KNOW THYSELF
The Five Fundamentals
by James Khan
Before we can investigate investigate philosophical or spiritual matters, we need to be clear on the fundamentals or the essences of the the self and reality. Without understanding these fundamentals, we wouldn't be able to see the 'wood for the trees'.
The ancient Socratic and other Mystery Schools had plaques at the entrances that said 'KNOW THYSELF', and these words were inscribed in golden letters at the lintel of the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
What does 'Know Thyself' Mean?
Do you know yourself?
"Sure I know my self, I'm Joe Bloggs, son of Adam Bloggs, from Blog land, father of Junior Blog, graduate of Oxford, Computer Programmer, ... ", you might say - but these are all labels, one of many that could be 'stuck' on you or removed.
Your name for example is just a vocal pattern made by a simple apparatus that can make just two types of sound: consonant and vowels. It has nothing to do with you, the same applies for all the other labels.
How would it benefit a man if he gains the world, but loses himself?
Who are you underneath the masks, underneath the changing identities and labels?
Who are you at the core? Thats is the question.
The answer to the question needs to be arrived at by you - only you can know thyself.
I may write the answer, but my words will not mean anything to you unless you experience it for yourself.
These are what I would call the fundamentals essential in knowing oneself. If you follow and understand these five fundamentals, you will be well on the way to knowing yourself.
What Can I Know With Absolute Certainty?
Descartes and "The Evil Genius"
The French philosopher Descartes asked this question - what if all the senses, were lying to me, what if this is all a very lucid dream?
Descartes considered the possibility that an evil genius could be planting all sensory experience in my mind to fool me.
To answer this question, he reasoned that "I think, therefore I am"
"Let him [the evil genius] deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I shall be thinking something"
Descartes was on the right track, he asked the right question.
But Descartes came up with the wrong answer because he identified with thinking.
Descartes was not aquatinted with eastern thoughts and philosophies. If he had been acquainted, he would have realized that it is not necessary to think to be.
I am when I think, and I am when I don't think. Thinking is not the same as nor is it necessary for Being.
Let us then proceed from Descartes question and see what we can know with absolute certainty. Let us assume that our five senses (what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste) and our thoughts, beliefs and philosophies can not be relied upon for they are all subject to manipulation by an evil genius as Descartes phrased it.
As you read, focus on your breath, make it a little longer.
The Five Fundamentals
1. The Only Truth: Breathing and Observing
There are two things we know for certain. The first thing is that:
At this moment you are alive in this world because of one thing and one thing alone.
That is the fact that you are breathing. If you stop breathing you'll be dead in under 3 minutes.
This is an absolute certainty.
Stop breathing and see for your self, if you don't believe that this an absolute certainty.
Whatever else that we have learnet from the senses or from cognitive or logical mental thought processes may or may not be true.
Whatever we understand of the 'world' around us may or may not be true.
You can not be absolutely certain about it because it could all be a lucid dream.
How can you say with absolute certainty that it is not a dream?
As breathing and observing is the only certainty we know, and we know that we are alive, attention to your breath should be our primary concern. This is why the Yogis, the Buddhists, the Taoists and others focused so much attention on breathing.
From the perspective of the Yogis and the Taoists, you are not breathing air but a substance that creates the fabric of the (illusory) universe. They called it Chi or Prana. Remember this and keep breathing.
The second thing to remember is
Everything is energy. Energy takes two forms: wave like (invisible) and as a particle (visible).
The inherent or natural state for energy is as a wave like invisible form.
The particle (visible, object form) only exists because of an observer
This means that the chair that you're sitting on is not there as you perceive it - it is just energy, as is everything around you, your head, brain, blood, the air, the earth, the sun.
Quantum physicists have confirmed as fact that the visible, 'particle' nature of light, energy and all things is only so because of an observer.
Energy only takes the 'particle' form because of an observer. Unobserved the particle (and this means everything from sunlight, electricity, earth, your body and the sun) does not exist.
It only exists because we are looking at it! We have manufactured the world that we are perceiving.
In other words breathing and observing things that we have 'manufactured' is the only truth we all know for certain.
The only truth we know for certain is that we are breathing and observing a 'world' that without our collective observation would not be there.
This is true where ever you are, dreaming or awake, on earth or anywhere else, whether the place is 'real' or 'imaginary'.
Supposing you could drift into a dream world, or slip into a Magical world like Harry Potter does, or slip into a looking glass wonderland like Alice does, or go on 'Trips' like the hippies did, or visit the worlds of the Shaman. Where ever you are you would still be breathing and observing.
Knowing this will be your only connection to reality or sanity.
2. You are Not Your Body
Are you your body? How can you be, when we have just seen that objects (bodies) only exist because of an observer?
If you think that you are your body, then exactly which bit of the body are you? The brain, the genitals, the heart, the eyes?
If the brain, then which bit of the brain - which cell? If I took that cell away, would you still be?
Of course, you are not your body, not your mind, not your thoughts and not your emotions .
The bodily substance, though, by a magical mechanism unknown is a gateway to you.
The bodily substance is the only way to you.
The body or 'bodily substance' is as the Tibetan hermit Milarepa called it 'The Palace of Divinity'. Your body houses you when you are present, that is, when you are here, observing and breathing.
The Yogi's and Taoists stated that the self (who you are) can not be described, but symbols (in particular Water) can be used to point to it, like a finger.
This page explores this: Water and The Tao: Why Water Is So Much Like God
Remember this - you are not your thoughts, not your body, not your feelings, not anything that can labeled.
3. The Seer and the Seeing
There is a difference between the perceiver and what is perceived; the seer and the object that he sees.
The perceiver is not what he perceives.
The seer can not be what he sees. The seer is, what he sees is not.
As the Sufi Kabir said:
Joh Disah, Woh Heh Nehih, Joh Heh, Woh Kaha Nah Jahai
"What is seen, is not there, what is can not be said".
"Disah Begheer Jahnana Nehi" -
"[but] Without seeing, there is no Knowing"
As everything is energy, and energy in it's natural state is invisible, it follows that everything we 'see' must be an illusion, a holographic projection or Maya - just like a dream.
But, as Kabir says, the illusion, the seeing is necessary for knowing.
The seer is not what he sees.
What he sees is not there.
The purpose of the seeing is that it leads to knowing. Seeing can lead you to 'know thyself' - so long as you stay clear of the illusions.
The words here are illusions, so are any thoughts that they may invoke. But the source of the words is not, and neither is the awareness that is perceiving them.
As Eckhart Tolle says, "What IS is is, is it not?"
4. Thoughts, Mind and Ego
I. Where Do Thoughts Come From?
You probably think that you create 'thoughts' by using YOUR mind.
Are you sure about this, sure that the thoughts occupying you now, are YOUR thoughts, that you are CREATING?
If this is indeed true, then why don't you stop creating thoughts for a minute?
How can you create something when it's a universal law of Physics that energy can not be created or destroyed?
What is compelling you to 'manufacture' thoughts.
Do you think that even though you are compelled to manufacture thoughts, you still are manufacturing them?
If that's the case, then why don't you then 'create/manufacture' thoughts that will make you a billionaire like Bill Gates, or a genius like Einstein?
You may argue that this mysterious 'thought manufacturing ability' is related to another mysterious thing called IQ; however, if you look you'll likely find 1000's of people with far bigger IQ's then Gates, so how comes they all aren't all rich like Bill Gates? Why did they not 'think' the same thoughts?
At this moment you may be aware of yourself 'thinking' something. Consider these questions:
Where did that thought come from?
What exactly is the process or mechanism of thinking?
What precisely do you DO when YOU think?
Supposing you could talk to a flower, and the flower asked you to teach it how to think, how would you go about it?
Where do you think from?
The brain you say? What bit of the brain then - the front, the middle, the back, the top or the bottom?
Specifically which cell do you think from, if you think from the brain?
My view is that thoughts just come and go, they just come and go. They have nothing to do with you, except that you give then life by attaching to them or giving them attention or focus.
We do not think from anywhere in the brain, because the brain is a piece of meat, and at the sub-atomic level just an illusion, like everything else in the Matrix or Maya.
The same for thoughts - they are things that only exist when your awareness focuses on them and gives them 'life'.
II. What Is The Mind
What exactly then is the mind?
Where could the mind be located?
Can you control your mind?
Can you switch it off?
If not, then are you sure that your mind is yours?
My view is that he mind is an instrument, a tool, that includes the brain and the five sense mechanism, but it is not limited to them or by them. This tool does the following significant things:
- The mind partitions infinite reality into illusory discrete little bits that another part of it can label. Much like a computer with its operating system and software.
- The mind creates the concept of Time by means of these bits - it takes 'time' to 'move' from one bit to another.
- The Sub-conscious part of the mind projects all that we see as a holographic reality.
- It is the mind that sees, hears, smells, feels, tastes - but not the perception or the knowing of what is seen.
- The Conscious mind interprets what we see - unaware that the sub-conscious part of it is projecting it.
Let us be very clear on this: all the objects that you can see or perceive and the mechanism of seeing/perceiving those objects are both aspects of the mind.
Object are projected by the mind, and then decoded by another aspect of the mind.
The objects are like holographic projections, without any substance, without an inherent existence - illusions - they don't exist.
However, the seer is not an illusion, the seer is.
III. What Is The EGO
The EGO is built by mixing the real self (which we have not labeled) with the minds illusions or objects, thoughts, concepts, emotions.
The mind does this by getting you (and we've discussed who you are above) to invest in or identify with an illusion that it creates.
Today EGO is prevalent where ever you go - me, me, me, ME, ME; I think this, I think that I, I WANT THIS, I WANT THAT, I, I, I. Numero uno,
Western culture in particular is designed to build and build this EGO, like a hot air balloon, which eventually bursts! Burst it must because it's not based on any substance.
In the movie The Matrix: Revolutions, Mr Smith for me symbolically embodied the ego.
In the moviw, something of the Self 'the One' had imprinted itself onto a thing that did not exist (it was just a program). Mr Smith (i.e. Ego) had become the only culprit in that movie - it threatened and destabilized everything in the Matrix.
Ego is described as the false self.
5. Meditation: Controlling Thoughts, the Mind and the Ego
The Yogis, Buddhists, Tibetan Lamas, Sufis and others realized that controlling thoughts, the mind and the ego was essential if one is to know the truth and live a happy life.
The realized, though, that you can't just switch the mind off or just drop the ego! There is no button, no "off" switch that comes with the mind or brain as people like to see it.
They discovered, however, that the Mind and the Ego can be brought under a degree of control by:
- Focusing the attention on the breath
- By observing and not attaching to thoughts, emotions or objects
- Placing full attention on the present moment or the task at hand
These are the basic techniques of meditation that the yogis and enlightened easterners mastered and taught.
They realized that only by these means could the knower know himself.
This is why you see Buddhist monks and Taoists place so much attention to breathing and in performing small actions like taking a single step.
Breath a little deeper then and focus on your breath, exhale completely, let it all go, and let all illusions go.