Stumbling Across God
From absolute doubt to the witness within (Part 3 of "My Search for Certainty")
Dear Living Dark reader,
Here is the second post in a three-post series in which I publish, for the first time anywhere, a long essay that I wrote in 1996 at age twenty-five for a friend and philosophical sparring partner who had endured many months of my quote-laden conversational style, in which I offered an unending stream of references to and quotations from a multitude of books and thinkers. He finally asked me to state what I, as Matt, really thought and believed on my own. “My Search for Certainty” was the result. I only ever shared it with him, and then I lost it. Or so I thought, until recently I found it stuffed in an old folder. For a full account of the essay’s background and origin, and to read its first two parts, see the first post in the series, “The Abyss of Doubt.”
In that first post, 25-year-old Matt describes the condition of “philosophical schizophrenia” that had afflicted him for several years after college, undermining his inner experience and even his outer relationships, and generating significant suffering.
In this second post, younger Matt continues the story by explaining how an earlier shift of consciousness during adolescence, which had spontaneously revealed an uncanny-feeling potentiality of consciousness to fold back upon itself and become self-aware, returned and became the basis of an epiphany about the core certainty of a transcendent selfhood that was free of anxiety and doubt. As stated in the notes at the beginning of the first post, I now recognize just how deeply locked into an intellectual/conceptual mode of approaching these things I was in my mid-twenties, which made the whole thing less of an actual awakening and more of an attempt to convince myself (and secondarily my friend) that it had happened. But it’s also true that the position I was describing and grasping at in verbal-intellecutal terms still tracks in its most important aspects the more authentic recognition of these things that occurred later on.
Warm regards,
My Search for Certainty
Part 3
“With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the drift-wood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“No feature of our nature is more undeniable than its duality: we have a “me” that is circumscribed and an “I” which, in its awareness of this circumscription, gives evidence of being itself exempt from it. . . . And as noncircumscription is its essence, there is nothing that separates it in principle from the infinite.”
—Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind
When I was an early teenager, I had an experience whose implications didn’t strike me until many years later. I was lying on my bed reading, and when I put the book down I suddenly experienced the strangest sensation I had ever felt. It was as if I were in the room with myself, almost as if I were two minds. I seemed to be looking into a mental mirror. The best way to describe it is that I was regarding myself regarding myself. I became aware suddenly of myself as existing, as a presence.
I was so struck by the feeling that I lost it almost immediately, and there I was, no different than usual. I ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror and try to recapture it, but it seemed to be like an unused muscle that had worn out and now refused to respond. I tried again later with a small degree of success, but again it went away almost immediately.
Since that night I have returned to this attitude of mind many times, although for several years I forgot about it completely. It always requires great concentration, and I can never hold it for more than a few seconds. It brings with it a sense of imminent discovery, the feeling that its prolongation will reveal a great secret or mystery. I was gratified several years ago to find out that I am not crazy, that in fact this ability of consciousness to “fold back” upon itself has been experienced and described by thousands of people throughout history. I even discovered a name by which to call it: the faculty of self-awareness.
Self-awareness is what sets humans apart from animals. In our bodies we are not qualitatively different from apes or tigers, but our experience of life is light years from theirs. Animals are not aware that they exist in the same way that we are. No animal is embarrassed or holds a grudge. Dogs don’t plan their days ahead of time. Horses don’t remember yesterday except as a set of conditioned responses. As far as we know, we are the only creatures on the planet which are aware of themselves as selves. Our attention can be focused not only upon our environment, but upon ourselves as part of our environment. Because of this, we have the ability to choose and act, unlike animals, which can only react. Our self-awareness is the factor that has elevated us to the position of masters (physically) of the earth.
Throughout history there have been men and women who have testified to the capacity of human self-awareness to be pressed to greater intensity than is normally experienced. According to these individuals, it is in introspective moments of great clarity that we realize our true identity. We find that we are not what we thought we were, and our whole outlook on life is changed. These individuals also assert that this new outlook is the essence and purpose of human life on earth.
When I was at my lowest point of despair it occurred to me (I don’t know why) to ask myself what was the one constant in all my doubting. The idea had been growing on me for some time that I was certain of something but had managed to hide it from myself, and now I determined to uncover it.