Seemingness

What is the one thing you can know with absolute certainty?

It is that conscious experience seems to be happening. It may be impossible to know with certainty exactly what is actually going on — the world itself may be an illusion — but the seemingness of it cannot be meaningfully doubted. If you try and doubt it, you will quickly discover that the conscious experience of doubt seems to be happening.

Pick any sound. You may be mistaken about what it really is or what’s causing it, but its seemingness cannot be doubted. Listen carefully.

Pick any texture you’re feeling. Its seemingness is also certain in the moment you feel it. Whatever it is, there it still is, seeming.

This seemingness takes on endless forms: it manifests as sights, sounds, textures, even thoughts. Taken together, they form what you call “the world.”

In one sense, these manifestations are all different. A sound is not a texture is not a color. Even two thoughts are not the same.

But there’s also something that all these forms have in common. Their essence is identical: they have the quality of being experienced, of seeming. Stop and see if you can intuit the sense in which sounds and textures are made of the one and only thing that cannot be doubted; of seemingness.

Really pause until you can get a sense of that. This perspective is more valuable than it might seem at first glance.

Why are we so captivated by questions about the origin of life? Well, first, what do we mean by “life”? There’s the textbook definition:

The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

But while that stuff is certainly fascinating, I mean something different. Have you ever felt vibrantly alive, and felt that life is infinitely miraculous; marvelous; magical? It is that life that we yearn to understand. What could possibly give rise to something so fantastical?

Now notice that “life” in this sense — that of a vibrantly experienced world — is just a synonym for seemingness. When you are in awe of all the sights, sounds, textures of life, you’re in awe of seemingness. It is the origin of that that tickles our funny bone.

And why do we want to know about the origins of the universe? It’s because it’s really quite surprising: why the hell is there anything at all? That just begs for an explanation. But we fail to notice that all of this stuff we’re categorizing as “anything at all” — all of the things we experience, and all the things we imagine to be outside experience — are themselves seemingness, since even our imagination is nothing but that.

Whether or not you believe there’s more to the world than seemingness, you must admit that anything you’ve ever called “the world” is made of it. That is the world — as far as you can ever know — and it is the origin of that that you long to discover.

Finally, why is consciousness considered such a grand mystery? Again, because it seems preposterous that a chunk of meat should be experiencing a world. It is the experiencing we’re after. Or, you could say, the seeming. That is what we want to know: holy crap, why do things seem at all?

Of course, we rarely phrase the question in this way. It’s so mind-blowing that it spins off thousands of seemingly-related questions (such as those about growth, reproduction, functional activity…), each of which misses the mark by “just a bit” — but also infinitely.

Whether we realize it or not, ultimately we’re circling around this one mystery: what is the source of this one and only thing we can be utterly sure of?

We will not rest until we find the answer.

There are two broad ways to approach this question.

The first is familiar to you: you collect evidence and think about it really hard. Through pondering and reasoning, you’ll eventually get to the bottom of it. After all, it’s worked for so many other problems; why not this one? One day we’ll have a formula that solves the grand mystery.

Q: Holy sh*t, how come… anything??

A: Because ∫ x dx + π ^ e …

Q: Oh, I guess it’s not so surprising after all.

The second approach is that of the mystics. It says, in essence: if you want to know more about this one thing, spend time with it. We may think that we’re doing so, but in reality we’re almost always just thinking about doing so.

The trouble is that the mind cannot grasp this seemingness. Everything you think of as the mind — thoughts, emotions, memories — is made of it, just like sounds and textures are. Just as a character on a movie screen cannot grab the light from which he is made, your thoughts will never grasp what’s being pointed at. And they will quite naturally conclude that there’s nothing to see here, and move on.

But what happens if you persevere? If you wholeheartedly immerse yourself in the one and only thing that cannot be doubted?

You begin to notice that embedded in the Question are all sorts of unfounded assumptions. “What’s causing this?” assumes causality, which presupposes time. It also assumes that there must be a something else which could give rise to the seemingness. Finally, it presupposes that there’s someone “in here” (“I”) who will discover the answer.

As your mind calms, you discover the source of all of these assumptions.

It dawns on you that you’ve never actually experienced time. Instead, it is always now, and into this atemporal space an imagined past and future continually emerge. Seemingness takes on the form of thoughts claiming “I am experiencing time,” and you unquestioningly believe them.

Whatever you are, it is fundamentally outside that which you’ve been calling “time.”

You’ve never come into contact with a so-called “physical reality” which you’re dead certain must exist — despite such a thing being (famously) impossible to prove, and despite all evidence to the contrary.

You’ve never encountered a separate “self” who’s supposedly residing in your head, looking out at the world. Both science and mysticism agree that there is no such thing, but you’ve never bothered to slow down enough to see the mind-blowing revelation for yourself.

When you go to the fabled Island of Gold, you can never find ordinary earth or stones, however hard you look. — Buddhist saying

As “you” settle into the essence — or rather, as it settles into itself — it occurs to you: perhaps the Question is not looking for an answer. Instead, it is inviting you on a wondrous journey to the heart of the Great Mystery. All of your desires to know the meaning of life, the secret of happiness, have been pointers back to the Source; your true home, in all its blinding glory.

The Light is waking itself up. Sooner or later, we all answer the call.

They say we don’t miss it because it’s far away or hard to see. We miss it because it’s everything. Our only mistake is being too busy looking for a mythical something else.

So close you can’t see it

So deep you can’t fathom it

So simple you can’t believe it

So good you can’t accept it

— Tibetan Saying

As we return to our daily lives, our old habits flood back. We bicker with our spouses; we shake our fists at traffic; we bury our faces in our devices to fend off the inevitable ennui.

But having glimpsed the fabled Island of Gold even once, and knowing that it’s not very far away, something has shifted ever so slightly in us.

We may still send forth an army of thoughts and microscopes to discover the source of it all, but this time something is different. There’s a twinkle in our eye.

What exactly has changed, we can’t really say.