Art by SheepDen
First I write about the practical psychological consequences of such a belief, and then the mystical , scientific, and philosophical aspects of the world not existing.
Is holding on to this thought/belief helpful?
Is doing so causing me suffering or keeping me from being effective?
The Philosophical.
I’m also interested in this viewpoint philosophically. There’s even a movement now in philosophy called the “new realism” led by Markus Gabriel, you can read a review of his book Why the World Does Not Exist HERE
So, the world doesn’t exist, something poets and mystics have always known, and now scientists.
Below are quotes from all three :
"How little does man know of his Self [the one, immortal, formless substratum of all that exists], how he takes the most absurd statements about himself for holy Truth. He is told that he is the body, was born, will die, has parents, duties; learns to like what others like and fear what others fear.
Totally a creature of heredity & society, he lives by memory & acts by habits. Ignorant of his Self & his true nature, he pursues false aims and is always frustrated. His life & death are meaningless and painful, and there seems to be no way out."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
THE UNBELIEVABLE by William Bronk
We are made afraid not to believe the fraud
of this world : believe or be lost.
Lost anyway.
No more to lose. Not that we ever had.
We said we had. The world said. It said,
"There is a world for having, a world to be had
only believe." Who was had ?
World,
I say no. No world.
These are not
spoken speeches. Nobody says, or to say.
But the unbelievable, which nothing believes,
says something. Listen. Says itself.
As if it were my voice. As if it were now.
What We Are by William Bronk
What we are? We say we want to become
what we are or what we have an intent to be.
We read the possibilities, or try.
We get to some. We think we know how to read.
We recognize a word, here and there,
a syllable: male, it says perhaps,
or female, talent -- look what you could do
or love, it says, love is what we mean.
Being at any cost: in the end, the cost
is terrible but so is the lure to us.
We see it move and shine and swallow it.
We say we are and this is what we are
as to say we should be and this is what to be
and this is how. But, oh, it isn’t so.
THE ELUSIONS OF DESIRE by William Bronk
I know nothing about my life except
that (call it my life) it is all mysterious.
You say, all right, come to your senses. I come.
I come to a sense other than common sense.
But I love that, too, would come there
if I could. Sense is what I love — the half
sense I find. My eyes look
out while I stay in mystery, wanting sense.
Abba Alonius, summarizes it well: “If a man does not say in his heart, in the world there is only myself and God, he will not gain peace”
When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky itself,
no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not love.
It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known before.
So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged—I begged to wed every object and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”
For then I knew my soul—every soul—
has always held
Him.
~ Meister Eckhart (13th C Christian mystic)
The Psychological
Often I hear people say they’re worried about “the world”. Where is the world, I ask. They usually point to a wall. “I’m worried about my neighbor,” they say. “Where is she?” They point to the wall again.
This interests me both psychologically and philosophically.
Psychologically, with clients, my intention is that their minds only entertain what is valuable; and by valuable I mean good to have done and possible to do.
So, it’s not indifference to the actual neighbor I would suggest, but indifference to the thoughts about the neighbor that are not valuable - that aren’t possible to do, and so don’t help anyone.
If we are preoccupied with thoughts of what is not possible to do, we will miss the real flesh and blood person in front of us that is possible to help.
Of course, when we are fused with our thoughts, we might believe them as an absolute truths, or iron laws we MUST obey, and then it’s difficult to separate our thoughts from reality, and instead of our mind reacting to the reality we are reacting only to our thoughts.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has much in common with Buddhism; also with Vedanta and its practice of Self-Inquiry where you meditate on “Who am I.”
In ACT they practice cognitive defusion, which has three steps:
Looking at thoughts rather than from thoughts.
Noticing thoughts rather than becoming caught up in thoughts.
Letting thoughts come and go rather than holding on to them.
It also helps to ask yourself:
Often I hear people say they’re worried about “the world”. Where is the world, I ask. They usually point to a wall. “I’m worried about my neighbor,” they say. “Where is she?” They point to the wall again.
This interests me both psychologically and philosophically.
Psychologically, with clients, my intention is that their minds only entertain what is valuable; and by valuable I mean good to have done and possible to do.
So, it’s not indifference to the actual neighbor I would suggest, but indifference to the thoughts about the neighbor that are not valuable - that aren’t possible to do, and so don’t help anyone.
If we are preoccupied with thoughts of what is not possible to do, we will miss the real flesh and blood person in front of us that is possible to help.
Of course, when we are fused with our thoughts, we might believe them as an absolute truths, or iron laws we MUST obey, and then it’s difficult to separate our thoughts from reality, and instead of our mind reacting to the reality we are reacting only to our thoughts.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has much in common with Buddhism; also with Vedanta and its practice of Self-Inquiry where you meditate on “Who am I.”
In ACT they practice cognitive defusion, which has three steps:
Looking at thoughts rather than from thoughts.
Noticing thoughts rather than becoming caught up in thoughts.
Letting thoughts come and go rather than holding on to them.
It also helps to ask yourself:
Is holding on to this thought/belief helpful?
Is doing so causing me suffering or keeping me from being effective?
The Philosophical.
I’m also interested in this viewpoint philosophically. There’s even a movement now in philosophy called the “new realism” led by Markus Gabriel, you can read a review of his book Why the World Does Not Exist HERE
So, the world doesn’t exist, something poets and mystics have always known, and now scientists.
Below are quotes from all three :
"How little does man know of his Self [the one, immortal, formless substratum of all that exists], how he takes the most absurd statements about himself for holy Truth. He is told that he is the body, was born, will die, has parents, duties; learns to like what others like and fear what others fear.
Totally a creature of heredity & society, he lives by memory & acts by habits. Ignorant of his Self & his true nature, he pursues false aims and is always frustrated. His life & death are meaningless and painful, and there seems to be no way out."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
From Eckhart’s 87th sermon HERE :
“For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal.
Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die. According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now and shall eternally remain. That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things….”
“For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal.
Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die. According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now and shall eternally remain. That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things….”
“The assumption that space and time exist and are real is not universal to humankind…there is practically no limit to the different ways in which people conceive of space and time.”
-Stanisław Iwaniszewski
“From an anthropological viewpoint, concepts of space and time should be viewed as cultural products (artifacts), products of thought, situated within Karl Popper's (1972) third world (Renfrew and Bahn 1991, pp. 340), but remaining embedded and embodied in physical objects, events, and processes taking place in his first world.
Therefore, there is no reason to suppose that space and time are real things that exist and can be universally and objectively perceived; rather they should be regarded as "imaginary constructs which generate the rationality of the relationship between people and their actions" (Iwaniszewski 2001, p. 3). In a similar way, all peoples create a concept of the universe, or cosmos…”
- Iwaniszewski, S. (2015). Concepts of Space, Time, and the Cosmos. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy.
“Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself. When the mind leaves the Self, the world appears.
Therefore, when the world appears, the Self does not appear; and when the Self appears (shines) the world does not appear.”
- Ramana Maharshi
"O, aspirants who hide yourselves away fearing this world, nothing such as a world exists! Fearing this false world which appears to exist, is like fearing the false snake which appears in a rope."
- Ramana Maharshi
“If one wished to escape the world of perspectives one would perish.”
— Nietzsche
"What is perfection? Profound humility, which consists in the abandoning of everything visible and invisible: visible meaning everything involved with the senses; invisible meaning all thinking about them."
—St. Isaac of Nineveh
-Stanisław Iwaniszewski
“From an anthropological viewpoint, concepts of space and time should be viewed as cultural products (artifacts), products of thought, situated within Karl Popper's (1972) third world (Renfrew and Bahn 1991, pp. 340), but remaining embedded and embodied in physical objects, events, and processes taking place in his first world.
Therefore, there is no reason to suppose that space and time are real things that exist and can be universally and objectively perceived; rather they should be regarded as "imaginary constructs which generate the rationality of the relationship between people and their actions" (Iwaniszewski 2001, p. 3). In a similar way, all peoples create a concept of the universe, or cosmos…”
- Iwaniszewski, S. (2015). Concepts of Space, Time, and the Cosmos. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy.
“Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself. When the mind leaves the Self, the world appears.
Therefore, when the world appears, the Self does not appear; and when the Self appears (shines) the world does not appear.”
- Ramana Maharshi
"O, aspirants who hide yourselves away fearing this world, nothing such as a world exists! Fearing this false world which appears to exist, is like fearing the false snake which appears in a rope."
- Ramana Maharshi
“If one wished to escape the world of perspectives one would perish.”
— Nietzsche
"What is perfection? Profound humility, which consists in the abandoning of everything visible and invisible: visible meaning everything involved with the senses; invisible meaning all thinking about them."
—St. Isaac of Nineveh
“If it is perceivable
or conceivable
it is not You,
therefore discard it.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
or conceivable
it is not You,
therefore discard it.”
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
THE UNBELIEVABLE by William Bronk
We are made afraid not to believe the fraud
of this world : believe or be lost.
Lost anyway.
No more to lose. Not that we ever had.
We said we had. The world said. It said,
"There is a world for having, a world to be had
only believe." Who was had ?
World,
I say no. No world.
These are not
spoken speeches. Nobody says, or to say.
But the unbelievable, which nothing believes,
says something. Listen. Says itself.
As if it were my voice. As if it were now.
What We Are by William Bronk
What we are? We say we want to become
what we are or what we have an intent to be.
We read the possibilities, or try.
We get to some. We think we know how to read.
We recognize a word, here and there,
a syllable: male, it says perhaps,
or female, talent -- look what you could do
or love, it says, love is what we mean.
Being at any cost: in the end, the cost
is terrible but so is the lure to us.
We see it move and shine and swallow it.
We say we are and this is what we are
as to say we should be and this is what to be
and this is how. But, oh, it isn’t so.
THE ELUSIONS OF DESIRE by William Bronk
I know nothing about my life except
that (call it my life) it is all mysterious.
You say, all right, come to your senses. I come.
I come to a sense other than common sense.
But I love that, too, would come there
if I could. Sense is what I love — the half
sense I find. My eyes look
out while I stay in mystery, wanting sense.
Abba Alonius, summarizes it well: “If a man does not say in his heart, in the world there is only myself and God, he will not gain peace”
When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky itself,
no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not love.
It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known before.
So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged—I begged to wed every object and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”
For then I knew my soul—every soul—
has always held
Him.
~ Meister Eckhart (13th C Christian mystic)
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