Existential Isolation & Time

If we think too much about our experiences we quickly end up in an existential isolation where we become obsessed with the idea that only we experienced this and no one else. Even when we share an experience with other people on detailed examination we see that what we experienced was different from what they experienced. Perhaps the account of us meeting our future wife differs between us and our wife, or a friend that was there remembers it differently. What happens is that an "official account" emerges that everyone holds on to and forgets their actual experience. This happens at all scales even up to National Myths about the past. The most glaring at the moment is that the US performed the largest and most complete genocide in human history to clear the land for colonisation. But the "official" history remembered is extraordinarily different from this.

In rejection of the falsity that emerges from "official" narratives we retreat into private experience that lived uniquely has authenticity. But that authenticity has the cost of being experienced by only us and so is accompanied by loneliness.

The fear of loneliness drives many back into the arms of inauthentic group experience and they prefer to think official narratives than see things for themselves.

This has another side too. Official History does not die, while our personal private experiences are bounded by death. The real bite of the loneliness that comes from authentic private experience is that it is limited by death. It dies with us. Many grab a pen in later life to record their "private" experiences so that they will not be lost.

So what do we do?

Well actually the flaw in the authentic experience is that we do not complete the job of turning inwards. And the flaw in the inauthentic experience is that we do not complete the job of turning outwards.

They actually end up in the same place.

Turning inwards is the easier to study cos we can do that in a closed room with the door locked.

So we turn in on our experience inside the closed room, really relishing the fact that only we are experiencing this room now. There is no one else here, this is 100% my experience. Owning the "desert island" is a fantastic feeling at first. All mine. But soon it starts to become a prison. Wow we think no one ever experiences what I experience. I am trapped inside this. If only I could share with someone. So we rush outside and look for someone to share it with. But its just plastering over, because no matter how much we pretend we are "with" someone its always just "me." Unless we have a car crash that kills us together either I will die first or my partner will and this brings home the isolation. You can see where the romantic idea of couple suicides comes from. Only if we die together can we really say that we shared the same life. But its all pasting over the fundamental cracks that we are different. How sad for couple suiciders to realise that their death is still separate from their partner even tho they tried so hard to time them to coincide. Hopefully not to late to turn around and realise it was a flawed idea!

So we are back in our private room seemingly trapped in our private world with no way out.

If we carry on down this path the next stop is Solipsism or Monads where we decide that the "separation" must have some real existence and we decide we really are separate. So we say that the whole universe that appears to be just for me really is just for me. I exist alone in a private universe and everyone else is just a figment of my imagination.

Okay enough! Why go through all this mental gymnastics? What are we actually trying to resolve here?

So the thing is that its not the experiences that are the problem here. It is the stubborn belief that these experiences are being held by "someone."

If for a second we imagine that experiences just happened by themselves like lightening and thunder shaking up the skies and there is no need for "someone" there then what is the problem in our locked room? Sure these are unique experiences, just like a particular flash of lightening has never happened before and will never happen again. But does lightening get all existential as it fades away? No it lights up and it "lights down" no big deal. Its not so strange any more to say that there is no Zeus or God throwing down thunder bolts from the skies. No one "behind" what is happening. Lightening happens by itself. So why is it so hard to say the same for our experiences? Sitting in the closed room the picture on the wall (if there is one) lights up as we look to it, and as we look away it disappears again. Just like lightening.

Ah we argue but the difference is "I" looked at the picture so that "I" could see it. If "I" close my eyes then no picture no more. So it is "me" choosing to look and "me" seeing. So its different from inanimate lightening. There is a Zeus behind this, it is me!

Really?

How do you know you looked at it? Little voice inside your head? Some secret intuition about what is going on inside your body. Even more secret in fact than the picture you are about to look at in your locked private room? Its like there is the private room, and then another even more private room inside your body or head deciding what to do. Perhaps there is an even more private Holy of Holies inside the private one inside your head so that you have secret knowledge not just of the fact you are about to turn to see the picture, but that you know you are deciding to turn to see it... how deep does this rabbit hole need to go?

Do we need a Russian doll inside everything so that we can know what is going on?

Perhaps its flat. There is nothing inside anything else. The picture just comes into view in the same world as the thoughts about what we are doing. There is nothing "inside" any of this. There is just what it is. After all if looking at a picture is not enough to see it, then how can someone being inside looking at it make any difference?

So without getting into an argument over this, we can see that it is at least possible that the world is flat rather than Russian Doll like.

Ah wow suddenly no problem with private room. Experiences just are what they are. No one inside, no one to be separate from outside. No desperate need to throw the door open and go running into the arms of a partner to prove that we are not separate from everyone else and alone.

So that is the inside story.

What of the other, the inauthentic outside story. So we abandon private experience and we become a slave to the establishment believing what we are told even when it disagrees with what we actually saw ourselves.

For Americans this is Hell! Altho worth remembering that Americans believe that they are like Russian dolls which is equally Hell (and Russian).

Well there is no private investigation to write out here. Its not a very Western Philosophical thing to do-- which after Descartes is obsessed with personal private room (with or without stove) accounts.

But suppose we do give ourselves up to the crowd like people at an ecstatic Bacchic festival. Can't great evil come from this group behaviour where no one is responsible?

Well we are challenging the whole Western Lutherian Protestant concept of Reality here. "Lutherian" because the break from the Catholic Roman Church was a rejection of the authority of other people in our relationship with God. For Protestants (unlike Catholics) you can worship God alone without the need for priests, popes or church. 

But like above lets not get into an argument lets just consider hypothetically that really the whole world happened before Luther and personal responsibility. Somehow Mankind was made, and mankind lived in groups like animals do today and at some point (perhaps Genesis) Mankind became aware of their existence and their personal responsibility (ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) and modern mortality was created.

Yet even without modern morality somehow mankind got here. Whatever was at work before mankind did an absolutely fantastic job: it made mankind.

The greatest evil done by mankind so far was the Nazi holocaust (well by official Western Narrative) and yet the Sun still rises every day as though nothing happened. The lightening still flashes in the sky just as it did before.

Are humans really so powerful that they can do "evil?"

Its that great problem for nature enthusiasts that no matter how much we love nature we must observe great cruelty as well. Our instinct as humans is to help the Wildebeest here. Can you imagine anything more terrifying than having the claws of great cats sinking into your flesh and the painful bites as they hold on. You struggle with all your energy but you are losing and death is coming fast. How terrifying. You are on the side of the Wildebeest. But at exactly the same time the lions are hungry and must eat. How can a human resolve this? Perhaps a bullet through the beest's head to lessen the suffering. But this is nature and this is how it works since the dawn of time, you can't shoot every prey animal. Suffering must unavoidably happen for nature to operate.

Is this not great evil?

It starts to get very complex. And then many people eat Wildebeest or cattle anyway so they are hardly any different from the lions.

And then humans have "noble" wars where they justify the slaughter of 10s of millions of innocent people.

Group behaviour looks ugly! We rush back into our Lutherian chamber to contemplate authentic private experience again.

And yet the public group world carries on. The lions eat the Wildebeest. The wars carry on. Perhaps those shoes we are wearing were made in a sweat shop and we have supported the income of an evil exploiter. We throw all our clothes outside the window. Now we are truly authentic free from group behaviour. Except we remember eating a cake made from eggs from a battery farm where the chickens are kept in dreadful conditions. So we chop a finger off to remove the protein because it is tainted by the evil group behaviour of inauthentic people who exploit animals without conscience. And then we remember seeing someone killed on the news and that memory is poisoned by the same evil behaviour so we remove a bit of brain. And then we discover that perhaps our parents did you truly love each other and I am born of an imperfect union. I am now completely destroyed every part of me poisoned by the inauthentic outside world. No point closing the doors of my Lutherian prison, every part of me comes already tainted from outside.

And so we get to the same place as the picture showing up when we look at it. Except now the outside world is coursing through every part of my body and existence.

And then we notice amazing things. When I speak to myself I do it in someone else's language! I don't speak to myself in my own language but in the language of my parents! Even my own thoughts are not mine!

Suddenly even the deepest parts of me belong outside. I think of my memories. My parents, my 4th birthday party, my first day at school, my favourite toy, my first kiss and realise all these moments were given me by the world around me.

I exist in the world. I am the world.

Suddenly throwing myself into the turmoil of the world around me doesn't seem so strange. A war is called and I sign up for no other reason than my friends are joining.

By best friend starts doing drugs and I join him doing drugs. Our lives spiral into addiction and we end up on the streets. He is killed one night and I am alone again wishing for my Lutherian room, cursing the day I threw the door open and embraced the world.

So this is the thing. Actually we know all this happens. Like the Holocaust all kinds of evil have happened. Plenty of people have completely messed up their lives. In fact no one gets it all right. But if we fully embrace the world around us then like the Russian Doll problem there is nothing outside us either. In our Lutherian room we thought there was a Russian Doll inside directing our activities and experiencing what was going on. The opposite problem happens in the world where we think there is a great World Doll into which we fit like a brick and which directs us towards evil and failure and we must run away from this into private contemplation. We followed our friend into drug use like an idiot and reached rock bottom with him. People say switch on the inner doll and take back control of your life. But why? Where is the Outer Doll leading us astray that we need to battle?

The point is there are many parts of society already in place that will stop us doing drugs. Our schools tell us not to do drugs. The Police tell us not to. Our parents probably say the same. Our friends may do too. In fact if we follow the society we know not to do it. If we follow our friend onto the street through drug addiction there is already a lot wrong with our society and the world in which we live. No amount of "inner doll" will probably rescue us from that. And if we are born in the Amazon chances are we will be encouraged by the Great Doll to do drugs as part of a ritual... and no one will see any problem with this and no evil will come of it.

And in fact if we think of many examples of classic "evil" they are conducted by "mad people" living in world's of their own. The Hollywood monster is invariably a loner with twisted desires that are incomprehensible to other people. These loners often become sensations because for all their evil they demonstrate the "inner doll" which for some gives them authenticity. What they wanted may have been mad, but they did it all the same. They could in fact have done with some strong external guidance in their lives! So actually despite Western celebrations of the inner doll it is just as problematic as the "outer doll."

So really we can just bin ALL these Russian dolls. Both the inner dolls directing our behaviour and experiencing the world, and the Outer Dolls directing our behaviour and telling us what the world is like. We sit exactly in the middle of a flat world. Nothing inside to feel lonely, and nothing outside to belong to and control us.

So I see the bit on Time in the title. Isn't that already obvious? If there is nothing inside or outside then who dies? There is neither a Russian Doll inside being dragged to the Death of the body or a Big Russian Doll outside with a long History into which we can get our name recorded if we get famous. Time does not flow, travel or change. It just is, right Now.

Escapism, Present Moment, The Key

So when things are hard its tempting not to enter the Present Moment and in turn drift off into escapism. Watch a film, take your mind off it, or even worse get drunk. This is all so well and good but it doesn't solve the problem.

However when faced with pain or difficulty surely the last place we want to be is Right Here, Right Now.

An important stage of meditation that I hear again and again appears to be occupying a perspective from which sensations become just feelings. As Pema Chödrön puts it we separate the sensations from all narratives and story lines and just perceive it as it is.

Strangely when faced with this advise we suddenly get pragmatic and say that isolating feelings from narratives does not solve the problem.

The issue now though what is "the problem." It is actually just a narrative!

Nonsense we say. I have just been diagnosed with cancer how is that a "just a narrative." Well what does "diagnose with cancer" actually mean? It means we will die a painful death. Well probably but is that happening now? No. It means I won't have a long happy retirement. But is that happening now? "Long happy retirement" is just a narrative, it is escapism. And so on. All we have right now after diagnosis is the same as we had before, plus a narrative and with lots of other narratives like "happy retirement" upset. We're just had a shakeup of our fantasies that is all. But perhaps now we do have some stress and discomfort that is a natural body response to hearing something frightening or upsetting. So this is where Pema Chödrön comes in. Just observe the sensations as they come and go. Don't add all the imagination that this feeling comes from my cancer diagnosis. But we will obviously experience a lot as our dreams of the future have had a massive reality check. But really we should not hold tight to future plans anyway cos they are unreliable, don't need a cancer diagnosis to remind us that.

Present Moment then is not just moving ourselves into the firing line. With practice is become removing ourselves completely. We don't need to move into the Present or hide in fantasies or alcohol. We don't move at all! Present moment simply allows us to see things in Sense Consciousness as they are without Mind Consciousness (narratives) bundling in or worse Self-Consciousness hijacking the show (and making it all about me). It stops being "my cancer diagnosis" and just "a cancer diagnosis."

This is 7 of the 9 consciousnesses. 5 senses + Mind Consciousness + Self Consciousness.

Meditation is usually focusing on making Sense Consciousness take over, and weaken Mind Consciousness and most importantly Self-Consciousness. These last two dominate so much that we often don't notice our sense at all. Reading and writing this is almost all Mind Consciousness. There is just a tiny bit of sense consciousness to see the words, and then often a big amount of Self-Consciousness as we own things like "disagreement" to make it "I disagree" etc. Mind Consciousness is the only one that sleep. 

There are 2 more Consciousness usually even more weak that sense. Store House is 8 which records everything and survives death. This is why people are born with knowledge and personality. Thich Nhat Hanh says that this consciousness is the one that knows how to drive the car while Mind Consciousness is day dreaming or thinking about other things. I think that means its the same one that slowly processes a crossword or other puzzle so that when we come back to it we suddenly know the answer. It is low energy so doesn't need sleep, but its a weak consciousness that is never bright.

Finally there is what Buddhists call Buddha Nature. This is the True Consciousness. When we enlighten this one is bright and it shows up the others. We see the Self-Consciousness does not really own anything or even exist as separate thing. We see the Store House and how our past lives and actions have made our current life. We see our Mind Consciousness as just the maker of narratives and stories about our world like a daily personal NEWS. And that brings us back to that Key stage in mediation.