Fable of the Telescope.

This is readapted from Hegel's brilliant one line dismissal of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. You cannot use a telescope to find out if the telescope you are using is working (meaning if reason or the telescope are faulty then your investigation and results will be faulty... except I note at "fixed points of reason" where reason makes no difference and the fractals that even a faulty reason under self investigation will make) Anyway...


Once upon a time, when a boy was too young to remember, he was given a wonderful telescope which he strapped to his head and spent his days marvelling at the spectacular universe above his head. As he grew up he became quite proud of his miraculous ability to see deep into space and report on things that no other could see. Time came when he wanted to know how he had this special ability, different from other people, and he came to investigate it. He searching far and wide in the universe but could see nothing that indicated why he should be so special. Eventually one day he asked someone why he had this special ability and was told about the telescope still strapped to his head. Taking it off he suddenly realised that the ability was not his own but depended upon this device now in his hands. He put it in a box under his bed and walked away seeing, for the first time in his life, the world without the telescope in the way. In time he became an astronomer and returning to the box under the bed he took out the telescope reattached it and continued to study the stars. Nothing had changed except now he knew that the special ability was not his own but was simply there because he wore a telescope.

So time passed and the boy, now a man, had an accident with the telescope which damaged his eyes and he went blind. He asked a friend to put the telescope safe in a box and his eyes were removed and preserved in case of medical developments. Now he was living in the world without a telescope in the way but also for the first time without eyes in the way. Remembering taking off the telescope he saw that the miraculous power of the sight that he had enjoyed was not his own but depended on the organs that had once been set in his head. In time a wonderful technology was developed which restored his sight and as before he was able to continue his life as an astronomer, but now in the knowledge that this ability of sight was not his own but came with his eyes.

As the man became an old man he learned the sad news that his own son had been killed in an accident at a major telescope site--his son too had become an astronomer. He was once again thrown back into the life without children that he had lived before. Unlike with the telescope and his eyes he could remember this time and had always cherished the joy of having a son. But, the event brought him to question what will happen when he loses his own life to death. He would never look his son in the eye again for those eyes were gone and when he died his eyes would go again too. But he lost far more of his son that that: he could never talk to him again, hear his thoughts, go to the football with him, share his life's successes and failures: everything was gone. And likewise he realised when he died all this things would be gone too.

But a curious insight stirred in him. When he lost the telescope he realised it was not his, and he could go on afterwards free from it. And when he lost his eyes he realised they too were not his own, and he could go on afterwards free from them. And when he lost his son, he was reminded what he already knew, that the son was not his own really, and now they could go on afterwards free from each other. Now conceiving his own death he realised it was not his own either, and he realised at death he would go on free from even his own life and existence.

But like with the telescope, and his eyes, once he had realised they were not his own he took them up again and continued as before, but free and safe in the knowledge that he was only wearing all these things just for a time.

And so in a lazy moment he might think: so what does happen after death? What is "going on after death" like? I went on when I lost my eyes, how might I go on when I have lost my life?*** And then he remembers these thoughts are not his own, he only wears them for a while and he just lets them go. At that moment he knows what going on after death is like.

And so the man became quite famous for his ability to see things that other could not see, peering deep into the nature of the world and of life and death. But now the man was not proud of his ability for he saw most clearly that it was not his own and he would not possess it forever.

*** In more detailed discussions he would examine the experience of first removing that telescope. Some things changed and some did not. He could no longer see tiny things up close, but his consciousness of what he saw was just as clearly without the telescope. Likewise when he lost his eyes he could no longer see things at all, but his consciousness was still just as clear as before. When we sleep our consciousness is lost, but we are not dead. There is a place (many in fact) before death where we live without consciousness. When I die... the man realises understanding life without life is like his younger self not seeing the telescope.