Contemplating Knowlege, Belief, and Ego

[StripedGiraffe]

Preface: I know nothing.

 

What is knowledge?

 

To know something, the way the word is traditionally used, means that you believe something.

 

What is belief?

 

To believe something means that you are labeling a concept in your mind as being an accurate representation of reality.

 

Our minds are constantly building a conceptual model of the world. We also create distinctions within this model. These distinctions are the only way in which we are able to "know" the world. If we were to perceive everything as one indistinct thing, we would not be able to build this conceptual model of reality that is so helpful for our biological survival. The distinctions we make with language and concepts only have meaning relative to the rest of reality that is being distinguished from. For example, the word "banana" only has meaning because it distinguishes an actual banana from the non-banana parts of reality. If reality was actually just one infinite banana, the word "banana" would have no meaning. It would be identical to saying God or Reality. This metaphor breaks down a bit because an infinite banana is not Absolute Infinity. Nevertheless, even the words God or Reality, no matter how sacred you hold them, only point to concepts in your mind. It's just something that you are distinguishing. Again, we cannot conceptualize something that is indistinct (nondual). We can only be it or be conscious of it. The moment we think about God, we get diluted. The capability of our dualistic minds doesn’t allow for it. The Universe in nondual. Being is nondual. It's our mind activity that makes it dualistic. It must be this way because our minds work with symbols, not raw reality. The human mind is Being's way of processing Itself dualistically. The domain of working with raw reality (Being) is consciousness. 

 

One of the most fundamental distinctions we make in our minds is the distinction between self and other. Just like we build a conceptual model of the world, we also build a conceptual model of ourselves. This is the ego. This is who we think we are. Let's take a look at some common lines of distinction between self and other. Let's say that I consider all of my skin to be part of me, but the air right next to my skin to be not me. Seems legit. But what if we consider the heat coming off my body. Is that heat me?  Is my hair me? What about the hair that the barber just cut off? What if my pinkie gets cut off? Is that pinky still me? What if a surgeon reattaches my pinky? Did it go from being me to not me to me again? Are my thoughts me? What about when I dream that I'm Harry Potter. Am I actually Harry Potter in that dream? Am I no longer David? Or maybe you don't actually believe that you're the body or the mind. Maybe you believe you are consciousness. Are you contained within the body? Again, what about when you dream? What if you had a samadhi experience where you become another object?

 

I would seem as if all knowledge is ultimately delusion. Knowledge is basically the art of a mind convincing itself that it has a grasp on truth. We must remember that these concepts and beliefs are not the actual truth. They are just a rough, simplistic model that exists as a mental image/movie and words. At the end of the day, knowledge is stored symbols. This contemplation seems to support my insight from my last mushroom trip (see my trip report) that everything is infinite delusion. More accurately, all knowledge is delusion. The Truth is Being. Of course, we have to remember that delusional beliefs ARE also Being. So at the same time, they are delusion, they are Truth. But hey are the map, not the territory. They are the menu, not the mango smoothie. But remember that the menu still exists and it is just as much a part of being as the smoothie is.

 

In conclusion, I have just one thing left to say. All heil the Banana.

[Spaceofawareness]

@StripedGiraffe nice post. 

 

I especially like the thoughts you have about self self and other, as I have been contemplating that a bit lately. 

My thoughts on it are this. There are two ways I seem to look at what makes our experience. We are awareness, like a canvas upon which all our experiences are layered, our ego, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, motivations, like layers in photoshop. We also have the self model, which is responsible for identifying which of these layers is part of us, or self, and which are part of the world, or other. When the self model finds a layer that it deems to be part of the self, it merges that layer with awareness, and in doing so, awareness can no longer look “at” the layer, but looks “as” the layer, identifying with that aspect of experience.

But, if the self model can be trained to view the layer of experience as something exterior, as other, awareness can look “at” the layer. The self model will view that layer as other, for example, if we have a feeling of pain in our leg, and we manage to keep the layer as an objective other by observing and not “going in”, and then, whatever other layers still are present beneath will still remain as self, without us being aware of those. 

When we have the feeling of being this detached awareness with everything external to us, and we now make this feeling of awareness the focus, the self model is left to interrogate it’s image of awareness itself. This is the image which must then collapse.

i haven’t managed to do this yet, but, this is how I have conceptualised it. These ideas aren’t my own, and even if they were, there would be no I for them to belong to, so, feel free to use them as you wish, or, do away with them completely, as in the end, concepts will become indistinct.

[StripedGiraffe]

Thanks for sharing. I like that analogy. I had an insight while reading it. Identifying as the blank awareness as viewing everything as external, if done completely, in theory, would be identical to identifying as everything or God. Also, identifying as consciousness is identical to identical to identifying as nothingness which is identical to Everything. It always comes full circle.