Back to Now

The struggle to stop struggling. An effort to forget. To remember.

[backtonow]

There's a fixed point of view behind every habit. When you change the perspective, what seemed like habitual repetition may reveal its more freeform charasteristics. To break free from habit and reclaim control one needs to change the point of view.

[backtonow]

It is movement that we must accustom ourselves to look upon as simplest and clearest, immobility being only the extreme limit of the slowing down of movement, a limit reached only, perhaps, in thought and never realized in nature.

Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics

[backtonow]

In a library of all possible books it would be practically impossible to find a book that made any sense. If the universe is that library and this moment is one of those books, then the books in the library must be organised somehow.

[backtonow]

It may seem peculiar to claim that action equals perception if perception is conceived as something static and action something that takes place in time. But in reality, there is no perception without time. All perception is movement, i.e. something that takes place in time, whether it is vibration of air molecules in the ear channel, or waves of light. Something that remains the same will fade away from our perception. We hear the ticking of the clock until we’ve become accustomed to it. We don’t notice the importance of relationship once it is gone. Perception is change. So is action. To act is what perception feels from the inside.

[backtonow]

Action is perception

For quite some time I have been asking myself why suppressing action reinforces it. I think I finally got it. It is best to think of action as pattern recognition. What appears as action on one level of existence is really perception on another. If you choose to suppress the impulse, you are simply making the impulse more visible, more recognizable. You may be eventually able to push yourself to the other side of the equation, abstinence, but that is simply another kind of action, the negative space around the figure, which is action.

The figure could not exist without the negative space around it. Reinforcing either the figure or the negative space makes the distinction between the two more visible. That is the nature of perception. It is just that if you are caught inside that, you don’t conceive that as perceiving but as forces acting upon yourself. You feel the impulse to do something and you may choose between following that impulse or abstaining from it. But if you are able to take a step back you can distance yourself from those forces. You start perceiving the forces instead of being pushed and pulled by them. The dualistic nature of the force and its counterforce, the figure and its negative space, becomes apparent. That is the transcendental nondualistic position. It is the transformation from acting to witnessing.

[backtonow]

The more particular the form the more individuated the experience. The hydrogen atoms must share a collective consciousness (if any) whereas an indivudal human being suffers a highly separated ego.

[backtonow]

There is no memory without order, no past without memory, no future without uncertainty, no uncertainty without free will.

[backtonow]

Consciousness seems to be about having a single determined chain of events in one direction of time (memory) and multiple possible paths in the other (free agency). The opposite of which seems to be amnesia and determinacy, the inability to see and act.

[backtonow]

Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no-one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently. But we would propably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange even to call what they were doing "arguing". Perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their culture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance.

Metaphors We Live By

[backtonow]

If argument is war then philosophy is warcraft. But the truth lies within peace.

[backtonow]

The first rule of ethics man learns is that he should work for the benefit of his future self. The second that he should work for the benefit of his co-existent self: the others. We are still struggling with the first…

[backtonow]

In a dream I was a neuroscientist

Imagine a dream where a neuroscientist is trying to figure out how does the conscious experience emerge from the patient’s brain. But because it is a dream the conscious experience of the patient as well as the neuroscientist are really aspects of the dreamer. There is nothing within the dream that would ever explain consciousness. Quite the opposite, the consciousness of the dreamer explains all the elements of the dream whether it is the patient’s brain, the readings on the instruments hooked to his brain, or the experience of being a neuroscientist trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

[backtonow]

Change is a relationship between now and then. Without this relationship nothing would be comprehensible. We would not be able to remember, to associate, to make sense. Thus, it is not possible to experience a static universe. And what is there without a conscious experience? Change is existence. Existence is change.

[backtonow]

The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery to talk of man as a mere mechanism—intending by this to imply he is without purpose—shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man. Indeed, there never was a machine that did not have a purpose. And there is perhaps no purpose that does not require a machine, whether a human body or some other kind, to achieve it.

Arthur M. Young

[backtonow]

Instead of beginning start from here and now. Instead of the smallest ingredients start from the scale of human experience. Work from there, to smaller and larger, to past and future. Nevermind if you can't reach the first moment nor the end of time. Nevermind if you can't reach the elementary particles nor the unity of everything. There's a good chance you will reach what matters the most.

[backtonow]

I don't remember anything from last night. I was asleep. But that does not mean there was no consciousness. It merely means that there is no conscious connection between who I am right now and who I was last night when I was sleeping. Since at any point in time I am merely what I remember.

Some say deep sleep is not a state of unconsciousness but superconsciousness. Should that be the case the capacity of superconsciousness is already in me. It is just that my waking identity has not been integrated with the superconscious state of deep sleep.

[backtonow]

The compulsive chatter inside my head. The habit of relating this experience to my past experiences. Telling stories of what should and should not be. As if the whole world would come to an end if I seized to connect the dots.

But it does not. I forget myself but the consciousness does not fade away. Quite the opposite.

Superficially, this seems to contradict my theory about existence as remembering, as making sense. But it could also be that when I put down my stories and theories—my instruments of sense making—only then it is possible for the deeper understanding to emerge.

Existence is remembering. But I just need to forget in order to remember.