Michael evoked by a spider
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
In bed this morning, an experiment. I wanted to watch the first "me" thought arise. So I went back to sleep with the alarm set 45 minutes later, resolved to observe closely on the next awakening.
In fact, however, I entered a dream in which I dutifully awoke and wandered into the living room. I saw a dead spider on the floor. I remembered my obligation to watch myself. As I approached the spider detected me, and came to life, moving slightly and looking bigger. Suddenly he moved with shocking speed across the floor to get away from me. At that moment "I" arose as a mute impulse to apply an equivalent amount of energy to crush the spider.
I (the observer) looked for the boundary between the spider and the "I," and was surprised to find that there was none.
The interface was so smooth between the "external" movement of the spider and the "internal" desire to step on it that it made me ask: "what does it mean if there is no real boundary between those two things?"
It must mean that the sense of "I" and the moving spider are the same thing.
That both apparent "things" are a part of the observable universe, while the observer-self is outside of that. All meaning, all real surprise, all wonder is seated in the observer.
The spider moved mechanically, and the mechanical "I" activated.
(Maybe it's more like this. The mechanical movement of the spider provoked an equally mechanical urge to crush, into which a personality reified itself immediately. Identified itself with the urge).
The vacuum in space-time created by the energetic pulse of motion was smoothly filled by an equivalently-sized psychological urge to chase the spider and kill it.
That "urge" came not from the observer (I, as the observer, remained calm for all of this, with no particular desire), but from "Michael".
(Again, I must inject parenthetically...I suspect it is more like this: the urge came as part of the mechanics of the universe. The "Michael-ness" of the whole thing was in identifying with the urge. "Michael" is not the urge itself, but a something which identifies itself as being one with the urge for some period of time. It only knows itself, in fact, when there is an action to which it can attach).
And...that is how "Michael" woke up this morning. Yes, within a light dream one layer removed from physical reality, but nonetheless, he was "there," just in abeyence until that point.
"He" can not be "cut out of" the world. He "worlds" along with that world. He is unalterably in the paper within the drawing of the world.
The observer. That is quite different. I suddenly feel as if I have grown another quite useful limb.
A partial rebuttal
Okay, as I was writing the journal entry here, I couldn't resist my parenthetical statements which provided an alternate explanation. And now I'm convinced that those statements are more true.
I could erase the text above and try to write down "the real truth" but I'd rather leave the process exposed.
What I think now is this: "Michael" is completely illusory. The spider was "there." The urge to chase was also there. The identification with the urge was Michael, and it was, well, completely superfluous.
The body-mind will act on the urge or not. The observer will remain as he is. This Michael is a middle-man, forming such strong opinions about what he sees that he can't separate himself from the action.
So this statement is false:
"He" can not be "cut out of" the world. He "worlds" along with that world. He is unalterably in the paper within the drawing of the world.
Michael has no reality in the world, unlike the spider and the urge. Some "body," like another spider perhaps, would experience the urge and give chase.
Michael must arise from some combination of the energetic release in the world-system "below" and the attention of the observer "above." He is continually reborn, with access to memories (grievances, likes and dislikes). Reborn in action...using up the quantum of attention from above. He knows that he "dies" when that attention is exhausted. He is motivated to be important...to "make an impact."
From this arises an interesting idea. I am continually "having children" with my mate, the universe. My attention becomes slightly too involved, breaking off in a way, to "mate" with the world and birth an ephemeral child with access to memory, and sufficient fear to comb through it.
Wow
Sorry, but this is so interesting.
In recent years, I've moved ever more in the direction of celibacy, or at least chastity. On the level of the personality, this is a movement away from further involvement with the world and its many circuses, and towards that "something eternal" we've all felt sometime or another. This movement clarifies thinking and reduces "pressure." It allows the subtle to be discerned, and the gross to be avoided.
Strange (or tiresome/predictable?) that I end up seeing an analogous procreative urge in this division between the observer and the personality as I saw between the personality and it's attachment to desires?
Fortuitous? Could it be that I can apply the knowledge gained in separating from my base desires to this "next problem?" This problem of the endless reification of personality? How often it has been so. In climbing I learned to love the movement away from gravity, and began to sense the usefulness of that mode in psychological spaces, which brought me to the present.
Okay, I have to think about this more, but I'm excited about it. I hope these scribblings are useful to you somehow!
P.S. But!
You might be yelling at me that I ignored something in the beginning. I said:
I (the observer) looked for the boundary between the spider and the "I," and was surprised to find that there was none.
Which led me into a chain of reasoning. You will say "dude, obviously there was no boundary, because the spider and the 'I' were together in a dream crafted by that I. At best, the dream is wish-fulfillment."
You have a point! I think your explanation is possibly true. I'll continue trying to note the introduction of personality into the observed space during waking hours. I don't think your explanation is necessarily true though, because the dream environment can be many things. A place of fantasy or wish-fulfillment, but also a place of exposure or discovery. It can be a simulation environment. Looking back over my dreams, they've been all of these at different times. This dream had the feel of a simulation environment. My observer consciousness was there. A simple interaction was there, and nothing more. An experiment was run, analyzed to some degree, then I awoke from the dream. So it was undeniably wish-fulfillment in the sense that I wished to run an experiment and tabulate results.
But our waking lives are also places of wish-fulfillment in this sense.
P.P.S. Be Careful!
Now that I've thought about this and wrote it down, my personality has access to this information as well. I'm quite sure there is an operation going on to construct a faux-observer into which my personality will climb like a Trojan Horse. If I fall for that, then I may spend weeks and months "observing" but I'm actually just granting life to the personality. He'll obligingly construct a smaller, meaner version of himself for us to watch together.
The answer to this must be to continue doing the same thing I've done in order to get to this point: meditation with a mantra and the breath of the body. An artificial construct cannot survive the constant "return to ground" effected by that fundamental process. My job will be to ignore these constructs, and return to the mantra as they arise to attract me.