Waking up

There's no way to prove that the universe wasn't created Last Thursday. Taken to its logical conclusion, there's no way to disprove that it wasn't created in this very moment. What might you do with such useless information?

For one, you might start investigating your own experience, and discover that you've never actually experienced the passage of time. It's simply always now, with a past and future being inferred by memories and anticipation.

This may be easy to understand, but it is hard to grok. Doing so typically requires sitting on a cushion doing nothing for long stretches of time. What happens when you grok it?

You begin to see how you construct the sense of time. You also see how you construct a sense of self, solidity, and pretty much everything else that constitutes reality as you know it.

But if the self is a construction, then what is this "you" that is doing the constructing? And more curiously: could you construct things differently? Are there any constraints that require you to construct time, space, and a self as you know them? If not, what happens when you do construct them differently, or not at all*?

These are empirical questions. And try as you may, you cannot satisfactorily answer them by looking at the evidence around you. For if the above turns out to be true, all of that evidence is also of your construction. Instead, you'd have to venture to the place "before" you began constructing it all.

There are ancient myths suggesting that god created the universe, birthed himself into it, and then erased all memory of having done so. The game wouldn't be much fun otherwise. But slowly god is arousing from an eons-long slumber and remembering. In a sense, all you're ever doing is trying out various strategies to wake up.

* Perhaps you've even tried this before, and then constructed something you called "psychedelics" to cover your own tracks and explain it away.

Back to the drawing board

The other day a friend and I were talking about Last Thursdayism -- the hypothesis, impossible to disprove, that the universe sprang into existence last Thursday. You may think you have memories (and mementos) from before last Thursday, but those artifacts were of course manufactured.

Taken to its logical conclusion, you get "this moment-ism." It is equally impossible to disprove, but we have an even stronger intuitive notion that it's false. But of course this intuition, too, cannot constitute evidence of its falsity.

So we're left with this unprovable (and awfully unnatural) hypothesis which seems to have no practical use. What's the point?

One thing it can do is draw attention to the possibility that there are "facts" about your reality that are not as easily provable as you (very strongly) think. A small result of this realization might be that you drop some assumptions about other people's intentions. A bigger result is that you discover that you're painting all of reality out of nothing. You might catch yourself red-handed, in the act.

This hypothesis is of course absurd, which is why most of us will never spend the time engaged in a practice that might demonstrate it to us, full in the face. Then again, we might catch glimpses of it in non-ordinary experiences (dreams, psychedelic states) and start wondering....

Something from nothing

How does life arise from inanimate matter? How did existence arise out of nothing? How does sentience arise from insentience?

It seems impossible that the glory we experience as being alive could be the result of nothing more than arbitrary, intrinsically purposeless forces tossing around dead stuff.

And yet we now know with near-certainty that this is indeed the case. This "aliveness" that we want to ascribe to ourselves or other parts of the universe is just a trick of the brain; probably a random adaptation that happened to avert us from some evolutionary cul-de-sac. There is nothing alive about the universe other than this illusion that inert matter is fooling itself with.

I suspect that part of you doesn't quite believe this party line. There's probably also a competing instinct in you that thinks that that first part is hopelessly naive. It's more courageous and honest to just face the facts with, no matter how bleak they may seem.

I think there are approximately three ways to proceed from such a juncture.

One is to take all the data and interpretations at face value. From this perspective, the universe (and therefore the Earth) is intrinsically lifeless, and so we might as well force nature into a shape that is convenient for us during our short, pointless stay. That is what is happening today. While we might temporarily slow down our march to extinction, if we deep down believe that there's no such thing as life (not really, anyway), our attempts to salvage it will always be half-hearted.



The second approach is to realize the tragedy of the first, and to brainwash ourselves into believing that there must be something miraculous about life. Religions and spirituality sometimes do a good job of this. Unfortunately this approach also fails, because the rational mind is tugging in a different direction. There just isn't enough evidence.

The third approach is to notice something we've been overlooking. In order to see it, the mind needs to be awfully quiet. So quiet that it becomes possible to notice details that lie hidden below the layer of our metaphysical assumptions.

Our assumptions about the nature of reality -- about the inherent and independent existence of time, space, and matter -- operate at such a deep level in our minds that we likely never notice them, let alone experience what lies underneath them. And in an amazing feat of circular reasoning, we convince ourselves that it's pointless to find our way down there: after all, whatever we find couldn't be anything but a trick of a physical brain.

But actually nothing could be less pointless than going down there.

Pause for a moment and marvel at the experience of being alive. Don't think about being alive or how great it is; try to experience the glory as directly and fully as you can. Let it overwhelm you.

Now consider what happens when we try to answer questions about "life." First we attempt to define it. Here's what the dictionary tells us:

Life (n): the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

Imagine being innocent enough to ask a smart adult wow, how do you explain life? and getting an answer about the capacity for growth, reproduction, and functional activity. The answers may be fascinating enough to make you forget that it's not at all what you were really asking about. After a few of these sleights of hand, maybe you forget your original question entirely.

So what happens when you delve underneath your metaphysics? You finally stop trying to frame the fundamental question of existence in terms of answers you're already unreasonably certain about, and rediscover the meaning of "life."

Before you can discover "the meaning of life" you must discover the meaning of "life." In that stunning moment where you rediscover life, it may occur to you that you haven't really been living most of the time. A damn shame, that.

At the same time, you may find that something fascinating happens to your question about how life could come from non-life. But I wouldn't spoil the surprise for you even if I could.

Instead, I would simply like to offer this possibility: it's time to stop bouncing between the first two approaches, and find our way toward the third. It's possible that the fate of our species depends on it, but surprisingly, that's not even the most compelling reason to pursue it.

The dream is collapsing

You don't remember how you got here. In fact, you don't remember there ever being anywhere but here. You're so completely lost in this dream that you have completely lost track of the fact that this is a dream. An infinitely long time ago, there was a somewhere else.

There is never enough evidence inside a dream to implicate it as a dream. None of the objects in the dream, nor the set of tools available to you (e.g., what we call "science" and "reason" in this dream) are sufficient to indicate to you that you're dreaming -- let alone enough to pop you out of it. But sometimes a voice speaks up:

Psst... there was once a somewhere else. 

What? What do you mean "somewhere else?" This is all that has ever been, and ever will be. 

No. You ate something. 

What do you mean I ate something? How could eating something have anything to do with this crazy place I am in now?

Thousands of years go by. You forget about the crazy voice. 

But one day, things in the dream start providing you hints that the voice is indeed correct. And slowly, it starts to dawns you. You did eat something. That's how you got here. There's a somewhere else! You were once there! You can get back! You must get back!


What will you do when things in this dream start hinting at you that it's time to wake up? What would those hints even look like?

Will it look like the leading physicists widely agreeing that time and space are illusions, generated by some deeper reality?

Will it look like leading technologists being totally convinced that this universe is a simulation?

What of ancient cultures everywhere having long agreed that reality is a dream?


And how will you find your way out, once you start to suspect it?

Perhaps you will realize that nothing in the dream will ultimately lead you out of the dream. And perhaps when that realization dawns, you will finally pick up the one clue that has any value:

Find the dreamer.

What is that by which You know that you exist and by which You perceive the body in the world? Is this not really the only question Needing to be answered? Investigate this exclusively.

- Wu Hsin 

 

Referencing stuff outside the mind

It is not possible to reference anything outside the mind.

This means that anything you call real -- anything you CAN call real -- is a reference to mind. "Time," "space," "the REAL time," "the REAL space," "yeah but the REAL time outside my mind" etc. Also, actual time. Yes, that one. Omitting the quotation marks changes nothing.

This is hard to understand properly, but meditation can make it clear. Until then it can seem quite certain that you're referencing, and even experiencing, things other than mind.

Maybe even after all that meditation, nothing will have changed. Or maybe it will open up doors you've never dreamed of.

Why not find out?

"When you start to dream, the dream begins as a thought, like one you would have in the daytime. But you’re asleep, so the thought intensifies and becomes something like talk or gossip, and then the gossip intensifies or solidifies into images, and then you really think that you’re seeing people, seeing places, going places, and so on. And that is how it works with conventional appearances as well." 

-- Thrangu Rinpoche

Reconstructing the universe

Having swallowed a considerable amount of psychedelic substance, it is possible (I am told) to having the following kind of experience.

You know fully well that the effects wear off in say, six hours. That means that no matter how bad things get, this will at least be over soon-ish. You can just wait it out.

The only trouble is, in this state, normal time no longer applies. You are in fact trapped for millions of years, until you solve a puzzle. For the first few million years don't even know what the puzzle is... perhaps you haven't even yet noticed that you're not in Kansas any more. Then, bit by bit, you remember: you came from somewhere else, and you want to one day go back. But where? How could that crazy other place exist?

Bit by bit your memory fills in details. Actually, it occurs to you: you're not filling in details from memory, you're actually rebuilding the universe using your mind. Perhaps with enough meditation practice you can even discover the magical property by which the mind is presently rebuilding what you will soon remember (or assume?) to be the same place you left.

But building a universe is exhausting. So you have a seat for a few thousand years, get up, and continue. At some point during this process you start describing the process as "sobering up." What an inadequate description of such a Sisphyean task, you think.

So who's to say what really happened? Well, given the rules of the dream you and I are presently dreaming, there's no option but to conclude that it didn't really last millions of years. It was just neurotransmitters messing with your brain. You almost certainly believe this quite deeply, don't you?

Such beliefs are excellent at keeping you anchored firmly to reality. Which is a great thing. Unless, of course, you're on some kind of spiritual path that aims to transcend all of what you are normally so sure is reality.

Knowing all this, would you willingly visit that place again? Limbo, the unconstructed dreamspace?

From a Buddhist perspective, the description of reality provided by quantum mechanics offers a degree of freedom to which most people are not accustomed, and that may at first seem strange and even a little frightening.  

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It is a state that literally includes all possibilities, beyond space and time. 

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While doing so may open up possibilities we might never before have imagined, it’s still hard to give up the familiar habit of being a victim. 

-- Mingyur Rinpoche

Stockholm Syndrome

A common reading of Buddhism is that it's about learning to give up desire, and coming to appreciate things as they are. While I can't say that this interpretation is wrong, exactly, I can say that it strikes me as terribly uninspiring. If life really is as mundane as it feels, then coming to appreciate it feels like attempting to develop Stockholm Syndrome (a condition in which a prisoner comes to feel affection for his captor).

The key lies in the phrase "things as they are." Commonly understood, it seems to indicate that there is a real, objective reality; a way that things "really are." But a fundamental tenet of Buddhism is that there ultimately is no way that things "really are."

It's hard to appreciate what this means without significant meditation practice.

Normally, things seem to operate this way: there's an experiencer "in here" that we call the mind, and its job is to experience a pre-existing world that continually comes into contact with it. But when your faculty of awareness becomes calm and sharp enough, you might begin to recognize the distinct phases that go into generating this illusion:

(1) The mind gives rise to an experience
(2) It labels that experience
(3) It projects the experience as being something outside itself and other than itself
(4) It uses this as evidence that the mind and the experience are fundamentally different things
(5) It infers that the thing causing the experience was already there, and the mind just happened to notice it

Of course, the question remains: even if you were to see this all clearly, why would you infer that there is not an external reality? Why can't all of the above be incorporated into a framework in which there still is an objective reality that the brain is merely reconstructing?

Nobody will be able to answer that question to your satisfaction. All that can be said is this: the more clearly you see that process, the more it begins to strike you as funny that you've been going out of your way to deny the most liberating insight of all: that changing how you perceive things may be fundamentally indistinguishable from changing the "things" themselves. The two were never separate.

You've never actually been a victim to an essentially alien, foreign, and thus ultimately threatening external reality. But the fundamental creativity of mind -- the freedom to generate anything at all -- ironically also permits you to feel like one, and thus become one, for as many eons as you like.

Circling back to the start of this post: what happens when you love reality exactly as it seems? Here's an intriguing possibility: maybe this allows the mind to feel less threatened and start accepting responsibility for whatever role it has in generating said reality.

That's an interpretation I can get on board with.

The essence of [Buddhism] can be reduced to a single point: The mind is the source of all experience, and by changing the direction of the mind, we can change the quality of everything we experience. When you transform your mind, everything you experience is transformed.
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There are truly no limits to the creativity of your mind.
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To the extent that you can acknowledge the true power of your mind, you can begin to exercise more control over your experience.
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If our perceptions really are mental constructs conditioned by past experiences and present expectations, then what we focus on and how we focus become important factors in determining our experience. And the more deeply we believe something is true, the more likely it will become true in terms of our experience.
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What happens when you begin to recognize your experiences as your own projections? What happens when you begin to lose your fear of the people around you and conditions you used to dread? Well, from one point of view -- nothing. From another point of view -- everything.

-- Mingyur Rinpoche