Let’s get mystical, shall we?
Says Alan Watts in “Become what you are”:
In this paragraph, Watts manages to condense the most important tenet of Oriental mysticism: the illusion of self. In layman’s terms and without getting too much in the weeds here, let’s just say life is multi-faceted and constantly evolving and moving (impermanence) and our ridiculous idea of establishing an immutable “self” and perpetuating it through time and existence is destined to fail.
Why? Because the nature of reality flows endlessly but follows certain rules. This is known as “Samsara”, for the Buddhists (the wheel of life and death, but also the “karma” in our actions), and can be found in many, if not all, the schools of mystic thought. Gnostics call it “the law of polar opposites”, the idea that when life swings in a positive direction, it will inevitably swing in the opposite direction in the future. This notion is at the base of all dualistic thought, be it yin and yang, life and death, pleasure and pain or any of the other interpretations. The most banal approach to Samsara and the law of polar opposites can be found in Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which has been dumbed down by modern society into something like, “do not do unto others what you don’t want done unto you”.
I’ve said before that language is a blessing and a curse: an incredible tool allowing communication between human beings, yet such a clumsy artifact for sharing human experience. Language is the necessary scaffolding for thought. It not only establishes the limits of what I can think about but sets the boundaries of my world: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, said Ludwig Wittgenstein.
When we talk about “the world” what we are actually doing is trying to detect repetitive patterns and create a semblance of order in an otherwise chaotic world. This is what science does: it looks for regularities and formulates them following strict language rules. That’s OK: if your objective is flying a rocket to Mars, you’re going to need science. Loads of it.
However, when we talk about the self, we should conclude that all our psychological models are terribly misguided or ill-informed. I studied Behavioral Psychology and even did an internship with patients, so I know first-hand how tricky the business of extrapolating how rats handle stimuli in a Skinner box to real life can be. Behavioral Psychology? Great if you want to extinguish a small child’s behavior of wetting the bed, terrible if a patient says they don’t know what to do with their life or are questioning their sexuality (not that psychoanalysis has any good answers, they just did a better PR job).
Now, if all this mystical/oriental stuff about the self seems gobbledygook to you (go back to the ashram, hippie!), you can always settle for the most influential Western philosopher of the 20th Century: Martin Heidegger. Heidegger said (I’m totally going to butcher this; apologies, philosophers!) that the question of “being” had never been addressed in the history of philosophy, leading to a terrible misconception that he was going to fix (obviously). When you say, “I am a football player”, what exactly is the function of the verb “to be”, here? And how is it different from “I am French” or “that is a hammer” and why on earth are we talking like this? This is a “mode of being” that corresponds to a philosopher: you go around asking what “a hammer” is, or if you’re living in a simulation, or if Napoleon existed. If you go around talking this way in another context, they’ll put you in a mad house. Anyway, Heidegger wrote two tomes on all of this, so go knock yourself out (or listen to a Podcast instead).
The point I’m trying to make is that all these schools of thought, be they philosophical, religious or mystical, are arguing the same thing: you cannot pin down Reality and Existence and point to it saying, “this is it”. First of all, the inadequacy of our language-tools cannot describe phenomenological experiences very well (try explaining what “being in love” is), and second, Reality is so multi-faceted, and Existence so complex, that these concepts resist reification (petrifying them and turning them into objects).
Yet we think we can. We do it all the time, that’s how our mind works: we take parts of reality, slap a concept on them, and think we’ve solved some kind of existential problem. “Now I’m a doctor”, “I can play the piano”, “I’m a leader”, “I have a strong personality”… All ridiculous attempts at creating stability in an ever-changing world that has its own rules.
Attachment to these made-up concepts is what brings anguish and suffering. Not only because we’re trying to latch on to something in a permanently moving world, but also because this “filter” blocks our participation in the existential process. Consider the idea, “I’m a football player”. It’s not a stable notion; we all grow old and weak at some point. So if you think your existence is about “being a football player”, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of suffering the day you won’t be able to play, which is something that will inevitably happen (Heidegger would probably have preferred a statement like “I’m playing football now”, but that doesn’t solve the problem).
Let go! You need to let go. Stop building these categories that imprison your existence. Nobody asked you to do that; you made all of that up by yourself. Nobody cares if you play football or not, or if you’re a “leader” or not. Nobody’s watching. Yet we feel like we have to “protect” these absurd constructs that just make us miserable. “Dancing is not my thing”, or “intellectuals don’t lift weights”, or “athletes don’t read books”, are just inauthentic modes of being (Heidegger) dependent on the “them” analysis: what would “they” think, where “they” is an invented idea about “the other” (Foucault’s social panopticon, if you will).
Most of the schools of thought, by hook or by crook, arrive at the same conclusion: STAY SILENT. When we create internal silence, when the voice stops ringing in our heads, when we look at life unfiltered, without language; that’s when the ecstatic experience appears. That’s when life reveals itself, when we witness the dance of the cosmos.
A word to the wise: don’t be so arrogant. Let go of your ego. It’s an illusion you’ve created. “You are” nothing; follow your true self, your intuition, your North Star. Open up your mind, and then you will see the perennial philosophy Aldous Huxley talked about: the most beautiful state of transcendence and communion with Existence itself, a timeless, non-dual Reality where “the ineffable Truth” resides.
Excellent. There are two things I like to add: You come to the same conclusion, just much more logical, as the social media community with the discussion of "labels" that recognized labels often are in the way, rather than helpful, except when you need terminology as transport for thoughts and communication and there is always the temptation to associate more with them. The other is that we like to believe in our mental models. Our model of "now" is around 80 ms in the past, plus/minus depending on what exactly you measure. We believe to experience present tense, knowing no human ever has, because we like to believe our models are true. If we did not, how could we trust predictions based on them? Science is no different, except we revise scientific models if facts contradict - well, we try to at least, or we use the terms outliers, anomalies, mistakes, noise, defects and disorders. Engineers know that. It's our constant battle. So you think anybody knows why a rocket arrived at Mars? Despite all efforts, we know how much trouble is in each and every scientific looking model. Hence the celebration if things work out - knowing many reasons why they don't have to, including knowing there are things we don't know of not knowing.