RETREAT

NATURAL COGNITION

Timeless way of knowing and Being

Exploring the difference between

Ego level-knowing vs Being level knowing

Unlike the 'modern' paradigm

No hypothesis, No tests, No labs, No machines,

No reasoning, No contrived conclusions

Just Be with the questions, awaken the senses,

be in choiceless awareness

Sensing Feeling Being

Date: MAY 21 to 26

Venue: Thrissur, KERALA

Live the questions now

Rainer Maria Rilke

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir,
to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along, some distant day, into the answer”.

LITERATES LEARN THE WORD;

ILLITERATES LEARN THE WORLD

The senses speak to the understanding:

”Poor understanding, from us, you took the pieces of evidence and with them, you want to throw us down? This down-throwing will be your fall.”

Democritus

Retreat

Reclaiming NATURAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM

A 5-day retreat is being planned to ‘understand’ NATURAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM which is about creating knowledge of the real world that we experience, autonomously.

Natural cognition, unlike the modern notion of cognition, is not merely a mental activity that happens in the brain but a wholistic activity where the body, mind, and the world are involved and are responsible for shaping our total being-ness- not just ‘knowledge’ but our sense of value, and aesthetic awareness.

Literate is TAUGHT the WORD; illiterates LEARN the WORLD, autonomously. This means the literates learn the CONTAINER- THE PACKAGE whereas the illiterates learn the CONTENT.

Literates are ‘fed’ the readymade description, organized and concluded whereas the illiterates are exploring the real world, imbibing the experience as it is and through self-organization creating ‘understanding.

The other side of learning is that the literates’ cognitive system is shaped by the WORD – ready-made, concluded information where whereas the cognitive system of illiterates is shaped by the WORLD- open, ever-changing.

Natural cognition is rooted in biological imperatives whereas the ‘modern’ cognitive system is a mental construct.

The whole paradigm of modern education, including alternative education- all shades, democratic, Montessori, Waldorf, homeschooling, decolonization, etc are all based on this delusionary system created by a distorted view of the world created by a distorted cognitive system.

The focus of this exploration is to EXPERIENTIALLY explore and understand how in childhood the foundation meant for autonomous learning/ creation of knowledge is formed and how through the act of teaching, helping, being instructed, engaging with literacy, books, and toys the foundation gets rewired for being an analyzer of information, dependency is formed.

The process is non-argumentative, and contemplative, awakening the sense of process, developing aesthetic awareness, learning to hold doubts, learning to be open, and reclaiming the lifelong nature of true learning.

Habit breaking- experientially understanding how literacy rewires our natural cognitive system and instills cognitive habits, fragments the body and mind, makes us ‘masculine,

Destroys childhood and feminine qualities and turns us against life. Understanding the disconnect between the words and their meanings… How do we appropriate words for our whims?

Understanding how modern schooling and various modern institutions damage our natural cognitive system

Redefinitions – Reclaiming the real meaning of the word in experience….

FOR WHOM

This is for people who are deeply interested in exploring the fundamental reason for what is going wrong with the ‘modern’ world. The retreat is for exploring deeper into the way how we, the so-called educated have turned against life whereas the illiterates, indigenous people have been in alignment with the natural flow of life. We will explore how this ‘anti-life beingness’ got formed. Naturally, children will be the focus as it is in childhood that our beingness gets shaped and like the foundation of the building once made firmly difficult to undo the damages done to the foundation except for some repair job on the superstructure.

Please join only if you are willing to critically look at all the assumptions of the modern paradigm

Natural Cognition

Knowing is the nature of life.

Why one learns, is to sustain life.

What is learned, is species-dependent.

What each species learns, is context dependent.

Where and when, is the context.

The context dictates what to learn.

Content dictates how to learn.

Life itself ensures the continuation of life.

CONTENT - The natural content of learning- the real world and its descriptions

INHERENT QUALITIES AND ABILITIES that exists in birth

DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE FOUNDATION- The way cognitive inputs get organized based on the sensory inputs

DEVELOPMENT of tools/ qualities/ abilities/skills/ expertise, Cognitive habits

DEVELOPMENT OF VALUES – Humility, sustainability, sensitivity, cooperation

DEVELOPMENT OF PROCESS (observation, exploration, etc )

DEVELOPMENT OF PROCESS (experience the whole, explore the parts-)

GRAMMER OF LEARNING (form function process materiality structure etc)

ORGANIC MEMORY- storing and recall

LANGUAGE LEARNING - Science of language, Purpose and limitations

AWAKENING SENSE OF BEAUTY- the optimizing principles of cognition

DRAWING- 3D to 2D conversion- the unexplored potential of drawing as a means to connect the real world to the two-dimensional realm of the screens

UNDERSTANDING/ comprehension – Gestalt and self-organizing principle

METACOGNITION – Making the IMPLICIT knowledge, imbibed while ‘being’ in the world, EXPLICIT through metacognitive awareness

The Premise

1. All living beings are learning and creating knowledge.

2. We are biologically equipped to create knowledge.

3. The formation of the neural network depends on the experiences we have

4. Literates learn the Word and illiterates learn the World.

5. We are biologically equipped to create knowledge of the real world autonomously and not to analyze second-hand information.

6. Our cognitive development and neural network formation are based on what we experience. Hence, as children when we are subjected to being taught using written description, the brain development will be formed accordingly for analysis.

7. The modern educational paradigm is rooted in dealing with readymade information because we assume that children are incapable of learning. So, modern research on children is for teaching them better.

8. Modern education disregards the importance of the sense in cognition

9. Illiterates create IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE of the real world which is outside the realm of language and this knowledge can be explicated by becoming attentive to what is implicitly known (METACOGNITION).

10. Metacognition doesn't require language as the observation is happening while the activity is being done. The best example is the way implicit knowledge of grammar gets embedded by the age of 3.

Check out / connect

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About

Victim of modern education, alienated from self, uprooted from culture,

and cognitively damaged.

After a PG in Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, began to work with rural tribal non-literate people who became my first gurus in the journey toward recovery.

Cognitive recovery started happening after I quit reading in 1990.

Senses began to recover from their numbness, and observation and attention began to happen which led to reconnecting with the real world.

I saw children more clearly and recognized their potential in teaching us, the so-called educated, what learning, living, and being are all about.

Only children have the potential to save humans from their ultimate self-annihilation, provided we sensitively engage with them.

The journey is on.

About