Uncertainty: Be sure of it

We all need something to cling to. The big question is, “What?” What can be counted on to support us when everything else falls away? What will stay with us and never leave? What is the stable center around which the rest of our crazy spinning life can revolve?

This is a theme that I keep coming back to in these Church of the Churchless “sermons.” I do so because I’ve been searching for that reliable something my whole life, as have we all. I haven’t found it yet. I’ll willing to bet that you haven’t either.

For if we have a longing for something more, different, or better than what we possess now, we aren’t in touch with whatever it is that satisfies completely. That “whatever” goes by many names: God, the One, Buddha-nature, Ultimate Reality, Allah, to name a few.

Today I was looking over Descartes’ “Meditations” before, appropriately enough, my morning meditation. Now, before you stop reading this post, expecting that a mention of Descartes is bound to precede a really boring philosophical dissertation, let me assure you that Descartes is a cool dude.

He’s just misunderstood. Most people quote his famous “I think, therefore I am” and believe that this sums up Descartes. I’ve read quite a few spiritual books where Descartes is dismissed as an intellectual who was fixated on logical thought rather than intuitive understanding.

I beg to differ. I’ve read his “Meditations” several times. Descartes starts to lose me after Meditation III, but up until then I feel like I know where he’s coming from (to use some non-philosophical terminology). I’m no Descartes. However, I’ve been there myself—that psychological place where what you used to believe in so strongly doesn’t make sense anymore, where the center no longer holds and nothing has stepped in to replace it.

It’s the Void. Uncertainty. Doubt. Angst. Dark Night of the Soul. Most of us have been there. Few, if any, have been able to rationally analyze what that place is like as well as Descartes.

He begins by saying, “It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formally accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation.”

That’s beautiful. And courageous. It takes a lot of guts to question everything that you’ve been accepting as the gospel truth. Descartes isn’t out to pussyfoot around the periphery of religion and philosophy, tidying up a few logical loose ends. He wants to penetrate to the core of what is true beyond a shadow of a doubt, discarding everything that is uncertain:

I shall proceed by setting aside all that in which\the least doubt could be supposed to exist, just as if I had discovered that it was absolutely false. And I shall ever follow in this road until I have met with something that is certain, or at least, if I can do nothing else, until I have learned for certain that there is nothing in the world that is certain.

In the movies about the “Matrix,” our world turns out to be a computer simulation, a theory that some argue makes sense philosophically and scientifically. Descartes came up with a similar notion back in the seventeenth century. He says that instead of God, the cosmos could be ruled by an evil genius who “has employed his whole energies in deceiving me.”

So everything that we take to be real—the heavens, earth, colors, sounds, and all other external things—could be illusions and dreams fabricated by this Artificer. This sounds a lot like the Eastern philosophical idea of maya. Reality isn’t what it appears to be. What we consider to be solid and trustworthy really isn’t, like a dream that fades away upon waking.

Okay, now we get to Descartes’ really good stuff. This is where Descartes becomes a mystic, notwithstanding the rather pedantic and scholarly style with which he wrote. For he realizes that he can’t count on anything in the outside world, for it could be merely dream stuff. And that includes Descartes’ own body, which is made of the same material the world is.

Descartes frequently is criticized as a dualist who splits apart the unity of mind and body. I don’t understand why, from a spiritual standpoint, that is seen as a bad thing. Doesn’t almost every religion say that soul or consciousness exists apart from the body? If all that we are is extinguished when we die—end of story, finis, case closed—there is little basis for a genuine spirituality.

If physical matter/energy is the root of reality, then when my physical body disintegrates at death, so do I. For there is no “I” apart from the collection of cells now manifesting as a living being known as Brian.

Similarly, Descartes is searching for what is really real. He has decided that he can’t count on the outside world. So he denies his senses and body, then asks: “What follows from that? Am I so dependent on body and senses that I cannot exist without these?” He imagines that he’s been persuaded that “there was nothing in all the world, that there was no heaven, no earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was I then likewise persuaded that I did not exist? Not at all; of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something.”

Thus Descartes comes to the conclusion that there is one thing he can be certain about: “I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.”

I am. I am. I am.

This direct awareness of one’s existence isn’t a thought, for I know that I am even when I’m not mentally thinking to myself, “I am.” Indeed, Descartes says that “it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking.”

Here’s Descartes’ bottom line as I understand it (in his first three Meditations at least; later on he skates back into some thin philosophical ice when he tries to prove the existence of a good God):

I can be fooled about everything outside and inside of me. With one exception. There’s an “I” being fooled. For absent the awareness of that “I,” there’s no being around to be fooled. In like fashion, I can have everything taken away outside and inside of me. With one exception. There’s an “I” being robbed. For absent the awareness of that “I,” there’s no being around to be robbed.

There is a center. There is something we can count on. There is a certainty in this uncertain world. It is that sensation of “I am.”

Of course, there’s no guarantee that I, or you, will continue to have that sensation after we die. If such is the case, there’s no problem, for there won’t be any “I” around to have a problem.

But so long as I’m aware of myself being aware, herein lies the only refuge that I can truly feel safe in: the awareness of my own existence. In Eastern philosophy there’s the notion of sat-chit-ananda, existence - consciousness - bliss.

Descartes echoes the first two aspects of this tripartite unity, existence and consciousness: the certainty of “I am.” The bliss aspect isn’t addressed by Descartes, so far as I can tell, which might well explain why he seems to have been compelled to leave that simple awareness of his own existence to bring the Christian God back into the picture in his later Meditations.

In Meditation III, though, he sounds like almost everyone who has attempted to still his or her mind and reach the unchanging center of consciousness. It is indeed strange that we pay so much attention to what is false and doesn’t last, while what is undeniably true and enduring—the “I” paying attention—almost entirely escapes our notice.

Although really it is very strange to say that I know and understand more distinctly these things whose existence seems to me dubious, which are unknown to me, and which do not belong to me, than others of the truth of which I am convinced, which are known to me and which pertain to my real nature, in a word, than myself. But I see clearly how my case stands: my mind loves to wander, and cannot yet suffer to be retained within the just limits of truth.

Comments

[Who Am I ?]

Brian wrote:

"Descartes frequently is criticized as a dualist who splits apart the unity of mind and body. I don’t understand why, from a spiritual standpoint, that is seen as a bad thing. Doesn’t almost every religion say that soul or consciousness exists apart from the body?"

Response:

It is true that the generally prevailing view is that consciousness is not the body, and that it is merely like a 'spirit' inhabiting the body. But that notion is incomplete and fundamentally false. It is not that consciousness and the body are two separate things. The criticism of Descartes' dualistic view is quite valid. I will explain why.

Consider looking at it this way: The body is an object of human perception. Perception is a function of consciousness. The body is an object perceived in consciousness, and without consciousness or awareness, there is no perception of body. The body is therefore only a form within consciousness. It does not exist apart from consciousness. It exists only as an artifact of perception, and because of the process of consciousness identifying with the form of the body, it only appears that consciousness is separate from the body-form, but somehow resides within it.

In reality, Consciousness is the sole existence, and the body is simply form and phenomena arising within Consciousness itself. Consciousness is never within or "inside" the body. The body is an object of sense perception occuring within Consciousness itself. Consciousness is not within the body. It is the body which is within Consciousness. Consciousness is the supreme cognitive principle. Nothing exists outside, separate, or apart from Consciousness itself.

All thoughts, perceptions, forms, bodies, objects, matter, space, time, worlds, and universes exist only within Consciousness-Awareness itself. This pure Consciousness is by nature unborn, non-dual, and formless. Within it arises the appearance of all phenomena, duality, birth, form, and decay. But all these appearances and phenomena are not intrinsically separate from Consciousness itself. Consciousness alone exists. Consciousness is not "I am". "I am" is merely a thought within Consciousness itself. "I am" has no more existence than a wave on the surface of a body of water. The wave is not separate from the water. The wave is not other than water. The water is what is. The wave is merely a temporary form on the water. In the same way, "I am" is merely a thought or wave on the ocean of pure Consciousness.

It is irrelevant that "almost every religion say that soul or consciousness exists apart from the body". Consciousness is the sub-stratum which is the context for all perception, knowledge, and existence. If anyone has doubt of this, then I encourage them to prove otherwise.

[Brian]

Re. the previous comment about consciousness being the "sole existence," this is an interesting hypothesis that has a lot of appeal and is the basis for many mystical paths.

However, there's no outward, public, verifiable, scientific proof that such is the case. If anyone, such as Who am I?, does have such proof, a Nobel Prize awaits them, for sure.

The final line, "If anyone has doubt of this, then I encourage them to prove otherwise," flips the scientific method on its head. It reminds me of a discussion about intelligent design/creationism on Nightline I watched recently.

Creationists argue that because evolutionary theory has some gaps, then intelligent design (which is thinly disguised creationism) must be true. That sort of non-rational thinking doesn't hold water.

The moderator, Ted Koppel, said that a Nighline staffer had written to the chairs of the top ten university biology departments. None of them said that intelligent design had any sort of scientific merit.

The Chair of Biology at the California Institute of Technology said this:

"Saying we don't know how a biochemical pathway evolved, therefore it did not evolve, is no different from saying we don't know that the moon is not made of green cheese, therefore it is made of green cheese. Illogical."

This is the case with consciousness also. Personally, I like the idea that somehow consciousness is at the root of existence. And it's true that science can't explain the nature of consciousness.

But to argue that because we don't know whether or not consciousness is the sub-stratum of everything, then it must be, is an unscientific, fundamentalist sort of statement. Similarly, it isn't up to science to prove creationism wrong, it is up to the creationists to prove that they are right.

Same goes for those who claim that consciousness is the sole reality. Show me the proof, and I'll consider accepting the claim. Otherwise, it's just another idea about the nature of ultimate reality, among many.

[Who Am I ?]

Brian,

I am surprised and appaled at the way you (Brian) have distorted the meaning and substance of my previous comment. You have given a ridiculous arguement in response, which was not based on what I actually stated or implied. You have crossed the line and distorted my clear statements, and even this entire issue.

Brian wrote: "... Personally, I like the idea that somehow consciousness is at the root of existence. .... science can't explain the nature of consciousness....
But to argue that because we don't know whether or not consciousness is the sub-stratum of everything, then it must be, is an unscientific, fundamentalist sort of statement."

Response: I did not say: " WHETHER OR NOT consciousness is the sub-stratum of everything". What I attempted to say and did say, was that all perception and knowledge depends soley upon Consciousness. Consciousness is therefore the all imporant and necessary factor, and is the root or sub-stratum of all perception, experience, understanding, and knowledge.

Brian wrote: "Same goes for those who claim that consciousness is the sole reality. Show me the proof, and I'll consider accepting the claim. Otherwise, it's just another idea about the nature of ultimate reality, among many."

Response: I did not "claim" anything. For all intent and purposes, pure Consciousness is the sole Reality, by dint of the reason which I have just indicated. It is not a provable issue, nor does it need to be. It can be known through direct experience, ie: Self-realization. Nor is consciousness just "another idea". Consciousness itself is not a thought or an "idea". Consciousness is the space or context where all thoughts, ideas, and perceptions arise. All views and arguements depend soley upon Consciousness. Without Consciousness, there is no knowledge either way.

To imply that I have postulated a relative truth and belief similiar to fuundamentalism, is simply a gross distortion and a load of rubbish. Brian obviously has some intellectual bias due to ignorance, or absence of Self-knowledge.

When one has awakened into, and realized true Self-knowledge, then this point of contention will be completely resolved. Your science and intellect will not give you the answer, nor will philosophical belief, nor will dualistic rational. Only in the awakening and tacit realization of direct Self-knowledge will the Truth be known.

Until then you will remain in the arena of endless unresolved debate, that all the un-enlightened intellectual theorists and pundits inhabit.

[Who Am I ?]

The body is an object of sense perception. Perception is a function of, and within Consciousness. The body is an object perceived in Consciousness, and without Consciousness/Awareness, there is no perception of body. The body is therefore only a form of Consciousness and within Consciousness. The body does not exist apart from Consciousness. The body exists as an artifact of sense perception. Because of the process in which Consciousness becomes identified with the form of the body, it only appears that Consciousness is separate from the body-form, and that somehow it resides within the body. Consciousness is not within the body, it is not "inside" anything.

In reality, Consciousness is the sole existence, and the body is simply form and phenomena arising within Consciousness itself. Consciousness is never within or "inside" the body. The body is an object of sense perception occuring within Consciousness itself. Consciousness is not within the body. It is the body which is within Consciousness. Consciousness is the supreme cognitive principle. Nothing exists outside, separate, or apart from Consciousness itself.

All thoughts, perceptions, forms, bodies, objects, matter, space, time, worlds, and universes exist only within Consciousness/Awareness itself. This pure Consciousness is by nature unborn, non-dual, and formless. Within it arises the appearance of all phenomena, duality, birth, form, and decay. But all these appearances and phenomena are not intrinsically separate from Consciousness itself. Consciousness alone exists. Consciousness is not "I am". "I am" is merely a thought within Consciousness itself. "I am" has no more existence than a wave on the surface of a body of water. The wave is not separate from the water. The wave is not other than water. The water is what is. The wave is merely a temporary form on the water. In the same way, "I am" is merely a thought or wave on the ocean of pure Consciousness.

Consciousness is the sub-stratum which is the context for all thoughts, perception, knowledge, imtellect, and and experience.

Consciousness cannot be proven, either for or against. Consciousness itself is its own proof.