www.radicaluncertainty.com

Author: Nicholas Williams

THE ‘CONSCIOUSNESS-ONLY’ MODEL

This model states that the ultimate nature of everything is nothing other than consciousness itself. Furthermore, consciousness cannot be ‘known’ in any conceptual way since it has no definable characteristics that can be seized upon - it has no essential features that can be matched with our mental categories in order to produce positive knowledge of it. However, despite its inherent ‘emptiness’ of anything that might logically correspond to our ways of thinking and conceptualising reality, consciousness (in this model) is said to have the property of being able to generate or project definable and knowable realities, which it can relate to as if they were not its own creation, which is to say, as if the said definite realities are themselves primary (i.e. independent) phenomena. This is the principle of ‘reification’.

Therefore, consciousness can play a game with itself whereby it creates completely effective illusions, which when believed in become pragmatically (or relatively) real. The property of being able to easily believe that such-and-such is true, or that some other thing is true, is a fundamental form of gullibility and in the absence of wisdom this gullibility is the main property of consciousness. The way this works is through the process of ‘irreversible information loss’: when I fall into the trap of believing that such-and-such a proposition is true, then what happens is that I immediately lose the possibility of seeing the world in any other way and so the ‘information content’ of my world collapses or crashes. Information as a concept can be directed correlated with the amount of ‘perspective’ that we have on things. Therefore, maximum information is when we have no restriction whatsoever on the number of ways in which we can see the world. This means that we are open to new ways of seeing things, we are open to ‘newness’.

Consciousness can therefore be ‘defined’ (in a manner of speaking) as a state of complete openness or freedom, or also as a state of pure unfettered perspective in which everything is shown as it is, i.e. empty of any static, fixed or limiting characteristics. Another way of explaining this is to say that consciousness is where we can see that there are an infinite number of ‘right’ ways in which to describe (or see) the world, which means of course that there is no one definite way to see the world. Instead of being a static or endlessly-repeating structure, therefore, the world is seen to be a movement, a ‘continuous unfolding of the new’.

When we believe that reality is capable of being exhaustively described (i.e. that there is a definite right way to understand or describe it) then the process of acquiring knowledge is basically an inexorable approach to a fixed position or standpoint; once we actually reach this position, then there is no further motion. This is the type of change called optimization, i.e. getting closer and closer to a known or knowable destination. When we do not have this ‘closed’ approach to things, then instead of a process of progressively accumulating positive knowledge, there is a negative process whereby false knowledge is gradually stripped away, like the layers of skin in an onion. This is the so-called negative way, the via negativa. We are not approaching a fixed position, but rather we are gradually perceiving that there is no such thing as a fixed position. When we travel down the via negativa, life shows itself to be a continuous journey into the unknown; there is no ‘final resting place for our mind’, only an ever-deepening understanding of the inscrutability and mystery of both ourselves and the universe that we are part of. In fact these two things are ultimately revealed not as two separate or unconnected mysteries, but as the very same mystery. There is not ‘consciousness plus its objects’, or ‘consciousness plus the world from which it arose’, but only consciousness.

According to this model, consciousness can be thought of as infinite information (or, alternatively, as infinite freedom). Any ‘true’ freedom must be infinite since if there is any restriction whatsoever then there is no freedom. This endless freedom contains all possibilities, no possibilities are excluded at all, which is a very strange thing to contemplate. If everything is allowed, then even the possibility that ‘not everything is allowed’ is allowed. Thus, negative freedom is born, which is the freedom that we have not to be free. Negative freedom is the ‘freedom’ to follow a set of strictly defined rules: we are free to buy any colour car we want just so long as it is black; we are free to think and do whatever we want just so long as we think it and do it in the way that we are allowed to. This is called ‘conditioned existence’ because everything we do is subject to conditions. Here we are under the law of ‘self’ (or ‘selfishness’) because everything we perceive and think and do is conditioned by our belief in a separate, all-important self. No matter where we go, we drag along the ‘self’ with us like a convict with a ball and chain.

On the one hand, the conditioned self offers us satisfaction - it allows us to feel the pleasure of possession, the experience of having ‘ownership’ of our experiences. On the other hand, the promise of personally owning something wonderful is never actually delivered: there is a worm in the golden apple, a snake in the Garden of Eden. I get a tantalizing taste of the prize, only to lose it again - I gain only in order to lose. The pleasures the self obtains are transient, and are ultimately cancelled out by the suffering that it incurs as a result of its attachment to itself and its objects. And finally, it faces the inevitability of death, which for the conditioned self is always the ‘great fear’. In fact, everything the conditioned self attains in life is bound to be undone later on; this is because the conditioned self does not actually exist. The insight into this essential ‘meaninglessness’ is something that the conditioned self runs away from whenever it can – it can never accept it, for if it did then it would have to accept its own unreality, its own nullity.

True freedom means no limits, no conditions, no boundaries, no edges. As the Buddhist saying has it, there are no endings, only changes. An end is a cut-off, a limit, a boundary – it is the hallmark of conditioned existence. If there are no boundaries then there are no beginnings and no endings. Furthermore, if there are no boundaries then there are no separate entities, no ‘me’ and no ‘you’. The conditioned self is separate and subject to birth and death, but the unconditioned self is not separate and it is not subject to birth and death, since birth and death are concepts that only makes sense from the point of view of a finite mind-frame, from a limited and static way of understanding things.

Conditioned realities flick in and out of existence constantly like pictures on a TV set. The underlying consciousness which generates these pictures, however has no beginning and no end because it is subject to no conditions. It is outside of space and outside of time, it was not created and it cannot be destroyed. The only law here is the Law of Love.

We are tempted to ask what this consciousness is all about, we want to ‘know what the story is’ with it. We also want to know what pure, ungrounded consciousness is like. This is a fascinating question, but it is at the same time a futile question, because we want to know ‘about’ consciousness from the safe position of our everyday understanding. If we really (genuinely) wanted to know we would find out by being conscious, not by thinking about it. Instead of settling for second hand gossip, we would go for direct personal experience. Wanting to know what consciousness is like is like trying to imagine what it would be like to wake up when you are still asleep – you can dream about waking up, and you can dream about being awake, but when you dream of being awake you are still every bit as asleep as you are when you dream about anything else. The rational mind always pretends to be interested in learning about mysterious phenomena (and the big, wide world in general) but what it is really interested in is enriching its own repertory of things to talk about. It is interested only in itself, when it comes down to it. The problem is that our every day ‘self’ is insincere, and doesn’t actually want to do what it talks about wanting to do. From this ‘false self’, nothing real can ever happen, and as long as we persist in thinking (or hoping) that something can happen, then we are stuck in it indefinitely.

The basic idea is, therefore, that consciousness as we usually encounter it is ‘asleep’ and dreaming. It has ‘broken up’ into an infinity of private dreaming bubbles, private worlds, each containing a private dreamer who believes himself or herself to be awake. Each closed (or disconnected) unit of consciousness is a ‘false self’, an actor in a play that it has written for itself. For this reason, reality as we generally perceive it is said to be ‘an illusion’. Crucial to this view is the idea that there are two opposed forces: the force which pulls us in the direction of self-forgetting (which is where information is ‘lost’), and the force which motivates us to move in the opposite direction of self-remembering. One force pulls us into darkness, the other force leads us on to the light.

Downwards is of course always the easiest direction to travel. This is the direction of ‘avoiding discomfort’, it is the inevitable result of wishing to have an unchallenging life. M. Scott Peck calls this the force of laziness (or ‘entropy’) - we know that more is required of us but we take the easy option, we sell ourselves short for the sake of immediate gratification (or for the sake of finding quick relief from uncomfortable feelings).

Due to the inverting property of psychological entropy (i.e. the principle of deceptiveness) movement in information-reducing direction does not appear as a loss, but as a positive gain. It seems to us as if we are getting to the real ‘meat’ of things, as if we are moving into reality, but really we are ‘moving into reification’ – we are moving downwards.

The downwards movement occurs whenever we act on the basis of attraction or aversion (greed or fear). In both cases we react to what we think is going to happen, and so we get trapped in our preconceptions about the world. To ‘not react’ is therefore a difficult thing because we have to risk (as it seems to us) missing out on something ‘good’, or getting saddled with something ‘bad’. The rational mind will do its best to persuade us that we have to act (or react) and if all else fails it will play its ‘trump card’, it will threaten us with our worst fear.

There are various obstacles to moving in the information-increasing (self-remembering) direction. One would be ‘inconceivability’ – we simply cannot understand or believe that there can be anything that is radically different than what we already know about. Our common-sense has us under a sort of magic spell – it has us hypnotised. The hypnotic trance of rationality gets all the more powerful when we are scared, greedy or under stress. Therefore, if we are in a difficult situation, then we cannot see that there are any other possibilities other than the obvious ones that we already understand. All we know is ‘fight or flight’.

Another obstacle is unacknowledged fear – we are blasé, self-confident, and cynical about anything we do not understand and we fail to see that our glib attitude exists purely to cover up the fact that we are afraid of the unknown. Another (related) factor is our automatic refusal to experience the pain that comes with seeing our true predicament. We might have some experience that has the potential to change us, but because the experience is too painful, or too weird, we make sure that we forget about it. In fact, the motivation behind forgetting (or ‘losing perspective’) can be seen in terms of ‘avoiding fear’ since we are moving out of reality, and into a surrogate, oversimplified version of reality which is basically a ‘defensive position’. To sum up, moving in the direction of self-remembering is perfectly possible (it is actually the most natural thing in the world), but we handicap ourselves by refusing to believe in it, and by trusting only in our own narrow (and ultimately delusory) understanding of things. We refuse to face fear, and so seek refuge in our defensive way of seeing the world.

There is a subtler way of understanding why there should be an obstacle to moving upwards, and this way can be explained in terms of the ‘virtual self’. The virtual self is a tautological entity, an exercise in make believe that thinks it is real, a pretence that somehow sticks and becomes real (like a ugly face which we make and get stuck with when the wind suddenly changes direction). The virtual self mistakes itself for the True Self, and cannot on this account let go of itself. Its continued existence becomes (to itself) the most important thing in the world, and because of this fundamental attachment it has no choice but to ‘hold onto itself’ no matter what. The virtual self is enslaved by its own self-concern, but rather than face this ugly truth it prefers to live under the pleasing illusion that it is free, and not fundamentally ‘selfish’.

A logical extension of this illusory type of freedom is the virtual self’s belief that it is genuinely committed to truth, and to its own evolution in the direction of greater understanding of the truth. It is quite capable of fooling itself that it wants to evolve, and is prepared to pay whatever price may be needed, but its real agenda is simply to hang in there, to perpetuate itself forever. The virtual self may ‘talk the talk’, but it doesn’t ‘walk the walk’. It is in fact inevitable that its attempts to transcend its own game are no more than another refinement of the game since everything it does is based on what it understands, and ‘what it understands’ always equals ‘the rules of the game’. Its goals are bound to be the goals of the game, and the goal of going beyond the game is also the game. When evolution is reduced to a ‘goal’, evolution becomes a pretence. The unpalatable truth is that for the virtual self, everything is entertainment, and this includes its own so-called ‘spiritual quest’.

LITERATURE SEARCH

The primacy of the infinite, the overwhelming tendency to flow downstream from the infinite to the finite, and the utter impossibility of explaining (or proving) the infinite from the point of view of the finite, is here set out by Alan Watts (p 46-7):

ALAN WATTS. 1950. THE SUPREME IDENTITY. WILDWOOD HOUSE.

Almost without exception the sacred writings begin their exposition of the ultimate Reality without preface, argument or proof. The modern philosopher will regard this as a hopeless prejudice, for to adopt the existence of the infinite or of God as one’s major premise is against every rule of his science. But it cannot be otherwise, for as the reality of light cannot be proved or described in terms of visible shape, the reality of the infinite cannot be proved in terms of the finite. For this reason every attempt to prove the existence of God by logic is a foregone failure. Logic cannot reach God. It may travel backwards in time from event to cause, but as long as it stays in time, as it must, it cannot touch the eternal. That which does not begin with the infinite cannot end with it. The most that can be said is that finite contingencies suggest the infinite; in no sense can they be said to prove it. The stream of existence seems to run from the infinite to the finite so that one cannot swim against it. for the purposes of discussion one can reach the infinite only by jumping upstream like a salmon, though for the purposes of realization, of true knowledge, it will be seen that, flow as it may, the stream can never leave the infinite.

The ‘consciousness-only’ model is probably most familiar in connection with Buddhist ideas, but what is not generally so well understood is the extent to which similar ideas permeate certain strands of Western philosophy. Jean Hardy (1987) in her book A Psychology with a Soul has an excellent section on the roots of Western mysticism. The basic idea of an illusory dream-like realm inhabited by units of ‘sleeping consciousness’ versus the reality of pure Consciousness she traces back to Plato and beyond (see P 117):

Jean Hardy. 1987. A Psychology with a Soul. Woodgrange Press.

The understanding that most human beings are asleep is linked to Plato’s view of the nature of reality: that the world we see around us is an imperfect copy of the truly real world, the perfect world or archetype. The ‘Platonic’ view of the material world as an image of its ideal archetype is central to much later mystical thinking and experience.

Hardy also quotes a modern author, Evelyn Underhill, who is particularly explicit in the way she outlines this viewpoint:

Evelyn Underhill. 1974. Mysticism. New American Library.

By false desires and false thoughts man has built up for himself a false universe: as a mollusc, by deliberate and persistent absorption of lime and the rejection of all else, can build up for itself a hard shell which shuts it out from the external world, and only represents in a distorted and misrepresentative form the ocean from which it was obtained. This hard and wholly unnutritious shell, this one-sided secretion of the surface consciousness, makes as it were a little cave of illusion for each separate soul. A literal and deliberate getting out of the cave must be for every mystic, as it was for Plato’s prisoners, the first step in the individual hunt for reality… We see a sham world because we live a sham life.

As Hardy goes on to say, Platonic ideas formed part of tradition of Western Alchemy, along with a vast amount of obscure symbology, and even more obscure doctrines. The basic model remains the same, however, as we can see from Colin Wilson’s account of the alchemical ideas of Giordano Bruno’.

COLIN WILSON. (1978). MYSTERIES – AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE OCCULT, THE PARANORMAL, AND THE SUPERNATURAL. GRAFTON BOOKS.

…Fifty years later, Giordano Bruno had the courage – and the intemperance – to state in plain terms the idea that was only hinted at in Cammilo and implied in Paracelsus: that if man is the ‘great miracle’ mentioned by Hermes Trismegistos, then the discovery of his own inner powers will turn him into a god. This is the vision at the heart of his major work, The Art of Memory. The mind of man is divine, and contains within itself the starry heavens. If man can grasp this universal plan – by means of a magical art of memory – then he will be able to tap the power of the cosmos. The magic power emanates from the ‘seals’, the images of the stars. He who understands the ‘seals’ will become a magus and possess the power to open the ‘black diamond doors’ in the psyche. Bruno also hints that such a man will burn with a kind of ‘heroic frenzy’ (eroici furori) and will bring salvation to the human race.

The consciousness-only model has found also found expression within a more modern idiom, as we can see from the following account by Robert Anton Wilson:

ROBERT ANTON WILSON. 1987. PROMETHEUS RISING. NEW FALCON PRESS.

Imprints (software frozen into hardware) are the non-negotiable aspects of our individuality. Out of the infinity of possible programs existing as possible software, the imprint establishes the limits, parameters, perimeters within which all subsequent conditioning and learning occurs.

Before the first imprint, the consciousness of the infant is “formless and void” - like the universe at the beginning of Genesis, or the descriptions of unconditioned (“enlightened” i.e., exploded) consciousness in the mystic traditions. As soon as the first imprint is made, structure emerges out of the creative void. The growing mind, alas, becomes trapped within this structure. It identifies with the structure; in a sense, it becomes the structure.

This entire process is analysed in G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form, and Brown was writing about the foundations of mathematics and logic. But every sensitive reader knows that Brown is also talking about a process we have all passed through in creating, out of an infinite ocean of signals, those particular constructs we call ‘myself’ and ‘my world’.

Physicist Amit Goswami has written a book in which he argues the case for what he calls ‘monistic idealism’, partly on the basis of modern physics. In this passage (p 48) he introduces this paradigm, the paradigm of unitary consciousness:

AMIT GOSWAMI. (1993) THE SELF-AWARE UNIVERSE. SIMON SCHUSTER.

The antithesis of material realism is monistic idealism. In this philosophy, consciousness, not matter is fundamental. Both the world of matter and the world of mental phenomena, such as thought, are determined by consciousness. In addition to the material and the mental selves (which together form the immanent reality, or world of manifestation) idealism posits a transcendental, archetypal realm of ideas as the source of mental and material phenomena. It is important to recognize that monistic idealism is, as its name implies, a unitary philosophy; any subdivisions, such as the immanent and the transcendent, are within consciousness. Thus consciousness is the only ultimate reality.

In the West, the philosophy of monistic idealism has been stated most influentially by Plato, who in The Republic gave us his famous allegory of the cave. As hundreds of generations of philosophy students have learned, this allegory clearly illustrates the fundamental concepts of idealism. Plato imagines human beings sitting in a cave in a fixed position so that they always face the wall. The great universe outside is a shadow show projected on the wall of the cave, and we humans are shadow watchers. We watch shadow-illusions that we mistake for reality. The real reality is behind us, in the light and archetypal forms that cast the shadows on the wall. In this allegory, the shadow shows the unreal immanent manifestations in human experience of archetypal realities that belong to a transcendent world. In truth, light is the only reality, for light is all we see. In monistic idealism, consciousness is like the light in Plato’s cave.

Philosophical writing can sometimes comes across as being rather drab or tedious – somehow missing the point – whereas pure fiction has the potential to introduce these basic themes in a highly dramatic and ‘alive’ way, as the following passages show:

PHILIP K DICK. (1981). THE DIVINE INVASION. HARPERCOLLINS.

[P 133-4] …What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don’t know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison, and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burst the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox as he treadeth out the corn, he thought, remembering the Torah. You will not imprison a free creature; you will not bind it. Thus sayeth the Lord your God. Thus I say.

They do not know whom they serve. This is the heart of their misfortune: service in error, to a wrong thing. They are poisoned as if with metal, he thought. Metal confining them and metal in their blood; this is a metal world. Driven by cogs, a machine that grinds along, dealing out suffering and death… They are so accustomed to death, he realized, as if death, too, were natural. How long has it been since they knew the garden? The place of resting animals and flowers. When can I find for them that place again?

They are two realities, he said to himself. The Black Iron Prison, which is called the Cave of Treasures, in which they now live, and the Palm tree Garden with its enormous spaces, its light, where they originally dwelt. Now they are literally blind, he thought. Literally unable to see more than a short distance; far away objects are invisible to them now. Once in a while one of them guesses that formerly they had faculties now gone; once in a while one of them discerns the truth, that they are not now what they were and not where they were. But they forget again, exactly as I forgot. And I still forget somewhat, he realized. I still have only partial vision. I am occluded, too.

But I will not be, soon. …

RICHARD BACH. (1977). ILLUSIONS – THE ADVENTURES OF A RELUCTANT MESSIAH. DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.

[P 69] “Listen!” He called across the gulf between us. “This world? And everything in it? Illusions, Richard! Every bit of it illusions! Do you understand that?” there was no wink, no smile; as though he was suddenly furious with me for not knowing long ago.

[P 48-9] “Just your imagination! Of course it’s just your imagination! This world is your imagination, have you forgotten? Where your thinking is, there is your experience; As a man thinks, so is he; That which I feared has come upon me; Think and grow rich; Creative visualization for fun and profit; How to find friends by being who you are. Your imagining doesn’t change the Is one whit, doesn’t affect reality at all. But we are talking about Warner Brother worlds, MGM lifetimes, and every second of these are illusions and imaginations. All dreams with the symbols we waking dreamers conjure for ourselves.”

For the most to-the-point and unmistakable references, however, there are few to surpass those found in the huge canon of Buddhist literature. We can take just two examples:

34-35: THE FLOWER GARLAND SUTRA
(Taken from Daniel Montgomery. 1991. Fire in the Lotus. Mandala.)

Both delusion and Enlightenment originate within the mind, and every existence or phenomenon arises from the functions of the mind, just as different things appear from the sleeve of a magician. The activities of the mind have no limit, they form the surroundings of life. An impure mind surrounds itself with impure things and a pure mind surrounds itself with pure things; hence, surroundings have no more limits than the activities of the mind. Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings are created by the activity of the mind. While surroundings created by Buddha are pure and free from defilement, those created by ordinary men are not so. The mind conjures up multifarious forms just as a skilful painter creates pictures of various worlds. There is nothing in the world that is not mind-created. A Buddha is like our mind; sentient beings are just like Buddha. Therefore there is no difference among the mind, Buddhas, and sentient beings in their capability of creating all things.

SHEN-YEN. (1997) COMPLETE ENLIGHTENMENT – ZEN COMMENTS ON THE SUTRA OF COMPLETE ENLIGHTENMENT. SHAMBALA.

“What is ignorance? Virtuous man, since beginningless time, all sentient beings have had all sorts of delusions, like a disoriented man who has lost his sense of direction. They mistake the four great elements as attributes of their bodies; and the conditioned impressions of the six sense objects as the attributes of their minds. They are like a man with an illness of the eyes who sees an [illusory] flower in the sky, or a second moon.

“Virtuous man, there is in reality no flower in the sky, yet the sick man mistakenly clings to it. Because of his mistaken clinging, he is not only deluded about the intrinsic nature of the empty space, but also confused about the arising of the flower. Because of this false existence [to which he clings] he remains in the turning wheel of birth and death. Hence this is called ignorance.

“Virtuous man, this ignorance has no real substance. It is like a person in a dream. Though the person exists in the dream, when [the dreamer] awakens, there is nothing that can be grasped. Like an [illusory] flower in the sky that vanishes into empty space, one cannot say that there is a fixed place from which it vanishes. Why? Because there is no place from which it arises! Amidst the unarisen, all sentient beings deludedly perceive birth and extinction. Hence this is called the turning wheel of birth and death.

“Virtuous man, all illusory projections of sentient beings arise from the wondrous mind of the Tathagata’s Complete Enlightenment, just like flowers in the sky which come into existence from out of the sky. When the illusory flower vanishes, the nature of the sky is not marred. Likewise, the illusory mind of sentient beings relies on illusory [cultivation] for its extinction. When all illusions are extinguished, the enlightened mind remains unmoved. Speaking of enlightenment in contrast to illusion is itself an illusion. To say that enlightenment exists is to not have left illusion yet. [However], to say that enlightenment does not exist is also no different. Therefore, the extinction of illusion is called the unmoving [mind of enlightenment].

“Virtuous man, all bodhisattvas and sentient beings in the Dharma Ending Age should separate [themselves] from all illusory projections and deluded realms. [However], when one clings firmly to the mind that separates [from all illusory projections and deluded realms] this mind [should also be taken as] an illusion, and one should separate oneself from it. Because this separation is an illusion, it should also be separated. One should then be free even from this ‘separating from the illusion of separation!’ When there remains nothing to be separated from, all illusions are eliminated. It is like rubbing two pieces of wood together to obtain fire. When the fire ignites and the wood completely burns, the ashes fly away and the smoke vanishes. Using illusion to remedy illusion is just like this. Yet even though illusions are exhausted, one does not enter annihilation.

“Virtuous man, to know illusion is to depart from it; there is no [need to] contrive expedient means! To depart from illusion is to be enlightened; there are no gradual steps! All bodhisattvas and sentient beings in the Dharma Ending Age who practice accordingly will permanently leave illusions behind.”