1.1. A wide notion of "clarity"...

The word "clarity" is usually associated with the presence of light and transparency. Light is easy to see and feel, we are surrounded by it, we owe our lives to it; however, light is very difficult to understand. Today's scientific vision of light is that it is a gauge boson that can carry the electromagnetic force (a photon). Fermions (matter) and bosons (energy) interact in very complex ways, and, in fact, one can be transformed into the other (at least theoretically). We might even conceive energy and matter as only ways of appearance of a more fundamental reality. All of this is very complex and mysterious, and the accurate description of what we know so far already involves very complex mathematical formulas and weirder concepts than one can find in the most fantastic science-fiction extravaganza. But even these complex mathematical structures leave us in the dark regarding the sensation of light, the inner experience of light, we would be unable to explain to a born-blind person what yellow feels like even if he could perfectly understand the current scientific explanation of light.

On the other hand, a perfectly transparent object would be perfectly invisible, but, although invisible to the senses, "transparency" is, as a concept, very simple and easy to grasp: it is merely the ability of a medium to pass-through something without changing it. That is, a medium that is perfectly transparent regarding a certain kind of object would allow it to travel from A to B without any of its relevant properties being changed. Properties may change during the travel due to obstructions (fewer properties get to B), additions (extraneous properties get to B) or distortion (different properties get to B). In any case a perfectly transparent medium would not interfere in any way with the objects traveling through it. We should also notice that any perfectly transparent medium will seem invisible to the things travel through it. For instance, if we travel through space we might see many objects passing by, but space itself is invisible. In practice, however, media are never perfectly transparent and sometimes the medium even destroys the object at point A and then recreates it at point B with all its relevant properties intact (this is perhaps what happens when light travels through glass).

It is easy to see that this notion of transparency is just a case of very good transportation, moreover it can be applied to everything, including feelings, thoughts, creative impulses, sensory experiences, and so on. In a general sense being transparent to the world is just being able to receive it in great scope, detail, and accuracy. It is also the ability to express and understand ourselves without barriers.

So, as you can see, we are using the notion of clarity in a much wider sense then its orthodox use. We want to apply it mostly to conscious experiences, about ways to get a clearer mind, of being clear about what we desire, fear, love and feel, and much more. It is a very wide notion of "clarity" and it might get weird at times. To be more precise we will widen the notion of clarity so that it applies to every transparent medium that allows us to be in contact or grasp something while at the same time maintaining our difference from it, this includes everything except the inner I (which we cannot see or feel - it is not reflected into any kind of experience although it is at the basis of every experience). For instance I may feel, think or see something but I am not that feeling, thought or material object, these things are reflected in a medium, in time and space, through colors, thoughts, etc. Clarity allows me to grasp thoughts, feelings, objects, relations between objects, etc. The more clarity I have the closer I will be to them, the more I will grasp them, but there is always a difference between the one that sees and that which is experienced by him, therefore a bridge is needed, and we want to speak about the clarity of that bridge. Clarity in our sense will therefore include, among other things:

• • Clarity of perception - the ability to perceive with the most scope, detail and accuracy the world outside - includes clarity of senses, thoughts, representations of relations and objects, etc. In my use clarity of perception involves seeing a star as a star, a planet as a planet and a galaxy as a galaxy. Or looking at Saturn and knowing that it has rings of ice, in spite of our inability to see them with the naked eye. So, clarity of perception, in this sense, is something that augments as science progresses. It is not just a matter of having good senses, but also of understanding what we are looking at.

  • Clarity of expression - the ability to express our inner state, unhindered by drugs, addictions, lack of technique, disease, etc. Just as any kind of "fog" can hinder our ability to see the outside world, so there are many hindrances that may stop us from being able to express what we are. For instance we might want to dance beautifully when we hear a wonderful melody, but the body may not respond well to our imagined movements. Dancers need many months of practice before their bodies respond accurately to their desired movements. The inability to master a foreign language displays the same difficulty: we want to express something but we simply do not master the medium. To this inability to pass a message to the outside world I will call lack of transparency, in this case from the inside to the outside. We should also notice that both the inner state and the outside world have a mysterious origin. We do not know what allows for the world to come into and continue to exist (or even if something is required or not); similarly we ignore what causes or consciousness (there are many hypothesis but none has been proved), what allows us to exist. So clarity is in fact a relation between two absolute mysteries. The medium in itself is a mystery too. So the clearer we are the more we understand how everything is enshrined in mystery.

  • Absence of secrets or personal clarity - perhaps personality is nothing but a collection of secrets, in any case, we may be more or less transparent, more or less obscure: the more secrets we have to others, and/or the more a secret I am to myself, the more obscure I will be to others and/or to myself. Persons can be very obscure. Perhaps some people have a clear view of themselves although they are very obscure or show an altogether different image to others. In that case the roots of their actions will be unpredictable or perhaps mysterious and even perplexing to others, but they will be relatively clear to themselves. But frequently I am a mystery to myself. Why do I feel the way I feel? Why do I have certain aspirations, fears? Why do certain unimportant things enrage me? The less I understand myself, the more a mystery my personality will be, the more obscure the roots of my actions will appear. The less secrets the more transparent we are, the more understandable our persona will be: our goals and dreams, our aspirations, fears, all exposed in the light. Absence of secrets is having clarity of the self, it is very different from having clarity of expression: clarity of expression is just to know how to do something. Clarity of personality is being clear on why we want to do something. if I am enraged then having the ability to express it is having clarity of expression. Being clear on why I feel enraged by that kind of thing or why I feel a certain aspiration is a very different matter.

So we will focus not so much on the transparency of clean glass and blue skies, but of minds, hearts, personas, and wills. Therefore we will not be talking much about the physical "light". In our inner world physical light seems analogous with the light of consciousness: experiences are not made "in the dark", they are as if lit with the light of consciousness. However this "light of consciousness" - although we all constantly feel it in our waking moments, and although it is the most intimate and obvious experience any conscious being has - is even more mysterious than the light of physical world, so we will concentrate mostly on being more and more transparent although we will talk about this "light" occasionally. But the fact that this "light of consciousness" seems to be a complete mystery, should not allow us to forget that, only with some sort of "illumination", can there be conscious existence, understanding, feeling, creativity or any kind of experience.