Seriously, I just recognized that this is a philosophy of stupid, unreflective, in the sense of being without thought. It is but not brainless; rather it’s a philosophy of pre-cognition.
The news today seems to suggest it is timely, particularly characteristic of this time and place – the US July 4, 2019 – but I’m not thinking about poor thinking, thinking that is illogical and even cruel. I actually experience a deep connection with the divine when I move into this space; it might be what Buddhism refers to as no-self, but that requires serious discipline and what I’m talking about may be caused simply by a neurological condition, or death. This or my exerience, as someone with epilepsy, if it occurs as a seizure or following a seizure. Whatever… that is not the point. The point is, we live in the pre-cognition and then process it, as a thought, a brain activity of neurons firing and memories forming, and amazing smart ideas. Yet those are all in the future when we’re actually just there, before all this thinking and perceiving occurs, and then it’s all memory.
There is our being that is not partaking in our narrative, our beginning, middle and end that is characteristic of this brain activity and cognition and history and anticipation. Both memory and hope and even the thought of our presence we make up, surmise – we think all that and to think is to create a narrative, a build a structure.
Before we can do that we have to be here, which is not to suggest some idealist being. We might – we certainly seem to – have a body. I’m not disputing that this is biological, at least for us, and ontological for, say, a rock or a black hole.
Before we can think, create a mental image, plan an action or even not plan, even simply to breathe because our body tends to inhale what it needs oxygen, before we do anything or think of doing anything, or think and do nothing, we are. And that presence that makes thinking about it, experiencing it as cognition, first of all just is; it is without thought, without knowing or even not knowing in the sense of having the capacity and not meeting it. It simply, before and beyond the structure of time and time consciousness, is.
Then the neurons fire. Then perception happens, as part of a process, a flow. We perceive the flow. We can’t perceive the present moment that constitutes a moment in the flow, though the flow is constituted by such moments. The brilliant thoughts flow. The present moment, our stupid self just is present.
It’s July 4th and I’m in the United States ready for fireworks and reflecting on democracy and how the present moments are all profoundly equal in the sense that all of us have a life that is really infinite apart from our place in history, of infinite value. My infinity is no lesser or greater than yours, no infinity measurably better or worse than another. We value a human life, perhaps, more than an amoeba’s just because we are human, but really…. perhaps that’s just a bias. A judgment. Not beside the point, but beside the point I’m making here. The flow that is constituted by a whole series of moments, before being actualized as present but past before it can be cognized, I need to turn my attention to next. I just want to stress – that’s what is perceived. What is lived is simply that presence with its infinite … I can’t say infinite dimension because that’s a contradiction. It doesn’t have dimensions, which returns us to the narrative. But I want to go there anyway, next.
