Questions of life are inseparable for the East and for the West. What is the nature of the human being? What is the nature of the universe in which we live? These questions emerge as we reflect on our experience. Philosophy emerges from the meaning which experience gives to it. Philosophical reflection is, reflection on experience.

This self-reflective nature of the human being presents an awareness which is beyond one’s own place and life. One is not only involved in the present situation but past memories and future experiences. Experience is integral. Philosophy is not apart from life. Philosophy is in turn with experience and returns to experience.

An investigation of laughter is presented to display this way of understanding and how it would be applied in research. This Experiential Method begins with that which is given in an experiential description. It begins with Experiential Expressions. For Fang:

The question: Please describe what laughter means for you. Laugh-ing, for me, has always been special. It helps me. It helps because it reveals the universal human foibles in a world which often seems to take itself too seriously filled with people too self-important.

What makes me laugh? Most clowns, for me, aren’t funny. They are too real. The funny ones are the people who play on the intellect. Comedy is an intellectual awareness which reveals the absurd in what is supposed to be real and serious. The slip hanging beneath the dress of a preening peacock woman, the suddenly befuddled scholar whose confounded words reveal the truth of human reality, forgetting the most important remark in a speech. To mimic, to mime, to caricaturize, all reveal reality askew. They show the quixotic tendencies. They reveal. Humor is a playfulness with self-importance. To laugh is to look at reality without value to self. To be able to laugh is a flexibility of the soul and resourcefulness of the mind.

Comics are akin to the visionary, to see in whatever way, each possible foible accompanies each human truth. To laugh is an announcement to myself. It means that despite my sense of human responsibility, the overwhelming significance of the impact of my correct action, serendipity prevails. The comedic in person is universal. To bamboozle logic, to slip up perfection, to enliven the habitually solemn is no easy task. For me, to laugh is to forgive. Nothing is beyond the absurd. Nothing is beyond human forgiveness. Laughter is divine, in some cultures, in some religious sense. It is the recognition of the uniqueness of what it means to be human. It is central to the human being. We can see how silly we can be, how silly we are, how laughable the seriousness of life is in its candidness. We are. We aren’t.

The laughter in life is to see what little wisdom has been gleaned from this birth, life and death. Only because we can see the ridiculous and the absurd in ourselves is to recognize how funny our seriousness about life, over which very few of us have any control, can be. The fickle finger of fate points to human foibles. To walk the path in another’s shoes is an exercise in humility. To speak the truth, not mine. Comedy, for me, is a release. It is a release from responsibility of doing the nonsensical, doing what is important, imperative and urgent. Frequently, those imperatives have noting to do with the quality of life but only with the social respectabilities, appearances, not realities.

Trust the truth and you will laugh. The overt lie is laughable, because it is witnessed by us all. We recognize the obvious deceit. It is obviously intentional. It is a direct route to laughter. Deceit is subversive, obvious lying is laughable. The intent is a prerequisite to laughter. We see the deception. I have to laugh, it makes me feel free, for a moment, if only for a moment, it releases me from the burden which life sometimes carries. To laugh about it, we can go on with the seriousness of living in a way which allows us to be free.

One of the first things to notice in the description of laughter and its meaning is that it is described in relation to humor, comedy and the comic. This puts laughter at the center, as a response to or an expression of what is fundamentally human. It is central to the human being. Only people laugh, at least as far as we know. We may attribute, "smiles" to the happy expressions on animals’ faces but to laugh, to breakout in hearty "belly laughing" is an expression reserved for the human being. It is the recognition of the uniqueness of what it means to be human. In this way, laughter first reveals human reality.

Of course, the reality it frequently reveals is one not intended! Often, the humorous situation is one wherein a routine, taken for granted, run of the mill situation goes haywire. Normalcy breaks down, social respectabilities wind up with egg on the face and laughter breaks through, revealing where logic and its firm grasp on reality has lost its grip. Comedy . . . reveals the absurd in what is supposed to be real and serious. The everyday, taken for granted connections with what takes us from here to there, can breakdown unexpectedly and in the giving way, emerges a response: perhaps anger or frustration but preferably, humor, laughter. It reveals the universal human foibles. Laughter is a healthy response, an expression of human flexibility and the ability to bounce back. To laugh is an announcement to myself.

Laughter is a way of communicating a quixotic mixture which shows the complexities of daily life and the non-logical ways we try to get the world to behave. Comics intentionally act in ways which maximize the inclinations found in situations and characteristics of people to evoke these same responses. In this way, comics are akin to the visionary. In their presence we expect to laugh, we are prepared to accept the unexpected vision of the comic, to allow another to make "fun," to showcase our shortcomings and to laugh at them. They reflect our images like mirrors. To mimic, to mime, to caricaturize, all reveal reality askew. We revel in this revelation! We laugh in spite of ourselves.

Often, laughter is an experience which is the result of revealing an imperfection in what is basically and fundamentally human. It seems too, that inflexibility and pompousness, that inflated air of self-importance is deflated in gales of laughter. It is healthy and restoring. It helps me. Humor is a playfulness with self-importance. Humor and self-importance are inimitable to one another yet in experience they seem to be constant companions. To bamboozle logic, to slip up perfection, to enliven the habitually solemn, is the way of the comedic. This is not to say that tragedy, agony and suffering are not serious and to be taken lightly. But humor, the simple truth, reveals the capacity of the human being to rebound, to bounce back, to stretch and roll with the punches. To be able to laugh is a flexibility of the soul and resourcefulness of the mind.

Laughter intervenes and pokes "itself" into our bubble of safety, security and smug self-satisfaction at having mastered our surroundings. Serendipity prevails. Just when all seems in order and one is in charge of oneself, just like the preening peacock woman in the description, the slip hangs beneath the hem. What is so laughable we could suppose is that the culprit slip is not available to her sight but only to the observer. She cannot see the flaw, it is oblivious to her but both the preening and the sagging slip, these unlikely companions inimitable to each other, are in full view. When intending to attract notice, her unnoticed is also noticed. The fickle finger of fate points to human foibles.

There is a curious effect of humbleness and that is the experience of being freed, released. To laugh lightens the load. Comedy, for me, is a release. This reveals that once relieved of one burden of self and its priority, one is lighter, resilient and relaxed. In this ability to laugh at and with oneself, there is a forgiveness of one’s foolishness. To laugh is to forgive. This is a healthy restoring, refreshing and renewing. It releases me from the burden which life sometimes carries.

This experience of releasement from is also a releasement toward or into. There is a naturalness which emerges, a being what one is as one is without effort. A good, healthy laugh clears away confining and restricting tension. Trust the truth and you will laugh. This addresses the simplicity and straightforwardness of the humorist. Reality is simple, it does not need to be tricked, deceived or otherwise manipulated. One truly laughable buffoon in comedy is the liar. This is the basis for stretching the truth to unbelievable limits and in so doing, reveals the ridiculous and absurd. Deceit is subversive, obvious lying is laughable.

With the releasement toward the naturalness of one’s own being, the trusting of truth, we can go on with the seriousness of living in a way which allows us to be free. This is accompanied by the buoyancy, the springiness of the being which flows along its natural inclination. To be released from also would infer the experience of having one’s vitality set free, to a sense of moving more fluently and vigorously. I have to laugh, it makes me feel free.

The Thematic Amplification has shown that laughter reveals, humbles and releases. In experience laughter is natural. Although sometimes solicited, most frequently it emerges spontaneously in naivete and innocence. It does not seem to be an experience which arises from a person who is intentionally directed toward innocence, rather it breaks through logic, certitude and what is taken for granted to what is innocent and at times, contradictory. Comedy... reveals the absurd in what is supposed to be real and serious. Laughter is the expression of an experiential dialectic between comedy, humor and the human being. It gives expression to the myriad of inconsistencies in the natural flow of everyday situations and events. At the time of its emergence there is an experience of outflowing, a break in tension and release from one’s own awareness of self and an abandonment to nature and reality. It is "being" out of control. In this way it is the antithesis of boredom, worry and dread where the inflowing, idleness or withholding of one’s own feeling of being refuses to answer to any beck or call. Whereas, in the situation of laughter the response is active, dynamic and freely-given, either expectedly (as in response to the comedian) or unexpectedly (as in experience gone haywire).

Experience gone haywire, where things become entangled and confused and seem to take on a quizzical insistence on express g something other than what was intended, is a frequent occasion for the laughable. To say we can see the ridiculous and the absurd in ourselves is to admit and acknowledge our imperfections; this is not in a disparaging, chastising condemnation but an acceptance, forebearance and humbleness. Naturally arising, laughter is one way for us to stay in touch with the simple truths of living. Trust the truth and you will laugh indicates that laughter is non-manipulative. There are many kinds of humor, jokes, mimic, mime, caricaturize, clown and on and on. But laughter itself is what is in a constant and expressive style. It is universally human. People laugh, some more than others perhaps but humor arises in all cultures. Babies smile while not yet having developed the intellectual capacity to distinguish themselves from the world and its surroundings. They too laugh, giggle and are naturally in tune with their own being and yet unreflected experience.

One interesting aspect of the description and the Thematic Amplification is that in the situations where laughter emerges there is an absence of emotion at the very time laughter arises. This is not to say that laugher cannot emerge in an emotional situation. Quite the contrary. Laughter frequently arises in situations "loaded" with emotion. Rather, laughter precludes emotion, that is, arises prior to the enlistment of sympathy, sorrow, anger or elation or any other emotion. Laughter is not an emotion. It is an upsurge of effervescence in life, a resourcefulness and flexibility. In this way it is experienced as freeing one for life and freeing one from what holds one down, what restricts and restrains our experiences, weighing down the spontaneity in pompousness, overly serious self-importance and subsequent, inevitable disappointment. To laugh is to forgive. When we laugh we acknowledge our humanity in its unique responsibility to what is not only ours but all others with whom life is shared. To admit openly in laughter, by laughter, our own imperfection is an act of humility. Laughter is a healthy restoring and lightens what may be experienced as burdensome, restrictive and repressive. In this way, laughter is a breakthrough to self-no-self-transcendence, into the boundless. In the West there is a proclivity to think of ourselves as independent from the world, the universe and nature. In the East, no.

This Experiential Method which introduces and locates intentionality within the reflexive, self-witnessing displays the integral meaning of the East and the West. The reflexive/reflective dynamism is of complementariness rather than contrariness. This exemplifies, as Thomé Fang would say, a comprehensive harmony. Although intentionality is constitutive of the objective world, immediate reflexive consciousness of self, as Pierre Thévenaz would say, is a constituting power more original than intentionality.

As a comprehensive harmony, the reflexive is a movement toward the center while the reflective is a movement away from the center. Each is an integral aspect of the whole. By locating intentionality within the reflexive, there is no loss of continuity. Consciousness does not exhaust itself in a fallacious outgoing movement as being directed toward something other than oneself. The sustaining, expanding, uniting continuity of the phenomenon, for this Experiential Method, as Experiential Expressions, Thematic Amplification, Reflective Synthesis are in dynamic interplay, a comprehensive harmony of act and knowledge which not only the researcher accomplishes but the subject as well.