What is me? What is the World?

I separate myself from inward-looking reflection in the sense that I believe action, and not necessarily silence, is the key to silence. Detachment from the physical world as a means of enlightenment is very appealing. Certainly the act of enlightenment is an act of the conscious thing, but the conscious thing, at the moment, might not be in a position to act by itself. Perhaps activity of the conscious self alone is misleading. Perhaps it needs the anchor of the physical? If that is true, then inward reflection as a thing-with-a-purpose-in-itself might be taking us further into the cave. It must be considered.

‘Conscious’, for me, means the facility or ability to know of things in ways things without consciousness cannot know things. I am not concerned with consciousness as something versus, or different from, unconsciousness. I would not deny unrecognised mental activity at all, and it may be interesting — it simply seems irrelevant; as a part of our understanding, or lack of understanding, about how the brain works.

This is how I see things. The order is: there is the world; there is consciousness of the world; there is consciousness of the world; there is the world. The world is, because of consciousness, increasingly coherent; its movement is from incoherent and corrupted to coherent. As individuals, our movement is from coherent to less coherent. The movement is from one to another.

All of this has rational appeal — what I know I come to know ‘internally’ but because of the world. The world will ultimately know me, at which time, I will be part of the world. As conscious beings, we are isolated from other conscious beings, but not from the world which is because we are. Ultimately, our isolation will be breached but then, in exchange for the breakdown of isolation, we lose our individual identity. Being part of the world is difficult to understand but, as Whitman says, ‘And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier’.

This is a rational process: for me, from conscious and rational to incoherent; for the world, from unconscious to conscious and coherent.

I am not concerned with the unconscious — it is irrelevant — just as it is irrelevant to me what is going on in electricity; and it does not matter. Reason is before and after — the unbreakable condition of the B-series — and everything must fit with this absolute condition. How can my insight be anything less than rational? It would be impossible because the B-series imposes the rational. I yearn for the permanence of the world, but I cannot claim it — it is impossible.

If in Van Gochean style, I cut off my ear, and put it in an hermetically sealed vacuum, in a box and wait, the ear will change. Over millions of years it may not even be possible to see any evidence of it, but it must still be in the box. How can it go?

If we are physical, and our mind is a complex brain process, and we throw out all dualistic tendencies to a spirit, then not only must we still be in the box, but so must our consciousness of at least those conscious things that we were conscious of. Where can we go? This does not mean that our thoughts persist — we no longer exist as what we presently are — but the contribution that we made by enabling some part of the world to be, persists. The B-series of before and after is a one-way, serial, cumulative system — there is no escaping from it. It is sad to lose our own ability to sense the world for us alone, but that is part of the condition. There is great rational coherence in the ‘persistence’ of consciousness like this.

If we are not physical (which I think is more likely), it does not matter, for in either case we are getting things wrong, sometimes badly wrong. And we may never see reality beyond the cave, but that does not mean there is not reality beyond the cave. It is a step to feel sure that all is not as it appears, but a greater step to realise that we are part of what appears, and a part of what is, that is not as it appears. And an even greater step to realise that what is, both as it appears and as not as it appears, is because of our realisation of it and that, in that realisation of it, it includes us permanently in whatever it is.

(As I write this) My only brother died suddenly yesterday — out of the blue, un-heralded. Now, there is isolation, there is a brutal depiction of loneliness, pitiable loneliness. We satisfy our sensual existence, and we get much joy from it, but it is short-lived, fragile and destined to destruction. What is real is the world and we are not only part of the world, but the world is due to us.

Revelation comes from confrontation with the world: action, doing — it springs through to us when we least expect it. We do not, or do not need, to construct conditions for its arrival in any particularly sophisticated way. Look at the world and the world will show itself because it can only show itself because we look at it. Making room for thoughts is important, but the dynamic contrast of the world is more important. If we are receptive to that then we see that.