The Piezo Metaphor — A New Metaphor For Awareness

If It Is Not ‘Awareness Of’ Something, i.e., An Observer Or A Watcher Of Something, Then What Is It?

One of the big difficulties that I have faced is trying to find a way of describing Awareness, if it is not ‘awareness of’ something, i.e. an observer or a watcher of something, then what is it?

I have purposely overthrown the traditional metaphor of a mirror, and have shown how the image created by it in our understanding can create an obstacle to our achieving true liberation.

It is useful to have metaphors at times in order to help solidify a correct understanding of what something is, but in the case of Awareness, it isn’t “something” like that. As I keep pointing out, that which is named “Awareness,” is just an abstracted quality of our experiences — that is, that we are aware of them. But this is the incorrect understanding, because it’s the conceptualization of something — “awareness” — being aware of something else.

It’s self-referential, among other faults.

The correct understanding is that we cannot correctly separate our having experiences, from our being. It’s like saying that your toe is its own entity, free to move about on its own without any connection to the rest of you. And that simply isn’t correct.

I have referred to knowing presence a number of times in this book, and I have already pointed out that both of those words needfully have to have their meanings tweaked.

So, knowing is not a cognitive understanding of the meaning, or qualification of some characteristic, nor a recognition of the identity, of something. Instead, it is a synonym for “naturing,” and by that I mean knowing, as in doing. We literally know something by doing it, and I wish to expand on that meaning to encompass the meditative insight that the naturing of all things, all phenomena, all appearances, are not separate from the “awareness of” them.

But this becomes just circular wordplay.

I have also pointed out that presence should be understood as “presence to,” as in the case where a teacher might call out to an unfocused student and demand: “Are you with us?” Being with, is being present to.

But this wording itself can quickly lead one into quicksand, if it is taken as someone being present to something — paying attention to it. That is not the intended meaning, because the perspective being invoked by that tweaked word is the presence of the Now to that which appears, or shows up.

Shows up where? Well, trying to describe the indescribable — the ineffable — is certain to lead one astray, but: shows up Now.

Because of these difficulties, and twirling ratiocinations, I have spent a long time trying to find a physical phenomenon that could be used to describe metaphorically what I am trying to point the reader’s mind towards, without being able to just explain it because it is ineffable.

By definition, and the reality that the word points towards, the ineffable doesn’t lend itself to explanation; while, on the other hand, pointing to everything with a sweeping arm gesture, and smiling at you, won’t accomplish much either.

I keep coming back to the same thing: Piezoelectricity. I assume most readers, no matter how intelligent, educated, or experienced you are, probably haven’t heard that word before, or took notice of it, and yet, I am just as sure that right at this moment, you have something in your hand, or pocket, or around you close by, that uses this phenomenon to work.

I am even sure that you have more examples of piezoelectricity throughout your home, car, work, and you probably carry at least one thing around that is piezoelectricity-based even when you go “roughing it” in the wilderness.

“Piezo” is of Greek origin, being derived form the word piezein, meaning to press or squeeze.

The interesting thing about some crystal materials, such as Tourmaline, is that if you subject the material to some kind of deformation — pressing or squeezing it — it will generate an electric potential on opposite sides of the material, as if you are squeezing the electrons to either side of the material, which can then be used, like it was a battery (actually, it’s more like a capacitor because its charge is quickly re-balanced once the squeezing stops).

And, interestingly, if you present an electric charge to opposite sides of the material, it will deform.

Now, the electrical potential is not something added to the material — when it is pressed or squeezed — it is just the result of the deformation of the material as it is being subjected to a physical stress, which “displaces” the electrons that are an integral part of the material.

And if you apply an electrical current to the material — rather than subjecting the material to some stress — it causes it to deform. Yet, nothing is being added to the material, rather, it is, as we tend to say, just electrons traveling through it, by “bumping” other electrons out.

So we have a piece of material that changes, or is changed in shape — temporarily — without changing the material itself — just its shape.

That all sounds interesting, but how it becomes useful is when it is subject to vibrations, like your voice speaking into a microphone, such as the one on your phone. Then the vibrations cause electrical potentials that increase and decrease in lock-step with your voice. And it is this electric potential which is then amplified by the phone and transmitted through the phone network. And that’s not all it can be used for.

For example: piezoelectric-based devices are also used in phonograph pickups, cigarette lighters, motors, sonar equipment, pressure sensors, diesel fuel injectors, earphones, ultrasonic cleaning and welding, ultrasound imaging, dot-matrix and inkjet printers, speakers for cellphones, speakers for toys, musical instrument pickups, buzzers, electric toothbrushes, and to generate a spark for igniting gas, such as on your gas stove (clic, clic, phroom), and many other uses.

So here is how I would like to metaphorically put this to use: the material is something, such as your body; while the electric current is awareness. Remember, these are just one thing.

Whatever happens to the body, causes changes in the awareness because it is the body, and the flip side to this is: changes in the awareness cause changes in the body — to move, or change form, or sing a song, etc. — because it is the body.

Got it?

Well, you should know that I’ve hesitated to ever mention this metaphor before writing this short dialog, because I just see so many problems in the physicality of it. In fact, I hesitated seven and a half years to put it out there in the world.

You see, skipping over the problem of ineffability and what happens when we try to name or describe that which has no name and no character to describe, while presenting a metaphor for “it” based upon a physical phenomenon, just leads to so many false understandings.

Here is how I see this going, when I say that all manifesting phenomena are the activity of awareness — awareness not being ‘of something’, but rather ‘doing something’, and then use this metaphor to evoke the ‘correct’ image of it, I will be misleading you — not intentionally, of course. But by “reaching down” to your presumed level (after all, why else the need for a metaphor?) I am already failing to properly instruct you (I am talking about me, and no one else, here).

The problem with my statement is that, after hearing it, people will say, “Oh, Awareness is the Mind, and what the Mind does is think, so what Awareness does is think thoughts, ideas, etc. so the ‘everything’ that Awareness does is the content of Awareness”

To which I have to respond, “no, totally wrong. What awareness does is ‘be’ (awkward, I know). And everything in the world is the ‘be-ing’ of awareness.”

But they still don’t get it.

So I try, “What Awareness does is be materially. It ‘matters’.”

“Oh,” they say, “so it changes shape or form, or becomes something real, rather than just potential!”

“No, that’s not it at all, unfortunately. When Awareness ‘be’s’, it doesn’t become something else; it doesn’t even become something at all. It just ‘be’s’.”

Well, this just doesn’t make any sense at all. Especially if someone says, “Well, hey, wait a minute! If awareness doesn’t become anything, then it has to be different than everything, but if it is different than everything than it isn’t anything itself, and thus everything has to have a real existence on its own!” Which is circular and wrong, and so the answer here is also, “No, awareness doesn’t become anything, it is everything. ‘Is’ as in the present tense of the verb ‘to be’… awareness is everything. (It) be’s everything”

But that just confuses them more because now I’m going around in circles — and using a made-up word, because the verb “to be” doesn’t have a noun form — “Have a nice Be!”

Yet, I have a very clear sense of this in my heart! So I reach for my Piezo Metaphor™.

I say: “The closest that I have come to something that might work as a metaphor for what I am trying to say, is the piezoelectric effect found in some materials and even in some biological structures like bones. So here is the metaphor: let’s say awareness is a kind of a field, like an electromagnetic field. Now an electromagnetic field that surrounds something, like an electric wire, is actually present throughout the universe, although it quickly becomes very, very attenuated (weaker) the further you are from the wire it surrounds. And this electromagnetic field is not directly observable because it has no characteristics itself, even though it is everywhere in the Universe.”

“Wait a minute!” you might interject, “We can see an electromagnetic field with certain types of meters, so how can you say it is not observable?”

“Well,” I respond, “because you’re not observing an electromagnetic field when you are looking at a meter, you are observing the practical application of scientific knowledge about the effect that a certain kind of construction of certain kinds of materials will exhibit when it is near certain other kinds of material, so that when you put the meter near a wire with current running through it, so that there is an electromagnetic field around it, the meter display registers some kind of activity in the meter itself.”

“Huh?!?”

So I try to make it simpler: “Ok, remember when you were a child and your teacher gave you a magnet and some iron filings and you put the iron filings on a piece of paper and then moved the magnet under it?”

“Yes?”

“Ok, what did you see?”

“Well,” they say, “I saw the iron filings being moved by the magnet because of its magnetic field!”

“Ah,” I say, “you’re wrong. What you saw was iron filings moving on a piece of paper. You did not see a magnetic field because that is just a scientific abstraction that you have been taught and are imputing into your experience.

“Scientists, like you on your own, notice that when they have a magnet under a piece of paper and move the magnet, the iron filings they place on the top of the paper move with it, so they realize that there has to be some cause of this, and long story short, they infer that something they then decide to call a ‘magnetic field’ is somehow a characteristic of the material that the magnet is made of, even though you can’t see it directly — you can only see its effect.”

“Mmmmm, ok, I guess…”

“So to continue, after millennia of observations, many, many people have come to realize that there is something about being alive that can be called “awareness” that actually makes everything by manifesting certain kinds of activity. Only in this case, there isn’t a meter, or iron filings, that this activity is manifesting in, because there is only awareness. So these “certain kinds of activity” are of awareness itself. And the activity is known because this activity is phenomenal — its appearance, its showing up, is felt — by awareness.”

“Well,” they sigh, “you’re losing me again.”

“I’ll continue a little more and we’ll see if what I’m saying becomes any clearer.”

“Ok.”

“Let’s imagine,” I continue, “that I have a piece of crystal that is known to exhibit a piezoelectric effect. What this means is that if I squeeze the crystal, it will exhibit an electrical charge, as if it had an electromagnetic field around it. And if I actually do apply an electric charge to it, thus creating an electromagnetic imbalance in the material, it squeezes as if by an invisible force.”

“Yeah, ok, whatever. Not something I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“But of course you have,” I say, “every time you turn on your gas stove and you hear that clicker igniting the gas, the stove is doing exactly what I just described. The clicker is a special kind of crystal material that exhibits a piezoelectric effect so that a big voltage spark can be created by a low voltage control that smacks it.”

“Really? I never knew that was how it works. Wow, you learn something new everyday…”

“So, ok, I’ll finish this metaphor up then by summarizing: awareness is the crystal. Now, I don’t mean that as an identification, that I am pointing to the crystal and saying that it is awareness. I mean that the crystal is what awareness is doing. And the interesting thing is that if we do something physical to the crystal it changes the awareness that is the crystal. We call this a feeling. So Awareness is being a crystal and anything that affects the crystal changes awareness in a way that we call feeling. Awareness feels the crystal it is being, being squeezed, for example. And likewise, if the feelings of Awareness change, so does the crystal!”

“I think I understand what you’re saying…”

So, what do you think? Does the metaphor work?

I find grave problems in it: it will never resonate for you because it is a phenomenon outside of our unaided ability to be conscious of, and this is the problem with all of our technology today. These artifacts are built upon phenomena in the natural world that operate at scales beyond our senses’ resolution.

And although the particular effect that I am using here is manufactured into many things, they are artifactual — human made, and not natural, so comparing our knowing presence to such a thing is like comparing apples and iPhones.

Of course, the point of using a metaphor is to remind oneself of an intended meaning, but it is just as likely to instill a false understanding that will forever block your way.

A metaphor only works if it uses something natural and in common experience, but finding one in a particular natural phenomena for awareness is a fool’s errand. Awareness is just an abstract concept that doesn’t exist in reality. And yet, what it points to is an ‘evident quality’ of all our experience — after the fact.

Instead of looking for a metaphor for an abstraction, look within for what truly is. Once you succeed in that, you will find that every natural thing is direct evidence for the truth.

But any natural thing, used as a metaphor for awareness, is a misleading device. You cannot separate ‘awareness’ from all that is, because the aspect of your lived experiences — your life — that you seek to show by using the metaphor, is not there.

How can a metaphor for an abstraction of a quality that itself is imputed into a rationalized apperception, itself based on already pre-existing understandings, ever bring you to the truth?

It’s so far removed from the lived event as to be almost meaningless.

The Buddha once silently held up a flower while he was teaching, and one disciple, Kashyapa, smiled in full realization. It is called “The Flower Sermon:”

In ancient times, at the assembly on Vulture Peak, Buddha picked up a flower and showed it to the crowd. Everyone was silent, except for the Kashyapa, who broke out in a smile. Buddha said, “I have the treasury of the eye of truth, the ineffable mind of nirvana, the most subtle of teachings on the formlessness of the form of reality. It is not defined in words, but is specially transmitted outside of doctrine. I entrust it to Kashyapa the Elder.”

If the Buddha had manifested a cigarette lighter and flicked it aflame, all he would have accomplished would be to have impressed some weak minds.

“You see? Awareness is like this cigarette lighter!”

Don’t do that. Find the real Truth for yourself, and let others find it for themselves .