Previously I gave a hazy formulation of an alternative view of the self, something that is not static, has no form and that there may not even be a name for. I’ve gone on at length to show how language, an appendage of an incomplete way of perceiving reality, is insufficient when it comes to describe what and who we are.
Basically, language cannot describe phenomena that doesn’t follow the rules of language. No answer will ever do.
Just for one last piece of clarification, let us look to etymology for some insight. The root meaning of the word ‘describe’ from the Latin describere is “to write down, copy; sketch, represent,”
To re-present something, but in words. Implicit in this notion of ‘re-presenting’ something is that it is a copy. It is not the original.
The root of this word (represent) is among other things to “bring to mind by description,” also “to symbolize, serve as a sign or symbol of (something else, something abstract)”
All the signs are there that language is purely for ‘bringing things to mind’ ie turning reality into mental concepts/abstractions.
It’s literally there, in black and white. We’ve known for a long time that what we’re actually doing is forming a re-presentation of things with words. I feel it would do us well remember this.
Ok….language isn’t all stupid
This isn’t to say that it has no use. It does serve a purpose. It can help us when we try to decipher reality. It allows us to communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas. It allows us to build a world of meaning that we can relate to. We definitely wouldn’t be able to function as effectively in the world without some means of conveying all these things.
Calling that force we know to be gravity actually helps in being able to overcome or manipulate it to enhance aspects of our lives, for example. So many feats of engineering rely on understanding an invisible force which depends on giving it a name too. There is a place for this realm quite clearly.
We just need to know that it is almost always symbolic. We can know gravity, but first, primarily and in the end we have to experience gravity. This is fine for lots of things but when it comes to our identity and we are trying to live meaningfully, peacefully, with purpose and authenticity, we need to see it for what it is.
There is no real truth to be known of the experiential realm – that which I believe contains our true identity and closer contact with reality – by using language, ideas and concepts.
Even these sentences, these words do not hold any real truth in them, though they are valuable as concepts.
There is a tension between these two modes of experience (experiential and abstract).
Always a one-sided argument!
I find it interesting that we always seem to have to resort to language and concepts – features of the abstract — to try and describe both.
This is where the emphasis has shifted and is unbalanced.
Whenever I watch a show or listen to a podcast where there appears to be a debate about something in the realm of experience, something spiritual, religious, I am always totally frustrated. The argument or debate is doomed to failure from the outset. People are exchanging ideas, words and concepts, to try and ‘prove’ something that evades those very terms.
Why is it that the people who have an allegiance to something metaphysical are invited into the lion’s den, the world of symbols and the mental to fight on their terms? How come the material reductionists, the sceptics, the hard core scientists, the atheists, are never invited over into the world of experience to find out that way?
If they ever do get there I would find it most fitting to say ‘now just sit there and shut up’ haha.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t dreamed of kidnapping all these ‘mentalists’ (sorry) for 6 months, taping their mouths up, and putting them through 10 hours of Vipassana meditation a day for 2 weeks, and then;
‘Now, tell me all about your ‘proofs’ you big sausage.
I digress.
Do the Spice Girls have the answer?
Anyway it’s probable that both are necessary. Necessary for what, I don’t know. For survival? is that it, though? Isn’t that just like, the bare minimum? How about….. for consciousness to evolve…
That does however presuppose we should evolve. We are obliged to evolve. Haaa….Who said we are? Who decided that? That is a human centred, outcome focused, biased perspective on things.
Maybe this is dualistic? There is of course the ‘non-dual’ approach which doesn’t see this as a game of mutually beneficial opposites. Maybe the self is the harmony between these two modes? Maybe the Spice Girls have the wisdom…. ‘When 2 become 1’?
And don’t you mock me. I would like to see anyone else successfully incorporate the Spice Girls into mystical philosophy, albeit amateur.
To sum up: with regards our true identity or true self, I’ve said numerous times that to know this requires perceiving reality correctly. So far I’ve made a rough outline of the way we generally perceive reality and that it is insufficient.
I’ve given some hints as to what and where our true reality resides but I have purposely held off from fleshing it out meaningfully.
I promise, I am not evading this!
All I can say for now is just hold the idea gently that the self, identity depends on and is informed by a connection to everything outside of what we say is the boundary of the self.
What do the great thinkers and mystics say?
(not just the amateur ones who reference The Spice Girls)
Incidentally, people have been doing this very thing for as far back as human records go; trying to convey the true meaning of themselves and life, and how we should orient ourselves, how we should act. Interestingly, many of the most illuminating of minds build into their description the fact that they know they are chasing a lost cause. It seems to hinge on this revelation that their true nature is different than what they thought.
Very often, descriptions of the self are often disguised as descriptions of reality or descriptions of ‘God’ because this newer understanding seems to come ready made with the idea that one is at least in some way also the other.
I do think that if I had started with the quotes and ideas below, it would appear as mystical nonsense to the casual, unfamiliar reader.
But I dare say I have given ample logical foundations to be able to broach this subject in a reasonable way, with an open mind.
The Tao Te Ching is the famous, classic oriental philosophical text that refers to life, the universe and everything, including us humans and our true nature. It goes back to at least 400BC.
The first lines are:
‘The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.
The Name that can be spoken, is not the eternal name.’
Sort of speaks for itself really, doesn’t it?
This is a text that has influenced the life and civilisation of millions of people since. It spawned major religions, major philosophies of life that have spanned the centuries.
Eckhart Tolle offers words such as
“most people carry around the burden of the mentally defined ‘me’. But ‘I’ has a deeper meaning. It refers to who you are beyond form, thoughts and emotions. You as consciousness. you cant grasp it see or define it. You cant say ‘there I am’ because who is saying that? You are the consciousness behind what you see and what you say, what you refer to as your ‘self’”
Jesus said; albeit open for translation and interpretation;
’The Kingdom of God comes not with signs to be observed’
maybe that means that truth cannot be given names and symbols.
And;
‘I am the light of the world’
This isn’t poetic loveliness or religious dogma. It’s trying to be factual. The light in this case is that which illuminates the whole of experience, the consciousness behind the see-er.
Buddhism maintains there is no self. This doesn’t mean there is nothing. There is reluctance to give it a name, to give it form, because then we become attached to it.
Alan Watts:
‘Self is the basis of all being. People say ‘I came into this world’, but you don’t, you come out of it, like the way the leaves come out of the tree. So you are an expression of it. Self meaning identity, is the world or the cosmos itself. You are of it.”
“The real you is not some puppet that the rest of life pushes around. The real you is the universe. What You do, is what the whole universe is doing in the place we call here and now”
“We are under the illusion that the skin is the boundary of man”
Phil Shepherd gives much more detail to the dynamic nature of the self:
’we turn the world into ourself and our self into the world’.
What this is referring to is that we are available to and connected to the whole of everything else around us. It influences us, inform us but we also influence and inform it.
Our individual nature still maintains it’s uniqueness because your individuality comes directly from the the local consciousness that is continually in a mode of exchange with everything else and not one persons quality of exchange is even remotely similar to anyone else’s. Weirdly, we become less than our true selves when we relate to ourselves as finite, static and disconnected from everything around us. And we call this being an individual!
Every persons uniqueness is enhanced by surrendering their identity to the cosmos, which enriches the local consciousness in a continual flow. You are bringing what is yours, and you are continually receiving information. So we are all of it, but we are also the locality, the unique system of filtration that processes all of everything else.
Iain McGilchrist, like others tries to show our identity by lifting the veil on our perception of reality. The abstract, mental world of static forms and language he attributes to the left brain, using all the available neuroscience.
He maintains that the right brain way of perceiving reality – the experiential, holistic and contextual, has been usurped by the left, gradually over thousands of years. All of civilisations myths and fables actually attest to this in their allegories. Joseph Campbell has the greatest collection of work to date showing just this.
The irony is that McGilchrist is famed for how big/long his books are. How many words are in them. It took him 10 years to get his last book together, with how much he wanted to cram in. Impressive evidence from so many different areas. Yet he maintains that he still may not have done justice to what he set out to do!
Remind you of anything? (hint: read these blogs again).
His books are so large precisely because he’s trying to grasp the ungraspable, and producing endless more words as the attempt continues. It’s a million circles all going round an unreachable central point.
McGilchrist is trying to describe the right hemispheres type of activity and interpretation of phenomena. Holistic, together, whole, flowing.
Ultimately amounts to using the right brain and all its attributes to describe the left.
More fuel for the fire?
I would hope that showing other great minds trying to talk about it gives some further validation to the idea I asked to be held with an open mind.
They too have used the words and the concepts. Are they not of use?
Maybe this is the reason I attempt to do similar. I would like to think some reading this have had either confirmation of what they suspected or a change of heart for the better.
Many hardcore Buddhists would disagree, saying I am adding more fuel to the fire, pouring more words and concepts into people’s minds when really things have to be experienced.
cont in Part 4
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