Conspiracy, Enlightenment and Self

By the end of this post we will see that what we think of the self is all wrong and that it is not even individual.

There is a sense amongst many people that everything is wrong, and the blame lies with the establishment or the elites that ultimately control us and don't allow us to do what we want. The size of this conspiracy is vast covering all aspects of our life and thought.

Well it is true everything we have been told is wrong. We are completely brainwashed to live a lie. This is a fact. The intuition that everything is wrong is correct. But the nature of this mistake is far deeper than even the The Matrix (1999) could ever prepare us for.

In The Matrix, Neo discovers that his entire world is actually a sensory hallucination created by a vast computer called The Matrix that has enslaved humans for their biological heat. Its a revamp of the old "brain in a vat" thought experiment, where it is hard to discount the possibility that the illusion of the world is being created for us by something other than the world. Am I just a brain in a laboratory with all my sensory experience being fed via electrical impulses to my senses from a huge computer or other device? How do I know what is actually stimulating my senses? I see a tree, but all I know of it is via my senses. I do not know the "real" tree, which may be half a mile away, only what I see in this case. And that can be easily faked by a simulation. Cinema and TV is one such simulation although it is easy to get "outside" a Cinema to see how it works. But once data is fed directly to our senses we can't get outside and we can't know.

This debate drifts off into metaphysics, but is also irrelevant. The thing to look at is "where am I?" in this thought experiment or the simulation? Could "I" be simulated also? Neo definitely is not simulated in The Matrix because he gets out into The Nebuchadnezzar world and exists on a space craft in "reality." Interestingly the Neo in The Matrix looks the same as the one outside the Matrix. We presume that the The Matrix has simulated people as they are in "reality" but it doesn't need to. And The Matrix could have gone on to reveal that even the The Nebuchadnezzar world was just another simulation. The Matrix could have been smart enough to include an Easter Egg level where you think you are escaping the matrix and battling Agent Smith but really all that is just simulated to keep humans happy. Ultimately in this game you can just say that whatever is happening is simulated. This means that even if we came face to face with the "computer" that was simulating everything we just say that is a simulation itself. Such metaphysics turns out to be empty and we can discard it. BUT this is not the point here and we need to drop the metaphysics. The point is about Neo. Where is Neo? From his perspective he is like an island with the world sailing around him. One minute he is in the ordinary world, the next he meets Morpheus and before he knows it he is waking from The Matrix. But where is he? Is he in the ordinary world, in The Matrix or in the Nebuchadnezzar world?

So the point here is to notice that Neo is never part of The Matrix. The Matrix simulation (that is a line from the end of War Games 1983) is happening to him, but he is already outside the Matrix even when he is in the Matrix. Neo is not himself simulated. So when Nebuchadnezzar world happens actually he was never in the Matrix in the first place so nothing changes.

Lets unpack that. If Neo looks in a mirror in The Matrix world he will see a simulated mirror and a simulated reflection. What is this reflection of? Well there is no body there because it is all simulated  so actually it is not a reflection of anything, it is not even a reflection. It is just an image in his senses. Yet even in this shadowy simulated world it looks just like the real thing, and most importantly he is "seeing" just as he later "sees" in Nebuchadnezzar World. While what he sees changes, that he sees is a constant and goes with him through out the film. The "seeing" itself is not simulated.

Now hopefully that little meditation on The Matrix brings into focus the nature of experience. What we are seeing and That we are seeing are quite different. No amount of metaphysics can get into this difference. But it will try very hard. Let go exploring again quickly to prove that.

What and That is the old essence/existence distinction. In predicate logic we presuppose a world of existences and then we apply predicates (whats) to that. There exists x such that x is Neo. If this is True then we are saying that something exists (x) and we are saying it is true that what this is is Neo. This solves the problem of "Do horned rabbits exist." Logicians were worried that if they didn't then how do we make sense of the question. There must be a way of knowing what a horned rabbit is without it actually existing. So we have the essence of horned rabbit being as described, but quite separately the question of whether they actually exist. People try to blur this. Don't.

So far so good. But instinctively we now want to know what is Neo? We think of him as Keanu Reeves, the actor who plays him but we allow him to pretend to be someone else. Regardless who he is he looks like Keanu all the way through the film so we can follow his story. But as noted above the Matrix simulates that same look, he looks like Neo in the Matrix too. Neo could have been a girl or a frog in The Matrix. This is handled better in Quantum Leap (1989-1993).

Dr Sam Becket undergoes repeating "quantum leaps" into people where he becomes them for a bit and can with Al's help fix problems in their lives. Like The Matrix Dr Sam Becket looks the same to TV viewers (Scott Bakula) but to everyone in the program he is actually the person he has taken over. This is most noticeable when he is a woman, and we have the odd situation of see Scott Bakula being treated like a woman. The point here is that when we go to First Person and see things as Dr Sam Becket sees them we are also seeing them as the person who has been taken over is seeing them. It is like Dr Sam Becket has received the media stream from their eyes and senses.

This raises a profound question. Where is Dr Sam Becket if his body is someone else's and his senses are coming from someone else?

The standard solution to this is the Soul. We think that there is something which is not material in which "I" live, or which makes up me. This way Becket's soul can safely enter someone else's body and occupy their life. This was the old idea of demon possession. 

So going back to Neo when he transition from The Matrix to Nebuchadnezzar world his soul is unchanged. And it is his soul who is being fooled by The Matrix and his soul which gets liberated by realising the truth of Nebuchadnezzar world. Likewise in Quantum Leap it is the soul of Dr Sam Becket that is entering other people's bodies and lives. With the idea of "souls" all this is easy to think about. But it is all wrong. The conspiracy is emerging!

Lets look again: do we really need a soul? Returning to looking in the mirror. We can see a body and a person. That is what is being reflected. But there is the other side of this of someone doing the looking. How are these connected, that is how is my reflection linked to the fact I am seeing the reflection? Well I can see eyes in the mirror and when I look at the eyes I am looking straight at myself. So I conclude I am in the eyes. I am not the rest of the body, just in the eyes **. Well this idea has been developed and now we push myself further back than my eyes into the brain. Consciousness arises in the brain and it becomes aware of what is being seen. This is the same as saying The Matrix is really my own brain. I am the consciousness that is aware of things, that is taking what is in the eye and turning it into someone seeing it. We can safely reject the body being "me" but rather we make consciousness the "me."

** because we are using vision obviously we will find ourselves in the eyes. What happens when we touch our self? Where are we then?

We need be a bit careful here not to muddy the "what" is seen from the "that" it is being seen. Consciousness in this model explains "that" things are being seen. The contents of consciousness are "what" is being seen. This means we can never see our self! What is being seen is just the contents, but that it is being seen is the consciousness. Yet this is a contradiction is it not? Is not consciousness a "thing?" We can think about consciousness as a stuff that starts and stop and is located in the brain and so has a lot in common with material things. Indeed many scientists believe that consciousness is similar to matter. If not existing as a stuff, then arising from matter. Daniel Dennett I believe (need reread) argued that consciousness is an illusion that arises from computing in the brain. We are back in The Matrix territory but this time consciousness is actually part of The Matrix. When Neo is seeing things we are saying that experience is actually simulated itself! Not just what is being experienced by the actual consciousness of it is being simulated. Really? This is wrong. This is confusing what is being seen, from that it is being seen.

We can add an important tool here. East philosophy identifies 6 senses. The usual 5 senses but they add an important extra sense: perception and thought. Why in the West we think that the world comes to us in just 5 senses is a mystery to me. Seeing something is only half of it. Knowing what it is is the other half. The 5 senses are attended by the 6th most important sense which is the one which turns data into things. This is called the mind (small 'm'). Buddha says, "with our thoughts we make the world". Crazy we think. The world is matter and solid and our thoughts are just ephemeral ghostly patterns in our heads. I can't think a pile of gold and it just appear. So the story of man awaking and in the darkness seeing a snake in his room. He spends the rest of the night petrified until dawn reveals it is only a rope. And we think perception and thoughts are not important. The world we live in is decided (and I use that in a computing sense) by our mind. As far as we are concerned what is there is whatever our mind say its there. Appreciating this 6th sense we can see just how vast it is. When someone says the things they are experiencing are being faked by a Matrix it is the 6th sense which is deciding they are not real. Conversely when we think they are real it is our mind that decides. You see a cup of tea. The vision gives you the image but the "cup of tea" comes from the 6th sense of mind. And the "it is an hallucination from a Matrix" is also a decision of the 6th sense of mind. This gives a much fuller picture of the world and moves all our thoughts and speculations on what it is into a "sense." In the model above of speculations about what causes consciousness and how things appear this is actually in the mind. It is just the 6th sense. Consciousness refers to "that" things are there, not what they are. So the mind asking "what is consciousness" is missing the point of consciousness.

There is something else to notice here. How do we know we are conscious? We don't sense consciousness, we sense things. Our memory can't tell us we were asleep earlier and now are awake as we only remember being awake. Consciousness has a remarkable quality of being self-knowing. The person who is awake knows they are awake, this is the nature of being awake. To be fully awake is to be Enlightened and waking up fully includes knowing we are fully awake. Buddha said the "path is at an end". The awakeness knows itself.

Yet consciousness is not yet full awareness. When we fall asleep then (normal) consciousness ends. When we awake it comes back. This type of awareness is still just a layer covering full awareness. But it is a vast step closer to full awareness than delving into thoughts like "I am my body" or "I am a person." And this gets finally to the real point of this blog post. "I am a person" is the core of the conspiracy against our self. This is the lie which we have been told forever and we continue to be fooled by. This is the issue which causes everything we think to be wrong and which makes the whole world seem wrong. It is not the establishment that is to blame, it is not even myself.

Now we are certain we are a person or at least a self. The awareness knows itself. You can't lie to me about that. It manifests in the presence of a world and of the existence of things being presented for someone to see and experience. The sudden smell of flower as walk past throws itself into existence and we know we are experiencing that. It cannot be lied about. The fact that it is cannot be ignored. Now the 6th sense will leap on this and start perceiving and deducing and thinking and quite quickly we can decide that what we just experienced was the result of a Matrix whatever that is--perhaps a hostile computer or perhaps our brain. Does not matter. These thoughts are the what we just experienced. But the fact we did just experience is easily proven: why are we thinking about it if it didn't just happen? If you have OCD you will be completely familiar with being drowned in thoughts you cannot contain or control. Just ask them why are they there? Ignore what they are, just pick up on that they are there. This is the essence of Mindfulness and Vipassana meditation. Just get to see that things are there, and ignore what they are. This is done actually by "noting" where we apply the mind (6th sense) to just observe what something is and then no more thought on it. The infinite stream of thoughts that arise, as indeed this very blog post is, are very familiar parts of our 6th sense. But here we are turning this juggernaut of what things are around to just look to that things are.

So we can't lie that things are. It is only when we put a fire under what they are that thinks kick off. Now where in all this is my self? We are getting to the crux of the post.

If we think of our experience of the world it is a first person game with other people. This is most obviously present in 1st person shooter games. This person called "me" holds the gun and gets to shoot other people. Meanwhile they try and shoot me. This seems very obvious and simple and think we understand it. We are wrong. Here is the whole nature of the conspiracy against us. Where in this picture below am I?

Does it ever seem odd that every person has this view from their eyes, but I only know mine and no one else can see mine. There is something odd about this. It is like we all live in different rooms with windows opening on the world (no accident we think this as we have based our living arrangements on this idea). But it is wrong! In this picture who are we? Well we can safely say we are not the people we are shooting. That is correct. But are we really the one holding the gun? asking this we are literally about to turn to the exits of the cave we have been living in for so long now. Yes someone is holding a gun, yes someone is seeing a view of people they are shooting at, yet these are just thoughts (6th sense) and decisions about what is going on, yes there are feelings and memories but try and point at the person who we think we are here? There is no person we can point at is there.

Perhaps we turn around and say I am The Fourth Wall, I am behind the camera. Well yes this is in a way true, but there is nothing there is there. All there is, is what is in front of the camera.

Now we can get into metaphysics here and discuss that I have a body and go into all the stuff we have discussed above. But cutting all that short the point is that we can't see or experience our self! The most obvious thing about being a self is that we cannot experience our self. We are the that there are things and experience but we are never anything what is experienced.

Unless you abide in pure awareness already that is probably a mystery. The thing holding us back is the incessant belief that we must abide in the world in some form. Probably the main argument would be that when I see other people they are definite people. They have a body and they talk and I imagine I am the same.  But why go this way. Why not go the other way and realise that all people are behind the Fourth Wall as well and are nothing.

 

What this does is get us to an extraordinary place which is that "self" does not come in the form of people. Self is not a person. I am not a person. This is not to say that people do not exist. Just look they are everywhere. The point is to allow self to let go of these forms and exist as it really is. It is the source of that it is never a what. So when we look at a person that is a what. The self part however is not to be seen. You can never see a person's self any more than your can your own self because they are not things and you cannot ask what they are. Self becomes a much more profound thing much more closely aligned to ideas of God whose home is just awareness of the world. Don't allow the 6th sense to try and get into this stream now and start thinking about that. There is no place in the mind where self exists so no point searching for it in that sense any more than trying to see or smell the self. Just let things exist: That is self.

So this is the conspiracy. At some stage in our early childhood we looked out on the world and all the people and we thought we were one of them. We thought we were limited by 2 hands and 2 feet, we thought we had 2 eyes and a mouth. We thought we breathed and had a heartbeat. We thought all the things about other people were us. But we never thought that all the things about me were them. It must have happened very young because by the time we ever reflected on this we were already convinced we were a separate self based on the what we saw of different bodies all with wishes and opinions. While we still obviously provided the Fourth Wall to the world, we ignore this and overlaid this with the idea that the Fourth Wall was just one body amongst many. Everyone had their Fourth Wall that was somehow inside the body. We never thought the other way around that perhaps all the bodies were just viewed from the Fourth Wall. The normal conspiracy of an establishment opposing myself is really just this mistake written large. All the other bodies have just become cemented together into an opponent to this body. But we overlook that I am not this body or even this person. I am the thatness of all these things.

Perhaps the struggle to achieve this letting go is what will be lost. We will have to see that while this person I thought is me exists, and has parents and partners and friends it is not me. It means letting go of my name and my identity. All these things belong to the body and not to me. If we have spent a long time taking pride in what we are, if we have great achievements and are highly regarded by people unfortunately to see clearly we must realise this all belongs to the body and not me. This is why once we start to grasp the thatness (also called suchness) many people give up on their worldly lives. It is not "crazy wisdom" where we just let ourselves starve to death. It is just treating our body as any body. When it is hungry we give it food, and when it is cold we get some warmth. The difference is it is no longer us, it is like a pet that we care for. This has the immediate impact that we are more open to other persons too. But it does not make us into a genius saint who can save the world. Our body is still whatever it is, with all its weaknesses and strengths. Being enlightened does not mean we run fast, or think fast or can live on air alone. A body is just the body as ever. The difference is that it has finally given up on the struggle to exist as someone. It already exists so there is nothing else for it to do. Once the body recognises the self as the thatness of existence it no longer struggles and is at peace.

This last bit solves what seems to me a problem in how to explain this. Enlightenment does not refer to a new state of being. An enlightened being is just the same as a unenlightened being. Nothing actually changes. From the perspective of Enlightenment nothing happens, we are always enlightened as Present Moment just is. But from the perspective of body--where all the suffering, thoughts and ignorance happens-- the sensation of peace arises because the body stops struggling. It is the body fighting to be a distinct self which is suffering. When it gives up trying to protect an imagined self, and opens to the simple reality that the thatness takes care of itself, that is the Present Moment is already there, then it can get back to just being what it is without stress. Conversely the enlightened observe the body as living its own life and needing very little extra to live. And when death comes that comes to the body as expected. The enlightened self loses nothing at death because it is not the body.