LWC Book 3
-Chapter 1-
Propriovisuality / Propriovision
When sensing in experience, some senses have regions whereat the Qualities and Concepts can be distinguished, as belonging to one location in that Moment, or in another. For example, a green dot can be at the top of the visual field, and a blue dot can be on the bottom of the visual field.
Qualities, and Concepts, can also be on the right side or the left side or the center of the visual field. They may become more difficult to see if they are nearer to the periphery or edges of the visual field.
When sensing in experience, there is also a sense of proprioception. This is a sense that helps detect where parts of the body are, relatively to other parts of the body. Partly, proprioception may be sensed from the pressures and tensions of some parts of the body on other bodily parts. Also partly, proprioception may be sensed by special sensations at the angles of joints. And partly, proprioception may be sensed by resistance to forces such as gravity, and tactile pressures of objects, external to the body. Proprioception helps to provide information of where the body is relative to other parts of itself, but does not necessarily give information about the space farther around the body, but only surficial, near, and active pressures, and also detection of space that is allowing the body to be in the current posture or pose. Really then, a person shouldn’t need vision to sense with proprioception. You can probably sense where your hands and feet are relative to the rest of your body, even with your eyes closed, and even if you change their positions. Likely, this is mostly due to the angles of joints, and various muscular tensions, and gravitational pressures resisted in specific manners.
(If you copy the pose above, you can probably feel yourself doing this pose, even with your eyes closed, with no Qualities from a visual field needed.)
So, without vision, the physical proprioceptional field is limited to take the shape of any current bodily pose.
If you put your hands by your sides, or in your pockets, and your feet down, and then imagine you are moving your feet or hands, and imagine that they are now more in front of you, then you are having a virtual proprioceptional experience, or what is called an oneiric proprioceptional experience. You are somewhat dreaming or imagining that they are located elsewhere than they are located physically. Even without vision, by doing these types of oneiric movements for any joints and limbs of the body, this can expand the potential proprioceptional field, or region, to anywhere that your hands or feet or other parts of your body could be, relative to where they are now. But unlike the physical body, instead of only having one set of hands, you can have as many hands or feet as you can imagine, oneirically, virtually. These extra oneiric bodily poses can be simultaneously detected and utilized at subconscious levels, such as when you are anticipating where your hand or foot will be next, or how your body will pose next with other body-parts. This can produce a field of proprioceptional potentiality, as a space around the body like a bubble, expanding the proprioceptional field to include any potential pose or contortion, like a range of all possible motions. This field is in “3D”, instead of the “2D” of the visual field.
Again, the visual field is two-dimensional or “2D”, and this means “2D” for one eye. Even with the difference of visual input between two eyes, the information sensed with two eyes doesn’t contribute as much to the sense of depth as you might expect. If you try closing one eye, or otherwise use only one eye to sense depth with vision, you might find that a sensation of depth is very possible, so it has many other causes besides usage of two eyes, binocular vision.
Vision and proprioception can be used together to modify one another. I call this propriovisuality. This can be used to help detect depth of space. Sensing using visual data only, might not tell you much in terms of space. Think of how easy it is to change the perceived depth of vision with foreshortening and optical illusions! If you are seeing the image below, how can you determine if the tower is very small and closer to the viewer, or if the tower is large and far away?
And if you are seeing the image on a page or screen, then both are basically the same distance away from your eyes. They only seem to have depth due to the shapes and colors shown on the page or screen you are seeing, about the same distance away, and neither having much depth.
You see shapes of colors of various lightness and saturations, some having useful outlines, which can help separate them on a “2D” plane. When you perceive depth, such as in an instance like the one above, you assume space between the objects in the field of vision, and also between the objects and yourself as the observer. You may assume, perhaps subconsciously, that it is possible for proprioception to occur there in that space, therefore modifying your sense of vision with your sense of proprioception. This makes a sort of combined sense, a propriovisual sense. If visual depth is to be perceived, shouldn’t it contain space that could potentially be sensed by proprioception, whether in physical actuality or even just virtually or oneirically?
When using both visual and proprioceptional senses together, the combined field is sensible as an even more expanded region, adding further forward depth, and also the back of the body.
If we reduce the peripheral propriovision, and simplify this shape to a rectangular cube, it might look something like this:
(Both are the same. One shows color to help portray the depth.)
Putting evenly spaced rows and columns of horizontal and vertical lines, to divide up this cube into many sections, makes something of a field like the following image.
The more lines that are used to divide the cube, then the more sections and vertices (shown by dots in that image) that there would be, in the cube. Increasing the amount of lines used to divide the cube into sections, is like increasing the resolution of an image, or like increasing the amount of available places to sense in the cube. Increasing the amount of lines allows propriovisual sense to be more specific, as opposed to reducing the amount of lines used to divide the cube, as there would be fewer dots, fewer places for propriovisual sense to choose and greater gaps between dots and lines. I call a divided cube, like in the picture above: a “tank!”. Tank!s are models of a region available for sensing. They manifest from a perspective of a sensing entity, such as the propriovisual sense from the perspective of a person.
A tank! is different than an environment. An environment remains, and a person can go away from an environment, and also return to an environment. A tank! stays with a person wherever they go, because it is a region of potential or available sensations. This difference will be useful to know later.
Some of the lines which divide a tank! can be used to show various distances sensible from a person. I call some of these distances “Layers”. Some can be foregrounds, backgrounds, and “midgrounds”. They can also be called near-distance, mid-distance, and far-distance. Or “near-depth”, “mid-depth”, and “far-depth”. Beyond a tank!’s line (or “2D” plane) dividing the far-distance from even further space, can be called “ultra-depth”. This is beyond the limits of physical vision. (But perhaps it can be oneirically sensed proprioceptionally? If so, then it would allow modification to vision, allowing propriovisual sense using that Layer.)
(If you are on a mobile device, you can click on the image and zoom in to see a better quality version.)
Sensing closer to the body than physical vision would allow, (but using physical proprioceptional sense or oneiric proprioception at the body) yet still using propriovisuality, allows for a “propriovisual layer” which is nearer to the self than the visual “near-depth” or “near-distance”. Even further behind this, would be both behind the proprioception of the physical back of the body, and obviously behind the physical vision, but still using propriovisuality (oneirically/virtually), is what can be called “nega-depth”. This is a layer even further behind than the physical dorsal region.
Propriovisuality is useful because it is possible to make changes between the sensible Layers by manipulating them (oneirically, is one way to do so). This allows one Layer to seem to be in another location in the environment and/or in a tank!, or even seeming to be at another Layer, so that Layers can overlap. Propriovisual sense is also useful for understanding later concepts and for later techniques described in this book, especially the concepts and related techniques of <stages>.