“The quantitive limit of pleasure is the elimination of all feelings of pain.” Epicurus
“The prudent man pursues freedom from pain, not pleasure.” Aristotle
“Happiness is nothing but a dream, and pain real.” Voltaire
“The fool runs after the pleasures of life and sees himself cheated; the sage avoids pain.” Schopenhauer
I could go on, but hopefully you get the message. The quote from Voltaire is particularly apt. Try and recall all the times you have imagined pleasures – the dream vacation, winning over a very attractive sexual partner, the promise of delicious food in an expensive restaurant, and the night out that would deliver untold pleasures. What tends to happen is that the dream vacation involves flight delays, cockroach infested hotels, sickness and so on. That exciting sexual partner turns into the beast from hell, and the great night out is hollow and painful. Pleasure is nearly always imaginary, and even when we do experience pleasure it tends to leave a bitter after-taste. Pain however is real. If you have toothache their can be no peace until a visit to the dentist corrects the situation.
I mention all this because once we can accept that death is nothing to us we can get on with the business of living, and the purpose of life is the avoidance of pain. Spinoza states it very clearly in his Ethics:
“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
It may seem that what is being said here is trite, but it is the height of wisdom. The alternative of course is suicide, but people only commit suicide when the pain of existence is greater than the will to life. So avoidance of pain is a very good way to stay alive.
As a functioning organism we may be nothing after death, but during life we are definitely something. The skills required to live the best life are explained in great detail by Epictetus, Epicurus, Seneca, Spinoza, and even more recent writers such as Camus. Yes, death will make us nothing, but then again death means nothing to us.
THE TASK
We tend to forget that experience depends on a perceiving subject and objects that can be perceived. During the waking hours we have experiences, but when the brain largely shuts down at night the subject and perceived objects disappear and we experience very little. The subject, the thing that experiences, is a product of the brain. This fact is staring us in the face because the subject, the sense of something that experiences, disappears when we sleep. Deep dreamless sleep is the most extreme example. Dreaming is the result of a brain that is still functioning to some degree, and as a result images are formed and the subject is still functioning, although much more dimly.
That the subject, the thing we call a “self” is a temporary phenomenon depending on the activity of the brain, is so obvious we overlook it. Gurdjieff commented many times that our everyday waking consciousness was not our real consciousness. He claimed the subconscious was the real part of us. In my opinion Gurdjieff’s claim doesn’t really help. Whether we like it or not our brains are active for the largest part of the day, and so we need to find ways to mitigate the suffering associated with its activity. The primary activity of the brain during waking hours is to serve the survival program – find food, earn money, seek shelter, company, a mate and so on. If the desires associated with the survival program are fulfilled we experience pleasure, otherwise we experience pain.
So the task we are charged with, as reasoning beings, is to minimize our suffering during the waking hours of the brain. Spinoza was accused of three grave sins – he largely dismissed the notion of consciousness (he replaced this with thought), the denial that the universe contains any objective notion of good and evil (what is good is what helps me understand, and what is evil is what inhibits my understanding), and finally that we can banish what he called “the sad passions”. Among the sad passions Spinoza included many that were extremely useful to the religions – regret, remorse, shame, pity, embarrassment and so on.
The reason Spinoza claims that good and evil relate only to our ability to understand, indicates how important he believed understanding is. And it is important because it is instrumental in helping us deal with the sad passions – the emotions that cause us pain. Spinoza was very clear. We are small things living in a very large, indifferent universe and most of the forces at work are much more powerful than we are. He is quite explicit – God/Nature is the cause of our suffering, but by developing understanding we can be the source of our own pleasure even when events and circumstances work against us. I quote fro Prop 18 Part 5 The Ethics:
So insofar as we understand God to be the cause of pain, to that extent we feel pleasure.
It’s a strange statement, but extraordinarily deep. By developing understanding of the nature of existence and our own nature we can find ways to diminish the sad passions. The religious figures of the day hated this. Religions depend on the notion that we somehow feel inadequate or are somehow flawed. His works were essentially banished for centuries after his death.
To summarize. Our waking consciousness is driven by the survival program. When its desires are fulfilled we feel pleasure, and when they are not we feel pain. The emotions that derive from these pleasures and pain are legion, but they are also passive. The task at hand is to become active within, and to become the source of our own pleasure. We can only do this through understanding. Meditation, chanting, devotional practices, philosophizing as a pure intellectual activity, religious practices – none of these things will bring some degree of liberation from the survival program. Reason and understanding hold the key, which is why they are of interest to so few people.
THE MYTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Most traditions that have been imported from the east place consciousness right at the heart of their sales pitch. Gurdjieff was particularly inclined to do this, with talk of higher levels of consciousness. Other traditions speak of cosmic consciousness and the like, and seekers in the West have swallowed these promises hook, line and sinker – which of course tends to imply that these people are dissatisfied with their current state of consciousness.
One of the most illuminating comments ever made about consciousness is that made by Deleuze as part of his commentary on Spinoza:
Consciousness is only a dream with one’s eyes open.
When we sleep we are typically either completely out of it (in deep dreamless sleep), or we are sucked into, and identify with, a world of our own creation called a dream. It is also important to note that during sleep we lose the sense of being a person with continuity of existence – our “self” disappears, indicating it is only a phantom associated with our everyday consciousness – a product of memory.
Our waking everyday consciousness creates a number of illusions according to Deleuze and Spinoza. The first is the illusion of being able to “do”. We are conscious of our desires, but wholly unconscious of the causes of those desires. And so we might believe that our one hour workout in the gym proves we can do, whereas it is simply the effect of unconscious causes – vanity, fear of poor health, addiction to the hormones given off during exertion. Just as in a dream where we passively accept whatever the brain conjures up, so the reality of our waking consciousness is that we manifest the effects of unknown causes. We are an effect and not a cause, and our everyday is the dream of a puppet being pushed and pulled around by unknown causes. Closely related to this is the illusion of free will. We believe we are a center of initiative, when in reality we are automatons wholly determined by environment and conditioning. Our waking experience is a dream, although of a different kind to the dreams we have when asleep. Our waking dream includes a level of continuity, with the illusion of a “self”, the illusion of control, and the illusion that we are a source of initiative.
So where exactly is this much talked about “consciousness”. It doesn’t exist. We are as much in a dream when awake, as when we are asleep. It is a dream of a different kind, but a dream all the same. In reality our waking dream is primarily concerned with survival. The nee
ds of the body program this waking dream so we spend most of our time gathering resources, or finding a mate to produce the next generation. Our days are typically spent working, acquiring money, food and shelter, so that the body might thrive. This waking dream is a survival dream, and as Deleuze states so powerfully, it is a dream with eyes open.
The realization of our utter slavery to the waking survival dream can be a source of despair or delight. If our waking self feels cheated then this realization may lead to despair. If on the other hand we come to see that we cannot do, that we are programmed automata, then we can sit back and watch the show with some level of detachment. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream …
A DEAD END CALLED CONSCIOUSNESS
The universe as a whole is unconscious, or so it would seem. Of course, we could propose conscious states of existence that we know nothing of - but we could also propose that the soup-dragon created the universe by breathing fire. We will work with the facts as we see them. Pretty much everything in the universe is unconscious, and by unconscious, I mean no reflective consciousness. A dog is part of existence, but it doesn’t seem to reflect on the fact it exists, and so by our definition, we would say that the dog and all other non-human life is unconscious.
Various writers have commented that humanity is overburdened with consciousness, and not least because individuals are aware of the fact they will die. Human beings not only suffer, as all other sentient things do, but they can anticipate suffering and reflect upon it. Such is the burden put on man by his consciousness that many mainstream writers (Freud, Rank, Adler) see man as an animal that is incapable of bearing an awareness of reality. And so he hides in symbols - words, images, systems, and anything else that might take him away from the awful reality of being something very tiny in a vast universe. Animals are spared this torture. Conditioned by their instincts and habits they do not contemplate the immense spaces between planets, suns, and galaxies for example. The world of an animal is a tiny thing. The world of man is too large to bear. And so consciousness doesn’t seem to have helped us here very much, creating a neurosis in man that cannot be avoided.
It might be that consciousness in man is nothing more than an overdeveloped mechanism for dealing with the outside world. As such consciousness is a terminus - an end point for the unconscious processing that takes place within the body. The body is quite happy sleeping at night, but if it needs to visit the bathroom it has to invoke consciousness of the outside world; otherwise, it would just continue with sleep. Our waking activities can be seen as nothing more than the body calling us to action to earn money, procreate, eat, defecate and carry out any other actions required for life of the body. It is clear that the body operates unconsciously whenever it can - digestion, gland function, heart rhythm, liver function and so on. This sense we have of being a self, of being someone, seems likely to be wholly erroneous. Memory and a map of the body created by the brain in the brain stem give us a sense of continuity, but there is no ‘self.’ Without a reflective consciousness, we wouldn’t even be able to posit a self.
Somewhat ironically many religious and spiritual schools glorify our consciousness, when it is really our subconscious that represents what we truly are. Trying to become more and more conscious, because we believe or have been taught that a pot of gold lies at the end of the consciousness rainbow, is folly. Consciousness is a dead end, and we need to move the opposite way - toward the subconscious. There is an undeniable point here to show that this is true. Every night we experience several hours of deep dreamless sleep. During that time there is no sorrow, worry, pain or other kinds of affliction. Our waking hours, however, are typically plagued with pain - physical and emotional. Our body is the same body in both states, but one is essentially blissful and the other purgatory. One is unconscious and the other conscious - take your pick.
It seems that our over-developed waking consciousness has served the purpose of making us the dominant species - but at such a high price. Our everyday waking consciousness is just an appendage, and Schopenhauer even called it a parasite. Gurdjieff said our real consciousness is our subconscious, and our ordinary waking consciousness a phantom. We as personalities and persons are phantoms.
Don’t go searching for heightened states of consciousness - go the other way and sink into your subconscious. And don’t underestimate deep dreamless sleep - Socrates said it didn’t get any better than that.
EXPECT NOTHING
Are you always feeling let down? Are things never going your way? Then you need to visit ancient Rome and listen to Seneca. He was the wealthiest man on the planet during his days in Rome, and at the end of his life, he was told to commit suicide by Nero. He tried to slash his wrists, but that didn't work because he was old, and the blood flow wasn't very healthy, so he had to sit in a hot bath for about an hour then slash his wrists, which worked. But Seneca was a very wise man, yet people who are in “spiritual work” turn their noses up at people like the Stoic philosophers, when the Stoics could teach them a thing or two. Anyway, Seneca said ‘no man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity.’ Now I generalize that, and I'd say no man is crushed by misfortune unless he's first been deceived by fortune. Our life consists of expecting things - when you go to work, you expect to make money, when you have a relationship, you expect some affection, love, whatever it is in return. If nothing comes in return, I doubt very much that you'd stay in a relationship for very long. When you get in your car, you expect it to start. There is an endless list of things we expect all day long. When our expectations are not met, then we get upset. And there are big things that happen in life, like not getting the promotion you wanted, or your partner leaving you, or poor health. Things happen that we never expected because we somewhat stupidly only expect things to go well. Well, the universe does not bend itself to suit our needs, the universe operates according to laws, and if you fall foul of those laws, then you will suffer. The idea that whatever you want is going to happen and when it doesn't happen you are justifiably upset or grumpy, is just simply ridiculous.
Now, here's a secret in all things, and it doesn't just apply to what we might call everyday life, it applies to spiritual practice as well which I'll elaborate on shortly. This big secret is to expect nothing, and it's great freedom if you can do that. The problem is, most of us have this causal link between doing stuff and getting some reward at the end. We're a bit like rats in a box, they press the button, and a bit of food drops out of a tube, that's what we're like. Go to work, get some money, work on a relationship, get some affection back or get some appreciation back or whatever. Work on our health, and we're going to be healthy, it doesn't work like that. Of course, in spiritual practice, we do whatever we believe is our road to Nirvana. We maybe do meditation, maybe some emotional discipline, perhaps some devotional work. Then what if nothing happens after we've done all that work? Oh my god! You may have spent most of your life doing this, and nothing has happened. You're not enlightened, you are not in Nirvana. I have an excellent little book which I refer to very often called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I imagine most people might be familiar with it. One of the pieces of advice he gives to people who practice meditation is that they should not sit there and expect something to happen. It's ridiculous to do that because all you are doing is polluting your effort. And in fact, I remember a conversation with Rina Hands, a lady who knew Gurdjieff. She always used to say to me ‘never work with the expectation of any results whatsoever,’ therefore expect nothing. Now, this ability to expect nothing isn't something you can magic out of thin air. I'm suggesting that this is the correct approach to life, but how do you get to that? Well, life must do you a favor. Life must kick you in the teeth a few times. You must learn that life doesn't give a damn about your desires.
What I do know is that life is not going to shape itself just for me, and it isn't going to shape itself just for you. Many of the things that you want are not going to happen, and as you get older and lif
e is just stubbornly refusing to give you what you want, then you'll start to learn that wanting things is a bit silly. For example, in ordinary everyday life when you feel frustrated - let's say that you're not well, you've been unwell for a while, and you're starting to get upset about it and grumpy. Then you should say to yourself ‘I do not expect good health.’ If you can say that to yourself, then you'll be amazed at how much relief you get from it. ‘I do not expect good health,’ ‘I do not expect my partner to care for me and to be loyal towards me,’ ‘I do not expect to get a promotion at work.’ I know this goes against a recent idea in ‘The Secret,’ I don't know if you are familiar with it. The Secret was a huge commercial success for someone because it told people if they focus on something and think positively about it then they will get it. For example, if you want to be wealthy then you don't have to do any work, all you do is you think about it, imagine it and visualize it and sure enough, it will happen. I think this is a very, very cruel thing because what it implied was that anything that happens in your life is your fault. It's your fault that your health is poor, not the fact that the food we can buy these days is heavily polluted with all kinds of crap we could do without. If you haven't made a million by the time you're 30 it’s your own fault, nothing to do with the fact that you probably need to come from a privileged background to achieve that, not always, but usually. So, people go around blaming themselves for not being able to achieve things. The woman who started this thing said that the great tsunami of 2004 was caused by a whole pile of people being negative. It's beyond belief that people believe that kind of thing, but they do, and they buy into it.
The Corporeal Fantasy Page 22
