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September 20th, 2006 at 12:14 am
you can find the meaning for existence in the Bible. i don’t say this to be cliche; i say it because it’s true. if you don’t believe me try it. study the Bible with an open and honest heart, maintaining your rational mindset, and observing the life around you (perhaps even your own existence), and let me know about your conclusion on the subject. just try it; i dare you.
September 20th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Casey:
I am willing to try this with an open mind. Realistically, it’s unlikely I will be able to find time to read it all. Are there any particular parts that are more likely to help than others?
Thanks.
October 11th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Read your mail last night and had the most fascinating dream! I dreamt about the meaning of life, or rather on how to compute the “square root of a snake”. This is how my dream went. My mind put a snake on the x-y plane as a wavy thing, like a sine curve almost, and came up with this conclusion: a square root of a snake serves to flatten it, kind of like pulling the twisted thing and roughly straightening it. If the snake fits entirely within the y-coordinates of 0 and 1, computing its square root (only the y coordinates’) would mean its values all are that much closer to 1 (since sqrt of a number between 0 and 1 moves up towards 1). If part of the snake snake protrudes above the y-value of 1, the sq. root will also gravitate towards 1 (since sqrt (x) where x> 1 serves to lessen it). Then my mind said, everything tends towards 1, unity, all is one and one is all. This is the message the spiritual folk have been giving us all along.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Saugata:
You’re up there with Kekule! Way to crack the puzzle of existence!
BTW, that’s what I call a lucid dream. You’re one detail-oriented dreamer. But maybe not as good as a friend of mine whose dreams are structured as Powerpoint presentations!
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:59 am
Casey: You might want to read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian, An Examination of the God-Idea and Christianity” with an open mind. (I like your choice of words “open and honest heart … “)
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
I wonder what nullifidian has to say about BR’s writing.
November 4th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Gbolletogenius:
That lecture has its place, but like most writing on such subjects, it troubles me in one critical regard. It does not end with the most valuable expression about existence—an anguished, exhilarated howl of angst and bewilderment. My goal on this website is to keep hammering home the point (perhaps ad nauseam) that words and ratiocination are a frequent and poor substitute for the true form of exploration of existence—sitting quietly and being supremely stunned by the fact that there is existence.
When Bertrand Russell said “Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations,” I wish he’d also touched upon the insurmountable fear from which all the little fears arise.
Here’s what I preach on this website: write less, read less, debate less, and just let existence sink in. The question of God should be quickly dispatched with the response “Let’s consider everything.” After that, one should sit back and be moved by the merciless bewilderment that is the consideration of everything. People who choose to merely name the bewilderment (e.g., “God,” “physics,” “science,” “truth”) rather than swim in it are missing the experience of maximal profoundness. And life is better lived swimming in the bewilderment than masking it with some world view.
Concluding an essay on God or existence with a positive, constructive, prescriptive, hopeful, utilitarian world view is a crime.
November 5th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Some random thoughts …
“It does not end with the most valuable expression about existence—an anguished, exhilarated howl of angst and bewilderment.”
The reason why it doesn’t end with such a howl is that BR’s howling occured before he wrote the essay, that the whole essay/speech came into existence because life’s questions bothered BR so much that he had a express himself realizing the limitations of his medium of expression. Of course, expression and release are clearly personal. You would end with a howl and Audrey would dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJR2yCMrHZw).
“Concluding an essay on God or existence with a positive, constructive, prescriptive, hopeful, utilitarian world view is a crime.”
When I was young and naive, I read a certain short-story from a book of short-stories. What disturbed me was that the story didn’t really have an ending. After I finished reading it, the feeling I was left with was as if I was sitting by the window and looking at the passers-by and the events in the story happened in front of my eyes and then I just stopped looking through the window.
Not concluding the essay like Russell does leaves you with two other options:
1. a negative, destructive, hopeless conclusion;
2. have no ending.
I believe, the latter would be your “prescription”. This begs the question: Is your stance/view a flavor of (for-want-of-a-better-world) nihilism — a non-(posi/nega)-tive, non-(con/de)-structive, non-hope-(less/ful) one at that?
“The question of God should be quickly dispatched with the response ‘Let’s consider everything’. After that, one should sit back and be moved by the merciless bewilderment that is the consideration of everything.”
I’m reminded of DNA’s Vortex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex) and I fear insanity
November 5th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Gbolletogenius:
I see. However, I think that that lecture was meant to be non-trivial enough to stand on its own. I don’t like a world view statement that fails to acknowledge the unfathomable void. I don’t see a medium-of-expression limitation here. (Of course, no medium of expression can fully convey the bewilderment of being.)
Here’s a very specific explanation of what I want Russell’s lecture to look like. I would change the title of the final section from “What We Must Do” to “What We Must Do to Live a Good Life.” Then I would add the following section at the end:
This lecture would be egregiously incomplete without the following admission: I achieve no more peace of mind with the scientific, rational world view I presented above than I could with the theistic, dogmatic beliefs I just refuted. Neither theism nor scientific inquiry takes one step towards an understanding of existence, because there is no such thing as understanding of existence, and there never will be. There is only bewilderment about existence. Do not mistake this sweeping statement for dark dogma; I ask you not to take my word for it, but to sit quietly and examine existence in the clean isolation of your mind, until you reach the point where you can strip away the concepts of physical form, thought, logic and truth. You will see it plain as day and you will be stunned by it: All that is, is; the idea that theism or science provides any explanations is laughable.
When I said a little while ago that “science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations,” I was not alluding to primal fear, of course. Primal fear—by which I mean fear induced by the understanding that there is no such thing as an understanding of existence—will not be conquered. In fact, good science only makes us more keenly aware of this fear, because it illuminates our confines.
So how do we live a complete life when living is so confined? We ultimately frame our lives not by a particular world view (such as the one above), but by the frame of existence itself. We contemplate origins not only of the world, but of origins themselves. At some point, we keenly realize we are gifted with the state of being, and shun received wisdom in order to achieve a very personal immersion in this state. By the simple act of realizing we exist, we are suddenly in direct contact with existence; we are stunned and bewildered that things exist; we experience the understanding that understanding is not ultimately meaningful, and world views are simply rules of hygiene for unavoidable bodily functions such as thought and action. We live a complete life by actually engaging this deeply troubling sensation of existing.
That was the essential coda to my scientific world view. There are those who will say “Science may one day help us understand everything.” I, however, can’t even comprehend that statement any more than I can comprehend the statement “Science may one day help us understand the square root of a snake.”
I hope the above helps (I prefer exposition to labeling), but to fully answer this question, I need to augment the BR lecture a little further:
Do it if you want, don’t if you don’t. There is no reason one must live a complete life. But living a good life is very important, because that way you won’t bother me.
December 10th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
So yeah, here I am thinking that to question existence is completely juvenile, ignorant and unrelated to life. I searched google and simple typed in “meaning of existence.” Of course thousands of things came flying up. Mostly religious. I clicked yours out of pure boredom. I was shocked, pleased, scared shitless and breathless at what you wrote. I’m not trying to praise you or put you on a pedestal or anything like that. I get that feeling all the time where I just sit down and let my thoughts consume me and I am…tingled…freaked out…..amazed…. that I actually exist. To know that I AM. It’s like a body high to know that I am living…or rather existing. No one can really question what existence is, they just have to know that existence is…existence. Any time I sit down and think about existence, I feel as if I’m suffocating. It’s enthralling and scary to not know what your very being is all about. I used to be naive just like you and constantly question what existence was all about. I realized that you can’t ask such a trite question when one day I was entrapped by my thoughts. I was slowly ascending the stairs in my mind. There I reached a door. The label on the door said “I.” I opened it expecting an answer. But of course, stupid, naive me didn’t realize that I couldn’t have an answer when there’s not even a question to begin with. I opened the door and there was a grain of rice. I shut the door in anger. Two days later I went back to the door, opened it up and there was a piece of corn. The third day I went back and opened the door and what did I find? Why a pebble! I slammed the door, kicked at it and screamed profanities at it. The “I” mocked me. Then I was slapped in the face by my own statement. “Why are you in my mind, if you won’t take me anywhere?” I froze. I realized that my mind took me to self-discovery. I was not a grain of rice, a piece of corn or a small pebble. I AM. I went back a forth time after realizing that questioning my being was an insult to my being. I AM. Plain and simple. I went to open the door and found it locked. I laughed with pleasure. Uncontrollable, pure, raw laughter. The door was locked because I came to the right conclusion. I could be compared to nothingness because existence will be found in a pure state of unconsciousness. The door will be unlocked when existence has left my body. I accept and appreciate that. I am absolutely floored, scared and…..bewildered that my existence will not be known to man. But to I.
I would put my name, but why? Putting a name is like placing a name-tag on existence. Names hold no meaning other than trying to make your existence known, or trying to make someone feel whole, solid. By placing my “name”, I am placing a word on my being that does absolutely nothing for me other than desecrate who I am. So you can simply call me “I AM” Because after all, that’s all that matters. That’s all I need to know.
December 12th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
I AM:
It was great to read your comment. I have waited a long time to hear from someone else who feels existence.
Predictably, I’m a little miffed when you say
But I will forgive you that because considering others naive is an indicator of enlightenment. However, I don’t know what you mean when you say I constantly “question what existence [is] all about.” I am supremely bewildered by existence. I don’t understand the concept of questioning what existence is all about, so I don’t think I do it.
In sum, as I have stated in ‘Everything,’ “There will never be answers, because there is no question.”
February 16th, 2007 at 9:15 am
i’m writing this comment because i wanted you to know how good, i’m convinced, this is-if i ever wanted to publish my philosophical views on the web i wouldn’t have to do it ’cause you have aready done it here on http://isism.org and on http://protest.isism.org.
with one little exception though, i think logic doesn’t contradict with what your thoughts are then why would you have to put it down? perhaps, you can explain me that?
February 17th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Sandris,
[I’m sorry for the delay before your comment appeared on this page. It was held for moderation because it contained URLs. The blogging software suspects such comments of being spam.]
Thank you for your comment. It gives me a measure of solace to find others who can see and feel the things that are said here.
I’m afraid I didn’t understand your question about the relationship with logic. Can you perhaps explain a little further?
Thanks.
February 18th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
/What do you mean “Stop living and start existing”?
Saturday, August 26th, 2006
Consider existence. Be stupefied that anything is. Be thrilled that things are. Get bewildered the hell out out of the comfort of sentience.
I’m not talking about going into raptures over the “beauty” of “creation.” If you’re still thinking about beauty or creation, or life or logic, you haven’t gone nearly far enough. If you’re rationalizing, […] ///
i had some trouble finding it again but here it is. my objection was that it is very logical to be bewildered with something like it is logical to do things you like.
i didn’t say it is a crucial objection from the start but the thing is when i’m bewildered with the same thing as you here i remain logical.
February 19th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Sandris,
Yes, it is logical to be bewildered by existence. Here’s what I meant to say about logic (and other notions such as beauty, truth and creation): if you conceive of existence in terms of this notion, you are not feeling existence.
I plan to write more on this in the future. I use the phrase “the logic delusion1” to refer to the comfort and promise people find in science and math. To find out what I mean, see my earlier comment on my specific objections to an essay of Bertrand Russell’s.
(To any casual reader that might be reading this outside the context of the rest of this website—God.)
1 Inspired, of course, by The God Delusion.
February 20th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
nullifidian,
Now I see! There are many ways of conceiving of existance but this is no positive task to deny any of them.
February 25th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Sandris,
I’m afraid I don’t understand your point. Please explain what you mean by “is no positive task.”
Thanks!
February 28th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
OK while I do understand what your saying and applaud you for you interest beyond that of the everyday person. I must say you say that beyond what you have said there is nothing more… Now that seems a little full of yourself (I don’t say the to be nasty) but since this is an abstract concept, maybe there is more to it…. maybe there is some meaning. I agree we will never know for sure but to say any other disscussion is pointless then you just don’t get it. To talk about ideas and philosiphize is in my opinion the point to everything. Sure we nmay never reach our destination (answer) but the journey (discussion) there is life….
February 28th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Jeff,
There is no question. You cannot have an attempt at an answer when there is no question. I’m not decreeing the end to any discussion. I’m saying there are discussions on the meaning of existence only so far as there as discussions on the square root of a snake.
I’m also saying there is more value in sitting still and being monumentally stunned by the realization that there is existence than there is in anything else that purports to pertain to existence.
Thanks.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 am
what i mean to say. say, i conceive of existance in terms of logic. and this happens to be negative task of your philosophy to tell me what you’re telling.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 am
positive task would be the demand for explanation.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:33 am
I see that I’m not alone, stranded in boredom, googling the answers to existence!
Stop living and start existing…….. This statement has been the source of my mental conflict for many days now. Am I just being simple? Or wouldn’t it be more suitable to say stop existing and start living?
Truth is, everyone exists, physically and mentally. Each person is present in this existence. Rotting in a nursing home, dying in a 9 to 5 job or sleeping your days away is not living, it is existing. Can someone offer justification for “Stop living and start existing.”???
May 14th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Max,
Everyone is conscious of their lives. Hardly anyone is conscious of existence. There is much to be felt here. But nobody can talk you into experiencing it. Take another read over everything I’ve written. Start here.
March 31st, 2009 at 11:37 am
Greetings. I find myself fascinated and engaged with all that you have written here, and it speaks to a state, or perhaps, in some sense, a stage of being that I am very familiar with. It is something with which I powerfully resonate. It occurs to me that you might be interested in some of the media integrallife.com has to offer, or in Ken Wilber’s AQAL philosophy, which inspired it. It has a similar bent as far as using philosophy as a life praxis, as something we experience and enact, rather than as something we simply talk about.
March 31st, 2009 at 11:47 am
P.S.
I initially came across this website in my search for a new “ism” word that could define a new avant-garde movement in art (including literature). It occurred to me that every conceivable word with any sort of broad connotation already had an “ism” attached to it in some form, and I also thought of the Rastafari philosophy being against “isms and schisms,” so I thought, why not turn the power of the “ism” back on itself, using the absurd nature of such a division to highlight the absurdity of the way words work within the human mind/brain to create a limited, binary construction of reality. The implications of the mere act of “existing” are far more staggering and immense than that; than everything words as divisions and definitions can describe. So I thought, “Isism,” and typed into Google, finding your website, and it seems your ideas on this are very much in line, in many important ways, with my own (and correct me if I’m wrong, there). This appears somewhat fortuitous.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
iFiction,
Thank you for your reactions. It is always great to discover and connect with minds that share my state/stage; that was indeed partly the purpose of creating this website.
This phrase suggests to me that you feel exactly what I feel. You may be surprised to hear that another reader of this website said to me he was keenly aware of the experience I describe here and also had intentions of registering the domain isism.org before he discovered I’d already done it. I suspect the chain of thoughts leading from feeling what we feel to originating the term ‘isism’ has been repeated in at least a few other minds.
I find this material interesting as a subject of examination. I don’t find it interesting as a candidate for adoption.
The words ‘philosophy’ and ‘enact’ are causing me to twitch in protest. Perhaps because they evoke an image of a world view, a prescription, a system. I propose none of these.
It is important to me that the material on this website be distinguished from larger bodies of knowledge, from organized systems of thought, from ways of life. It is important that none of these terms be legitimate descriptions of what I have presented here.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
The sheer, unfiltered awe one experiences when facing down the incomprehensibility and absurdity of existence itself seems the issue of central importance here. In the face of this Mystery, all other conceptions are merely tools for revealing its profound discontinuity.
This, I believe, is true for movements, schools of thought, world views, philosophies, actions, organized systems, and ways of life. They are tools, just as thoughts are tools, just as images are tools, just as words are tools, to expose the eternal Riddle to those who miss it, which in the long run, is everyone.
Sometimes a lack of adoption in the face of all these categories is the more useful policy, but a lack of adoption of one thing is by nature the adoption of something else. There is no such thing as no perspective.
I don’t allow the Integral Institute to speak for me, nor I for it, but I do find its structure, and mainly the way it connects me to other people, to be useful. I think we will go a lot further by navigating this Mystery among fellow travelers than by attempting to go it alone. I’m not arguing for the adoption of any particular school of thought, mind you. I am simply saying that it may be useful for the purposes of exposing the immense implications of the idea that anything exists at all if we begin to examine where various schools of thought connect and come together on this matter.
April 14th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
iFiction,
Thank you for clarifying your intent, and for bringing to me your position. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to connect with like minds. I would not reject the opportunity to make such connections. I was rejecting the suggestion (perhaps misperceived) that the content or creator of this website can fruitfully connect with a system of living.
Here is what I know (and ask not how I “know”): after an early point, withdrawal from knowledge contributes to, does not detract from, the experience of existence. I am not on a quest. I know my journey is over.
Less personally, I find that a crushing surfeit of words and rules is burying possibilities for people to come into contact with existence.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge. Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC) , The Confucian Analects
March 10th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
“I” have felt the what you describe to the nearest detail. It is the nothing which intrigues me most, the nothing which we create for no other reason, as far as i know, to justify existing.