Hereness & Existence

Slowly condensing an awareness of “hereness” and existence.

While working in the Walthamstow FoodGiant in 1994, washing my hands and looking in the mirror, I suddenly experienced that the “thought” that I had a brain (the mental picture so to speak) was better illustrated by the fact I was having the thought. That is the existence that we attribute to other brains was in my case proven by the existence of the world. To put it again: if we survey the objective world we can identify any number of objects, all of which occupy the same status of being part of the world. Then there is the question of which object is myself, it is as though I then need to “enter” the world and when I do I discover that the object of my “brain” corresponds to my experience of the world itself. The existence of my perceptions and my world is the same as the existence of my brain – there is only one level of existence. This is the identity theory which states that brains are consciousness, rather than cause it. Now this runs into problems so expressed but is the beginning of the awareness.

Yesterday came a similar awareness that the existence of the Universe is the same as my existence. It followed from thoughts inspired by a hypothesis on TV that Jack the Ripper was a known criminal with a mental illness that occasionally made him need to kill. This raises that ancient question of freedom and choice and evil once again. If he “needs” to in a way that he cannot control then is he culpable for his crimes? I believe, and have it supported in Buddhist teaching and others, that there is always choice. However if we sink to such a low level of consciousness that we can’t gain perspective on our desires then indeed it will seem to our consciousness that we are overwhelmed by forces beyond our control. Indeed he quite possibly had a desire to kill and mutilate women (this is after all only an extreme type of hatred and greed), but that he “needed” to suggests that his mind was already in a very low state when the desire hit. Once the awareness hits that we always have the possibility to escape the confines of our genetic and mechanistic programming (our body that is) the question arises about the nature of our experience of the world: is this the result of our genetics and mechanistic programming or does this transcend these? What we sense is purely mechanistic—the colours we see depend upon the receptors in our eyes and the wiring of our brain and even the language we speak—but the fact we sense is beyond this. Like Kierkegaard trying to separate the dancer from the dance it is hard to separate the actions of the mind from the mind itself. But if some people might want to say that the ability to see is only the sum of colours and other perceived elements, they might also want to say that a dance can exist without a dancer. Yet and this is crucial the dancer can’t be another type of dance! If we speak of transcending our experience of the world we are going outside experience. Now it is at that level that I realised we are no longer separate from the world. To use Heideggar’s metaphor, the light that shines through our experience is the very light of the Universe. To experience our existence is to experience the existence of the Universe.