What a peculiar prison sentence is this thing we call life. Each of us appears to have been born into captivity, a death sentence hanging over us, only the actual date of our ‘execution’ unknown.
We are shackled to these bodies – bodies that are not of our choosing (otherwise, I’d have chosen the Brad Pitt model, right?) – the prison staff composed of the family and friends who await our arrival at the delivery room gate. Through sheer happenstance the prison may be situated on the tony shores of the Hamptons or the sewage-strewn streets of Calcutta.
Escape from this prison does not seem possible. Unless, of course, we opt for self-execution. Gravity keeps us pinned to the planet and even if we were to jettison ourselves into space the absence of air or the sun’s warmth would do us in.
We know not of whence we came nor, for that matter, where we are going, and the capriciousness (if not outright unfairness) of the whole thing can be maddening.
A strange prison sentence indeed.
So it is that amidst our life’s work (e.g. the struggle for survival, for shelter and safety, for food and companionship and the next cool Apple product) a kind of explanation is concocted, one that wholly depends either on imagination or the ‘scripture’ of those who came before us.
Some tell themselves that none of it matters, we are mere aberrations, blips on the radar screen of life, here today, gone tomorrow, utterly irrelevant to a cosmos without rhyme, reason, or rationale. We came from nothingness, we return to it, enjoy the game while you’ve got some playing time.
For others, there are one or more gods of differing temperament who dispatched us to this place and who await our return, no doubt where they will explain the whole thing to us and perhaps even share a good laugh at all the carnage and pain that for so long seemed unnervingly real.
But perhaps there is another understanding, one that, rather than flipping the equation on its head, suggests the equation itself is the problem (or, more precisely, a belief that it is real).
When I lift my finger into the air and stare at it, the question arises, “Where do I end and the universe begins?” The question is both obvious and ludicrous. Obvious in that each of us wanders through life imagining ourselves to be separate and apart from everything else. Ludicrous in that it is impossible for “me” to be separate from the cosmic soup that both hosts me and comprises me. Look at your own finger and see if those same thoughts do not occur to you.
Over the span of 18-24 months, your entire body regenerates itself. Every cell comes and goes. So from a purely physical perspective, where or what is the substance of you? When quantum physicists peer deeply into the fabric of stuff, they can’t find anything. Literally. The deeper they probe into matter the more confounded they become: There are only probabilities of energetic wave/particles occupying a place in space and time. Only…. space is creating itself and time – well, nobody can prove its existence.
The point being that in all of the history of the world and its billions of human inhabitants and their biggest-brain progeny, not one has ever been able to prove that one of us has ever existed. Think about that.
And then think about who it is that is thinking about that if the thinker itself doesn’t exist? What ARE you?
So if there is no prisoner, how can there be a prison? If there is no individual, how can there be an individual who suffers (or triumphs)? How can there be birth or death, a god or gods, meaning or meaninglessness (by whom would such meaning be assessed)?
This has been a strange and often times paradoxical adventure and nearing the crisp age of 50 I know less now than ever. But I see that growing ignorance as a good sign, because the more I forget all that has been jammed into this noggin (by other lost souls) the more that existence itself is allowed once again to shine through and show itself.
As Wei Wu Wei wrote: “In the West at least, we are nearly all busy polishing our mirrors … instead of understanding that neither the polisher nor mirror has ever or could ever exist. As long as we do not perceive the fatuity of a phenomenon telling itself how marvelous it is, we will never come to the knowledge of that which we are when we have understood that, as phenomena, we are not.”
No prisoner. No prison. No-thing. Just beingness, being. If only our minds could truly be blown by such anti-knowledge, eh?
Dude. Cogito ergo sum.
“I noticed that while I was trying to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth, “I am thinking, therefore I exist “[cogito ergo sum] was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of philosophy I was seeking.”
Worked for René. Works for me.
But oh shit. Now what?!
Go Ravens.
Tolle argues that Descartes had it exactly backward. “Descartes had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being “at one” and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested – at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!”
On a far more important note, I think the Niners will win 🙂
What can be proven ? Carry on the negatives….no prisoner, no prison, no-thing, no beingness no being, no mind, no thoughts no thinking. Why didn’t you take the negative exercise to its full extent ?
No word, so no vocabulary, so no thought, so no consciousness ?
Consciousness, the trademark of a god stamped into each individual human being. (not my saying but reads great) I am thinking, therefore, god is. Don’t we just love a good mystery.
A mistake, I think, to equate thought with consciousness. Isn’t that the crux of it? I think, therefore I am conscious (the Cartesian maxim Curt quotes in the previous comment). If you ‘space out’ for a bit, do you disappear? Thinking occurs in consciousness, not the other way around, yes?
I am thinking therefore I exist or am I a thought that is thinking that ? The thought of a thought infers a thinker, who or whatever that might be.
Can there be individual consciousness and not thought ? To be aware and not know it. The desired state of meditation that not even a buddha can reach. Can I feel spaced out and disappear; yes for my body but no for my mind. To be conscious is to think and to think is to be conscious; they mutually arise.
If I do not exist, then why would I question my existence ? The idea of an existence would have no meaning. Who or what is this being….ah, it’s a human being, being the being…if only a thought could be caught in a container then a mystery might be solved of the nature of dualism. Perhaps, my image ends up in the container and my physical body disappears, then you can q.e.d. it. Can there be existence/consciousness without a body ? This no.6, has the belief that it is our true nature and through patience will eventually find out, yes. Thankyou Doug for keeping us aware of the alternatives and methods to ‘cushion our existence here’.
What is more appealing; total disintegration and death or to go on forever in one disguise or another, immortal ?
Words, as the mystics point out, get in the way. Which I suppose is another way of saying, “Once the mind gets hold of the thing it’s no longer the thing, it’s a thought.” At the age of 15 my wife had a transcendent moment on a hill overlooking her school when, as she puts it, she more or less dissolved into the Oneness of existence and ‘saw’ (from that place of Oneness) that separation was an impossibility. It was not a thought but a ‘knowing,’ as she says, and an enormous stretch of time passed before ‘she’ came out of it, reduced to tears at the magnificence of the whole big shebang. We cannot conceive of being without thought since, to the mind, they are inextricably intertwined. I blog mostly to spit out whatever it is I’ve been chewing on of late, aware that with every word written I move myself farther from the truth. But as Robert Adams said, “It’s better than sitting in front of the TV.”
These comments can go on ‘forever’ so this will be my last, thanks for your patience Doug. As I’ve mentioned before, there is always a residual ‘I’ that experienced and recorded and digested; it is always an individual experience. I find the thought of being an individual entity liberating and it is the ‘I’ that knows; what is true for you.
Yep, the words can be stacked a mile high eventually, filled wit sound and fury and reasoning and intellect, signifying, what? And I agree, it’s that pesky “I” that lies at the center to the whole discussion. The ‘residual I,’ as you call it, is just memory, as you say, recording, digesting, puzzling over (and then making sense of), and so on. But if the memory starts to go, so too does that I. So what is it that that ‘little I’ exists within, that is home to the whole shebang? The nondualists call it the screen upon which the film is played, the ‘big I’ of Jesus’s “I am that I am.” That I must, of course, be utterly transparent, but we miss it for the little I that is so busily interpreting the world for us (or at least our little sliver of it).