Sunyata (emptiness) & Madness

Disclaimer I am not enlightened and like everyone, at some level, am seeking to throw off the shackles that bind me to the world.

Now recently I've returned to a similar place I was as a child. There are many ways to shake yourself out of your complacent assumptions about the world. For me it was this one:

When biology lessons start to teach you that the brain is the "centre" of perception you have a rabbit hole opened up.

The issue is that you have 2 ways to refer to your experience. Sound familiar from Gödel type isomorphic proofs that cause contradictions via multiple ways of referring to things. You have the normal way which is to experience things as you always have. But now you can also consider that everything you are experiencing is a process in your brain. This means that when you see a flower in a vase on the table, you have both the flower present in your experience, but also the thought that this is really occurring "in" your brain. When asked where is the "flower" you have several answers now.
(1) The flower is in the vase on the table
(2)  The flower is also in our brain as a virtual flower.

But this gets more involved because is not the vase and the table, in fact everything we can see ALL in our brain?

This begins by realising that what we see is really the image in our eye rather than what is really there.

This is how TV works. There is no real candle in the TV, all it needs to do is simulate the image in the eye for the brain to then think it is looking at a candle.

This is a very complex rabbit hole. For example consider at which point does the "real" candle become the "image" of the candle. We might argue that the light being reflected or generated by the candle is the "image" as the "real" candle remains on the table while the image is transmitted in light to our sensory organ (the eye). But the eye is not enough to see. If you cut the optic nerve you go blind. So the "light" on the retina is not enough, that is converted to nerve signal that must make it to the visual cortex for us to see anything. So where is the "image." And then you get to the famous mind/body issue of at which point do the physical processes and electrical signals become the conscious "image" that we see. And where in the brain does this occur? Well with modern scanning we can see which parts of the brain become active during seeing the candle. But obviously the brain activity does not look like a candle. And pointing to our head when asked where the candle is does not make sense as the candle is on the table. But then we realise that not just the candle but the whole space including our heads and brains are also in our head. But this is nonsense. How can our head be inside our head? And there is another avenue in this rabbit warren. If the "real" candle is on the table and the "image" is in my head then the real candle is not the same as the image, and we can never experience the "real" candle as we can only see images. This is classically referred to as the noumenon being the "real" entity and the phenomenon being the conscious experience. But really this is just mind/body problem again because how are they linked? Are they linked in the real or the phenomenal world or is there a 3rd world. Okay that is a quick walk around the upper sections of the rabbit warren if you take the red pill. But none of this is the real point.

We can just go Matrix (1999) here as they approached this too, the thing to note is that there is no difference* between sitting in a world with flowers in vases and candles and sitting in a pod with all this being faked to our senses by a computer. Or before the film Matrix it was brains in vats in laboratories. 

* In fact there is a difference but it's complex and not relevant here.

Now I wonder if there are 3 types of people here:
(1) Those that just accept it as a factual possibility that our sense experience could be generated by a computer. They are Blue Pill people who hear it, but it makes no change.
(2) Those that actually put themselves in the picture, and realise that there experience right now might be generated by a computer simulation. In other words this is no longer idle speculation but a realisation that upends their whole life and existence in a seemingly unavoidable way. These are the Red Pill people who go down the rabbit hole. What I used to love about Philosophy is that just sitting in my bedroom as a child I could go on bigger adventures than anyone in the world. 

Here I'll break before getting to Type 3 people. (2) is the kind of revelation that changes everything like a religion. One day we take the world one way, and in an instant everything changes. Feeling we are really in a pod in a dystopian world is however un-nerving and destabilising. Its great for a bit of fun, but what if Matrix was true and we really do live in a horrible world like that? And while Matrix is just a film, we realise that "where we are" is quite possibly nothing like where we think we are. I remember one night lying awake very concerned that perhaps I was dreaming while lying in a ditch of dead bodies during a war. Not conducive to a good night sleep.

The reason for this blog is to note that this destabilising feeling is exactly what people experience as they approach Enlightenment.

When Buddha says that suffering is caused by attachment, he is referring to our habitual need to grasp at a particular world view and reality. We know the world is impermanent and this thing we grasp is liable to change but we ignore it, like "My Muse" who you never think is never going to die did die. I was permanently attached and that hurts when it changes. But letting go is not a simple thing either. There is a reason we grasp and risk the pain. Letting go is destabilising and it takes time to get used to this feeling. It is actually the feeling of freedom, but like flying it is a horrible feeling for those used to standing on the ground. It is literally like jumping off the high diving board, until we are used to it the feeling of free fall is unpleasant. So is Enlightenment.

I think a lot of people will run away from (2) above because they feel the start of the destabilising feeling and rush back to (1) where they hear it, but stay bound to their world view. Isn't this the commonest thing in the world. "Global Warming" is gradually becoming accepted even by once committed rebels, and we are getting used to the instability of thinking about our climate no longer being so friendly. It is the same thing. We attach to what is safe and known, and we ignore change. But not being able to change leads to pain. But being able to change is destabilising at the start.

Being able to change, seeing ultimately that there is no fixed thing to attach to, feeling that instability as freedom this is Sunyata. And that means that people running away from (2) are running from Enlightenment. This is why we remain in ignorance.

There seems to me to be two main ways to Enlightenment and letting go: questioning the Who? like Eckhart Tolle or questioning the Where? What ultimately shook Mr Tolle free was asking "Who is suffering?" When we are having a bad time Who really is having this bad time? Do we really know them? What are they really like?

For me there is the other approach which is this exposition in this blog which is the "Where am I?" Am I sitting on this chair? Am I in a brain in a vat? Am I in a pod in world ruled by the Matrix? The very fact that I can get confused on this matter and feel the instability of not knowing is actually the key to the fact that we don't need to have an answer to this. We are no where! "Absolutely" that is. I am sitting in the chair this is just a fact. Perhaps that is in simulation creating in my brain which is in a vat, so really I am in a vat. But perhaps the idea I am in a vat is itself a simulation that is being given me. The point is that in absolute way we are No Where. We are only ever relatively somewhere. I discussed this before with regards to relativity. But here I want to look at the feeling of instability that comes with this and leads us back to holding, certainty and not really wanting to know.

Now in some poor mental health states there is a thing called Dissociation where we feel separated from reality and our self. This can lead to experiencing or living different selves, including forgetting who we are. It can feel like separation from the world, and that it is not real. A meditation master when asked about mental health said that this is something that should be treated by a trained professional. However in the context of this blog I am looking at the feeling of instability. Dissociation is obviously not enlightenment, it is the brain's way to deal with stress and suffering by breaking up aspects of itself like identity and reality. I'm not sure if it is linearly connected but Psychosis would be the extreme case where we start to invent new realities to help us escape pain. All of this is just standard suffering and Samsara caused by holding on. Letting go is letting go of all this and more. So I wonder even in the midst of mental crisis which must create instability much as above where we start to lose the old certainties, if we hold out through this we can use it to let go. It was after all the depths of mental illness and depression that led Eckhart Tolle to let go.

So what of Type 3 above. If type 1 hear things that may destabilise but ignore, and type 2 plunge in and go on the white knuckle ride, type 3 can handle letting go and don't even experience instability like a high board diver who is now unafraid of the feeling of weightlessness, is no longer on a thrill ride, and now relishes this experience of pure freedom where they can display their skills like a Buddha uses his freedom to do wise things.