So the truth is captured by the camera. There are 3 squirrels: one is bigger and has used this to finally get to the feeders. There are 2 others who cannot do this and feed from the crumbs. What is very interesting to observe over several weeks is the skilful squirrel never once drops peanuts for his family. This squirrel does not see what the camera sees, but is biased towards itself. It has a small, local and conditional* perspective. For this small squirrel death will consume it entirely. Its a prefect demonstration of Capitalism in fact... but this is just squirrels; humans have the potential to escape death, though few develop it. So where does this potential lie? This is the subtle bit. No-one can become a dispassionate camera and have an "out of body experience". Ok arguably they can, but they don't need to. Much better than a literal camera perspective, is separating ones actual awareness into that which is small and conditional and that which is large and unconditional. When we awake and become aware we are awake we don't just see, we are aware that we see. Indeed we have the potential to observe everything in our minds, even our mind state. We can see whether we are happy or sad, we can see whether we know something or not--even before we recall it--, we can see what we are thinking--that is we don't just think, we can see ourselves think. We have the potential to observe everything about our small conditional minds. Now how is that possible? It is possible because we are not our small conditional minds. We are actually much bigger and unconditional. We actually look at the world from an unconditional perspective like a camera, and within that we see the conditional world that we habitually think is our self.
The tricky problem is that we seek to own that small conditional self that we see, and that anchors our unconditional free mind to the conditional prison world of death. In meditation people from Capitalist countries have a particular problem of trying to own their breath and trying to work on it. It is extremely difficult just to leave it alone to be what it is. In the same way its extremely difficult to give up our conditional existence and remain at the level of unconditional mind. In squirrel terms its very difficult--faced with hunger, tasty peanuts and the success of having got to the feeder--not to sink into that moment in a toxic way and lose touch with the bigger view that is freedom. We have hit the jackpot, we're prepared to give up freedom cos we have what we want. We don't realise that in giving up freedom there is now no escape. Our fellow squirrels go hungry, but right now that doesn't matter cos I have tasty food filling my senses. I am all that matters. This becomes in the extreme solipsism and madness but right now that is fine.
However soon I will be full and the food has no use to me, eating no longer has value. So I am satisfied, but now I am now trapped inside my own small perspective. I am unavoidably conditional Me now. OK maybe this time I can work to give this up, renounce the Devil etc but it becomes harder every time until I am just small minded, trapped in the mortal shell of me facing death eventually. But its actually not true. I just got tricked by sense and desire.
If George Orwell was to write a really profound story it would be the one where Humans become squirrels under the influence of Capitalism.
* Conditional here means subject to conditions. That means it changes in different situations, and it depends upon situations. This is our experience of constantly changing senses, emotions and desires. Our world is constantly changing. One minute we are hungry, the next full, the next we are bored, the next we are sad, the next enthusiastic and positive, the next negative. It's forever changing. A bad thing happens and we are immediately plunged into emotions, a good thing happens and its the same. Obviously in this world eventually the very bad thing will happen and we will die. Things are always balanced in this world however. We can only die because at some stage we were born. It is a "relative" world too. We are only happy because before we were unhappy. We are only full because before we were hungry. If we were always full we would forget about food and eating all together. Its the constant moving between opposites that keeps our lives forever moving and stops us finding peace. Often we like this constant moving because peace is initially quite a struggle. We find it boring, or even frightening as the clouds of our busyness settle we start to see ourselves as we are. That can be a moment of honesty we are not ready for, and something we avoid through habitual activity. The Unconditional is quite something else. It is always with us, it is the perspective inside which everything happens. Regardless whether we are happy or sad, excited or bored the unconditional just watches unjudging. We can block the unconditional out however. This is what is called The Unconscious in psychology. We can be unaware of things, even actively avoid them in our lives. Some time in the future we see them and can't believe we didn't see them before. Well actually our unconditional self did see them, but we hid from it. That line reminds me of Adam and Eve hiding from God in Eden. Perhaps Nietzsche has a point that the Genesis story is actually a good analysis of consciousness.
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