S Y M B O L S O F T H E H A G : Tony Kelly
Some things we remember well. Other things we have forgotten. Others again we think we remember, but the memory is false. How do we know the false memory from the memory that is true? We don't. Not until events show us the falsity. And what if events never show us the falsity? Perhaps it's trivial? If I feel sure I put something in a certain place, and when I go to get it, it isn't there (and I know no one else has been there) it's an annoyance, but hardly anything more. Or is it? Where did the false memory of putting the thing there come from? That's trivial too, isn't it. After all, perhaps I intended to put it there but never actually got around to doing it, and somehow the intention was falsely remembered' as a fact. So we can dismiss it as being of small consequence. We can, can't we? Because... if we were subject to memories that didn't really relate to actual events, it would be unnerving, wouldn't it? But the Hag is unnerving. Unmaking... Not destroying. That would be too crude... too simple... too easy to understand...
Now here's a postulate to examine. I postulate that you are now dreaming that you are reading this article. Do you protest that you're not dreaming? What are you using as evidence? How will you verify your assertion? Surely not until you wake up? But if you're not dreaming, you'll never wake up, and so you can never be sure you are not dreaming. And even if you are dreaming, you might dream that you woke up. Of course, this is all academic, a mere intellectual exercise. We all know, in our bones, that this is just a hypothesis. We're quite sure of our reality: just as sure, in fact, as we are when we're dreaming.....
The advaitin says: "All is self" (Aham Brahmasmi: I am Brahma). When I look at that slab of shale on the ground, it's a delusion, born of Maya, the Deceiver, the ultimate source of ignorance, the ultimate ignorance. I can touch the piece of shale and feel its hardness, its coldness, its extension into space... But all these experiences are in the mind, even as the delusion of the piece of shale itself is merely a figment of the mind. Not only the shale is a delusion, but the very ground on which we imagine it rests, and this very body we imagine is observing it. There is only mind; there is only atma'; there is only me. This doctrine of nihilism is repugnant, but can you refute it? (It's survived centuries of argument). Don't misunderstand, because it's subtle. I said, "There is only me." If I ask what I said will you say, "You said there is only you"? That would be to miss the meaning; me' doesn't change to you'.
But it's empty, isn't it. Cold, lonely, purposeless, meaningless. Meaningless.....? The Hag is not concerned with meaning, with cause and effect, not even with chance and its wayward and fickle laws. Her domain is where meaning breaks down, like the artistry of the waxen image in the fire, like love that lingers on the rotting corpse. To say it was emptiness would give it too much definition, for definition implies the definer.
Or it's like this. Five minutes ago, all the universe was created out of nothing, complete with an artificial and utterly spurious pseudo-memory of a sham past. All the galaxies, all the laws of physics and chemistry, all the living beings and their ready-made memories were created just five minutes ago. Oh, I know the uranium-lead ratios postulate an age of three thousand million years of solidity for the Earth, and the figure is confirmed by other geological considerations. But it was only five minutes ago that these elements were created, and in just these ratios, and with half-lives of decay to be compatible with a consistent view of physics. And for completeness, we've got a pseudo-memory of all sorts of scientific experiments done to build up to this point, and we've even got a mass of scientific (and other) literature, all created just five minutes ago. It's fantastic, isn't it? It's so obviously rubbish, isn't it? What do we mean by rubbish'? Do we mean something we can't understand? Oh, the Hag scorns your attempt to understand!
Nuclear physics really is in a mess, even by orthodox admission. Virtually every new theory created turns out to be right', but just as certainly incomplete'. If it gets into an intractable mess, it's a simple matter to destroy all the past, and create a new past', and we'd never know because our memories are all changed to fit it; let's not underestimate the Master Magician! This gets rubbishier and rubbishier, doesn't it? More and more improbable. Ah, but..... Are you resting it all on mere probabilities anyway? You are, aren't you? And instincts. Like a chick who, imprinted by sight of a football, ever after follows it like a normal chick follows a hen. What could more right' (it feels) than following a football around? So safe! So secure! That's rubbish too, isn't it? Did you endorse that "too"? I expect you did, and I equally expect you've now retracted it. Did you only retract it because I was here, outside you' to jog your alertness? There's no one beside you when you stand before the emptiness of the Hag, naked and alone, with not even a thought to clothe you or to stand as shield between you and that awful emptiness.
Let's lay our experience before her, for it's easier to do it of our own volition than of her bidding. What is our experience? Let's distinguish between the real and the symbol of the real. And let's make no mistakes. How would it be to be standing, all alone, albeit clothed in the real, on the rain-lashed lonely rock, and the sphagnum and the peat and the moor all around, and standing thus before the terrible emptiness of the Cailleach, to know then, as we didn't know before, that what we took for the real was but another form of the false?
So let's examine our experiences. There are the so-called five senses (though in fact there are more). There's the sense of touch, which is really three senses, one being the feeling of contact, one of pain, and one of temperature. There's the sense of hearing. There's sight, and taste and smell, each of which again is not a single sense but a group of senses which are classified together because, within each group, they have some similarities. Now in order for us to be aware of anything, some information must impinge on one or more of these senses. Let's consider the sense of sight and, in particular, the sense of reception of green light. Suppose we see some grass. This isn't accurate. We see some light which has left the grass and entered our eye. We don't see grass; we see light. All that we have ever seen is light. The light that we have seen may be of different hues and different brilliance and in differing patterns, but for all that, it is still only light that we have seen. We have never seen grass. Do you hear the hollow laugh of the Hag? It was all deception, wasn't it? But this isn't all. What is light? It's a vibration of something, and the only different between one kind of light and another of a different colour is that some vibrations are faster and some slower. So if all our experience of sight is reduced to a mere experience of a variety of different colours, these in turn are reduced to a single thing which varies only in one way, namely, in vibrating slowly or faster. But we're not even aware of rays of light; the only bit we see is the end of the supposed ray which actually hits the retina of the eye. So the only event of which we have any experience in the visual field is an event which is going on inside our own eye. Our visual experience doesn't extend outside our eye. What we experience is a chemical change in the retina, and this is all we've ever experienced. Grass is a mere symbol of it. In fact, it's not even an experience in our eye. It's a reversible chemical change in a few rods or cones in the retina, which initiates a chain of electrochemical changes along an optic nerve which eventually merges with the brain. So what we're actually aware of is something going on inside our own brain. It's purely an exercise in symbolism to translate this into terms of something such as grass' which is imagined to exist in a postulated outside'; because, in fact, we have never seen grass. All we have ever seen is a series of electrochemical changes inside our own head.
The same is true of each of the other senses. Even our own body is a postulated thing since we're not directly aware of it, but only of electrochemical changes in the brain which we project, by a process of symbolism, into an image of what we call a body. The very mapping out of the body's contours is based on a chain of hypotheses which is intrinsically unverifiable. The galaxy which, in its star-strewn beauty, seduces the gaze of the astronomer as he looks with his telescope into the remote depths of space is really a figment of a chain of hypotheses, and all that really exists is a pattern of disturbances in the astronomer's optic nerves.
This has gone on too far, hasn't it? It's getting ridiculous. After all, it may look plausible in part, but there's too much consistency in our experience. We can check our observations by several independent methods; we can find unifying laws; we can make predictions and test our hypotheses, and out of all our efforts, a pretty good and consistent picture of the universe has evolved. Oh but..... many of the predictions were falsified. The picture is only self-consistent precisely because we've thrown out the bits that were not! The survival potential of a bit that is not consistent with the rest is about zero. And it wouldn't be true to say it was a vast, collective delusion, because the only experience I have, even of other people, is part of that same delusion, that same symbolic projection of nerve signals.
I have no experience whatever of anything beyond the confines of my own brain; for all I know, the symbols I have projected, of people, of stars and galaxies, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness... all these are symbolic projections of what is going on in the electrochemical engine of my own brain. But my brain too is a hypothesis. (Are you reading you' for me' again?) Consistency in the postulated outside' is not evidence of the reality of the outside'; it's merely evidence that inconsistency doesn't survive because I can't tolerate it in a rational frame of reference.
And the Fool says, "There is no Outside!"
But he is a fool.
And the Hag..... You can't place your problem in her lap, because
she hasn't got a lap.
Now here's a postulate to examine. I postulate that you are now dreaming that you are reading this article. Do you protest that you're not dreaming? What are you using as evidence? How will you verify your assertion? Surely not until you wake up? But if you're not dreaming, you'll never wake up, and so you can never be sure you are not dreaming. And even if you are dreaming, you might dream that you woke up. Of course, this is all academic, a mere intellectual exercise. We all know, in our bones, that this is just a hypothesis. We're quite sure of our reality: just as sure, in fact, as we are when we're dreaming.....
The advaitin says: "All is self" (Aham Brahmasmi: I am Brahma). When I look at that slab of shale on the ground, it's a delusion, born of Maya, the Deceiver, the ultimate source of ignorance, the ultimate ignorance. I can touch the piece of shale and feel its hardness, its coldness, its extension into space... But all these experiences are in the mind, even as the delusion of the piece of shale itself is merely a figment of the mind. Not only the shale is a delusion, but the very ground on which we imagine it rests, and this very body we imagine is observing it. There is only mind; there is only atma'; there is only me. This doctrine of nihilism is repugnant, but can you refute it? (It's survived centuries of argument). Don't misunderstand, because it's subtle. I said, "There is only me." If I ask what I said will you say, "You said there is only you"? That would be to miss the meaning; me' doesn't change to you'.
But it's empty, isn't it. Cold, lonely, purposeless, meaningless. Meaningless.....? The Hag is not concerned with meaning, with cause and effect, not even with chance and its wayward and fickle laws. Her domain is where meaning breaks down, like the artistry of the waxen image in the fire, like love that lingers on the rotting corpse. To say it was emptiness would give it too much definition, for definition implies the definer.
Or it's like this. Five minutes ago, all the universe was created out of nothing, complete with an artificial and utterly spurious pseudo-memory of a sham past. All the galaxies, all the laws of physics and chemistry, all the living beings and their ready-made memories were created just five minutes ago. Oh, I know the uranium-lead ratios postulate an age of three thousand million years of solidity for the Earth, and the figure is confirmed by other geological considerations. But it was only five minutes ago that these elements were created, and in just these ratios, and with half-lives of decay to be compatible with a consistent view of physics. And for completeness, we've got a pseudo-memory of all sorts of scientific experiments done to build up to this point, and we've even got a mass of scientific (and other) literature, all created just five minutes ago. It's fantastic, isn't it? It's so obviously rubbish, isn't it? What do we mean by rubbish'? Do we mean something we can't understand? Oh, the Hag scorns your attempt to understand!
Nuclear physics really is in a mess, even by orthodox admission. Virtually every new theory created turns out to be right', but just as certainly incomplete'. If it gets into an intractable mess, it's a simple matter to destroy all the past, and create a new past', and we'd never know because our memories are all changed to fit it; let's not underestimate the Master Magician! This gets rubbishier and rubbishier, doesn't it? More and more improbable. Ah, but..... Are you resting it all on mere probabilities anyway? You are, aren't you? And instincts. Like a chick who, imprinted by sight of a football, ever after follows it like a normal chick follows a hen. What could more right' (it feels) than following a football around? So safe! So secure! That's rubbish too, isn't it? Did you endorse that "too"? I expect you did, and I equally expect you've now retracted it. Did you only retract it because I was here, outside you' to jog your alertness? There's no one beside you when you stand before the emptiness of the Hag, naked and alone, with not even a thought to clothe you or to stand as shield between you and that awful emptiness.
Let's lay our experience before her, for it's easier to do it of our own volition than of her bidding. What is our experience? Let's distinguish between the real and the symbol of the real. And let's make no mistakes. How would it be to be standing, all alone, albeit clothed in the real, on the rain-lashed lonely rock, and the sphagnum and the peat and the moor all around, and standing thus before the terrible emptiness of the Cailleach, to know then, as we didn't know before, that what we took for the real was but another form of the false?
So let's examine our experiences. There are the so-called five senses (though in fact there are more). There's the sense of touch, which is really three senses, one being the feeling of contact, one of pain, and one of temperature. There's the sense of hearing. There's sight, and taste and smell, each of which again is not a single sense but a group of senses which are classified together because, within each group, they have some similarities. Now in order for us to be aware of anything, some information must impinge on one or more of these senses. Let's consider the sense of sight and, in particular, the sense of reception of green light. Suppose we see some grass. This isn't accurate. We see some light which has left the grass and entered our eye. We don't see grass; we see light. All that we have ever seen is light. The light that we have seen may be of different hues and different brilliance and in differing patterns, but for all that, it is still only light that we have seen. We have never seen grass. Do you hear the hollow laugh of the Hag? It was all deception, wasn't it? But this isn't all. What is light? It's a vibration of something, and the only different between one kind of light and another of a different colour is that some vibrations are faster and some slower. So if all our experience of sight is reduced to a mere experience of a variety of different colours, these in turn are reduced to a single thing which varies only in one way, namely, in vibrating slowly or faster. But we're not even aware of rays of light; the only bit we see is the end of the supposed ray which actually hits the retina of the eye. So the only event of which we have any experience in the visual field is an event which is going on inside our own eye. Our visual experience doesn't extend outside our eye. What we experience is a chemical change in the retina, and this is all we've ever experienced. Grass is a mere symbol of it. In fact, it's not even an experience in our eye. It's a reversible chemical change in a few rods or cones in the retina, which initiates a chain of electrochemical changes along an optic nerve which eventually merges with the brain. So what we're actually aware of is something going on inside our own brain. It's purely an exercise in symbolism to translate this into terms of something such as grass' which is imagined to exist in a postulated outside'; because, in fact, we have never seen grass. All we have ever seen is a series of electrochemical changes inside our own head.
The same is true of each of the other senses. Even our own body is a postulated thing since we're not directly aware of it, but only of electrochemical changes in the brain which we project, by a process of symbolism, into an image of what we call a body. The very mapping out of the body's contours is based on a chain of hypotheses which is intrinsically unverifiable. The galaxy which, in its star-strewn beauty, seduces the gaze of the astronomer as he looks with his telescope into the remote depths of space is really a figment of a chain of hypotheses, and all that really exists is a pattern of disturbances in the astronomer's optic nerves.
This has gone on too far, hasn't it? It's getting ridiculous. After all, it may look plausible in part, but there's too much consistency in our experience. We can check our observations by several independent methods; we can find unifying laws; we can make predictions and test our hypotheses, and out of all our efforts, a pretty good and consistent picture of the universe has evolved. Oh but..... many of the predictions were falsified. The picture is only self-consistent precisely because we've thrown out the bits that were not! The survival potential of a bit that is not consistent with the rest is about zero. And it wouldn't be true to say it was a vast, collective delusion, because the only experience I have, even of other people, is part of that same delusion, that same symbolic projection of nerve signals.
I have no experience whatever of anything beyond the confines of my own brain; for all I know, the symbols I have projected, of people, of stars and galaxies, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness... all these are symbolic projections of what is going on in the electrochemical engine of my own brain. But my brain too is a hypothesis. (Are you reading you' for me' again?) Consistency in the postulated outside' is not evidence of the reality of the outside'; it's merely evidence that inconsistency doesn't survive because I can't tolerate it in a rational frame of reference.
And the Fool says, "There is no Outside!"
But he is a fool.
And the Hag..... You can't place your problem in her lap, because
she hasn't got a lap.