The Art of Flux Thinking

Understanding yourself is by far the best gift bestowed on man. Our ability, or rather our potentiality, to know who, what, where, how and why we are, is by far the only thing of value. All else is fleeting, vulnerable, perishable and of no value. Matter can change and so all things material are never enduring. Memory can be forgotten or misguided by our interpretations, so memory is not enough. Thoughts come and go; they are fleeting. Even life itself is fleeting. The only things of value is who, what, where, how and why you are. All these things can be explained with the simple revelation of the essence of your existence. By essence I mean perception without clouding, perception of the true nature of a thing without the mist of delusion or deception.

Notice how I say, revelation as opposed to knowledge. Revelation has the implications of experience as well as knowledge. To know is not enough; you must be in the moment, present with that which you know in order for that which you know to be revealed to you. Otherwise, if you lose the presence, it was not revealed to you at all, that which you know was nothing other than imagination or memory. When something is revealed the distance of time is taken out of the equation, it all happens in the now. Reflection thus is not capable of revelation; it is merely capable of remembering, for it lacks the presence required for revelation. Consequently, imagination is rendered ineffective too, for that too in-itself has the distance of time. When you imagine, you create events that have not occurred, you do this by using the constituents of events that have occurred and are stored in your memory. Thus, imagination is rooted in memory, it is a chimera of past parts of your experiences brought together to create an illusory whole which you attribute to the possibility of the future.

When the knower and the known come into contact there is a bridge that is built, knowledge is created, that bridge is between you and that which you know. So the knower and the known are in relation to one another (much thanks to Osho for this understanding). You have the knower on one side, that which is known on the other and the processing of knowing connecting the two. You can almost picture a bridge between knower and known, and the bridge is called knowing. Now for this knowledge to happen with existence, the bridge must be instantaneously created, it must be created in the delay of no time. This is because the essence of existence is not rooted in the imagination or reflection, it is a revelation. You cannot imagine or remember what existence is, you can only experience it in the moment of its revelation. To reveal something to someone, they need to be there in that moment to see it. The very process of knowING, the “ing” shows that it is a process that happens now, it is in the present moment, it is not in the “knew” or in the “can-be-known”; it is knowing, it is in the now.

This word revelation of which we are keen on means, for something to reach a disclosure, for something to be revealed. Revelation is the only road to one’s own existence, to one’s own individuality and escape from delusion. You are deceived if you think that you can find a path to the essence of your existence using reflection or imagination. We shall venture into the reasons why. First and foremost, in order to avoid confusion, I will try and be clear on the use of the word existence in this article*. Existence is closely linked to the word, “being”; for something to “be” it must have the minimum capability of contemplation, in other words it has to have some value in the realm of thought. However, simple contemplation is not enough to render something as existing, just because I can think of something it doesn’t mean it has to exist, e.g. the Unicorn. There is another level to existence, it needs justification in the form of experience of the relation between itself and the thinking-thing (human being) that can accommodate it in its thoughts. Put in other words I need to have come across that which I have in my head somewhere in life** in order for that thing to have the value of existence. Thus all things that exist can be contemplated, but the value of existence is given when they are manifested as adhering to the objective world.

When you are engaged in the process of reflection you are using your memory. You are reflecting upon something that has happened in the past and you are reflecting on it now. By doing this you are creating an illusion, the illusion is in your mind and is very subtle. The moment you remember an experience, you are simply bringing into existence something that doesn’t exist, you are giving life to something that is already dead. The subtlety of this is very exquisite. Think about the past for a second; what is it? The past is the sum of all “nows” that have gone and are weeded out of existence, back then they had existence because they were in the now. All things located in the now have existence, once the now has gone, their existence has gone with them for the moment that has just past can only be re-lived via memory, strictly because it has just passed. When you die, you have past, your moment has gone, your existence as you know it has gone, however you can still exist in the memory, someone can bring you back into existence by thinking about you, but ask yourself this, do you really exist or are you nothing more just a memory, something non-existent? Similarly all things that have passed are non-existent, they are not existent, they are nothing more than things that have passed being brought back into existence by the memory, and this doesn’t however make them any more existent. The bummer with this is that you are using your now-moment, a thing with existence to think about a past-moment, a thing with no existence. So to think about a past-moment in the now-moment is to reject the now-moment, to reject true existence for false existence. Each moment spent thinking about the past is a moment wasted in something non-existent. This is because you cannot occupy two spaces in existence at the same time, you are given one, so you can only use the now moment once at one time, how you use it is your choice; can think about the past/future or you cannot think at all and simply be. You can be in consciousness. It becomes a loss of existence when true existence is preoccupied by false-existence. How many true existences have you lost up till now; how many are you losing constantly?

Imagination, the other culprit of this loss of existence, is nothing more than a manipulation of memory and experience. Imagination takes parts from the past or memory and creates a whole out of those parts. Think of things that are imaginative for a second, for example the Unicorn, it is a creation of different creatures that have been seen, parts of each creature are taken out and a whole new creature is created by the parts. Anything created by the imagination is as existing as the Unicorn. Imagination does this constantly; you can never imagine something that isn’t related to something that you have experienced, it mandatory for you to experience something in order to create something imaginative. This use of the imagination is done constantly when thinking about the future, whenever you think about the future; you are imagining how it could go. You are trying to create a now-moment by using the parts of now-moments that have past. You are building a future with the blocks of the past. This too is a form of non-existence, primarily because the past parts you are using do not exist. Not only that but the future now-moments that you are creating are non-existent for they are merely now-moments that have not happened yet. How can something that isn’t happening have existence? So remember always, a whole created by parts that are nonexistent leaves the whole itself nonexistent, for something created from stone cannot been seen, without delusion, as made of steel. That which is created by something cannot be seen as created by something else, without illusion.

The only thing that is worth the value of existence is primarily anything attached to the word “now”. Now is the only revelation there is. The now moment revealed in the absence of mind, in the presence of pure consciousness is the revelation we are all seeking. The now moment is the bridge required in order for existence to meet with the person in-existence. It is the only way for the relation between the knower and that which is known to happen, and the irony is that the moment this happens, the knower and the known vanish, leaving you only with consciousness, and out of that consciousness the essence of existence is sprouted. So the gift of existence is this, the past and future, are merely projections, the now-moment is the only truth. Projections are helpful for living a causal life, a life of transition from one moment to the next, a life of cause and effect. A life of Samsara. To escape that life, to go beyond it, to reach the absolute, more is required. A surrender to the now moment, a surrender to existence, a surrender to consciousness, is mandatory.

Namaste.

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* The notion of existence is an extremely delicate concept, and one must be very careful of its fragile nature lest it break and cause problems. I will not venture here into the intricacies and implications of this word because it would require an essay, so for precision sake I will be as brief as I can in my usage of the word. Take care not to mistake my use of the word Existence with that of an Existentialist, the differences are immense.

** By life I mean everyday living, in the realm of experience, the physical world as opposed to the metaphysical. The existence of metaphysical entities are not a subject I am engaging in here.