Wednesday, September 24, 2008

My Latest Existential Thoughts

Yesterday, I called up a friend and talked for three hours about how nothing really matters, about life being absurd, everything goes to hell anyway, about there being no matter, about everything being pre-determined, about pain (and particularly my back aches) being the cause of philosophical progress, and about how our actions don't really matter because we're insignificant compared to the size of the universe, about how everything that humans do is because it is a "surrogate activity" designed to fill in a void caused by a lack of meaning, about how marriage is an institution designed to keep people docile (ref. Gore Vidal's essay "Sex is Politics"), about how happiness can be achieved only if I could have complete control over the entire universe (ref. Leonard Cohen's "The Future"), or about how so many people in the world are starving and immersed in the fear of becoming homeless.
The first thing you need to do is become a seeker and understand the reason for living. When I use the word seeker, I mean a person who understands that the outer world is not everything; life is more than just the outer world. Whenever you feel that life is just more than what you experience through the senses you become a seeker. You start seeking the truth. Again and again, life reminds you of the truth, that life is beyond your control; especially when some near and dear ones die, or there is some accident, or you lose your job. Then, you are completely shaken, and don't know how to handle it. Either you fall into a depression or you suffer. You have to then start seeking... especially when you feel that your life is no longer in your control. The seeking should be a deep understanding, not just an emotional reaction. When understanding is added to the seeking, you will see that you will be transformed. The truth is, life itself is a psychodrama. If you understand clearly that you are playing this drama again and again and again, you will realize that being a human is nothing great. If you do the job of the body, the shell, the human, you will realize that it's just another job. It is purely your choice. It is just a matter of who chooses to play what role. But if you can escape the world of human EGO, the ID... you will be free.

It's all about transcendence. We dream, we fantasize, we get intoxicated with food and drink and physical contact, only to escape our own company if only for just a moment. Without those moments of ecstatic bliss of expansion which free us temporarily from our lives of quiet desperation, we may as well die. What is it that does it for you that lets your spirit soar high in the skies of purity? Can you remain flying in those skies, or does gravity pull you down unceremoniously? When we enter the space of deep frustration that human existence brings, and enter the vacuous emptiness that escapism through sensory excitement leaves in its wake, a new space opens. A space of bliss eternal, ever renewing, ever nurturing. A space of bliss which is not polluted, corrupted, by insiduous thoughts, or feelings, or actions. A space of bliss which has always been ours. In that space we realize, we are home... or in a number of cases [see above]... homeless.