Here is the fourth chapter of John Alexandra's forthcoming book:
It is.
And if we wish to 'look in' or 'know ourselves' and find it, we first need to be here.
So, are we?
We believe we are always the same. After all, we have the same name and body. We are educated people aren't we, with rounded personalities and distinct interests, inclinations, opinions...?
No.
David Hume put it clearly: 'For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception.' He said that we are, 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement.'
This implies that we are not entities that respond to events but a series of reactions. Our thoughts, emotions and physical tensions are merely reactions to life.
There is a Tibetan parable that compares us to a committee with a succession of individuals standing up and claiming to be 'I'. Each thought, emotion, sensation tells us it is 'I' and what to do, until shouted down by the next. We have innumerable 'I's. And this dispersion runs our lives.
Education, religion, caste or class systems and tradition create pressure-groups of 'I's. This process is completely random and an enormous waste of energy.
Buddha said, 'That which is called a man is perpetual transformation.' This equates with the Biblical statement: 'Man's name is legion.'
As the Dhammapada puts it: 'Consider this body! A painted puppet with jointed limbs, sometimes suffering and covered with ulcers, full of imaginings, never permanent, ever changing.'
And Plutarch: '...each one of us is made up of ten thousand different and successive states, a scrap-heap of units, a mob of individuals.'
There's no unity or 'self' behind this process at all.
We're puppets.
This is the most objectionable thing anyone can hear. But until we know we are marionettes we have no hope of understanding anything.
Portrait of Mr Mediocre: He has the standard motivations — sex, status and security. He is interested in physical comfort, enjoyment, the easy way out. He does not want his opinions questioned, does not want to be disturbed. His self-defence is a balancing-act called self-affirmation.
He's full of hopes, ambitions, dreams. Of opinions, resentments, envy. Of vanity, negativity, rage. Of anxiety, lies and humbug. He has thousands of false ideas and concepts, chiefly about himself, and nurtures his self-pity which he loves.
He is selfish, competitive, possessive and wants to be 'seen of men' — wants a bigger salary, a more impressive house, a smarter car. Not that what he owns is the problem. (Possessions aren't the problem but the possessor.)
As he ages and suffers his quota of disappointments and defeats, he becomes progressively more fearful and depressed because circumstances refuse to grant him what he is certain he deserves.
This self-satisfied sentimental hypocrite is readily insulted, soaks up flattery, justifies himself in everything and sees all setbacks as personal affronts. Even a late train or bad weather can make him irritable all day.
He is obsequious to his boss, orders his family around at home but is meek with his mistress whom he fears. He's pious in church but kicks the dog and is furious if criticised. In short, he's a different person each moment and the slave of every situation. He is born crying, lives complaining and dies disappointed.
Not that he's 'bad' or in any way unusual. He dresses well, wears a nice tie and is your neighbour, husband or good friend. But a flash of anger or other negativity, or an hour of daydreaming or physical tension can destroy all the energy he's received from his previous night's sleep.
Perhaps you can remember a time when you were insulted, ignored, rejected — a time when you felt the resentment of having your precious self demeaned. Can you recall that emotional storm and how it left you drained?
Now scale that down to the lifetime of minor irritations, disappointments, regrets and smouldering antagonisms that siphon off the substance of your life.
A loud noise... Overeating... A tense face... Everything takes your attention and fritters your energy away.
Even reading this is sapping your substance — life energy. It costs you something. Do you feel that slight inner drain?
So, you are not just completely inconsistent but leak energy like a sieve.
We believe we have free will but say, 'I can't get that tune out of my head.' Or, 'How dare he treat me like that?'
We say, 'I love you.' But what in us can possibly love? Today's reaction loves. And in the next half-hour or next breath, perhaps a flash of jealousy hates.
Although we contradict ourselves in everything we do, the last thing we wish to hear is that we're the pawn of everything inside and outside us.
As the practical psychologist, Ouspensky, said, 'Observe yourself very closely and you will see that not you but it speaks within you, moves, feels, laughs and cries in you, just as it rains, clears up and rains again outside you. Everything happens in you.'
He goes on: 'If we begin to study ourselves we first of all come up against one word which we use more than any other and that is the word 'I'. We say, "I am doing", "I am sitting", "I feel", "I like", "I dislike", and so on. This is our chief illusion. For the principal mistake we make about ourselves is that we consider ourselves one. We always speak about ourselves as "I" and we suppose that we refer to the same thing all the time when we are actually divided into hundreds and hundreds of different "I"'s. At one moment when I say "I", one part of me is speaking, and at another moment when I say "I", it is quite another "I" speaking. We do not know that we have not one "I" but many different "I"s, connected with our feelings and desires, and have no controlling "I". These "I"s change all the time. One suppresses another, one replaces another, and all this struggle makes up our inner life.'
You, in other words, are a function and not present to yourself at all.
What does this mean?
It means that you have never observed your inner dispersion for one moment.
Worse.
It means you merely have a vague waking consciousness. You are never truly 'here'. And it's not just you. Everyone around you exists in a state of waking sleep. In this state, we can do nothing. It all happens. We don't love, hate, desire. It happens. Wars. Revolutions. They all happen. All our deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, habits are the result of external influences and impressions. So, everything goes in the only way it can go.
It's as if we are hypnotized.
Zombies.
We sleepwalk through our lives.
We have said that nature is not our friend, but still cherish the quixotic notion that we live in a well-meaning world. We believe we understand nature, forgetting that we are part of it. Can the part comprehend the whole when it doesn’t even understand itself? We are symptoms, not the cause.
Apparently, nature needs sleeping people. There is an Eastern tale about a rich magician who had a great many sheep. The sheep wandered into the forest or ran away because they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins. So, the magician hypnotised them — told them that they were immortal and would not be harmed when they were skinned. That he loved them and if anything bad was to happen to them, it wouldn't be that day. He told them they weren’t sheep at all. He told some that they were eagles, lions or magicians. The sheep were soothed and never strayed again. They waited obediently till he slaughtered them.
We are sheep!
And need to be.
Otherwise the system doesn't work.
We are asleep. And everything, including the cosmos, conspires to keeps us snoring. We are reactive, hoodwinked, helpless, conceited, posturing mechanisms.
Slaves.
Used ─ then massacred by millions.
We know nothing. Can do nothing.
We are 'done'.
As individuals, we don't exist! Yet some of us have the temerity to think that this bundle of exploding rat traps that we fondly label 'ourselves' merits life after death or immortality!
How can something that is not stable for one second survive the shock of death? And what would be the point?
As for fathoming the cosmos — forget it.
This book is now available on Buzzword.
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