Tuesday 8 May 2001

Pic of the day: You know, there were lots of nuances in this picture ... but somehow, when you get the ligth from above straight against you, things tend to become, like, more black & white.

Soul shedding

"You have to write about this in your journal" I said to myself. "You have to remember it. Write it down. At least take down some keywords on the pocket PC." I meant to do it too, but I just didn't get the time ... and then I woke up. It had all been a dream.

So what was the monumental event that I struggled so hard to remember? Actually it was just an idea, and not a very novel one, except in its visualization. It was about reincarnation, and the idea was that the soul "spun off" or emitted some fluff as it wandered through time, until it evaporated completely. I'm now hard pressed to see how this is much differently from conventional buddhism, which also aims at the gradual and complete negation of the individual self. And I am not even a buddhist.

***

On the other hand, I have read through the book "Det plurale jeg" (the plural I) by Eva Ramm. Ramm expands on the work of Carl Gustav Jung, and concludes rather categorically that gods and spirits are nothing more than inner personalities from the subconscious. (Jung was more reserved on this, stating that the spirits could only be observed as they showed up in the psyche, and so we could never know anything about the spirits as such, including whether or not they existed independently. This equals the position of an agnostic or "weak atheist", while Ramm is a "strong atheist" that states outright that there are no gods or spirits outside the human brain.)

Ramm's deconstruction of the human "I" would probably please a buddhist. A key part of buddhist doctrine, if I (!) understand correctly, is the realization that there is no personal self or soul. It is just another natural phenomenon. Knowing this in theory does not help, and so theravada buddhism has devised a set of introspective methods that lets the individual observe his or her body and soul at work. At closer observation, the functions of the mind dissolve into minor processes that create, through their cooperation, the illusion of a constant self.

Incidentally, you don't need to be a buddhist to see this. A little talent or training in introspection, for instance through scientific meditation, should convince any honest observer that the mind as we know it does indeed consist of a myriad of thoughts. They compete and cooperate and the status in there just under the surface is more like a first grade classroom. Or perhaps a brainstorm. :)

This should not shock anyone into a state of perdition, though! You have known since early childhood that your body consists of parts. There are arms, legs, eyes, ears and so on. And the parts also consists of parts. The chest for instance contains two lungs and a heart. (And on females, there are also breasts! Yes! A hindu book I once read recommended its male readers to meditate on the composition of the female breasts, with its blood vessels and milk glands and icky fat. That way, whenever you inadvertently are exposed to the sight of bouncing female breastesses, your x-ray vision kicks in and you see the icky stuff inside. Just thought I would mention it.)

Now you know that the various body parts themselves consist of parts, and these parts again also are divided, if nothing else then at least into millions of tiny cells. This applies even to our brain, which consist of various discrete parts, some of them virtually separate organs, and billions of neurons and glia cells. It should come as no horrible shock, then, that also our software is modular.

The point where your view probably differs from buddhism is the conclusion that, since all is parts, there is no whole. That simply by knowing the composition, you can sort of mentally disassemble the sense of self. Well, I suspect you can. But should you? There are already plenty of people who are poorly integrated. Some of them need medical supervision for life. Others mostly function normally, but are given to sudden changes in personality that trip up work and personal relationships. A quick and uncontrolled breakdown of the self is probably not a good idea, then.

On the other hand, the vision of my dream - the revolving self casting off a smoky corona of particles - is not so different from what happens in actual life. We do grow, particularly in our early life, adding more and more experiences. But eventually we start to shed. It seems I have done quite a bit of that too, and in only one life even. (The Norwegian word for reincarnation is "sjelevandring", soul wandering. Quite a bit more poetic, don't you think? And it sounds like something you can do in this life, if you're in a hurry.)

***

When I was a boy, I loved anything to do with cars. Cars were not all that common back then. I would stand by the road outside school, where there occasionally was some traffic, and write down the licence number of the cars passing by. When my dad eventually got an old van, I would try to ride wherever it went. It was all very exciting. I also loved tractors and scooters. But I was quite sure that when I grew up, I would have my own car and of course my own driver's licence. I was quite excited, you may even say infatuated. But things changed. I died inside, perhaps that is the best way to say it. Today, I consider cars a complication that I prefer to be without. I appreciate the bus taking me to the city rather than having to bike or walk, but I would not like to keep my own car. It would be just another complication, another distraction.

Back when I was young, I was very interested in computers. And I have to say, they have really come in handy. But at the time, I was keenly interested in how the microprosessors worked, and bits and bytes and RAM and ROM and bus and DMA. I knew the starting addresses of various subroutines in the operating system, and so on. It was all very exciting. But something happened. Something inside me died. I still very much appreciate computers - in fact, I have just yesterday ordered a new one - but I only want to know approximately what they can do. The instruction set of the CPU is of no interest to me. And I don't open the computers and fiddle around inside with a screwdriver unless I absolutely must. It is just another complication that I have spun off.

When I was in my early thirties, I still had a fascination with large houses. Occasionally I would have an outbreak of house mania, in which I would look at various flats and small houses, and daydream of really big houses. But this too would pass. Now I am satisfied to have a place to sleep and make some food and store my stuff. It is a bit crowded right now, but I suppose that can be fixed by throwing away more stuff. I don't know where the desire for the big house went. Perhaps something inside me just died. Now I think of it as just another complication that I want to avoid.

There are several such examples, but it has struck me that perhaps a key part in it all was when I eventually gave up the presumption that I would one day marry and have a traditional family life. This was not the beginning of the process, but I think it was a key element.

But that's plenty enough of that. I think I shall just skip the sappy philosophical ending and leave you with the disturbing image of a soul slowly descending into nothingness. Heh. If you don't know me, that would be a disturbing image indeed.