 You who seek answers, know this: nothing can be said to cause anything. A can never cause B; but rather B and A are manifestations of the same underlying existence. This, I hope to show you, is true. For human beings, in our great ability to think abstractly, have created this conception of “causation.” And human beings, in our great capacity to become confused by our own inventions, have become beguiled by its temptations. First things first: some necessary study. Subjection, subjectivity: this is to combine various senses into a single amalgam. If you do not see why this is so, then I caution you, do not understand words sloppily. Subjectivity is not “art,” it is not “emotion,” nor “whim,” nor any of those things. How could this be so, that one word is another? From where does that connection come? Why should it imply that one means the other? Do not confuse this term, "subjectivity," (nor any term, in the general) with related concepts. What you must do if you wish to understand reality, is to simply look closely at what something is while forgetting all the baggage and assorted, related labels it carries in your mind. For the human mind has endless capacity to mix and match -- to be subjective -- but to learn, we must be objective, which is to say we must define our variables clearly, which is to say we must not be sloppy. Try then: “subjectivity.” Good and bad, we say are subjective. What is good? Happiness, kindness, your memory of helping an old lady across the street? That those things are good is both true and false. Those things are those things. Happiness is happiness. Kindness is doing a kind act. Helping an elder is helping an elder. But then, we fit these concepts together and create something quite secondary: the notion of “good.” Not observable, not sensible, but an abstract combination of components. This is subjectivity -- the single amalgam of many experiences and feelings into one singular concept. Nothing wrong here, but remember the previous warning -- do not become confused by your inventions. Let not subjectivity become objectivity, become objectified, as “good” might be transformed within your mind from its multifaceted and fluid subjective nature into a singular rigid concept. Here is truly where we become lost, because “good” as a singular concept never existed at all. It is multifaceted, and it must stay as such in your mind. See how our variables remain defined clearly? Briefly, there you have it, some background on objectivity and subjectivity. Let us on to causation. If you understand causation to exist; if you believe one things causes another -- sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. From where did this idea come? Can you observe causation? Can you see it? It is not self-evident, not objective. It is a subjective amalgam. You’re leaving me to pick it apart now, see? What do we really mean by "causation," this is the question. Example: the refraction of light causes the sky to be blue. “The” -- one in particular. “Refraction” -- this is the observation that light bends through a medium. “Of” -- concerning. “Light” -- this observation of luminescence. “Causes” -- … -- ... ? Do you see how every word before is connected to the senses, if not simple prepositional guide words? Clear. They are what they are. But we come to “cause.” What are we really meaning by this? Where is the cause? For the refraction is the “blue-ness” itself isn’t it? The moment the light refracted, it also became blue from the our earthly vantage point. The “blue-ness” is thus a sensory perception of the refraction, just the same as is the observation of various angles at which the light is being refracted, which although we more arbitrarily tend to call “refraction,” is but a different measurement of the same occurrence. This same, singular phenomenon that is refraction is occurring, but is observed in different ways. It is these different perceptions of the same event which we divide into cause and effect. A and B are manifestations of the same underlying existence. There is not causation. As the site prefers to a more spiritual bent of its subjects, I think I’d do well to finish with spiritual implications. What is the reason for existence? What is the cause of morality? Why does anything exist? Well... Look inwards. In what ways are you dividing, diffracting, splitting existence into its various forms, and confusing one as cause and other other as effect? If you seek causes, you understand not. Back, back to the source! The light, from which all our colors derive. You will know truth there.
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 The relentless battle to stand upon that solid foundation we call truth. The militaristic mindset needed to slice and dice through every fiction of the mind. The restlessness and eagerness to dispose of every fantasy and dream to get to what is real. This is a battle. Some call it war. And the enemy is the ego. All life, and all death, dances around the fringes of egoic perception. Life, with the golden face of a cherub, wraps you up in its ecstatic glory, trying to bring you closer. And death… ...that gaping hole of nothingness that petrifies our being… ...waits for you to fall in. It is fearful ego that focuses our attention away from the battle for our soul, and pulls us into a morass in which mind, body, and spirit, are not quite alive yet not totally dead. The world of ego is a world of imitation, of hollow spirits and empty shells. Puppets dancing on a stage, the ego symbolized by the tension in the strings that guides our spasmodic movement. A show; a drama; an ephemeral and emotional high. 1. This is death mistaken for life. A force that develops from the fear of the battle for truth, that battle between life and death, ego channels our energy away from our sensations and withdraws us into the world of the mind. We see not with our eyes, but with our beliefs and prejudices, which give to us comfort and stability. The world is transformed from what it is, to what we believe it to be, which is to say what we like it to be. We are hypnotized to accept this world as real, though it is only a tool for our pleasure. 2. This is life misperceived as death. The confusion of the ego is therefore twofold. Death becomes life, and life, death. Each confused for the other, and neither truly glimpsed. While we are so confused, we see just a shadow’s shadow of the true nature of the two. Suppose now a metaphor, that the nature of our lives is such that we walk in pastoral landscape. Whereas true life and death exist all around us, in the mountains and trees and earth and sky, we continue on with eyes locked straight out ahead. It is ego that keeps our eyes thus fixed. And as this ego erodes, we will begin to see heaven above and hell below. Be careful. For in this process of spiritual purification you will open your soul to both. Avoid letting either in like the plague. Once in, they can rot the heart and corrupt the mind. A word of advice as you begin to explore this landscape: look, but do not wander. Do not give in to temptation of heaven or you will find it lapses into hell. Do not award yourself heavenly gratification through the pain of hell. Have eyes to see, and no more. Your place is here on Earth, where you will walk the fine line between the two. If you can manage this feat, you have found yourself, and you have known truth. All that is left is to enjoy God’s creation.  Money tends to be unfortunately misrepresented in the public at large. The statement that money can buy happiness is lambasted by most "forward thinking" people who tend to favor sentimentality in human relationships over something that can be bought and sold at whim. This is the wrong way of looking at it. The people who decry money and its relation to happiness have missed the point completely. This sentimentality and "human worth" view of the situation has no relevance with regards to what money can actually provide. Money does actually buy happiness. In fact, money is probably one of the best ways to obtain happiness that we know of. The moralists are confusing happiness with "contentment"; the two being quite different modes of being. Contentment is a more evolved feeling than happiness. It is hard to track and describe since it is by definition divorced from many outward emotional and physical responses. To be content is very much to be satisfied where you are; to be satisfied with yourself. This feeling is independent of money since it does not want and desire. Happiness on the other hand is "elation"; an elevation of one's emotional being to higher levels in the literal sense. The chemical pathways that cause mood elevation are quite known. Money, being only a means to get "what you want" will give you the happiness that you want, whatever it may be. Happiness is fleeting, however, but contentment is lifelong.  Much is talked about "existence" and the various questions of identity (the "who am I?" rogations). I do not think I have seen a person who truly knows who they "are". Of course, how would I know something of which somebody else knows? In order to do that, I would have to do one of two things: A.) Be them B.) Know what they think. The first quality is, for all intents and purposes, (at least for the purposes of this article) impossible; to be "them" I would have to negate being "myself". To know what someone else is thinking is an interesting scenario. At first, one could see it as just another form of the first quality, that is, if there is no true separation between the "body" and the "mind"; what they think is part of "their body" (them) and since I have my own existence, I cannot know someone else's existence. This second quality is impossible in another interesting way, however. All true knowledge, as opposed to being the stuff of rational and empirically obtained experimental data is subjective. Subjectivity is the quality of that which is gained by personal feelings and opinion and it is exactly these things which make the world go round. We know everything about our world through our sense perceptions, no matter how imperfect or lacking they may be. Now, is there anything outside of what we can perceive? Well, by strict definition, no there is not. If we claim that there is something outside of what we can sense, but cannot sense it, it remains only a claim and the issue of existence no longer matters. What is supposedly objective are all the things which are derived from the subjective, only the wool is pulled over everyone's eyes to make it appear objective. Ethical Morality The Building Blocks of the Universe Your(self) (In fact, the scientists are taking the 5000 year old cue from the ancient scriptures and now dissolving the idea of an objective seat of consciousness.) So everything that we know...is just that, we, meaning "yourself" knows it; there is no collective consciousness (or collective 'unconsciousness' for that matter, to take a stab at Jung, but that will be for another talk), only individual consciousness. There are only individuals. There is only you. To know this is to find this out without thinking. To find this out without knowledge Without logic because it is illogical Without rationality because it is irrational. You will find it at the point where words take you no further. Not even nothing will remain.  “Non-duality” is the state of seeing everything as one thing. The interconnectedness of all things. How can you can you see, in all of the million and one things that you can touch, taste, and feel around you, that they are actually one single thing exactly? Well, no need for heady, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, the scientists have figured out what these philosophers were hypothesizing for thousands of years: Atomic Theory Democritus the Thracian said that everything can be broken down until you get to one indivisible part which he called “atomos”. Since then, scientist have been working in order to verify this claim; and they were successful. With the magnification of the electron microscope, the naked eye can catch a glimpse of these subtle particles that we were taught in school makes up everything around us. Every, single, thing around us, whether animate or inanimate is made up of ”atoms. problem is… Science is not true, and it was never supposed to be pursuing truth. Science is a tool with which we can construct the “known” out of the chaos of the “unknown’ and this is different from other “constructive” pursuits doing the same thing like religion or philosophy, from the interpretation of organized data. If the experiment can be repeated by obtaining the same results, the experiment works. What did the scientist find out about reality? Existence? Knowledge ? The scientist fails in all accounts, but that wasn’t the point of science. The religious figures too tend to fall short because they talk of pursuing truth based upon belief, which is ultimately a completely unsuccessful pursuit from the start since they find the truth through belief, which is oxymoronic. At least the scientist perceives that they start from an objective standpoint, holding no beliefs, claims, or magic that will influence the results. problem is… Science is no better than religion in that they both follow the same ritualistic pursuit of using belief systems. The Rites of Ceremony = The Rites of the Experiment Holy Scriptures = Textbooks Pontiffs = Nobel Prize Laureates So if you have questions that want to get to the truth, and science won’t give it to you, and religion won’t give it to you, and philosophy won’t give it to you, how will you get it? Moreover than just asking yourself what is there to get, ask what is there at all? Removing your tool belt of thoughts and constructions, what do you have to work with? You have existence, and that existence is yours; and my existence is mine, and person-over-there’s existence is there’s. There is only one question left, Do you feel it? |
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