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Studstill: Cybernetic Approach to Dzogchen 363subject distinct from spatially localized objects, and includes the implicitpresumption that this dualistic mode of experience is ontologicallygrounded. See Ben Goertzel, Chaotic Logic: Language, Mind, and Reality,from the Perspective of Complex Systems Science (New York: Plenum,1994), p. 108. On the linguistic component of perceptual construction, seeGoertzel, Chaotic Logic, pp. 90, 96–7, 105–6.23. According to Paul Gilbert, “Learning theory shows clearly that previouslyneutral stimuli can come to trigger defensive responses.” PaulGilbert, “Defense, Safe(ty) and Biosocial Goals in Relation to the Agonicand Hedonic Social Modes,” World Futures 35 (1992): p. 37. Culture may“tag” stimuli with positive associations of safeness as well—what Gilbertrefers to as “social attention holding power” [SAHP] (Gilbert, pp. 61, 41).24. Gilbert, p. 35.25. Gilbert, pp. 49, 57.26. Harold A. Sackeim and Ruben C. Gur, “Self-Deception, Self-Confrontation,and Consciousness,” in Consciousness and Self-Regulation: Advancesin Research and Theory, vol. 2, eds. Gary E. Schwartz and DavidShapiro (New York: Plenum Press, 1978), p. 166.27. Glenn A. Perry, “A Systems/Perennial Approach to the Evolution ofPsyche,” World Futures 36 (1993): p. 239.28. Perry, p. 238. The “high stakes” of self-image maintenance (survivalversus death) may explain the autonomic and affective arousal causedsimply by hearing one’s own voice or watching a videotape of oneself in aninnocuous interview. See Sackeim and Gur, pp. 152–5.29. Combs, Radiance, p. 69.30. Elsewhere I have attempted to explain this continuity, inspired byHerbert Guenther’s presentations of Dzogchen: “At the ultimate level, allthat exists is Being’s dynamics, which have nothing to do with ‘things’ or‘substances.’ Yet within the context of an hypostasized self that somehowseparates itself off from Being, these dynamics take on certain meanings.These meanings [are] concretized by the mind, becoming at that pointsymbols of Being’s qualities and dynamics. In our current situation, however,these symbols have lost their meaningfulness through the mind’sactivity of labeling and its tendency to interpret the entire field of experiencein terms of completely taken-for-granted concepts, these symbolshave become reduced to the status of things.” Randall Studstill, “Being andthe Experience of Being in Heidegger and rDzogs-chen,” (unpublishedpaper, 1994), p. 19.31. See Michael R. Bütz, “Chaos, An Omen of Transcendence in thePsychotherapeutic Process,” Psychological Reports 71 (1992): p. 830. Itshould be emphasized that most “threats” are defined in relation to prior