Glimpses
This is a work of fiction. It’s the first in a new series I’m calling Noirs.
When I wake up all is amiss. I'm panicked and short of breath but don't know why. There's the burnt aftertaste of vague regret. The fading trails of some story I've been telling myself in the night still lingering in my mind. Something I'd said or done years or decades ago. Something that my unconscious seems to have been reviewing in my stead. I imagine it like a ghost or spirit of some sort—my unconscious, that is—in a grim ancient space, watching the existential equivalent of old fight tapes on the cerebral equivalent of a projector on the cosmic equivalent of a wall in a dark and windowless room. I imagine it doing this both while I'm awake and while I'm asleep. But it's most effective during sleep, as is evidenced by the terror and turmoil I regularly awaken to.
The more I work my way into the new day's consciousness, the more the tumult subsides. This is the consciousness at work, I've come to believe. It swoops in to make things right again, or to make them align again, rather, even when they're not right and don't align and never did.
Does our consciousness have its own unconsciousness that is separate from our unconscious mind? Meaning, if the unconscious goes to work in us as we sleep, say, and consciousness goes to work on suppressing the unconscious when we're awake, is there some separate, but also unconscious, force behind it? Something larger than us driving our consciousness to do its work? Among the more devout rationalists that I've encountered, it's been said that what some think of or feel as God or a soul or some supernatural force is really just "pure reason" snaking its way through man and the cosmos. The latter being the higher power or law in the universe that various religions have throughout history ascribed to the former. An opponent of reason I am not. I contend only that it has its limits. As do we as mere reasoning mortals. We are free to believe whatever we want. But we are not free to know that which cannot be known.
The certainty with which some push their beliefs on others as facts is but one source of the madness that has overtaken me in this, the probable and statistical middle of my life, a time when the conjoined stench of human certainty, spiritual poverty, and societal sickness hangs strong and heavy in the air. It is not of much interest to me to explore that last point in any more depth than I already have. (At least not immediately.) For now, though, I will just note that these positions—the pure religious and the pure rational—are exactly the same: they are both fundamentally beliefs in man-made stories of higher powers that are present in the universe and contained within. For some, that higher power can be found (or, it might more accurately be said, pointed to) in religious texts and symbols and morals and myths. For others, it can be found in things like science and technology and reason and humans themselves. With the latter group, though, I can't help but wonder: Are these beliefs not on their way to becoming new religions? Are they not there already? Will future historians not point to our present and our concomitant belief in and worship of science and reason and tech and self as the formation of yet another religion? And are there not in fact multiple, incoherent sects forming all at once? The religion of Humanism versus the religion of Transhumanism, for example? There's no guarantee that there will be future historians, of course. Nor is it certain that, if there are, they will be anything like us. It seems more likely than not to me that we will be looked back on in the future as we look back on Neanderthals now. The hard-to-fathom difference being that we will be the first to leave such a massive trail of documentation in our wake (assuming that we leave anything in our wake, that is). What in the future will be the simple and accepted narrative about us and our endless complexities? What will be "known" about us, the (supposedly) rational world's (supposedly) supreme little god-men and god-women; its billions of vessels of muscle and bone, fat and intellect; its overlords of the natural world; its believers in the separation of man and universe; its elevated visions of itself; its delusions of grandeur?
What does it mean to "have" or "experience" consciousness? It’s been put forward by some that humans, rather than “experiencing” consciousness themselves, are but the various expressions of a single cosmic consciousness. Alan Watts, for example, said that humans are the universe experiencing itself. As he put it:
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.
The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world “outside” us is largely hostile. We are forever “conquering” nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order.
It’s debatable whether or not this claim is wholly factual. But if you believe in evolution, as I do, then there's a strong case to be made that Watts’ claim is likely to be true, or that it is at least likely to contain significant truth. We got here the same way the leaves did, after all.
Suppose it is all true. Consider that we exist as something like the universe’s experience of itself through us. Consider as well that there is, in fact, only one consciousness. Then what does this mean for unconsciousness? Are there many? Or is there only the one? Where does consciousness begin and the unconscious end? Do these states precede us? Do they need us to exist? Are they both singular nouns that we humans merely partake in as (their) verbs? Suppose that's the case. Then wouldn't everything that is alive partake in it with us, rather than beside, below, or beyond us? The things outside my window now, for example. The sun, the sky, the soil. The trees, their bananas, jackfruits, eggplants, mangos. The hens that my wife and I recently acquired, with their small world shaped at the moment (presumably, and I believe cruelly) by the large wicker dome under which they presently preside. The neighbor's chickens, running now as they often do—with no apparent concept of boundaries, but with very apparent drives of fear and hunger and desire—across our lawn? What of the thick gray blanket of PM2.5 particles that gather together this time of year and engulf the town where I live, poisoning those in its path? Is it alive? Meaning, when pluralized, do those particles exist as one? Are they engaged in a kind of collective consciousness that is also the universe experiencing itself through it/them? They seem to me to be, as they creep and hover like a body of alien life in the sky. Is that body (or craft, if you will) of particulate matter neutral, impartial, just passing by? Is it without a plan, absent a direction, meaning, or will? Is it self-aware? Does it "have" or "experience" a consciousness or unconsciousness that is greater or less or other than mine? Are its particles somehow separate from me and mine, even as they enter my body and carry out their toxic diminishment; embedding themselves in my lungs, finding their way into my bloodstream, assailing my mind, body, and spirit; slowly taking me over, not unlike those zombie parasites that invade and possess insects?
How might one "cooperate" with an "outside" world such as this in "harmonious order"? Where’s Watts when you need him nowadays? If he were alive today, I’d seek him out and ask him. Is the hostility that humans have directed at nature for eons now coming back at us? If we are one with nature and nature is one with us, then where else was all that hostility to go? What other channels existed for it to travel through? What choice did it ever have but to turn back on us, to enter into us, to conquer us?
We say we're self-aware, but are we really? Even if we are, can there ever really be any awareness beyond that? What can we possibly be aware of that is not—only and always—an awareness of the self, which may or may not mean an awareness of the universe’s experience of itself through us? Yes, I see the trees and fruits and chickens, but only because my eyes brought them into me, into my self, where they merged with all else there. Still, illusory or not, there do at least seem to be things that exist separate from and beyond our various selves. So maybe the real trouble is in the distinctions we too easily make between us and everything else. Maybe true self-awareness is an awareness of there being no distinction between us and everything and everyone else, which would, indeed, mean that there is also no such thing as a self.
But what is one to do with that information? you might now be wondering. What is its utility? If you've been paying attention, you will of course know that it is not my place to answer such questions for you. There are reasons for this that I’ve already gestured toward. But I will quickly detail two of them in closing, for clarity and concision. The first is that, because I believe that the answer to almost everything is slippery and shapeshifting and moving as a singular entity through all of us at once, whatever part of it that I think I now hold is, like us, a verb rather than a noun, and so the very specific, very partial glimpse that I have now will not be the same as the one I had a moment ago, nor will it be the same as the one I will have a moment from now, and so on. Similarly, none of my current glimpses will align perfectly with yours, just as the Sun will never appear to people in Earth’s Eastern and Western Hemisphere’s in the same place at the same time. The second is simply that I do not know. I only believe that I've seen and experienced certain glimpses. So, no, I don't know the answer. But yes, I do believe the glimpses of it, ever-changing though they are. I've therefore not arrived at this writing seeking to change anyone or alter their course.1 I've only arrived here because something compels me to put the things circling my head down in writing. (And it’s no coincidence, I don't think, that we sometimes refer to the act of writing about ideas as "putting them down" in writing, just as we also refer to euthanizing animals this way, not to mention offending others—as all worthwhile writing should do. It should, in one way or another, be a devastating affair for all involved, one that must hurt before it can help.)
On this point, too, I share Watts' orientation with the "outside" world:
As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses. I realize, too, that the less I preach, the more likely I am to be heard.
I'm as allergic to the dogma of rationality as I am to that of religion. One is not an improvement over the other. They complement each other. They each shine lights into the darknesses of the other. It could even be said that those lights are not unlike tractor beams that draw the world—including its inhabitants—into themselves. And in doing so, the one necessarily draws in the other. The fact that the one’s function is, in part, to spit the other out, changes nothing. For some of us, though, unquestionable sermons—on rationality, religion, and all else—will always have the opposite of the intended effect. They will not draw us into them. They will drive us away. Because we are either blessed or cursed or both to see truths as moving particles that exist in evolving complexities that occupy in-between spaces. To us, there is no such thing as "unconditional." There is no such thing as "unquestionable.” It’s either there to be cut open and explored, or it has no use being there at all.
So we cut it all open. We see what one says about the other, and what the other says about the one. We compare and contrast. The left cerebral hemisphere is not superior to the right. And vice versa. Both have their particular functions and focuses and dysfunctions and blind spots. And which one has which one at which time is highly contextual. One note in a piece of music is not superior to another. The different notes complement each other and form the larger whole, or the higher power, if you will.2 And what ultimately shapes and defines any piece of music, it has oft been said but bears repeating here again, are the spaces between its notes. The unheard is at least as important as the heard. The unseen is at least as important as the seen. The unmeasurable is at least as important as the measurable. And on and on and on we ride.
Human experience is an experiment. And I think there is sufficient reason to believe that the trial at hand—containing what we call life, the cosmos, consciousness, the unconscious, death, love, loss, anger, want, sadness, illness, beauty, joy, suffering, et cetera—is an n of 1. We can call our cosmic lab the universe or God or nature or humanity or science or religion or technology or design or evolution or "I" or whatever else, but these are all just words and stories that we spread. Our languages are not the things themselves. They are symbols of innumerable infinities in constant states of flux. Insofar as we believe any of our stories to hold answers, it's only because we've found them there, or placed them there, and not because they actually are there. That is not to say that they are not there. Because they might be. It is only to say that, as far as I can see, there's only one way for us to know any of those answers, or to know any of us. And that way, or so I believe, is to cease being one of us.
In fact, when wondering, as I sometimes do, if I'd choose to act on such powers if granted them, the powers to change anyone or anything, I find that I almost invariably choose no, I would not.