When humanity goes beyond itself
Humanity has a tendency to worship itself. It might think it is worshiping an outside entity, like science or a god, but secretly it is worshiping the images and ideologies it has created through thought. Thought is its powerful tool, capable of many tremendous feats, like delivering information at the speed of light. Because thought is quite capable, and thought also realizes this, humanity begins to worship itself and its own creations. It is its own creations.
But, because of this vanity, this self-centered, or rather human-centered, movement, thought isn't capable of seeing reality. It begins to think that it can actually manipulate the world and its matter. It begins to take responsibility for creation, which means thought thinks it can create and change things. Thought believes that it can be the cause of some effect, either the cause of a reform or revolution in politics, or the cause of progress in civilization.
If one were to think about the theory of cause and effect carefully, there are actually infinite number of causes that contribute to every single phenomenon. The building can be constructed not simply because humans have the materials and technologies to construct it, but also because the earth is spinning exactly as it is, and the universe is functioning exactly as it is. Humanity tends to think that its actions are the only cause of its creation. Quite literally, without the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the galaxy in which this system exists, without the raw materials such as metals, without the air which humanity needs to breathe, without the food and water which sustains the body-organisms, there is no constructing buildings at all. Any single act of creation has innumerable causes, so in reality humanity cannot take responsibility for anything, since it is not the creator. It is rather simply a part of the phenomenon that is creation.
Without this vanity, humanity then wouldn't be in conflict with everything. To the human mind, it seems reality always needs to be changed into an image it projects. The human mind lives in this oscillation between what it desires and what is actual. This oscillation is the entire movement of human civilization. A constant discontent, feeling of lack, urge to complete, desire to make whole, will to change. This oscillation is the very movement of conflict, of war, fighting, contradiction, fragmentation, bipolarization, schizophrenia. Yet, reality is always reminding the human mind of its utterly hopeless enterprise. The tremendous progress of human technology has reared its ugly head of war, doom, and natural consequences which threaten human livelihood and survival. Everyday is a reminder of how the desire to change simply fails. This might sound negative and cynical to the mind, and therefore be rejected as non-truth or absurdity, or there might be a simple emotional rejection coming from some primal conditioning. However, facing this truth liberates. It liberates the mind from the bondage of itself, from the cage and limitation that is desire, from the distortion and misunderstanding that is vanity. When the mind ceases to own everything, meaning also that it ceases to take responsibility for any phenomenon, then clarity is natural, because the vested interests and agenda are absent therefore unable to mislead thinking. Desire is the bondage, because it is a compulsion to complete something that does not need to be completed, since everything is already completely what it is, happening absolutely and perfectly. The mind tends to think that what does not fit its own perspective is wrong. This is the vanity, the pride, the distortion of the mind. In reality, there is no perspective, no right nor wrong, only what is.
When humanity goes beyond itself, it also goes beyond its own life and death, fears and pleasures, and the misery that it calls a life. Then life has a totally different significance: not as something to be changed, shaped, manipulated, controlled, but as the natural and serene appearance that needs not be fixed. This is the end of thinking, the mystery that cannot be uncovered, the absolute that cannot be argued with. It is like death, final, total, complete, leaving no trace, and therefore the liberation from time and space, from the miserable travail of the human. Thinking cannot approach the absolute, because it does not realize it is the absolute thinking. When the vanity that is mind is let go, truth is all that is.
Cover photo by Aman Upadhyay on Unsplash
