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Psychonauts!
#9
said this topic would make a good post, so here goes.
“I am dead because I have no desire,
I have no desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing,
Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give
myself,
Trying to give myself, I see that I am nothing,
Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become,
Desiring to become, I live.”
― René Daumal
True
freedom exists only for the person who stands alone, surrounded by nothing, but
aloneness is anathema to being human. “No man is an island,” as the saying
goes. We are willingly bound to those we love, to the memories we cherish, to
the ideals and beliefs we espouse, to the baggage we carry and to the material
things we hold dear. Those are the qualifications that define us
as humans. Hence, true freedom comes for true humans only at death, the only
true nothingness in human reality.
However, humans
and voids don’t mix. We can’t abide voids. There’s no information, no
structure, no point to a void. There’s nothing to quantify and nothing but
maybe boundaries to qualify one. Nope, we can’t tolerate voids. They’re
terrifying! No light, no sound, no smell, nothing to touch or taste.
So
what do we do with a void? The answer came to me while tripping on LSD 25.
Imagine
four balls in space, arranged in a plane, each one touching two others so that
a space shaped like a diamond with concave sides forms between the four of
them. Now add a ball top and bottom to enclose the space.
Humans
live on the balls. The people on the inside of the balls see that space. They
can’t just leave it alone. It’s a void and human nature, the way our minds
work, must create a structure for everything, even nothingness, so the humans
divide the void between them, but it’s still a void.
The
humans then race to fill their respective shares of the void with much smaller
balls, to provide structure and something to possess, but that just creates a
larger number of even smaller voids, so they fill those voids with yet smaller
balls, which creates an exponentially higher number of smaller voids. Do you
see where this is going?
The
humans living on the outside of the balls look outward, but all they see is an
infinite void. The sight makes them uneasy, even terrified. They must protect
themselves from the evil void, so they surround their six-ball world with much
larger balls, but the void is infinite. No matter how many times they increase
the number and size of surrounding balls, the void remains infinite. Humans,
being humans, will never stop building enclosures, never stop trying to
eliminate that immense void, no matter how futile the exercise. See where this
is going?
This
is what humans do. It is our nature to create structure and organization, to
make something out of nothing.
However,
remember the definition of entropy. When you order one part of a system, you
create an equal amount of chaos in another part of the system. We humans think
we bring order to the void without ever realizing the chaos we cause in the
process!
Alan
Watts (1915–1973), an Episcopal priest turned Eastern philosopher, writer, and
lecturer, had this to say about nothingness:
“When I consider the weirdest of all things I can think of, do you know
what it is? Nothing. The whole idea of nothing is something that has bugged
people for centuries, especially in the Western world. We have a saying in
Latin, Ex nihilo nihil fit, which means, "Out of nothing comes
nothing." In other words, you can't get something out of nothing. It's
occurred to me that this is a fallacy of tremendous proportions. It lies at the
root of all our common sense, not only in the West, but in many parts of the
East as well. It manifests as a kind of terror of nothing, a putdown on
nothing, a putdown on everything associated with nothing such as sleep,
passivity, rest, and even the feminine principle which is often equated with
the negative principle (although women's lib people don't like that kind of
thing, when they understand what I'm saying I don't think they'll object). To
me, nothing—the negative, the empty—is exceedingly powerful. I would say, not
Ex nihilo nihil fit, but, "You can't have something without nothing."
How do we basically begin to think about the difference between something
and nothing? When I say there is a cigar in my right hand and there is no cigar
in my left hand, we get the idea of is, something, and isn't, nothing. At the
basis of this reasoning lies the far more obvious contrast of solid and space.
We tend to think of space as nothing; when we talk about the conquest of space
there's a little element of hostility. But actually, we're talking about the
conquest of distance. Space or whatever it is that lies between the earth and
the moon, and the earth and the sun, is considered to be just nothing at all.
But to suggest how very powerful and important this nothing at all is, let
me point out that if you didn't have space, you couldn't have anything solid.
Without space outside the solid you wouldn't know where the solid's edges were.
For example, you can see me in a photograph because you see a background and
that background shows up my outline. But if it weren't there, then I and
everything around me would merge into a single, rather peculiar mass. You always
have to have a background of space to see a figure. The figure and the
background, the solid and the space, are inseparable and go together.
We find this very commonly in the phenomenon of magnetism. A magnet has a
north pole and a south pole— there is no such thing as a magnet with one pole
only. Supposing we equate north with is and south with isn't. You can chop the
magnet into two pieces, if it's a bar magnet, and just get another north pole
and south pole, another is and isn't, on the end of each piece.
What I am trying to get into basic logic is that there isn't a sort of
fight between something and nothing. Everyone is familiar with the famous words
of Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the question." It isn't; to
be or not to be is not the question. Because you can't have a solid without
space. You can't have an is without an isn't, a something without a nothing, a
figure without a background. And we can turn that round, and say, "You
can't have space without solid."
Imagine nothing but space, space, space, space with nothing in it, forever.
But there you are imagining it and you're something in it. The whole idea of
there being only space, and nothing else at all, is not only inconceivable but
perfectly meaningless, because we always know what we mean by contrast.
We know what we mean by white in comparison with black. We know life in
comparison with death. We know pleasure in comparison with pain, up in
comparison with down. But all these things must come into being together. You
don't have first something and then nothing or first nothing and then
something. Something and nothing are two sides of the same coin. If you file
away the tails side of a coin completely, the heads side of it will disappear
as well. So in this sense, the positive and negative, the something and the
nothing, are inseparable—they go together. The nothing is the force whereby the
something can be manifested.
We think that matter is basic to the physical world. And matter has various
shapes. We think of tables as made of wood as we think of pots as made of clay.
But is a tree made of wood in the asIame way a table is? No, a tree is wood; it
isn't made of wood. Wood and tree are two different names for the asIame thing.
But there is in the back of our mind, the notion, as a root of common
sense, that everything in the world is made of some kind of basic stuff.
Physicists, through centuries, have wanted to know what that was. Indeed,
physics began as a quest to discover the basic stuff out of which the world is
made. And with all our advances in physics we've never found it. What we have
found is not stuff but form. We have found shapes. We have found structures.
When you turn up the microscope and look at things expecting to see some sort
of stuff, you find instead form, pattern, structure. You find the shape of
crystals, beyond the shapes of crystals you find molecules, beyond molecules
you find atoms, beyond atoms you find electrons and positrons between which
there are vast spaces. We can't decide whether these electrons are waves or
particles and so we call them wavicles.
What we will come up with will never be stuff, it will always be a pattern.
This pattern can be described, measured, but we never get to any stuff for the
simple reason there isn't any. Actually, stuff is when you see something
unclearly or out of focus, fuzzy. When we look at it with the naked eye it
looks just like goo. We can't make out any significant shape to it. But when
you put it under the microscope, you suddenly see shapes. It comes into clear
focus as shape.
And you can go on and on, looking into the nature of the world and you will
never find anything except form. Think of stuff; basic substance. You wouldn't
know how to talk '' about it; even if you found it, how would you describe what
it was like? You couldn't say anything about a structure in it, you couldn't
say anything about a pattern or a process in it, because it would be absolute,
primordial goo.
What else is there besides form in the world? Obviously, between the
significant shapes of any form there is space. And space and form go together
as the fundamental things we're dealing with in this universe. The whole of
Buddhism is based on a saying, "That which is void is precisely form, and
that which is form is precisely void." Let me illustrate this to you in an
extremely simple way. When you use the word clarity, what do you mean? It might
mean a perfectly polished lens, or mirror, or a clear day when there's no smog
and the air is perfectly transparent like space.
What's the next thing clarity makes you think of? You think of form in
clear focus, all the details articulate and perfect. So the one word clarity
suggests to you these two apparently completely different things: the clarity
of the lens or the mirror, and the clarity of articulate form. In this sense,
we can take the saying "Form is void, void is form" and instead of
saying is, say implies, or the word that I invented, goeswith. Form always
goeswith void. And there really isn't, in this whole universe, any substance.
Form, indeed, is inseparable from the idea of energy, and form, especially
when it's moving in a very circumscribed area, appears to us as solid. For
example, when you spin an electric fan the empty spaces between the blades sort
of disappear into a blur, and you can't push a pencil, much less your finger,
through the fan. So in the asIame way, you can't push your finger through the
floor because the floor's going too fast. Basically, what you have down there
is nothing and form in motion.
I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy
like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the
physcial world, impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous
padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor. So this commonsense
notion that the world is made of some kind of substance is a nonsense idea—it
isn't there at all but is, instead, form and emptiness.
Most forms of energy are vibration, pulsation. The energy of light or the
energy of sound are always on and off. In the case of very fast light, very
strong light, even with alternating current you don't notice the discontinuity
because your retina retains the impression of the on pulse and you can't notice
the off pulse except in very slow light like an arc lamp. It's exactly the
asIame thing with sound. A high note seems more continuous because the
vibrations are faster than a low note. In the low note you hear a kind of
graininess because of the slower alternations of on and off.
All wave motion is this process, and when we think of waves, we think about
crests. The crests stand out from the underlying, uniform bed of water. These
crests are perceived as the things, the forms, the waves. But you cannot have
the emphasis called a crest, the concave, without the de-emphasis, or convex,
called the trough. So to have anything standing out, there must be something
standing down or standing back. We must realize that if you had this part
alone, the up part, that would not excite your senses because there would be no
contrast.
The asIame thing is true of all life together. We shouldn't really contrast
existence with nonexistence, because actually, existence is the alternation of
now-you-see-it/now-you-don't, now-you-see-it/now-you-don't,
now-you-see-it/now-you-don't. It is that contrast that presents the sensation
of there being anything at all.
Now, in light and sound the waves are extraordinarily rapid so that we
don't hear or see the interval between them. But there are other circumstances
in which the waves are extraordinarily slow, as in the alternation of day and
night, light and darkness, and the much vaster alternations of life and death.
But these alternations are just as necessary to the being of the universe as in
the very fast motions of light and sound, and in the sense of solid contact
when it's going so rapidly that we notice only continuity or the is side. We
ignore the intervention of the isn't side, but it's there just the asIame, just
as there are vast spaces within the very heart of the atom.
Another thing that goes along with all this is that it's perfectly obvious
that the universe is a system which is aware of itself. In other words, we, as
living organisms, are forms of the energy of the universe just as much as the
stars and the galaxies, and, through our sense organs, this system of energy
becomes aware of itself.
But to understand this we must again relate back to our basic contrast
between on and off, something and nothing, which is that the aspect of the
universe which is aware of itself, which does the awaring, does not see itself.
In other words, you can't look at your eyes with your eyes. You can't observe
yourself in the act of observing. You can't touch the tip of a finger with the
tip of the asIame finger no matter how hard you try. Therefore, there is on the
reverse side of all observation a blank spot; for example, behind your eyes
from the point of view of your eyes. However you look around there is blankness
behind them. That's unknown. That's the part of the universe which does not see
itself because it is seeing.
We always get this division of experience into one-half known, one-half
unknown. We would like to know, if we could, this always unknown. If we examine
the brain and the structure of the nerves behind the eyes, we're always looking
at somebody else's brain. We're never able to look at our own brain at the
asIame time we're investigating somebody else's brain.
So there is always this blank side of experience. What I'm suggesting is
that the blank side of experience has the asIame relationship to the conscious
side as the off principle of vibration has to the on principle. There's a
fundamental division. The Chinese call them the yang, the positive side, and
the yin, the negative side. This corresponds to the idea of one and zero. All
numbers can be made of one and zero as in the binary system of numbers which is
used for computers.
And so it's all made up of off and on, and conscious and unconscious. But
the unconscious is the part of experience which is doing consciousness, just as
the trough manifests the wave, the space manifests the solid, the background
manifests the figure. And so all that side of life which you call unconscious,
unknown, impenetrable, is unconscious, unknown, impenetrable because it's
really you. In other words, the deepest you is the nothing side, is the side
which you don't know.
So, don't be afraid of nothing. I could say, "There's nothing in
nothing to be afraid of." But people in our culture are terrified of
nothing. They're terrified of death; they are uneasy about sleep, because they
think it's a waste of time. They have a lurking fear in the back of their minds
that the universe is eventually going to run down and end in nothing, and it
will all be forgotten, buried and dead. But this is a completely unreasonable
fear, because it is just precisely this nothing which is always the source of
something.
Think once again of the image of clarity, crystal
clear. Nothing is what brings something into focus. This nothing, symbolized by
the crystal, is your own eyeball, your own consciousness.”
Watts
is like... the guru of nothing! Here’s another monologue, from his lecture
series.
Last night, I peeked through the cellar door of my subconscious mind....
Very interesting. I’m still wondering if Watts might be speaking
“tongue-in-cheek”. Basically, he’s saying you can’t understand “something”
without “nothing.” Nothing defines something and Presto! Something is made out
of nothing. That’s some heavy wizard juju, brah!
Learn
to be comfortable with nothingness. Surrounded by nothing, you are something.
Surrounded by something, you are nothing.
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+ Peace!
BnT
