Quines again + SRH (getting there)

Here are Quines for the Euphoria programming language:

sequence quine
quine="sequence quine%squine=%s%s%s%sputs(1,sprintf(quine,{13,34,quine,34,13}))"
puts(1,sprintf(quine,{13,34,quine,34,13}))

and php:

<?php
$quine='<?php%c$quine=%c%s%c;%cvprintf($quine,Array(13,39,$quine,39,13,13));%c?>';
vprintf($quine,Array(13,39,$quine,39,13,13));
?>

which I felt inspired to do last night. These are easy because of the built in ability of both languages to generate a string template and then substitute in values later (the two printf flavours).

I still can’t quite get my head around what the exact nature of the problem is so I’ll analyse it here. I did cheat when I initially found this problem and read someone’s take on Quines – he explained that the secret was to create a copy of the program in memory and then essentially print this twice – once for the whole program and then once for the memory definition itself. So this idea of the solution isn’t mine. It makes me wonder whether there are other solutions.

It was harder in BASIC because without being able to natively substitute, one imagines the solution is this (quoted section underline):

a$=“a$=”+Chr(34)+“a$=”+Chr(34)+“+Chr(34)+”+Chr(34)…

Every time a “ character is met the string needs to stop and add a Chr(34) as a meta command (outside the string). The code to do this involves two “ characters: 1 to stop the string quotation and 1 to restart it again. Thus every time a “ exists in the code it requires 2x” to encode it. Obviously an infinite process. This is not how to do a Quine in BASIC! One solution I imagine is to use another character which is not used in string definition and then substitute it after the string has been generated.

This is an example of SSR (strong self-reference). A string is defined using the “ characters. To then ask a string to encode itself then requires it to encode the “ characters. There is then an ambiguity. Are the “ characters defining a string or are they part of a string? This is strong self-reference (SSR) – the string is not about itself it is actually itself. Two levels are implied by SSR. To encode the “ characters requires a different system of interpretation to avoid ambiguity. Thus 2 levels of interpretation are required. One level interprets “ around text as the definition of a String entity, the other level interprets “ as just a character and part of the String entity.

It is this requirement of 2 levels which is essential to SSR which is what I think I’ve called is the God argument. For any system to manipulate itself it need to approach itself in a meta level of interpretation. Self-reference generates levels. Thus any system available to manipulation requires a higher level … Mankind needs the God level if he is to approach reflection upon himself.

However two levels can lead to infinite recursion as seen in the basic example because every time the lower level meets itself it must invoke the higher level which expands the complexity of the system. Thus “ becomes “ + Chr(34) + “ (where defining characters with numbers and the Chr() function is a higher level outside the “ world: the meta ‘deus ex machina’ (i.e. God) of the String world). If that expansion involves the lower level then it will expand forever. That is one way to solve the BASIC Quine: shift the whole problem into the higher level and use Read and Data statements.

This as far as I know is existence of the Meta level is the same argument as God-el himself tried to rigorously formulate. I’ll need to find out more about Godel to confirm that. If it turns out he already had the idea then I doubt very much I’ve more to add to his genius work!!! It is the essence of the SRH intuition that I sought two years ago now to try and marginalise materialism.

ref BBC Dangerous Ideas (You-Tube)

SRH – Accurate definition at last

It is ridiculous how long it takes me to make even simple progress in these things.

The SRH states simply that in the event that something depends upon itself for its definition then there is the possibility of an infinite regression and an indeterminate result.

That is all I was trying to say all these years. So it is not that weak self reference of the type “This sentence has six words” is impossible. That sentence only describes itself, it does not try to define itself and so it is simply a false statement about itself. A false sentence is still a sentence with words so there are no definitions under threat here.

On the other hand a sentence like “This is the sentence with six words” has strong self reference because it defines itself as having 6 words when actually it has 7. In this case the sentence fails to be self-referential because it refers to something that doesn’t exist. In predicate logic there is no x such that x is this statement. It still intrigues me that a statement can be true in one form and then false when mapped into a different system of symbols. The Godel number for this sentence has different properties and so while in a 1:1 mapping with this sentence it has a different truth value if self-referential. Something up there.

However the most famous strongly self-referential statement “This sentence is false” one assumes by default is true but then is told is false. This completely overturns the definition. It is strongly self-referential and resolution enters an infinite regress.

A recursion example of strong self reference and why I’ve a problem with it.

int Me(int input) {

       return Me(input);

}

This algorithm definition depends upon itself. When called it runs forever because there is no non-self referential way of escaping the loop. Its value should be called NULL. What actually happens is that a block of memory is filled with the CPU instruction to go to a position in memory and also the data of its own position in memory. (I don’t understand enough at the moment to know how the chain of returns is set up so that if a value is ever found it will be propagated back to become the returned value of the function). It keeps copying the same block of memory into the CPU without immanent end … obviously the operating system can refuse to give the virtual program any more resources or if it is a direct bit of code the machine can be unplugged … so it is only an infinite loop within the context of the CPU’s game.

This fits into the Turin stopping problem. But can we say something like without self-reference a program will run out of space and have to end. Only with feedback can the possibility of the infinite be approached in a finite machine. Now not all feedback is self-referential and not all feed-back leads to an indefinite system… is there a relation here between strong self reference (SSR) and infinity and weak self-reference (WSR) and the finite.

Will need to understand a LOT more and run lots more experiments on the computer to get a feel of what in the hell this is all about. Will post some of the fractals I’ve been inspired to generate by the MIT course… last did this when I was a teenager!!

Infinite loops

Watching that MIT series on Godel, Escher, Bach has been really good for drawing the essence of the problem together. I notice that “This is a lie” is acknowledged as an existing problem (so I know it hasn’t been solved yet).

A note to the section on recursion. There is no such thing as recursion because the computer really implements a stack and a loop (I realise I’ve always implemented fractals like this! not recursively). That is to say that there is no “calling of itself” rather a dumping of new parameters onto a memory stack FIFO style and then running the code again taking the top parameters off the stack.

This is my argument that there is no such thing as self-reference. We can approximate it by feeding output into input so that the system reprocesses its own state – this ends up with a dynamic system which can negative feedback to a single equilibrium or a group of equilibria which it oscillates through or it can become chaotic where the path of the system (it is not a Markov chain) never repeats a value and so no matter how long the chain input never equals output. This is an infinite loop, but not self-reference.

Self-reference is where the current state depends upon itself – same time and place. In a loop, current state depends upon previous state – it is a path not a single value so the self is actually the path. A self-referential loop would have its whole loop-state depend upon the whole path.

Escher’s hand drawing hand picture is a good example of “self-reference”. For one hand to exist it must have drawn the other hand so that the other hand can draw it. I first met this with the thought that maybe God the creator of “all” things might have created himself – it’s an idea that doesn’t settle well. With Escher’s hands we are left hoping they are not at the same state of evolution – if one started the whole process (the chicken/egg problem) then it is not-self referential. But, we know the awful point is to ask how can they ever have got started. At what point was the hand fully formed enough to hold the pen to start drawing the other hand. It is a system which truly depends upon itself.

My quest is to find a simple proof that this is impossible. This way all attempts to explain existence (and self) upon itself fail. Explanation must always then demand more than what is present in the system (what was called God – what I would call the God principal) : complete understanding is then impossible: essential self dependence upon non-self is implied and interdependence is necessary. These simple ideas are the bed rock of moral behaviour suddenly gain a firm footing so it is not a trivial project.

p.s. So Godel’s theorems depend upon Godel numbering: the ordering of sentences of a calculus so that they can be referred to by their position in the set of possible sentences. One presumes then that Godel’s theorem itself has a Godel Number in Godel’s calculus. That is to say: not only is there a sentence which says “I am unprovable” which has a Godel number, but that Godel’s whole theorem has a Godel Number. Now I don’t think it is possible for the theorem which outlines how to generate Godel’s numbers to have a Godel number itself! That goes right back to the origin of this enquiry and the realisation that “the theorem” is just symbols which are as useful to the wind as autumns leaves. It takes a mind with a culture of logic to start playing games with these symbols and animate them (a la Wittgenstein). A string of symbols does not create Godel numbers and so can’t provide its own Godel number. Next stop…. fully understanding Godel Numbering (should have done that at college!! still I somehow got a 1st for my logic module)

My muse revisited

 

Watching my muse’s sister going through the first throws of love with her new boyfriend is being played against my own experiences with my muse. My errors are simple, yet even with this knowledge it changes nothing. The simple rule seem to be that a girl who likes you expects you to act quick else she will get bored – or hurt or both – and reject you. This is almost the mistake that my muse’s sister’s new guy made. This is exactly what I know happened with my muse - although she actually gave me three months to get my act together which is a very long time I realise - and while I won over her friendship she was never, after that, prepared to go further. Simple fact, something that I deep down knew.

However it changes nothing because the situation was not so simple. She had a boyfriend already. Now everyone knows this means nothing – she was interested; I should have struck while the iron was hot. But to me at the time, given the situation, it was not like this.

My heart has made a commitment to her already – she was “the one”. I also sensed that this was not a new arrangement but something that I had been expecting all my life. If this was indeed a “true love” then it was far more precious and it also required in my logic that she should feel the same by destiny not by deed. If I had to seduce her then I was simply a chancer eating scraps from the plate of fortune.

I have discovered since that women are actually suckers from any attention from men – if you try hard enough and sincerely enough then any girl can be persuaded - exactly as a good door salesman can sell anything to any housewife. Men are always criticised by women for thinking “with their dicks” so it is no surprise that men behave like this, but to discover that women are equally vulnerable somewhat goes against the grain of established wisdom and the idea that women hold some guile in these matters. Genetic evidence I saw in New Scientist a few years ago points to an even more contrary reality – that most men are actually faithful with only a few highly active “door salesmen”, while a majority of women (historically) have been a little unfaithful – after all acts of adultery necessarily involve a member of each sex so no one sex can be blamed. I wonder if incidents of rape can be separated in this study (not exactly adultery though middle-eastern law seems a little confused on this!). This as has been argued in this blog explains the apparent need for men to restrict the movement of “their” women to ensure that they bear only their own offspring (not a problem in reverse!).

But all this is profoundly mundane and I have no interest in such mediocrity. Fighting for the chance interest of a mate, trying to patch over the obvious chance, conditionality and imperfection of it all – how can anything more than a business contract be built upon this? It is in brutal reflection probably a good idea actually to base one’s marriage and reproduction around a business contract – it is the mutual meeting of needs, which dissolves once needs have been met. I think such an outlook, while bleak, is realistic and will probably produce a happier union free from ideology and expectations.

Returning to my own issues: such a landscape I’m willing to forgo – this does not really interest me. “My muse” was a “chance” for eternity and truth seemingly bound into the very fabric of my existence. If she was really that interested in me then she would have forgone her boyfriend was my logic – but she didn’t.

This means that she was confused. She was flirting with me, yet secretly had a boyfriend too. Again in reality we are to assume women are imperfect and conditional; not expected to make solid decisions – we play along trying to convince them that they should chose us and invariably from what I’ve seen they will. But again, this is not destiny but chance – commerce, sales and conditions. It is also not impossible to decide unconditionally because that is what I had done!

So I had to decide for her. I did not want to break up their relationship for that would involve hurting the other guy – it is through indecisive women that man is set against man! and vice-versa. It is a truth I’ve learned that we should never be indecisive in matters of the heart. To take from someone so that we can have is theft, yet love is a gift with no cost and no conditions. “True love” cannot be won like this.

I was also much older than her which while not really an issue meant that she had a lot of life to live yet before she would see things like me. It was unfair to call upon her to be in “love” at such a young age (17).

But the central point, after reducing this problem down at the time, was that I am not attracted to business or employment. It seems (and I can’t see any other way) that matters of the heart are actually deeply embedded in matters of the world – they lead to children and families and these entangled with the imperfect world are deeply conditional. We must buy this house, or that house, our children may be disabled or healthy, we may be richer or poorer than our neighbours etc etc. This is not the world of love most definitely.

As the story unfurled I discovered that he was a good deal older than me which crushed any concerns I had had for age and immaturity. I also discovered that he himself had a long term girlfriend – to be wife. His own indecisiveness had lead to “my muse’s” indecisiveness. I wonder whether I was generated as a counter foil to his own infidelity. Anyway I had only the choice to leave her to her own devices and wait to see what she decided…. yet unknown to me the clock of female sexuality was ticking and I had only a few weeks to determine the outcome … I was bound into conditionality, conquest and chance whether I liked it or not.

But none of that matches my own experience. I was awoken suddenly at 2m this morning (which gave me a chance to watch consciousness .. next blog) and fell into examining this whole thing again. My heart I perceived even now almost 10years after I last saw her is like a secret mirror in my heart facing square on to hers to reflect all her radiance and light – and hers is exactly the same even three and a half years after she died facing secretly and squarely at mine reflecting all my radiance. Inside that union is an infinite world of freedom amongst the golden light and reflections. That golden light incidentally is the golden light that used to enter the room as she entered. And, that sonnet of Shakespeare’s “shall I liken thee…” seems nonsense to me because she actually was all those things to me – maybe I hallucinated, maybe my memories are false but she was accompanied by a bright glow, I never once saw her feet touch the ground – that was the remarkable thing about her when I first saw her across the shop floor as a stranger that I thought I would never see again – she was floating somehow – I wasn’t in love I just noted it as unusual.

Note to self here: she also had that quality that I attribute to my own “taste” of “transcendents”: those girls whose beauty is in a class of its own so that it is no longer relative. A dusky, rich, smouldering quality which is only borne at certain times. Interestingly she never really bore it to me, but I saw it in her a few times. A quality different from the “radiance” which she did bear to me.

Talking like that does make her seem conditional – and it is true that I weighed her up relatively when I met her and she scored about 95-96% so not exactly my archetype – but enough and then the switch goes and it becomes non-conditional. I wonder if she had been involved in some horrific car accident before I met her and she was in a wheel chair, unable to speak and wearing a mask to hide her disfigurement whether my “destiny” would have played out the same? This is the issue: is there such a thing as unconditional love or are we always lying across the bed from a stranger who by chance we came to share our lives with?

I also noted as I pine once again for what was that I am really just a drug addict. It is funny how we treat drug addiction as some artificial chemical sin purveyed by the criminal underworld. Yet if our bodies were not geared up for addiction how else would it work? Love is the most powerful drug that I know – I have been addicted all my life. I try to find out how and it seems to go back to before I was born. Meeting “my muse” is a face on my addiction. Did I meet “her” in a past life? Or were we simply pawns in the game of addiction that we have been evolving for billions of years? I don’t know.

That mirror connection is the source of the knowledge that she was in “grave danger” and why I was not shocked on discovering of her death. That single thing points to some “reality” to this connection thing. Whether I made it by 100% commitment to someone or whether I made the 100% commitment because of it I don’t know. I also don’t know whether she felt the connection. I always assumed she didn’t but tested her to see if she did – because if she was simply seduced by my attentions, or my looks, or anything else then we had simply a mundane, impermanent and conditional contract of a relationship that I never signed and on the surface never happened.

I’m surprised how many questions still remain after all this time and learning. I guess it is probably good that I never did sign because I clearly don’t know yet what I’m signing up for!

p.s. Examining this in my 2am to 4am wakefulness this morning I saw that what my heart has done is become unbreakably committed to this girl. It is a very profound bond that I cannot really break without denying the whole possibility of such bonds – and if I do that then I lose faith in relationships all together so either way I’m stuck. This bond I couldn’t see as a “desire” this morning – it seems to be something else. It doesn’t seem to obey the rules of desire which are that they will go away if we ignore them. This is like a dusty mirror in the attic. When I found it in 1997 I knew it had been in the attic all along, I just forgot. I dusted it down and it became bright again and all I can do now is put it back in the attic and let it get dusty. Cigarettes are different: I can go back onto cigarettes I know, but right now they are disgusting. The less I think about them the less I think about them. True I don’t think about “my muse” very much anymore and the passion is all but gone – but the connection sits there like a diamond; impenetrable and lucid as ever. I only hope it is more like an ice cube and each day has imperceptibly shrunk so that one day I won’t be able to find it anymore. Then if this is all true I won’t find it again next lifetime.

p.p.s. I also came last week for the first time to see what had happened to “my heart” as an injustice. That it should have made a total commitment to someone and find it unrequited and in need of extra work to bring it to fruition a humiliation and injustice. For her to so cheaply give herself to others does seem extraordinary – for small change she would walk any distance, but for gold she was immovable – odd how the sharp edge of such contradictions makes them impossible to digest. This is an issue which I’m only beginning to see with a clear eye. “Injustice” however is never a suitable term (there is no such thing) – it is just a thought.

Waking up at 2am

A loud bang awoke me at 2am. I think something must have been slipping of its own accord and finally fallen to ground because I had some warning that things were changing in my dream.

What was interesting this time however was that rather than be drawn by the sound my mind was drawn by the emergence of consciousness itself. This was an exact but much more direct version of the realisation I had stepping onto a train in 1990. The “mind” must be greater than consciousness because consciousness is brought to a situation on some cue. In other words the sound made me conscious of what was going on, rather than me being conscious of the sound.

This simple interpretation of a common experience leads one to the realisation that consciousness is itself caused! It is created, conditional and impermanent! Now what is the mind that lies “behind” and conditions consciousness?

Consciousness is also often linked with the concept of self. How can we have a self if we are simply responding to external influences? The notion of “self” seems to arise because “consciousness” of things gives a concrete “existence” not to things as much as a perception of things. We are not conscious of things as they are, but rather a version of those things which is unique to a perspective. For the experimenter consciousness seems to be placed after sensory processing has occurred, while to the patient we are inside consciousness and the object beyond the outside of consciousness. This is why different people are conscious of the same things in different ways and what science tries to eliminate from experiment. From this we become progressively more aware of a particular way of seeing things and this enforces the view of a self.

My waking up experience this morning however poses a problem (just as in 1990). It seems that “my” consciousness is the product of a larger mind that I was previously unaware of! In 1990 I interpreted this as meaning that consciousness was epiphenomenological (the name I discovered later in philosophy classes). So does this mean that there is a higher self which I am not conscious of? I believed so – this led rapidly to the view that there was a noumenol world “outside” the phenomenol world of consciousness and that “truth” was unknowable. One problem with this is that while the form of this world was unknowable it seemed that the structure of “things” was preserved so that although I wasn’t seeing a real apple, there was never-the-less a real apple causing my sensation. Science could discover this. But I put no weight on science because without the conscious world to “colour” the outline drawings of science there were meaningless.

I’m kind of aware today that I’ve no real answer to this view. I thought this was all done and dusted. I agree with Dennett’s analysis of the Cartesian theatre and played that through my mind this morning – that the self is not some person sitting inside the mind looking out of the window of consciousness. Consciousness Dennett notes has no central thread or place to it: it coalesces from separate bits often in the wrong order (compared with objective time measurement of stimuli). Buddha argued a lot of this a long time before Dennett in the Shurangama sutra – the argument about the mind being inside the head or outside (the conclusion being that the mind is Nowhere).

A huge problem to note is the mixing of the words “Mind” and “Consciousness”. It seems that my waking experience definitely separates them and suggests that my “mind” became “aware” of the emergence of “consciousness” of the sound – so that there is an awareness which is non-conditional and unconscious that can be even “watching” for sounds in the outside world while I sleep and be aroused to consciousness. Whether that consciousness is a function of that “mind” (or Brain as it is often associated) or a separate entity I can’t comment.

What is apparent is that this is tiptoeing very close to the abyss of self-reference and infinite loops. If the mind which gives rise to consciousness is the same as the consciousness itself then we can be aware of ourself in a proper way and this leads to an infinite regress of being aware of the thing which is aware of the thing … like the mirrors in my previous post on “my muse” (a metaphor not literal !!).

I abhor such things and think they don’t exist. That is the essence of the SRH that true-self-reference cannot exist the subject of the next post…

SRH – Found the short cut … excellent series

 

Machine Stopping and Self-Reference

Just watching BBC Dangerous Minds and it seems obvious that the issue not covered is that of self-reference.

Turing's halting problem is on two levels: there are the problems to process and there is the problem of working out which will halt or not. That itself may halt and provide and answer or not. If we assume that all such things are processes then we have self-reference since the halting problems applies to all.

What love is.

Love means respect. That is all there is to it. To be in love is a matter for the self and not the other. When Jesus speaks of love this is what he means. In this view arranged marriage is a good idea. Where “love” marriage is supposedly better is that it enables both partners to be willing participants – however in Love we do not respect the other person on conditional grounds and upon our own wishes but rather upon who they are. This is the fallacy of “love”- marriage it is actually selfish-marriage and so is doomed to fail. Where an arranged marriage may fail is that on seeing their betrothed a partner is unsatisfied and may think I can do better than that, or why am I so unfortunate. From the outset there is resentment and loss of respect and love. But if a partner was allowed to marry that person where they think I have done well, they are a good partner then rather than it being “love” it is personal satisfaction and selfishness. So ironically the love referred to in “love” marriage is actually its opposite, and what both arranged and love marriages need is respect or alternatively “love”.

What is a thing?

So what is a thing?

If one says of a tree, “this is a tree” one might point at the trunk and say is this a tree? No this is a trunk. And the same for the branches and the leaves and the roots. Each of these is what it is, and it is not a tree. Yet put them together and they make a new thing – which is not to be found in any of them – which is the tree. A tree is not a substantial thing – it is a spirit which inhabits the assembly of its parts. Not so primitive the animism of the uncivilised then for it is more realistic than our own material view. Names are for spirits which are wholly illusory!

So what of a thing’s properties like its size. As a child we might have thought the distance to school was far. But as an adult returning to the village in which we were brought up we find actually it is small. Size is relative. The big thing against a bigger thing embodies the quality of small. But that same embodiment becomes big against a small thing.

All that remains are the sensory qualities like colour and texture. These are real.

Society (yet another look)

Watching people during the recent heavy snow falls I came to see very clearly the nature of society and especially the place of work in that society.

A whole street had turned up to dig itself out of the snow. There was a good feeling in that street as everyone ganged together. I felt that for a while society had built up stronger around the job that existed than it had about even being neighbours. One thing I missed during the snow fall was the experience of getting time off work. My days are free so when the snow fell I did not receive that bonus of free time that all the working people shared. It was just another day for me – the snow lost one part of its significance for me.

Putting those two experiences together gets to the point. Humans are social. We are constructed out of the interactions we have with other people: the inter-personal theory of human existence and truth. What work generates is human interactions – this is why we like work, this is the importance of work in our culture.

The economic view that work makes things that we need like food is almost completely missing the point. It is true that we need to expend energy in order to live – obtaining clean water, foraging or growing crops, building shelters and making clothes. But animals do this. Machines can do this. The point for humans is that these objective processes provide the focus around which society can organise and it is through these therefore that we as subjects are created. It is like rain condensing out from clouds onto dust. The mechanical production required to live is inanimate like the dust. Our “Life” however is not this: it is the fluid water than condenses and finds form around this dust.

All the structures we find in work from slavery, to pay increases, to authority are products not of the mechanical but of the social. The injustices are often blamed incorrectly on the mechanical when really they are nothing of the sort.

So actually society could be built on anything that organises people and creates interactions. That it is dominated by the mechanical requirements of our bodies is just coincidence.

On Self

My sister said that some celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker are a bit freaky to her because you think you know who they are from some program like Sex and the City but then they turn up in something else and are completely different and then you read about them and find they have a huge history that simply doesn’t fit into your picture of them, like SJP being in a relationship with Robert Downey Jr during his drug days.

I forget how the conversation progressed but it ended with her recalling that some people with split personalities really are many people in on head. So I asked is that 1 person with many personalities, or many people within one personality. She said the latter. I believe she is right because the point of this is another look at Buddha’s ‘anatta’.

We believe that our personality belongs to us. That is we exist and we wear a personality like clothing. We learn to modify that personality to occasions and people and play the complex social games. This proves that we are independent from personality. However turn that around and ask who is the person behind the personality of someone else like a celebrity etc. We think of some soul, or core that inhabits the body and pulls the strings of that person. We believe similarly that somehow we exist independent of our body and somehow pull the strings of our body and life.

Not so for my sister, she believes that the personality IS the person. When our personality changes so does the person. More akin to the Greek conception of acting, an actor actually becomes the person when they adopt the personality! As far as I can see this is a good way to think because it highlights the problem that Buddha identified with our minds – which is that we behave as though we were protecting an solid and unchanging core to our selves – rather than the reality which is an ever changing, impermanent self.

The true self which survives death is not the physical body or personality, but something less personal all together.

The truth of performance

I’ve got to the point now where I can play my latest piece of piano music quite well – the moonlight sonata. Today I practised it again and started to listen to my own output. I was beginning to enjoy hearing my own piano playing – but almost immediately I ran into problems and forgot to sharpen a note. In that I unearthed a problem that I realise I have been struggling with since very young – the problem of enjoying ones own performance.

I’m a bit older and my mind clearly a bit more aware because today I saw the struggle clearly where as a child - and adolescent particularly – it was a foggy confusion. When we try to enjoy - or be aware of - our own performance we fluff it. The temptation and fascination with being aware of oneself – some kind of fatal interest in narcissism – rips the content out of what we are doing, distracts us and destroys what we were doing. This is the story of my life. I do nothing because the quest of my life has been to track down this illusive “self” – a Poohish like search for the mythical Woozle (i.e. A.A.Milne’s Pooh who went following a Woozle’s tracks only to find they were his own). What good argues my immature self is there in a life lived like an animal, looking outward always and never in knowledge of its self?

But now after the SRH enquiry and Buddhism I am convinced it is a fools search. The self IS the outward world – outward is the only way. Even when we look “inward” really we are just looking outward. Looking IS outward. Stare at ones eyes in a mirror and tell me what lies “inward”?

The only notable thing about “inward” is that it negates and distracts outward. To try and listen to oneself while one plays is actually selfish if there is anyone else in the room. As performer we must concentrate on “outward” and never be distracted into absorbing as “inward”. If we have offered our self as the meal at a feast we cannot then take a seat and take part in the meal! Our life must always be lived outward, to turn inward is selfish.

This explains an experience my father noticed and that I never understood. He gave an important presentation at a conference, but returning from the podium he had no recollection of what he had just done. To his surprise he was welcomed back by his company with much congratulation for it had been an excellent speech. I have had this experience many times: for example on the tube once with “my muse” I absorbed into some animated explanation of something and returning to the world afterwards I was met by her shining eyes clearly entranced by whatever I had said or done. This is the way – when we turn outward completely, we give completely and we perform perfectly.

Temptation to prey upon the fruits of one’s own labours, to contemplate and enjoy oneself is to feast on ones tail like the Ouroboros and die of starvation.