Escape From The Percept/Product Box

IN HELD TWAS IN I----At a time like this, which exists maybe only for me, but is nonetheless real, if I can communicate, and in the telling and the bearing of my soul anything is gained, even though the words which I use are pretentious and make you cringe with embarrassment, let me remind you of the pilgrim who asked for an audience with the Dalai Lama. He was told he must first spend five years in contemplation. After the five years, he was ushered into the Dalai Lama's presence, who said, 'Well, my son, what do you wish to know?' So the pilgrim said, 'I wish to know the meaning of life, father.' And the Dalai Lama smiled and said, 'Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?'


If I Am To Find Percept/Product Free Consciousness, I Will
Find It In The Grasping Act Of Comprehension

Keaau Beach

June ‘73

Moving forward through consciousness means moving along the
percept/product continuum, a journey that is bound to leave a
sensitive person unfulfilled and unsatisfied. It is a journey devoid
of authenticity-- one man's percept is another man's product. Truth
here becomes just another word for fabrication, which in turn,
consists of means, mode and end. Interpretation is the means,
percept/product, the mode, and relativity the end. If I want more out
of consciousness, I must move in a different direction--but how?

Strange! I feel like Descartes must have felt when he ended his
meditations with the realization that existence exists; that is, with
his "cogitio ergo sum," which was the same thing. How could it be any
different? How could anything be questioned unless a questioning
subject existed? Essentially, Descartes turned existence on its head
when he concluded: I doubt, therefore I exist. That seems to be
where I am at right now. If there are answers outside of the
percept/product continuum, then those answers must not be a product of
anything. Products lie inside the continuum. As a "product," the
percept/product continuum is always ahead of me. But, I am in the act
of grasping, of comprehension, before I comprehend anything. If I am
to find a consciousness that is percept/product free, I suspect I will
find it in this "act of grasping,” in this "act" of comprehension. I
must therefore, if I am to acquire this consciousness, stop moving
forward in consciousness, and instead, move in full retreat.

Before the answer, there is the question. Before the question, there
is mere possibility. Something is responsible for the percept/product
world, the world we live in (quantum mechanics suggests an answer to
this question, but that is a conversation for another time). Existing as
mere possibility, I become/became that something. Whatever mere possibility
is, I am the “engine that realizes the product.” I am the possibility that carries
forward the percept/product continuum--as the product of the percept!

Thrown into the world, I become the world. I am inseparable from the
world, but, simultaneously, the world ceases to be "my world" as I
cease to "be me." In the world, clouds, trees, flowers, and campfires,
all the "things of the world," are perceptions given to me as I give
myself to them. Together we are, and separate, we are not. My
subjective consciousness, in this respect, becomes objective. All
"objects of consciousness," in this way, participate in the
percept/product continuum.

Because, "I am not what I am, and I am what I am not," I can conclude
that I am both "not-me and me," simultaneously. This is certainly a
strange statement. But, I believe, it is a true statement. It's as if
I had just stepped across the threshold into Alice's "looking glass
world." Over there, or should I say over here, through the glass, the
faster I run toward something, the farther away from it I get. In this
place, it becomes impossible to know anything about what's "really
real." Identity per se is fraudulent. In this world, "being my
possibilities," is the closest I can get to "being me." Once I
actually become something, I am forced to be something, or someone,
other than who I am. So there it is-- whatever it is. “Consciousness is
a slippery and strange fella," indeed.

Given that I have come so far without really going anywhere, I want to
conclude with a few brief speculations. If I am not myself, if I am
something other than myself, where am I? Will I ever attain myself?
"Being what I am not" is not a very pleasant experience. It makes more
sense to say I am already dead. Perhaps, I will become myself when I
die. Perhaps, I am dead already. That makes more sense than to call
self, not-self, and not-self, self. What is life anyway, except "a
waiting for death?" Life is so unstable and consuming. At least death
is logical. Everything is satisfied, at rest, "being what it is,"
instead of what it is not. Perhaps, life is really death, and death is
really life. That makes more sense, except, why would life have death,
if death were really life? Why would you die into life? I don't know. (Stay tuned,
I answer these questions in the end.)

In a nuclear holocaust, the percept/product is pushed to its limit, ---
absurdity (nuclear holocaust) is the result. Absurdity also results when
you do an about-face and move in the opposite direction.
Perhaps, this is all part of an infinitely large whole, and we are an
infinitesimally small part of that whole. Perhaps, our consciousness
is at a transitional stage in its evolution, and something will eventually
push it into a higher plane of consciousness, where we will finally understand
why we are what we are not. Perhaps, death is an incomprehensible part of the
whole, and sooner or later, we will evolve into more than the sum of
our parts. Absurd? I do not know! At least, here, in this world, we can
still have another cup of tea, or was it Treacle? I'm not sure anymore!