Epistemologically speaking, the mind is a paradox because it is at once the thing we are most familiar with and the thing which we know least about. It is actually this familiarity which prevents us from knowing it. Consciousness (and the self) is what we have known our whole lives; it is, literally, the world we grow up in. Consciousness, like water to a fish, is what we have known our whole lives and is therefore invisible to us. To think of it differently: consciousness (and derivatively so, the self) is the lens that we have used to examine reality our whole lives. It is the only lens we’ve ever had. But because it is the only lens accessible to us, we cannot examine it. The lens cannot look back upon itself in much the same way that a mouth cannot eat itself.
The mind is not what it appears to be. It is not a transparent landscape. Just below the visible surface things quickly become cloudy and muddled. The mind is multifaceted in its dimensions. On one level, it is merely a reflection of the environment. It is the digested and metabolized information that comes in from our senses. On a different level, the mind is a continuous stream of free-associations: perceptions lead to random memories, which lead to random thoughts, which inspire random musings, etc—a relentless concatenation of interrelated links. On this level, our mind is constantly going, a never ending stream of consciousness, that often times continues without our (self) awareness. On a different level, the process of thinking is completely and utterly unknown to us. What we are familiar with are the “answers” that pop up but not the process by which they are formed. On a deeper level, the mind is determined by thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are subdued and unconscious. And finally, on a higher level, our mind seems to be blessed with powers that are almost angelic in stature and on a lower level, we clearly do not seem to be anything more than sophisticated primates, as visceral and primal as the next animal in the jungle.
Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, James, and other philosophers and psychologists argued for the idea that the majority of consciousness remained hidden beneath the surface. Sometimes the mind is the reflection of the environment but sometimes it clearly is not. It is subject to intrusion. Fully formed thoughts, emotions, or ideas seem to pierce our consciousness and demand our full attention, as if we were suddenly possessed by a muse. My own life is littered with countless examples of being overcome suddenly with the urge to draw something, write something, think something, or do something. I’m sure you have experienced this in your own lives as well. I have found that these bursts of creativity are the most productive and precious things that I have. Their quality and value is greater than anything that I’ve deliberately and begrudgingly forced myself to toil over and create. There is a variety of Buddhist philosophy that believes that enlightenment is something you can only prepare to receive and not something you can actively attain. There is an element of passivity to this thought that is reflective of the mind in general. Consciousness used to be the one thing that we had completely possession and ownership over. But that does not seem to be the case.
This problem of our mind’s content is further complicated when the mind is perturbed from the outside. For instance, when the mind is under the influence of psychedelic substances, these aspects of hidden-ness and novelty are amplified and emphasized. In the psychedelic experience we come face to face with a perception of reality that is completely and utterly astounding in its alien-ness. The experience seems to functions under different rules, with different content. Images and thoughts that never typically pass through our ‘sober consciousness’ flood us at an alarming rate. I am using this drastic example of psychedelic experiences because it helps to emphasize and illuminate the point that I am trying to get at, which is this: the contents and capabilities of the mind remain largely underutilized and untapped, forcing us into a new conception of the mind and self-hood.
So if the mind is on the one hand merely a mirror of the environment, and on the other hand a passive receptacle for random thoughts, where exactly does that leave “the self?” We’ve always considered “the self” to be the decider, the chooser, the arbiter, in short, the mover and shaker of our mind and body. But it is clearly obvious that the majority of the time, this “self” is merely a passive witness. Half the time we think that we’re thinking we are actually watching ourselves think. Where does this notion of selfhood and me-ness fit in? Who am I? Where do my thoughts come from? How can I do what is right? Do I have a soul? Why do I do the things I do? … Follow this line of questioning far enough down the rabbit hole and you will find yourself uncomfortably present in unfamiliar territory where self hood, free-will, control, and individuality are idyllic illusions. These are hard thoughts to swallow for Westerners.
Deeply examining the mind is avoided because it leads us to conclusions that are incongruous with our Western ideology. This is exactly why we have summoned up enough strength, ingenuity, and courage to travel outward to the moon but have barely scratched the surface inward into the soul.
