Chilean Miners - Extension and Self + The Halo

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100825/twl-chilean-miners-trapped-in-hell-told-4bdc673.html

I have been following this story more avidly than any story I have ever heard I think. There is something about it which captures my own very personal issue of life. Partly of course because it is my greatest fear: being unable to escape from an area, and this because of my desire to escape the obsessive thoughts of OCD by physical movement if I wish. It also captures my limited but fascinating experiences of being underground for 3 days, deep in caves at depths slightly deeper than the miners. Of course I had a means of escape but there was always the thought in my mind that - especially after the earthquke one year and the large rock movements - that a boulder would shift and block off one of the tiny passages that linked me to the surface.

Yet the body and mind do adapt and after a day underground it becomes one's home of which one becomes very fond. Hotel Tolminka was the name of one deep campsite which I still regard as one of the best "homes" I have ever had. It was here I understood that it takes just warm food in one's stomach to create the sense of home - from which I deduced the reason why a welcome meal is so important in culture.

Yet the miners have an challenge ahead of them which I have never experienced which is the climbing out of a 700m bore hole 66cm wide. This is probably the worst part of the whole thing.

The actual being "trapped" is relative, and is simply a way of thinking. As long as they have access to essentials (and can physically stay alive) then they are only trapped relative to the "outside" world. If their whole world had been the mine since they were born then there is no such thing as "trapped". This is a good example of how the mind makes the world.

An interesting line of thought then began in my mind about 30mins ago:
Another aspect of this is that whether "in" the cave or "outside" the cave they are bound by the limitations of their body. I can never get beyond my own body to "over there", I must move my body to over there - I am always stuck with this body.

Except we have influence beyond our bodies. Criminals can keep their crime empires going from behind prison walls simply by smuggling out notes. The Chilean miners with video links will be able to interact with their families in every way but physical contact and sharing simultaneous experiences like going to the park together. But even this is not 100% true: there is the feature of Extension whereby we use a fork and feel what the fork tip is doing as though our mind was at the tip of the fork and not our finger tips. A miner could use a robot to do brain surgery from inside the mine or with a 3D display projecting a computer simulation of the surface feel like he was walking about outside. This extreme Matrix type reality really shows that "where we are" is actually an "Extension" of the mind rather than an actual "entity" being somewhere... worth contemplating in depth for access to Anatta (non-self). So I was going to argue that we are trapped together with our bodies - a monks wrote that "mind" is the limit of our sense of bodily feeling - I'm not so sure about this limit to "mind" but accept the distinction. But on reflection it seems that we are not really "with" our bodies but are an Extension projected onto the body but also anything that connects with the body - even quite tenuously like "property". If a Chilean miner was to be told that his house had burned down he would feel it like it was happening to "him". This is extension of himself far outside the mine!

So this Chilean miners situation really captures, very much, the essence of the personal issues that I face in life and are questioning.

=== 29/8/10

My sister has a much more practical and down to earth take on this - and this also high lights another aspect of my approach. She was thinking that the best way to deal with this was to get the miners actively involved in their own escape. This way they have a goal to aim for and can see the gradual progress, and the process will organise them and keep them teogether both physically and mentally. "Genius" was my answer to this, and doubly so because this is exactly what the rescuers have done: lowered a drill bit so the miners can begin to do dig themselves out also. Singing, games and dividing the living space into 3 sections, both for practicality but also for a sense of order, have also been implemented; also along the lines my sister imagined. Indeed I see her point. Our mother is also particularly strong on the issue of "order" in ones life for good mental health.

This morning having let all that sink in it gave me an excellent perspective on my own approach. "Games" I have stolen from Wittgenstein as the process by which "value" and "meaning" are created. Without value or meaning people lose structure and start to fail in playing the games that constitute society: they become what is termed "mad". In our family going "mad" is a great taboo and fear especially because thyroid deficiency (which is inherited) has symptoms which make you feel insane and for which my mother spent time in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager - a truly terrible experience in the 1950s!! But it is also a taboo of the wider community: one only needs look at the way Hollywood treats madness; essentially in place of monsters; poorly understood and abjectly feared.

But for me fear of "madness" is as bad as the prison of madness itself. How many people conform simply to stay away from the fear of madness. This is quite tautological however if one understands madness as simply not playing the Game. Not playing The Game (actually an indefinitely complex fluid interaction of games involving language through to custom, mores and culture) means we step outside the relationship with other people which is constructed by The Game.

There is no doubt that for those who are or who feel mad, the way back to "normality" is to enforce a strict structure and discipline in their lives which must begin at some level to involve the playing of interpersonal games in society: language (talking), friendship, work, family etc. The more embedded in society's games the more sane one feels. This is not to say that huge upheavals in ones constitution cannot find us playing the wrong game or playing the wrong part in the game, madness essentially driving us into a new relationship with society. It is a dynamic liquid broth always simmering away. That idea in 1994 of "harmonic structuralism" which argued that there is no "right" or "wrong" absolutely but only consistency and size of structure. The larger the structure a system of rules could produce consistently the better that system of rules keeps coming back as a good idea. Saw this idea in essence in a maths book this week, it seems quite fundamental.

But my approach has been different - to seek a more substantial basis than just the swirl of ever changing social attitudes and norms. One flawed aspect of the search is to find a solid foundation for my "self" that is independent of "other" people. As a child I was fascinated by the observation that I could not see myself as "other" in the way other people could. Other people can look on me and judge me in entirety as that is "Alva". I on the other hand never seem to be able to step outside myself to look in and gain objective impartial perspective on myself. Why can't I be scientific about myself? My whole mental machinery has been constructed with this goal of being able to step outside myself to see myself unbiased as other people see me. The SRH however is the search for the proof that actually this is impossible. Buddha says that it is impossible because actually "I" am not a substantial thing anyway anymore even that "other" people are. And social sciences would point out that actually the sense I have of "other" people treating me as "Alva" is the only basis for "I" there is. "Other" people create my "I". When I spend too much time by myself I start to step outside the social games so that even a trip to the shops becomes an awkward and anxious time: you find yourself saying odd things, embarrassing gaps occur in your social machinery as you fail to execute social protocols correctly (especially in upper class parts of town) and the connection with people starts to break down: the "Other" starts to reject you and the "ego" starts to go into crisis and it slips away - alienation is death on wheels, it is esectaly the feeling of dying while alive - it is not an easy thing to approach calmly and we seek to run and hide, or to fight for our survival both of which would only make things worse. This is the spiral into "madness". I was analysing this yesterday after several nights of little sleep, admittedly with friends, but the spending of time by myself in this house sit I am doing. This current phase is ironically a direct result of the social approach I began on holiday. Society (meaning, value) is a two edged weapon - one feels secure and alive when it is working and anxious and annihilated when it fails.

So returning to the miners. The practical approach is exactly what is happening to keep the miners in good positive mental spirits, with hope, an outlet for their energies, strong social reinforcements of their existence, their living, their being someone in their work together to escape and to live together. But in my mind when they escape they are really still trapped. The other approach is not practical. It seeks instead to examine the possibility of madness to understand what it is and so overcome it directly - that way seems the only way to true freedom but it is also likely to end in destruction because we can never actually become "mad" with out hurting ourselves and those around us. Our duty is to play the social games and provide meaning and value for people, even if we seek to gain a perspective on the processes by stepping outside society.

Religion is a very powerful approach in stepping beyond society. God, Buddha or whatever we believe in lies outside society. The isolated, abandoned, failed, ill, unfortunate, unloved are all pushed to the edges of society and feel the "madness" that lies in this no man's land. Society is a very destructive creature when we lie outside it: either directly through exile, or by accident when we fall to its edges or it turns up on our shores and wages war (literally) on us. Modern society is much smarter and seeks to befriend alien societies by bringing them into the fold economically - but societies with different value and meaning, i.e. that play different games, are essentially annihilated because meaning and value depend upon a particular set of rules, and admitting relativity puts a crack right through that meaning and value. A whole socity would feel alienation and death if it ever admitted the authority of another society's rules. God however provides the rock upon which people, wherever they are in society, can build their lives. We are only ever on the outside of God's Kingdom when we fail to play by His rules, but the moment we realise we have strayed we can repent and be accepted straight back in. The other view is that we simply cannot escape the Kingdom; it is everywhere and the fallen as well as the righteous are equally within that system. This is the law of Karma that says that whatever we do we simply create seeds of the future and our suffering, alienation, and unhappiness is a product of what we have done. Even our own death only creates a new birth. The fears and joys that occur within us as we cycle around and around, up and down the karmic system are just temporary products of whatever we have created in the past. In this view I am rather unsure whether we are to work to maintain a position in society or realise that falling outside society is of no real concern. While Vedantic indian thought would never has questioned the structure of the caste system, wandering monks who live far outside worldly structures in singular worship of a gods would never have given it any thought at all. To those disciplined in religious structures of thought and living it seems the need for worldly structures is removed. But the question remains what if we have no structure (meaning or value) what so ever: is anything left. I suspect that ironically the most disciplined states of mind that exist: the various meditation states answer that question. Deep within precise structure (of meaning and value) actually lies emptiness and nothing associated with profound peace (and joy in lower states). So what the other way of the yin yang, does precise structure (i.e. the cause of meaning and value) lie within emptiness and nothing? I mean to abandon all structure and let go into the Void would actually get to the same place? Not sure about what this is saying ... need to examine more. Obvious question here tho is why not just follow the Buddha Dharma to get there rather than seek a short cut!

Beyonce - Halo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMmRL6_r24

We rejoice, we believe, we dream that we can be truly found, we turn the corner we are astounded by vistas of light, beauty and peace that have been always waiting for us where we truly belong; in the eyes of the Other we can dream, we can believe.

There is so much joy in this dream but is it true? Do we spend our lives seeking it or do some people find it? I don't know but I don't believe anymore, yet I do accept the dream as long as it is a dream: it is beautiful: song says it all.

I am beyond this dream now, but not happily yet. However the dream is true in a way because the truth does lies in the Other. My problem with Beyonce's dream is that we abandon everything at the altar of our Other and worse we do this because our Other offers us sexual satisfaction so it is a very selfish self-centred sacrifice in most cases. We are all seeking Unconditional Love but who can really give it without hoping they will get something back i.e. conditionally?

The dream also applies in this blog because would the Chilean miners care where they were if they were with their love? When we are in Love we are Found - where our Love is that is Home, the Universe has its centre in our Love, Here becomes Heaven, Everywhere I'm looking now I'm surrounded by your embrace/ Baby I can see your halo, Those walls come tumbling down because I found a way to let "You" in (and myself Out?). The prison that the miners live in is only a prison because in some way Love lies outside the walls. And, Love only means letting the Other in.

So we do by accident or design let the Other in when we form relationships for mating. But, that process of letting the walls down seems to stop as we become selfishly fixated on Our new Self and build a Family wall around that. It is like the Ego reaches this chimerical position reaching out to The Other while at the same time constructing a Self around the embrace - The Halo becomes not Heavenly but really just a version of The Self. Such a chimera will die as its two halves run in opposite directions. Each part of the beast fighting to control the Other and feeling pain at every attempt by the Other to be free. It is like a Chilean miner bringing his loved ones into the cave with him (which is where making a family is actually an unspiritual process).

Linking that with Plato of course the escape from the cave is the awakening to the True world freed from the imperfections of existence and particularity, but in this view that means escaping the Ego. This is what the adventure with My Muse was supposed to be, but in reality when sexual desire is involved I've noticed the desire to take is too great for most - we seek self-gratification as the motive for partnership with another! what a chimera!

All that said my desire to escape all this and the cave myself, or even more the elimination of the concept of cave and outer-world, has gotten me nowhere... yet. Maybe I am better off taking it step by step and seeking harmony with a single other first as a model for the general Other. Maybe Beyonce's Dream is the best door through which all of us trapped Miners can escape.

Is there madness in Love? When I met "my muse" I had no choice but madness, my friends thought I was going insane (more than usual). This is because we join an inner choir much more powerful than anything outside. Normally we are ok to sing to the song sheet of the world - but only OK it has never been satisfactory for me. The inner choir is where we feel we belong. In Love we have our own direction and destiny. Divine Madness is the same but for when God speaks to us and becomes our choir master. Kierkegaard speaks at length about this. It is odd that when in Love we never feel the madness even though we may spin far outside society. Most romantic stories plot the destruction rent by the overwhelming madness of love/desire. The film/story 'In The Realm of the Senses' is a particularly intense true story about this. So that inner desire gives us a structure and game to play that provides the divine meaning and value of love. The scene in the film Inception where everyone wakes on the plane after their shared dream adventures, reminded me exactly of that experience of looking into the eyes of a someone where love has secretly been confirmed and knowing that we adventure secretly in a world that no-one else knows about. That secret world is a large ego in which we may find meaning but which itself may detach from meaning all together. The Chilean miners likewise might not individually go mad, but rather form a society that buds off from the outside world as in Lord of the Flies or The Beach etc. A society in which there was Love that placed Home where they were and which eliminated the concept of "rescuing". This is something I realise I have been playing around with ever since "My Muse" - seeking a source of Love that evaporates the need for rescuing, salvation, freedom or escape that we look for in Beyonce's Dream. A source of Love, a Halo, that won't run away or die, that provides us protection from madness, society and ourselves.