I was never indoctrinated into a faith, so it comes as no surprise that I, even at a very young age, have always understood the absurdity of organized religion. Living my entire life as an atheist also led me down a path of nihilism. This isn’t the dreary jet black path that so many people make it out to be. Heck, it’s not even a path really. It is more or less an innate and fundamental understanding that the only absolute value that a concept, being, or object has is the value that the assignee grants to it. You don’t have to be very intelligent to come across this conclusion, you just have to be somewhat pragmatic, strong-willed, and have had the good fortune of never being initiated into some sort of religious thought control; because then it becomes much harder to “break” through the inconsistencies of your non-logical paradigm.
That being said one fateful evening my somewhat shallow and pseudo-nihilistic world view came to a climax. Without getting into the boring technicalities I had an awakening of sorts; albeit this awakening did not pull me away from my nihilistic tendencies -it did however illuminate an entirely new concept that I had previously never fathomed. You see, words are merely abstractions that inadequately attempt to explain experience. Yeah, you can read about a fiery romance, but unless you’ve ever actually experienced the wrath of love, then you can never fully understand the pleasant (or terrifying) delusions of such an emotion. The same can be said for ego-loss, or loss of self.
At first it was terrifying. Every last strand of my being was attempting to pull itself back together- to assimilate as one again. But it was no use. The self I had known was gone. All that was left were hollow details. It was like reading the biography of a long deceased friend. I was then thrust into an abyss of sorts – a dazzling “bottomless pit” where everything really is everything and the individual goes to perish. It is here that you became me, and I became you. It was so surreal that it became cinematic. It was so cinematic that it became surreal. It was beauty defined. And then, it was over. I was myself again – now the only thing that’s left nearly two years later is a reminder of the day I went to pieces without falling apart.
Before that realization I took an astronomy class in college that was taught in a fairly large planetarium. Each day upon leaving the class I’d gaze up into the sky with the understanding that I was an ant… no I was smaller; I was a grain of sand lost in the vastness of an infinite universe. I am now aware that “I” was wrong. I am not a grain of sand. I’m merely the reflection of an idea. I am nothing… and yet… I am everything. I bet this whole thing sounds absurd. Don’t worry, it is.
Tags: after life, alan watts, buddha, buddhism, buddhist, christian mysticism, christianity, coexist, eastern philosophy, ego loss, enlightenment, errowed, existentialism, glass bead game, god, herman hesse, illusion, jesus christ, john paul sartre, love, lsd, meditation, mysticism, nietzsche, Philosophy, psychedelics, sartre, shroomery, shrooms, sidhartha, steppenwolf, string theory, theory of everything, transcend, universe, waking life, what is the meaning of life
October 9, 2008 at 9:43 pm
This was not absurd. I understood every word of it, and it made sense to me.
I seem to have these defining moments from time to time. I draw a conclusion in my mind about life in general or some tiny aspect of it, but I can never find the words to explain it. Mostly because I am an average writer with average potential. (Off Subject) I have noticed I am not great at anything in life, nor am I bad at anything. I am the most average person I know. You could call me a “Free Thinking” Joe Six Pack dog-gonit.
October 12, 2008 at 6:29 am
A most interesting account. Yet I will challenge your nihilism; if the only absolute value that a thing has is that which the observer assigns to it, you are saying that the observer creates things out of nothing, or everything exists because you are there to observe things. By this, in a state of unconsciousness, not only are you unconscious, but the whole world ceases to be.
This zero-value view comes about when everything the mind observes, it observes to be relative and changing, by which the statement that “everything is relative” truly is not surprising, since it is what the mind experiences. Yet, relations cannot exist in nothing, or we would be admitting that neither relations exist (they being constituted by nothing) and we would be denying existence itself.
However, finding an absolute value is not so difficult as it seems, for we need only turn to the things that we are in full possession of, by which a mind, rather than trying to find absolute values in the shifting things it sees outside itself, may turn to regard its own awareness and existence; for awareness is fully aware of what it is aware, or a mind is fully in possession of its own perception, and when perception perceives itself, it is not difficult to see how it is that a mind conceives a truth.
Far from being nihilistic, I think that your described experience is quite the opposite; in a moment of awareness, you came to observe your own existence profoundly, by which you found the absolute value that you had been missing. Further, since the separation of things has no other foundation than the idea of their separation, the idea was not present when you only conceived essence, or something positive, whereby you where brought to experience existence as undivided and immanent.
Consider this: existence exists as utterly infinite because there exists nothing to limit it. Because existence is utterly infinite it contains infinite limited perspectives that do not perceive the whole of infinity. Because these limited perspectives do not perceive the whole of existence, they experience things fragmentarily, or as a multitude of separate things that are impermanent and changing. Yet since a limited perspective has itself fully in perspective, it is capable of conceiving the absolute value of itself, or existence itself, not fully but essentially. When a limited perspective conceives existence essentially in this way, there is no longer room for separation, since there exists nothing to limit existence, by which the mind, rather than to transcend common experience, reaches through to the immanence of it, or it experiences fully, wherewith it will be utterly fulfilled — or affected by its highest sense of beauty and joy.
October 12, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Immanent,
Thanks for the response. I will try my best to respond in a lucid manner but I’m more or less a pseudo-philosopher with only a few years of philosophical “training” under my belt. I do agree with many of the points you made.
So, we will assume for the sake of argument that you are right. We are all the products of some gigantic “metaphysical quilt” – every object while seemingly separate is actually of the same origin. I realize this may sound nonsensical, but why couldn’t this be the ONLY universal truth? Wouldn’t it make sense that since you, me, and everyone else views the world through a single lens that the social constructs, value systems, rules, and emotions we deem “good” and “evil” are all just meaningless gibber? Why can’t this vast infinite illusion just be a purposeless mess? Why must Easterners insist that there is some warm fuzzy orgy of love buried deep within everything? Perhaps we can transcend the boundaries of the self from time to time, and perhaps that self doesn’t truly exist as we’ve been trained to believe, but why must there be a truth beyond that?
Why can’t Buddhist views embody the metaphysical world? And why can’t Nietzsche’s views dominate the material? Can there be no middle ground between these two seemingly unrelated schools of thought?
I’ve been in an existential crisis of sorts lately, so maybe you could help me figure this out.
October 14, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Philosophical training is hardly a requisite to gaze into one’s own inner workings, or the inner workings of existence, which is the same when we consider that we exist; but on the contrary, a pre-occupation with academia may very well lead someone to more superficial considerations, and especially to the gathering of credentials and acclaim. Personally, I have no formal philosophical training at all, and nor do I have in my plans to pursue such, since l consider life itself to be an excellent course when you only pay attention to its lessons.
As for your question why there should be more to existence than merely existence, or sheer non-affective, amoral being, I will make an answer through explaining the nature of positives and negatives. For if something is, we concede that something is true, i.e., something is positive, while, if we say that something is not, it is something untrue, or something negative. Yet to say that something negative is positive is nothing but a contradiction, by which I mean this; existence does not exist in a contrast to anything, for the negative, speaking very strictly, is nothing that compares — in being nothing at all.
Through considering that when something is, something is true, or positive, i.e., in existence, in order to disprove a non-affective existence, we have only to consider our emotions, which are something, i.e., which is the reason we are having this discussion. That is, our emotions, or at least something of them, must be positive, or they would not be apparent to us since they would be negative. Yet, as most philosophers today would say, emotions exist only in contrast, so that happiness cannot exist without suffering etc, since they define each other. This, as is apparent from the above, I hold to be an aburdity; for relations cannot exist in nothing, and to say that emotions only exist in contrast is to say that there are apparent negatives, which is nothing but to undermine our language, since we are then contradicting ourselves at every turn.
However, since we experience our emotions to exist in contrast, just as we experience everything in the world to exist in relation to other things, as were there nothing permanent and actual (i.e., since we are limited in an unlimited context), we may by the above reasoning conclude that some of our emotions are positive, while the contrasting emotions are negative, or without concrete essence, or only existant under limitations, which is the same. This is not as difficult a task as it may seem, though it has seldom been done, since, while many are busy to intoxicate themselves with pleasures, they still do not often reflect upon what those pleasures truly are. The demonstrations, in any case, may proceed as follows:
A man does not suffer because he loves something, but because that which he loves is denied him; a child does not weep because she likes to play, but because she is not allowed to; a woman does not regret because she had something, but because she lost it etc., by which it becomes very evident that the positive emotions are indeed the emotions of pure, undiluted pleasure, while suffering exists only in the absence of pleasure, or, as is also clear, in the consideration of nothing rather than nature. That is, the destructive emotions exist only under limitations on thought, or in limited minds, which is the same, while the positive emotions express essence, or are the emotions that exist in infinite immanence in existence itself. That is, existence, considered as a whole, is an infinitely affective entity, which is capable of feeling only joy, happiness, love and contentment to infinite intensity etc, and cannot at all be affected by negative emotions.
Hopefully, this may, if not convince you, so at least open the door to the possibility of absolute good; for certainly, I was myself ambivalent until I realized that my ambivalence too was something, by which we may all indeed find our way to essence through observing ourselves, even in an existential crisis — or perhaps especially during one, since that is when we may begin to pay attention.
November 18, 2008 at 7:52 am
Have you ever watched “I Heart Huckabees”? Your post and the follow ups reminded me of this film. Of course I’m jaded (I think the film is fucking brilliant). For me this film envelopes the possibilities of opposites – I won’t go into any long philosophical undertaking of your post. I just think you may be moving in the direction of accepting that which we may not think we “already” know.
Then again, that may just be my own filter. LOL – oh our damn filters.
Thanks for your honest post,
John