The Spell You Put on Yourself
El hechizo que te lanzas a ti mismo
A question about whether perception constitutes evidence of an external world, leading into a discussion of disenchantment, dark nights, and the choice to remain in or step out of illusion.
The Spell You Put on Yourself
A question about whether perception constitutes evidence of an external world, leading into a discussion of disenchantment, dark nights, and the choice to remain in or step out of illusion.
In the meditation you were implying that there are no objects. At one point you said, for instance, that you open your eyes and see an image, and that's the only thing you see. It's not evidence that there's something out there. But my wondering is: it almost seems like a perfect trick, made up by God, to make you believe that there are objects and things out there. You say there is no proof, and I agree. But for instance, I see an image, I go forward and see it bigger, I stretch my hand and touch something hard, I put my ear near it and hear the sound it's making louder and louder. How do you get around that?
The trick is to be precise. You said it seems like a trick created by God, something designed to deceive you. But you could also say it's something created by you to trick yourself. Both interpretations could be equally real or true. So which one is it?
Both interpretations, you mean: me or God?
Because both are valid, both are possible. You don't have any evidence that it's either way. So why choose one?
The simulation analogy
Consider the simulation theory, the idea the Matrix films are based on. You could be inside a simulated or virtual reality world. In that metaphor, the organs of perception are hijacked: sound, sight, sensation, all of it comes through another kind of channel. Suppose it's a computer program. It's virtual, not real in that sense. Because you can imagine this experience being like that, and if the simulation is good enough it could be identical to this, why assume that version A is the real one, that there are actual things out there that you're perceiving?
The fact that there appears to be a world out there doesn't mean there is one, because it could equally be explained by a different interpretation. Since both explanations are equally plausible, why assume one of them without evidence?
I'm not saying there is evidence. But the way science gets to a conclusion is by making many experiments. They never reach certainty, but all experiments suggest something. In that same way, the perceptions suggest there are objects.
If you do follow science, it's actually suggesting there are no objects. Perception alone doesn't establish anything. Only the interpretation does.
Interpretation creates the world
This is the whole problem. As a metaphor, suppose everybody was blind, with a few exceptions: very few people who can see with their eyes. The majority who are blind have an interpretation and a paradigm of what the world is, but those who see can describe something that those who are blind cannot know. They are unable to give any evidence. Only through gaining the ability to see will you know what was being referred to.
That's a metaphor for what this is about. I'm pointing to a misinterpretation. You say perception makes it appear as if there's something there. I'm saying that's not correct. It's the misinterpretation that makes it appear that way. Once the misinterpretation is dropped, it is obvious that there's no evidence that there's anything there, that there are no objects. That's the metaphor of gaining the ability to see: it's actually the dropping of interpretations, of beliefs.
You said there's no evidence that there are no objects, or it's obvious that there are no objects? Which is it?
Both. And there are different degrees of seeing, different degrees of awakening. Everything that is described from the perspective of seeing is not the seeing itself. It's impossible to communicate accurately and truthfully. In a sense, there's nothing that can be done other than try to ignite the ability to see, to awaken the ability to see for yourself.
In this case, unlike in the metaphor, there is an ability to drop the misinterpretations. There is that possibility. If that happens, things will become obvious to you.
Seeing for yourself
For example, regarding the first thing you said, that it could be God creating something to trick you or you creating it to trick yourself: there is the capacity to see which one of those it is, for yourself. It's no longer a philosophical question or an intellectual exercise. It can be known through you knowing what it is that you are doing, through seeing directly: "I am creating this. I am choosing the illusion and choosing to be tricked by myself."
But if I say that and it's adopted as truth, then it's another belief. The point is the experiential seeing of it. The point is for you to see for yourself that of all sensation, perception, and thought, all you know is sensation, perception, and thought.
I see it sometimes. I intuit it sometimes. But in regular life, it's like being surrounded by millions and millions of people who are all believing the same interpretation.
Exactly. That's the metaphor: most are blind, and the few who see are most often ignored or seen as crazy, especially in the past, not just crazy but dangerous.
I just feel like I need to talk about it and bring these curiosities forward, because if you're not under the spell anymore, I need to continually hear from people in that process to come out of the spell more and more.
The spell is self-created
Yes, and one way of talking about it is that the spell is created by yourself. It's in your hands. Otherwise, there could be an interpretation that some other entity or energy is putting you under a spell and you are a passive victim of that. At the deepest level, it's a choice. I respect the choice of being in the illusion, because for myself, I appreciated it. I wanted it. I wanted to know it, to experience it. But at some point that ended. I preferred to experience it from the perspective of it being relative, not absolute.
So at no moment during your most ordinary day-to-day tasks, talking to people, do you believe they are separate entities or objects? At no moment does it appear to you as absolutely real?
It appears so. I experience and relate using interpretations, but knowing they're interpretations. And it's not because I'm tracking them all; it's because it's obvious.
It's like a VR headset. You could be walking on a wide, flat floor, but in the headset you're crossing from one building to the next, 500 stories high, walking on a narrow pole with a drop on both sides. You're going to get vertigo. You're going to feel the sensations of altitude and falling. But unless you were put in that system from a very young age and never taken out, you know you're in a VR world. At no point do you fully feel the terror of "I'm going to die if I fall." Not the way it once was. There can be the experience of intensity, of the vertical, of the falling. But it is no longer to the degree of "that is absolutely real and that's the only reality."
And that metaphor is more like God put the headset on and never took it off since we were two years old.
From very young, we start interpreting. There is an aspect of society being fully immersed in that, which feeds the absolute nature of it seeming real. But it's also, I think, hardwired in this creation.
If I put it into words: the freedom to be in the illusion, the thrill of being in the illusion, is a certain kind of thrill that ends in awakening. The thrills, the excitements, the horrors, the intensity of life and death: there's a certain extreme of contraction that eventually ends.
In my experience, and I think it's something quite universal, there is a loss. That's why it's a choice.
For myself, I appreciated the illusion. But at some point it ended. For a while, about a year, there was an experience of knowing the absolute and experiencing the relative as relative. Then there was no distinction. The relative and the absolute, to me, are one. But that's very hard to describe.
Connected to what was just said, I wanted to ask whether there was a kind of apathy around seeing all this. I don't know whether my motivation in the past has been more around fear, but the more I've explored these topics, the more the motivation has dropped. It's become a kind of "what's the point" feeling. Maybe that's a phase of losing the need to differentiate yourself, but nothing has really emerged to replace it.
The dark nights
That's exactly what happens. There's a disenchantment with the illusion, and that's the ending of the dream. It's experienced in very different ways, but that's what has been described as the dark nights. They could be more intense, filled with terror, or they could be more subtle, like what you are describing: an apathy where it's just, "what's the point?" There's nothing here. It's no longer exciting. There's a boredom with it. It can become a limbo, a lingering in something that seems to go nowhere. But it is a phase, and if we keep looking and keep working, there can be a coming out on the other side.
The Christian writings on the dark nights describe the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the soul. There are several dark nights. In that map, there is first a disenchantment with the world, and then a disenchantment with the spiritual world.
We move from the work of finding pleasure and happiness in experience, in relationships, substances, and things. There's a shifting into the inner world, into a more spiritual search. But then there's a dark night there too, because again we don't find it. We do at first. We experience the thrills of spiritual openings and subjective internal experiences. But if the progress is healthy, it leads to another dark night, another series of dark nights, where we're not finding it in the spiritual work either.
That's actually a successful journey, when we get to that point. It's no longer about any kind of experience, spiritual or worldly, or any shift of consciousness.
What emerges on the other side
What can happen is that the coming out on the other side is what has been known or described in many ways as peace, or sat-chit-ananda: consciousness, bliss, knowingness, peace, well-being, happiness. True happiness, not dependent on anything. A gentle love, a caring for everything that is.
What I feel you're describing is exactly that: those periods where what used to bring motivation, energy, excitement starts to not work anymore. But it's important to keep looking and look more deeply, to explore, to not stay too stuck in that limbo.
I definitely feel like it's a limbo, a holding pattern.
And it's never not about experience. It actually includes everything. For example, I get enormous thrills from swimming in the ocean, swimming close to a turtle, being in that kind of amazingness. I'm very much diving into all experience: relationships, a good glass of wine or mezcal. All of it is embraced. But there's no longer a looking for something to be resolved or gained from any particular experience.
I'm saying this because there is a risk, in that shifting and the losing of motivation, of withdrawing and not embracing experience. It's the not-finding of the answer in experience, but then going more deeply into it at the same time.
Saying yes to life
What's coming up is a comedy I really like, "Yes Man," with Jim Carrey. In a lot of his movies he's going through awakening, and then he went through it in real life as well. "The Truman Show" is a story of awakening. "Yes Man" is a story of awakening. In that film, he goes through experiments of extremes, coming from a place of being completely shut down and then going into experience. There's this big yes to life, yes to the adventure of exploration. But at some point in the movie he realizes there's nothing there either. And yet he doesn't stop diving.
So as you are feeling this, simultaneously, can you see anything you might want to experience, anything you might want to dive into? Even if you don't have motivation or desire the way you used to, is there anything that, in a new and deeper way, might be calling you in life, so that a deeper energy may awaken?
Something resonates around what you said about the turtle. Being around different cultures and environments does that for me. But when I'm back home, around everything familiar, there's a dullness again.
That brings up all of the old patterns of interpreting things as "the normal."
And also feeling in a culture that doesn't have any interest in God or anything of depth, where the norm is very secular. Although on the other hand, you can see it everywhere, so it's the perceiver, isn't it? Because then the trick of the mind says, "Oh, you're in the wrong country or the wrong place or the wrong culture," and that's not helpful.
Exactly.