Mind over Matter?

Mind over Matter?

Here I am, once again. That moment, once in a while, raises as an unexpected doubt; as something that when caught in ordinary things, it doesn’t appear; yet, that problem always persists. It doesn’t go away. Though I attempt tackling it through various, infinite, directions, the ways out seem all, almost, impossible.

The problem of skepticism… Which can be reduced, ridiculously, with this simple question: is this hand, that belongs to my body, real? Or more, is this body, that I have, real? And all the objects that surround me? Me…? But who am I, that I that is talking, now? What is this voice, in our head, that we all call conscience? We? Is it really in my head? Or there’s a collective mind, of which we all belong, like drops of the ocean? Or, is it just an object, as the objects that surround me. Objects surrounding something mental. Is that even possible?

The problem of solipsism overwhelms me. No, it terrifies me. To think that I am the only thing that exists, and everything around is just the result of my mere creation. Like a spider making castles of web. That could all disappear, but there’s also the risk that I may get all tangled with myself. All the universe would be pervaded by silence. With me, just me, – the only one –, thinking. And as I do this activity, things are produced. My thinking is creation. Those things themselves that are produced coincide directly with the string of my thoughts: for, as what I see, it is what I think. Surely, that can easily be said about anything. Likewise, about space, since space is nothing but the relation among all these physical objects. And time?

Well, time too is part of my production since it exists as the result of change. As the movement of the pendulum. The sun rising and setting. The change of the seasons. All undergo a consistent change which again is something that depends upon me. Everything, under my demesne. But again: Who am I? What is this I that I (we) speak about? Yet, this is something that persists always overtime. Overtime, maybe, the only. Yet, there are moments in which this I seems to disappear or reemerges while time continues to exist (at least, we suppose so). So, what happens to me? Time is the succession of my ideas, for changes in objects are changes in my perceptions. So when I cease to think, also time ceases, and all the rest too, poof, disappears! Like the game of a magician.

Descartes appears in my mind; and I ask him: why would you claim that you don’t exist, when you stop thinking? Useless to repeat his saying (that everyone knows) cogito ergo sum. At bottom, that’d just mean that: you exist, but just in your head. You atheist! From your mind, yours, starting from there, you arrive even at the apodosis of proving the existence of God. But all that wouldn’t be anything if not a projection of your mind. Another, among the many puppets and castles you construct. What a pretension! But wait, am I not committing the same error?

Everything seems so confused, reverted, inverted, flipped upside down, that I no longer distinguish, nor know where I am… who I am… Where are the orienting points of orientation, of balance, since I seem to have even lost, my own? Inside this meander of streaming thoughts and ideas. What is reality? What, where, is, its contour? Reality, what is?! This question enters abruptly. As there is no distinction between me and the objects that I create. (Created?) All coming and eventually returning, back. As a vortex, from the barycenter of my belly. No! This can’t be. Is this all reality? Or all an illusion? Well, taken with these extremes, there wouldn’t be any difference in calling it with one name or the other. Names are just names. Indifferent. And dreams? Even between dreams and what we call reality, there wouldn’t be any substantial difference, if not that in dreams things undergo change more rapidly, and don’t have a constant and resembling succession as reality. Thus, if reality had all its objects move faster, with an increased velocity, then reality and dreams would be the same. Reality: that which has a certain uniformity. And the uniformity derives by the velocity of its objects, all succeeding each other. Another succession… The river, goes. So, it seems that the two things; reality and dreams; and time and the I are all intertwined.

Thus, reality itself seems as something that is a dream. A streaming consciousness? Can’t be since without time, everything is still. But still, in becoming, becoming something so impalpable that cannot be touched. For reality itself, between the constant and non-constant flux, is impalpable. (Yet, I create it?) Then, when does it truly happen that we touch something that is real? That has a constant uniformity. When it is still? Or when it escapes? For, the apparent uniformity is the result of the greatest rapidity. There’s a point in which velocity, when it surpasses that limit, it passes from being so chaotic, to pure order. In that case, dreams would seem easier to catch; for their dynamic stillness.

Absrud… To think that reality is nothing but a projection; an illusion. But, is it bearable? At bottom, why give so much importance to our mind (myself)? To this thing which thinks. Even in talking to myself I duplicate myself in various forms, down to an infinite creation of multiple I’s. So out of here! For once, now, let’s try to look at things from a different perspective, the supposed (because I no longer know if what I see is real or illusion). I was saying: let us suppose that reality is real, as we usually think, as when asserting that an object is real: so, reality is real.

If reality is real, and is composed of real objects, then such objects would really exist. And here, they’d exist without me thinking about them, thus without being thoughts. Like this piece of paper from my desk. We wouldn’t say that it thinks. (Though thoughts may be inside it). But who tells me that it doesn’t have a mind? Do I judge “things that have a mind” just by the fact that they act in a similar way as me? Is this the case? If not, if this piece of paper is an illusion; then what is the illusion of an illusion? Would it be as asking what is the drawing of a drawing, that is inside the drawing? The ordinary life seems to mingle with the extraordinary. But the ordinary, for pragmatic reasons I suppose, continues. The miraculous remains hidden. And the ordinary shall go on. Ordinary perceptions all around me. Everything being the same. The books, pens, and lamp on the desk all restituting the same image. The computer too and its images: providing, even a stronger uniformity than reality. Look at all these folders, files, all, always, metaphysically, the same. Does the virtual, then, become more real than the real? Can’t be. Look: the ink from the pen, coming out, from the pen I’m writing with. It’s a bic, one of those cheap ones. That when they seem still (still) half full, they’re truly empty. (Here too playing tricks?) And this body, (in which I live in?). Wait, what am I talking about. Because if I suppose that I, the mind, can think, independently of the body… But I’m restricted and I cannot do that. What can I then?

Do I fully depend upon the body? Or am I just partially buried inside it? If that were the case, I couldn’t wish for anything but its death. Am I one of his productions? Impossible. Since at first I thought about being me, myself, Reality; and the body just an illusion; just as one of the many, potentially, infinite things that I am capable of producing. What I accuse him of, though, could be mirrored back to me. Are there then different floors of reality? Reflecting each other? One must supervene. And I would definitely be on the top by the moment that I create, just by an act of my will, infinite things in infinite ways. But, again. They’d all just be mental.

Yet, even in this precise moment; as I write these thoughts that I think, they are converted into the form of the physical. How does this passage occur? Do these two floors run together? Or is there a medium in between? Argh! Now, I feel as if there is an intruder. And sincerely, I no longer know where he came from. I no longer know, where all the things I perceive, in this precise moment, or that I create… come from? I am no longer capable to distinguish, since I started losing perception of what is the mind and what, its limits: what the limits of the body? For, he is abusing of my space! Out of here! Stay calm. He cannot enter here since we’re totally different. I’m safe. But I need to understand this assiduously, because there where the body finishes, there I begin to live. That’s where my freedom resides.

This new intruder (which isn’t a body) that just came in, comes with this high pretension of confronting me, seeing me just as an object projection, as any other, at the same level of the body. Only another idea can intrude in this way, both being object for the other; thus, there would be mutual respect and sovereignty: since the borders of separation are clear and distinct. But then it’s the body that is and remains the problem! The body, which is quite weird since it doesn’t even think anything! So I cannot delimit it. To me, it’s not thinking, since it has no thoughts. But this also renders it so mysterious. Everything it does seems so mysterious, it sounds so mysterious, in all of its acts performed in silence.

What does he think? I, of him, cannot perceive anything if not his movements, the transference of some of his parts from one side to another. Instead I can create from nothing, – ex nihilo – and do whatever I want.

Wait a second. What is he doing now? I can understand that he is, in this moment, writing. One of his many activities. As when he runs, eats, or sleeps. He is writing, all his back crunched over the desk, since he, unlike me, is quite tired. I could continue thinking up to infinity, what he does. Instead, he changes and interrupts. And these interruptions constrain me too! Sincerely, I hate having this sort of dependence upon the body. When he, the body, stops doing his stuff; I … I… I don’t even know where I go; neither know, what happens.

Yet, it seems to me that I’m always something related to the body, since all the thoughts that I think, concern this body, in one way or another. And, apart from those idea with which we all refer to each other, I don’t even know what I am. Do I know myself only through different mental reflections? But what am I outside of those mirrors? What am I, for the body?

I shouldn’t care about his judgment, since he is inferior. I can think and create things which the body will never see nor touch. In this, my superiority. So as I wanted to prove: his judgment, at bottom, wouldn’t mind much, it would just matter. Yet, the body has something that I do not possess. That is: a sort of solidity. And, by solidity I do not mean that which contrasts with fluidity. At least, not in the common sense of thinking those terms: like this solid wooden table contrasted to the fluid water that is inside this glass.

Alas! He seems thus to enjoy a privilege that I cannot experience. I can’t tolerate this. That is: a continuously, given, resembling appearance. To have this I would need to be in constant activity, I would have to renovate one perception again and again each time. Look at it! Notwithstanding its various changes, it appears in a continuous identity; which is not identity, rather resemblance. Or, slight differences. The changes that occurs in the body seem always to follow a sort of linearity; of coherence. But that can’t be the case, since geometry is my invention. Yet, I do not always have that orthodoxy. Like, look at his actions! Even when he moves all clumsy like a pachyderm, each of its movements follow with a natural geometric flow. The waves of all its fat, succeed each other as a cascading effect of causes and effects. Whereas me, I, what do I create if not monsters. Contradictions. Winged dragons, and pigged balloons. Which block and terrorize me, and make me spin around myself like crazy.

Uh! Stop. I finally found it! This is where our fundamental difference lays! Now I know with certainty that I have more power since whatever the body is, I can think of. I can duplicate, quadruplicate, e multiply up to infinity all the objects that belongs to matter. So whatever he is, I can become. But there’s the risk, that with all this quantity, I may get tangled. The body, always so simple. But too also so stupid!

Furthermore: that which I create; is it real? It doesn’t seem so, since it lacks that sort of solidity which the body has. So is this, which I have, even a power? It now almost seems more like a weakness. To have this constant vulnerability, of undersetting myself each time. Stopping, casting doubts, hesitations and moments of insecurity each time. Is this “power” of creating anything I want, then, just an apparent power? Like the empty folders the body creates.

Because, that which I create doesn’t even seem to belong to me. It’s neither in my power! For, neither in dreams nor in other moments of thought I am in full control of the thoughts I have. (That I have?) What a high pretention, that of the stoics, in believing that they could take control of the body; even when, in truth, they cannot even take control of themselves!

More than power, here, thus, I see its contrary: impotency! Not only that! I almost feel an unbearable dependence upon the body, to the point that I’m almost led into thinking that I am the one who is commanded by him. But no… This certainly cannot be the case. Sometimes I can see that what the body does, corresponds to what I command. Yet, when he gets tired, as now… and almost collapses. Also I… begin getting drowsy, and close… to collapse; and slow down; and there I go.

Turned off, just like the body.

But the body doesn’t ever even go completely off. It just stops acting as crazy. Doing all those weird movements. Jumping up and down, sitting and walking, moving everywhere, left and right, without any purpose. Here I’m better since I can expect demand and have the pretention that things go in a certain way. How? According to the way I imagine. Yes, because the body can’t even imagine the future, about what is to come next. He only sees what is about to happen, as objects at a certain distance. Without even having far sight. But, what if what I do is quite similar? That is: that I “fall asleep too.” And stop doing all of my thinking? Well… sometimes I continue thinking. In a slower manner, with dangling vine thoughts. As when I dream. I tired. I am. I mix the colors, without caring to provide the usual coherence. Distortion… Interruptions… Darkness… Whispers of thought, what… So there… BOOM.

           Asleep. The body hit his head on his desk. To me, I do not know what happened. Maybe the body knows. I doubt it, he never knows anything! HA!

Even now, he is no longer capable of staying awake. Look at him. It’s 3 a.m. of the morning, unconscious of the existence of time. (Time is my creation.) He awakes and sleeps whenever he feels. Just acts as reaction of certain physical phenomenon, as that constant sound that rings and vibrates until he hits it; or, when he falls asleep, after passing his fingers on that luminous screen that he always has between his hands.

He hasn’t slept for four days in a row for now, because he has been hypnotized staying still, taking the form of the chair where he sits, with in front, those squared objects, made of many thin layers, and black signs scribbled inside. These, in his hands, while I, thinking. The chain of thoughts of the greatest minds. I, the mind, think; he, the body, does.

…

Again: who knows what the body may think about me.

Oh yes! That’s true! The body doesn’t even think!

What a great superiority I enjoy with regards to him! I can think of him, I can create an idea of him; whereas the body cannot even form anything that may relate to… Wait a second. What is he doing? Now he’s using that vertical thing which contains ink, that he spreads on wooden white squares and rectangles. They seem as pictures, representations. (Creations?) Symbols and signs, as hieroglyphics. May these may be his mediums of referring? Perhaps, to me?

And me? What do I do more than just referring to him by supposed mental representations that I create; mental acts of intuition that are constituted by objects, i.e. ideas. In fact, what would intuition be without its ideas? As movement, which is nothing without its… etc. etc. etc.