Nostalgia
The people interviewed in this podcast all seem very sure of themselves and speak as if what they were saying was blindingly obvious and they couldn't understand why the rest of the world would choose to remain trapped in the belief that they exist as real entities in a real world. They write books and give talks (often called satsangs), charging an entry fee (often called donation) if there are people who are willing to pay, in which they announce the end of the spiritual search. They will insist that you're not going to gain anything from any gurus, books, practices, etc., because, as I said, there isn't even a you to gain anything. How they justify their writing illusory books, full of illusory concepts, that illusory people will read and buy giving them illusory money, or going on an illusory tour of illusory satsangs, scheduled at specific times in the illusory future, in which they will go on and on about how pointless the spiritual search is, is something that escapes me.
What's really interesting is how devoid of meaning their arguments can be. You'll often hear them say, for example, that you are not a person, that the self is just a concept without any real substance. And I ask, is "person" not, by definition, precisely what we are? In other words, the word "person" was essentially "invented" to refer to that which we are, whatever that may be. So what these guys are in effect saying is that a person is not a person. Cool. And then, what does "a concept without any real substance" mean? What does a "real substance" look like? "Precisely," they would reply. But then, what does it mean to say that something doesn't have any real substance when there is no such thing as a real substance? Another one of their core beliefs is that what we call reality, including ourselves, other people, concepts, things, time, matter, etc. is just an appearance, an illusion, a dream. And again I ask, if everything is an illusion, what does "illusion" mean? Illusion only means something by comparison: we say that some things are an illusion only by contrast to the the rest of the things, which are not an illusion. Similarly, if we say that nothing is ultimately real, we are just rendering the quality of realness meaningless. It only makes sense to say that something isn't real by comparison to the rest of the things, which are real.
Imagine we all got enlightened, or saw things "as they truly are" — call it whatever is non-dualisticly acceptable. Imagine we all realised that reality is an illusion and began to refer to it as such. Would we not end up inventing a new term to discriminate between the illusion formerly known as reality and the illusion that we've called illusion all along? And if we all finally realised that the self doesn't exist, that there is no you or me, and dropped personal pronouns and referred to ourselves as, for example, empty experiencing, would we not end up devising some way of discriminating between this empty experiencing over here that writes a blog and that empty experiencing over there that reads it?
What I find most troubling about these neo-Advaita people is that they appear to be absolutely convinced of what they're preaching. They're all radically awakened, or whatever other synonym of the — for most of them taboo — word "enlightened" they use to describe themselves, and they consequently have to readily produce a confident answer to every question thrown at them. They'll never say, "Hmm... I don't really know. What do you think?" They'll just make something up, or pick one of their stock responses that's only tangentially related to the question. And then, after all this pontificating, they'll categorically reject the idea that they are any kind of gurus or spiritual teachers. But all things considered, that's hardly surprising given that they reject the idea that they are persons at all.
Why do I then bother listening to them at all? you might rightly ask. Well, I generally enjoy philosophical and spiritual gibberish, even if I don't agree with it. As long as they don't abuse words like energy, vibration and quantum too often, and don't expect me to believe in elaborate fairy tales, it's all good to keep my restless mind entertained. And, to be fair, I do find the Advaita ideas interesting; it's just that I can't stand the complete absence of self-doubt most of these people display. If you're so open-minded that you're prepared to believe that everything is an illusion, it wouldn't do you any harm to also be open to the possibility that you've got hold of the wrong end of the philosophical stick. And, of course, this doesn't just apply to Neo-Advaita.
You can now fast-forward and contemplate how the chosen atoms of that nebula first become a massive lump of molten rock, then earth and atmosphere, then bacteria, insect, plant, river, bird, urine, shit, pig, bean, milk, raindrop, breath, cow, saliva, tomato, spinach leaf, and, finally, it all converges into you. Can you visualise that infinite backwards ramification of yourself into empty space and the forward converging of a nebula of atoms into your present body? Does it not feel like an absolute miracle? If that isn't enough complexity to blow your mind, consider not only the past history of the atoms currently in your body, but their future as well. Where will all the atoms that make up your body be in billions of years? Consider that if you go 10 billion years further back in time all the atoms in the nebula converge on the single point from which the universe exploded into existence, if that is indeed what happened, although they wouldn't be atoms at that stage. Consider the past and future not just of the particles currently in your body, but of every particle that has ever been a part of it. Consider also all the ususpecting atoms scattered around the planet that will one day become a part of you.
If you look at it from a deterministic perspective, you could almost say that those privileged atoms in the cosmic nebula were predetermined to one day become part of a conscious being who would be wondering where they were 5 billion years ago. Even if I try to stick to chance and physical laws to account for this process, it is almost impossible for me not to find meaning and purpose in it. You could say that meaning and purpose, if they weren't there in the first place, emerge from an ocean of chance and blind determinism, which is even more mysterious. Whichever way I look at it, I end up with the same sense of awe, which has an uncanny resemblance to a feeling of worship. But — ssh — don't tell anyone I said that.
Mysticism and nihilism are equally illogical, or more precisely, equally alogical. Reality is what it is — intrinsically neither good nor bad, neither mystical nor depressing. It is us who decide what to make of it. I'm not saying that any ideas whatsoever, being the product of our humble little brains, are equally valid. There are objective truths, like the laws of physics. Denying that, and some do, is plain silly and incoherent. But whether existence is sheer beauty and bliss or a meaningless nightmare is up for any given three pounds of meat in a skull to decide.
In my last post I wrote about how the universe is constantly creating stories and histories — of people, countries, worlds — only to destroy them later, leaving no trace of their former existence. I often feel the need to believe that that's not quite how things work, that the past must still exist in some way now and will always exist. The idea that my childhood memories — places, people, etc. — only exist in my brain and will vanish when I die can be a difficult one to come to terms with. I sometimes like to watch TV clips from the seventies and eighties on YouTube: the news some random day of some random year, the test card they showed with background music at the end of the evening until the first programme began the following morning , ads, anything. As you might expect, it makes me terribly nostalgic, and something in me thinks that I should have the right to be able to go back and re-experience those things first hand. But it won't stop there. I want to be able to visit my parents village as it was in the forties and fifties, when they were kids, to watch them run around and play. You might think that I'm certifiable for saying this, but I also want to claim my right to visit early 20th century Bombay and 17th century Istambul, to meet Jesus and the Buddha (just out of curiosity), to have a coffee with my great-grandfather. But I digress.
It's not just the extinction of my own memories, the fact that my past is forever past, that concerns me, but also everyone else's memories and past, all the things that have happened on this planet. The past must still be real in some way. I just find it almost impossible to believe that it is gone forever and will be forgotten completely.
By the time the universe is 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old, the black holes themselves will disintegrate into stray particles, which will bind loosely to form individual "atoms" larger than the size of today's universe. Eventually, even these will decay, leaving a featureless, infinitely large void. And that will be that — unless, of course, whatever inconceivable event that launched the original Big Bang should recur, and the ultimate free lunch is served once more.And then whatever has happened in the past, the innumerable indeviduals, lives, experiences, stories, memories, etc. will have disappeared completely. There will not even be any clue to suggest that any of those things have ever occurred. Whatever happens in the universe, the end result is the same: absolute nothingness. Can that be true? Let me try a desperate attempt to prove otherwise.(from TIME.com)
Mozart died on 5th December 1791. As far as we know that's a true statement. Would it make any sense to say that it is false — just because — or that it is neither true nor false? Obviously not. If it's true, it's true. And will it make sense to say either of those two things when the human race has disappeared from the universe? Obviously not. Whatever happens to the human race, "Mozart died on 5th December 1791" will always be a true statement. And does anything change when then universe "dies"? Will our statement stop being true? Obviously not. Now take all possible true statements about the past, down to the minutests details, to the position of each atom at every moment. All those statements constitute all of the past, and each one of them is true, and it wouldn't make sense to say otherwise. It wouldn't make sense now, and it wouldn't make any sense in 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years. So, even if the past is gone in some way, there is another way in which it will always exist, because if it didn't exist in any way, it would be perfectly logical to say that "Mozart died on 5 December 1791" is neither true nor false, when that is clearly nonsense. If the past didn't exist in any way, at the end of the universe all the true statements about the past of the universe would cease to be true and become neither true nor false. I hope you'll agree with me that that cannot happen. Some might argue that after the death of the universe, "Mozart died on 5 December 1791," along with all other possible statements about the past, will just be something whose truth or falsehood cannot be known. But my point is that, even so, the statement will be either true or false. In conclusion, if we accept that the truth about the past exists, then the past, all of it, will always exist in at least some way, the way that makes true statments about it true.
I don't blame you if you don't find this argument very compelling — neither do I. There is something awkward about it, and it's little solace. But then there's something awkward about all philosophy. It's just another argument in my collection of philosophical reasons for puzzlement and hope.
Your life, the people that come in and out of it, the emotions that seem to take up all the space around you, that are so real and pervasive, the jobs you go through, the ups and downs with your girlfriends and boyfriends, all the letters and phone conversations, all the lies and truths, struggles, achievements, love and hate, the photographs you take, the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, your personality, the sound of your voice. Your life, your story, infinitely intricate, is but one among billions on this planet. And this planet is probably just one among billions of planets that are home to sentient beings who also go through their own unique, endlessly beautiful, painful, joyful and complex stories. Both their stories and ours are written only to be forgotten shortly after death writes their final chapter. Your children might remember you, you might even be one of the few that have done something great for which millions of people remember them after they die, but there will come a day when our precious planet is annihilated along with all the life that has arisen on it. And then nobody will remember Gandhi, Beethoven, Picasso, Jesus, Genghis Khan, Queen Victoria or Kermit the Frog, let alone your life or mine. Any trace of anything that ever happened on planet Earth will be pulverised and the universe will carry on as if human history had never occurred.
How many other intelligent and conscious life forms might have existed in the universe that had a history like that of the human race, complete with civilisations, empires, technological and moral progress, art, and, most importantly, billions of little people that asked themselves what the hell was this joke called life supposed to mean? Just us? A handful of them? Billions? I'm inclined to believe the latter, but any answer seems equally puzzling to me. If indeed there are, have been and will be billions of civilisations comparable in richness to the human race, what sort of a universe is this that incessantly invents these magnificent histories/stories, a million at a time, only to mercilessly destroy them later? It conjures up the image of an extremely talented and infinitely prolific writer that threw his books in the fire just as he'd finished writing the last page. Why would he do that? Why bother writing the story in the first place? You could say that the universe, unlike an actual writer, is not aware that it is writing a story, or trillions of them, or that the stories are just writing themselves, or that it is us who choose to see things as stories. That's all very reasonable, but still, is it not striking that the most magnificent of all storytellers is not even aware that it is creating stories all the time, or that it is not aware at all, or that it is simply sprouting conscious life that then worships it or, like me, asks it what it's playing at, creating and destroying all these precious stories? What's the point of all that? Could there possibly not be a point? Really?