Existence

It’s the most obvious thing there is. And then again, it isn’t.

I exist. No matter what happens, no matter what I think or feel or do, no matter what goes on around me, I’m here to witness it.

Once one notices that, it becomes the most self-evident and self-proving thing there is. The fact that I’m aware of being here proves without any kind of possible doubt that I’m aware, that I exist in this moment as something that is aware. I exist. I’m aware of something.

Everything else is a lot more uncertain. I don’t have any good way of knowing whether I live in some kind of simulation, whether my perceptions are manufactured for me. I don’t have a good way of knowing what I am exactly. Everything I can think is a lot more sketchy than the unavoidable fact that I’m here to witness it. What exactly I’m witnessing is not sure. What “here” is, is not clear at all. The extent of what I am is not clear at all. But I am, that’s the one sure thing.

Now, I’m saying that it is self-evident and self-proving. But I’ve had enough arguments with other people to realize that it is only self-evident once you notice it. Lots of people have noticed, or will notice right away when you call their attention to it. But also lots of people will not. They will start arguing intellectually about it, that it is not proven at all that there’s some kind of self or soul, and brain science hasn’t found it anywhere, and maybe consciousness is some kind of illusion. So maybe you don’t exist, you just think you do.

Whether something is an illusion or a simulation or not, if there’s somebody there consciously wondering about it, there’s obviously consciousness. But this kind of discussion becomes circular when it is with somebody who hasn’t themselves noticed that they exist and who doesn’t have any kind of distance from their own thoughts. I haven’t found any easy way out of it. There’s no great argument that would convince the other person. Which is in some ways shocking. But it is also indicative of the human condition. We’re in many ways stuck in a world of recycled thoughts and feelings, and we don’t easily connect with what’s really here. I’m not above that either.

I didn’t notice before I was seventeen and a bit of a lightbulb went on while I was listening to a lecture. Until then I didn’t really realize that I exist. Oh, I could walk and talk and dream about a better world, but I thought I was some kind of machine, a robot of sorts. I wasn’t aware of myself having a conscious existence. Until suddenly I did. So, I can appreciate either perspective. But I couldn’t possibly go back to thinking I don’t exist. That seems irreversible.

Once I noticed it, I also noticed that it probably always was there. If I think back to my early childhood, I was there witnessing it, whether I was aware of it at the time or not. That’s rather odd, of course, how one can not notice that one is observing what is going on all the damned time.

It is so always-there, so obvious, so unavoidable, so intimate, that one apparently can forget it. Also because there’s nothing much one can say about it. It is a looking OUT. All the stuff you can say something about, all the stuff that’s some kind of “object”, including your thoughts and feelings and things one perceive with the senses, all of that is not really me, but it is all so very interesting and engaging that one might forgot the most important part, the me who’s looking at it. Which I can’t really say much about, because it only looks out, and not in. Aside from that fact, it is unknown. So it is sort of boring, a non-event.

So, noticing one’s own existence doesn’t directly bring anything new, doesn’t really change anything. But it is maybe a good starting point for a deeper exploration of what really is going on here. For that matter, that is the suggestion from various gurus who point towards deeper realizations about reality, like Ramana Maharshi or Nisagardatta Maharaj. Just meditate on that sense of “I am”, and keep doing so. And one might arrive at a revelation about what that is.

It is also a good starting point for any other kind of mindfulness and for being a more responsible human being. If you have no distance to your thoughts and emotions and actions, if you’re essentially being them, you’re likely to do things that you’re not conscious of and that you’re not taking responsibility for. A feeling of anger might lead directly to hitting somebody, if there’s no element of reflection in the system. That reflection requires that there’s somebody home, that there’s an awareness of, hm, there are some thoughts and feelings there, I perceive certain things, and I have thoughts about them, and realizing that there’s a choice there, as to what one does about it. One is unlikely to get to that point of having a choice if one hasn’t noticed that one exists.

So, please notice that you exist. Go from there.