The second-by-second flow of images, words, feelings and sounds

這些每分每秒在腦中不停流過的影像、文字、感受和聲音

inside our heads that philosophers call: our Consciousness.

哲學家稱之為「意識」

All day, this consiousness is filled with a tangle of material that flashes by an observing eye

一天之中，意識由無數混亂無序的片段組成，迅速地、密集而多層次地

so fast and in so multi-layered and dense array; we can generally only rest and focus on a minuscule part of what is before us.

掠過腦海；而我們僅能就剛好出現在我們眼前的內容，抓住其中一小部分

There are waves of sensations, fog-banks of moods, collisions of ideas and swirls of associations and impressions.

可能是湧上心頭的感覺、難以言明的情緒、相互碰撞的各種想法、漩渦一般的連結和印象

Consciousness doesn't just unfold on a single cinema screen of the mind either.

意識也並不只是展現在心中浮現的某一幕畫面

We can think of it more like a multi, multi-plex where a dozen or more moods and emotions

我們可以將其想像為一個由十幾種思緒、情緒多重層疊

are projected at once in a fractured collection of images, reminiscent of a puzzling collage of Avant Garde videos.

同時一起投射在某個影像片段，令人聯想到由前衛藝術的影片拼貼而成的謎樣的作品

Most of what we have felt and have been, will disappear before it can ever be held and examined.

大部分我們感受到的、看見的生命經驗，在我們尚未攫獲、詳細檢視時就消失無蹤

Furthermore, little of the richness of consciousness ever makes it out into public discussion.

除此之外，意識所包含的豐富性從來都難以被言明討論

When we open our mouths and tell other people, for example:

舉例來說，當我們開口要告訴他人

what we think or how we're feeling. We have no option but to radically simplify the nature of experience

我們的想法或感受，我們只能極其簡化

like a journalist filing a 100 word piece on a battle or political revolution to an indifferent, domestic audience a continent away.

如同一名記者把一場戰爭或政治革命簡化成一百字的文章，以供遠在另一大洲的讀者閱讀

We might say we've had a "quiet day so far" or are "fairly cheerful at the moment."

我們會說「至今為止一切如常」或是一切都「還滿愉快的」

And a generous social code means we don't remind one another of what an inaccurate portrait this must necessarily be.

而根據一般的社交禮儀，我們並不計較這是一個多麼模糊的形容

Part of the reason why we're not quite aware of the true nature of consciousness is the fault of literature.

讓我們不那麼清楚意識的本質的原因之一來自於文學作品給予的錯誤印象

In most of the novels we read, characters are attributed an utterly implausible, yet superficially beguiling, clarity of mental functioning.

我們讀過的大多數小說裡，人物的心理狀態總是會被看似清楚真誠地揭露

For example: the influential, 19th Century, English novelist: Anthony Trollope,

例如，19 世紀著名英國作家特洛勒普

liked to offer his readers a snapshot of what was supposed to be going on in his characters' heads.

喜歡讓讀者們知道他小說中的人物腦中的想法

In his novel: Phineas Finn, a man is elected to parliament and Trollope describes him travelling by train to the capital to take up his post

在小說 Phineas Finn 中，一名剛獲選為議員的男人坐火車到首都去取郵件

and musing moodily on his political prospects.

同時思索著他的政治前途

He had many serious, almost solemn thoughts on his journey to London.

在前往倫敦的旅程中，他嚴肅地想了很多

He wondered if he would make a failure of the great matter he had taken in hand.

他思考著他是否可能失去他手中握有的一切

He could not but tell himself that the chances were twenty to one against.

他只能告訴自己，機率是一比二十

Now that he looked at it, the difficulties loomed larger than ever!

但他發現，他前途上的障礙隱約變得前所未有的艱鉅

Trollope gives us the sincere impression that this really is how human beings think when they sit down on trains and consider their futures.

特洛勒普營造出一種印象：這就是人們在火車上沉思未來時的思考過程

The sort of novels that Trollope wrote have even been described as extremely "realistic".

特洛普這類的小說甚至被認為十分寫實

And yet the problem is that, of course, no human who has ever existed, actually thinks or feels remotely like this.

問題是．沒有任何一個活生生的人是這樣跳脫出來思考的

It took until the early 20th Century of writers to focus on and respond to this foreshortening.

直到 20 世紀前期，作家們才開始注意、回應這樣的心理投影手法

In 1918, in his great novel Ulysses, the Irish writer James Joyce, for the first time, made the move of putting

1918 年，愛爾蘭作家喬伊斯在其知名作品《尤利西斯》中，第一次

a kind of microphone inside his characters' minds

聚焦於角色心中的想法的描寫

to pick up on what became known as: 'The Stream of Consciousness'.

以嘗試所謂的「意識流」

It sounded radically different from anything Trollope or past novelists had ever described.

這聽起來和特洛勒普或過去的任何作家的寫作手法都極端地不同

At one point in Ulysses, we hear the stream of consciousness of a heroine Molly as she lies in bed beside her husband Bloom in the middle of the night.

在《尤利西斯》其中一段，我們可以看見女主角摩莉半夜躺在丈夫布盧姆身邊時的意識活動

Is he dreaming?

他在夢中嗎？

Am I in it?

他的夢有我嗎？

He smells of some kind of drink not whiskey perhaps the sweety kind of paste

他聞起來像是某種酒。不是威士忌，有點像是人們用來黏海報

they put posters up with. I'd like to sip green and yellow expensive drinks staged or Johnny's drink.

散發著甜味的漿糊。我要啜飲有黃綠漸層的高級酒或是約翰的酒

I tasted one with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel. He must have eaten oysters.

我曾經將手指伸進那個養松鼠的美國人嘴裡嘗過一次。他一定吃了牡蠣

I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel fuller.

從來沒有人的尺寸能比他更讓我感覺被填滿

What's the idea of making us like that with a big hole in the middle.

我們身體中間的那個洞的意義是甚麼呢？

I hate people who come at all hours, answer the door and you're all undressed.

我討厭老是有人來訪，你必須去應門，即使你正一絲不掛

We come to know more about our own consciousness via Joyce's unusual portrait of Molly's.

我們透過喬伊斯對摩莉的意識活動的特別描寫，更了解我們自己的

Like ours, Molly's mind moves extremely fast from one topic to another.

如同所有人的意識，摩莉腦中的想法迅速地在不同主題之間跳躍

At one moment she's thinking about liqueurs, then about an American she met at the theater then a second later

上一秒她還在想酒，下一秒她就轉移到了在戲院認識的美國人。再下一秒

she's wondering if her husband's been eating oysters.

她在猜測丈夫是否吃了牡蠣

Then she thinks about his penis. Then she wonders about her own body.

接著她想到他的陰莖。然後是她的身體

Then gets irked by the idea of people coming around to the house when she's not ready to open the door.

最後她覺得訪客在她還沒有準備好的時候來訪讓她感到厭煩

There's no dominant central theme that gets carefully explored.

這些想法之間並沒有一個主要的主題

Despite the monstrous complexity, Ulysses, arguably, still amounts to a radical simplification of the true nature of experience.

即使《尤利西斯》中描寫的意識活動已經十分複雜，仍然遠比真正的經驗過程簡化許多

After all, the novel exists only as words, wheras our real stream of consciousness includes

畢竟，小說以文字寫成，然而我們的意識更像是

a disjointed and random streaming of films and pictures.

一連串雜亂隨機的影片和圖像

Images constantly flit across consciousness.

影像持續掠過我們的意識

Sometimes we'll see something extraordinarily specific, a door handle from 27 years ago or an image of a boat on a canal in Western France

有時候會浮現特定的事物：27 年前的門把，或是法國西部河道上的一艘船

or remember looking out of a train on a journey through Germany,

或是在經過德國的旅程中，從火車上往外看見的景色

but there'll be no further details or real sense as to why this has come into our heads right now.

但關於這些影像為何出現在我們的腦海的原因，我們無法知道更多細節或確定真正的原因

Nevertheless, Joyce's work is hugely significant because it helps us to start to see what we're up against when we try to understand our own minds.

無論如何，《尤利西斯》極具重要性，因為它幫助我們開始了解，人們在試圖了解意識活動時會遇到甚麼情況

It is not a case of just opening up a hatch and finding a welter of well-formulated thoughts.

這並不是打開艙門、翻找一堆雜亂堆疊在一起的格式化思想

When we turn our attention to ourselves, we won't be able to locate crystalline attitudes and precise ideas.

當審視的主角成為自己，我們無法清楚定位自己的立場和想法

We will discover only chaos and illusive thoughts.

我們只會發現一片混亂和錯覺

More significantly, it's from this prime-evil mulch, that we will have to assemble the solid and serious plans we need to navigate through existence.

重點是，我們正是從打魔王一樣的任務中，找出如何思考自身存在的具體方法

We have to decide: What we care about? How we should direct our lives? Who we should try to be?

我們必須決定：我們在乎甚麼？我們的人生方向是甚麼？我們想成為誰？

Knowing more about the stream of consciousness prepares us for the work that we have to do to pull out from the stream, the decent and accurate thoughts we need.

了解更多意識流的知識有助於正確地、合宜地挖掘出我們想在意識流中找到的東西

The mind won't automatically yield clear answers when we ask ourselves what we think or where we might direct our energies.

當我們自問自己在想些甚麼或我們應該做甚麼的時候，頭腦並不會自動給我們一個清楚的答案

There can naturally be a temptation to avoid the hard work and there are some alternatives to proper introspection.

人們當然想避免這種苦差事，而的確有些替代方案

Some of the content we hold in our minds is coherent and very easy to grasp,

我們腦中有些內容是相互呼應且極容易掌握的

but it suffers from a marked draw-back: it isn't really ours.

然而有一個缺點：它們不屬於我們

It's second-hand, stale and a derivative bank of ideas and plans.

這些內容是二手、陳舊、非原創的思想和概念

We have certain notions in our heads that come, not from our deeper resources of feeling and intuition

我們腦中有些想法並非來自我們深層的感受和直覺

but from what we have sucked in uncritically from outside

而是我們不加鑑別就囫圇吞棗的外來資訊

from what we've read in the newspaper or heard about from parents or friends.

像是報紙新聞、父母或朋友的言論

These are: our received ideas.

這些都是我們被動接受的思想

We don't need to think hard at all to regurgitate them.

我們並不需要反芻這些資訊

They're just waiting in prepackaged form in the reception room of our minds.

他們就像已經被打包好，在我們腦內的接待櫃台等待被接收

And yet, it's only the thoughts and feelings that are originally unprocessed that come from the caverns in ourselves

然而，只有那些我們內心深處那些原創的、尚未被加工處理的想法和感受

that are the ones richest in information.

才能提供我們最豐富的資訊

Even if they're also, painfully, the hardest to make sense of.

儘管解讀這些訊息可以說是相當困難

Knowing a little more about the stream of consciousness shows us that our brains are a more delicate, messier organ than we're normally allowed to imagine.

多了解意識流動，我們就更能了解大腦這個器官比我們一般想像還要來得多麼精密又雜亂

Many of the introspective tasks we set ourselves turn out to be more fiddly and are going to need more resources than we typically allow for.

我們發現，許多自我檢視的任務原來是那樣精密，而需要的資源比一般我們能取得的還要更多

Yet the rewards for mastering introspection correctly are immense.

然而，掌握正確的方法所能獲得的成果是非常值得的

For it's by becoming experts in our own streams of consciousness that we have the chance truly to understand who we are.

因為藉由成為精通自身意識流動的專家，我們有可能真正了解真實的自我

and thereby to align our lives with the way we really feel and with the goals that can truly satisfy us when we reach them.

繼而調整生活方式以符合我們真實的感受和真正能滿足我們的目標