Shardrol wrote: Jason, I find your way of thinking quite interesting. Would you mind elaborating on your philosophical methods & what conclusions you have reached? Perhaps in another thread.
I thought that since I was going to explain my methods and conclusions I would also give an overview of my philosophical journey that led to them. The story that I tell below is rather simplified and idealized version of events and not perfectly accurate, I have teased out what I see as the areas that ended up being the most important to me, the actual path I took that led to my current understanding was less focused and linear than what I describe. Also my memory of all the events and the order isn't exactly crystal clear, so with that in mind...
I began to get deeply immersed in serious philosophy around about a decade ago now. When I say serious philosophy I mean philosophy that is concerned with the most fundamental aspects of existence and reality. Before that I had always been very driven to find truth and understanding but it was focused in other areas, usually social, cultural, moral and psychological. It seems that several factors lead me towards philosophy and a search for truth, firstly, as a kid I very scientifically oriented, and as I got older I became increasingly aware of the limitations inherent in science. I think as I found more problems with science I started to look for something that could take truth and understanding further. I had also been experiencing suffering due to various problems I saw within myself, my life and the world and I was hoping that ultimate truth might be a cure for at least some of these problems. Also around the same time I had been experimenting with various substances that allowed me to eperience some very unusual and interesting states of consciousness which further led me towards serious philosophy and truth.
I don't remember ever having a single pivotal moment where I decided then and there that I was going to begin searching for truth, I think it started out slowly and gained momentum, and since I had a disposition that sought out understanding and truth it wasn't anything particularly unusual for me, just a deeper expression of what I had always done. At the start of the journey I only had vague ideas about truth and enlightenment, but I didn't have a proper method, path or even goal, so for a while I investigated various techniques and ideas and methods. Eventually the goal of my philosophy became clear to me: I wanted to find what was ultimately real and true.
I also decided that if I was to find this illusive ultimate truth and ultimate reality, what I found would have to be absolutely certain, with no ability to doubt it whatsoever. If what I found could be doubted in any way, if there was even a skerrick of uncertainty in it, then the thing I had found would always have the potential of being incorrect. But I wanted a final answer, the undoubtable ultimate truth and reality, so uncertainty wouldn't do. So from that point on I decided that absolute certainty was a necessary characeristic of ultimate truth and reality, and now my search for ultimate truth and reality became equally a search for absolute certainty.
With my focus on finding absolute certainty taking such a prime position in my search, my method and path became more obvious to me: I had to eliminate all uncertainty, and by doing so I would hopefully eventually be left with only certainty. My philosophical method now largely consisted of investigating potential ultimate truths, and seeing if I could uncover any uncertainty or doubt in them. Doubting widely held supposed truth was already familiar territory for me, but now I took this doubting to its extremes. One after another I examined possible ultimate truths, found uncertainty and doubt in them, discarded them, and moved onto the next. It seemed like I could doubt or find uncertainty in just about everything: science, billiard-ball cause and effect, consciousness other than my own, external-from-my-consciousness reality, and on it went, it was getting to the stage where I was left with very little that had not fallen to doubt and uncertainty.
Eventually I struck upon some certainy: what I perceived directly through my senses at any moment was beyond doubt. When I saw the colour green: I definety saw the colour green, when I heard a dog barking I definitely heard a dog barking, there could be no doubt of this, there was no uncertainty in it at all. Finally I had found some certainty, but this was limited in scope, so holding on to this fragment of certainty I continued with my search and my systematic doubting method.
It might sound like my method and journey were easy and abstract the way I am retelling it here, but this stage of the journey lasted for several years, it was very real and personal for me, and could be difficult and painful. The uncertainties I found were not always kept at a distance, they frightened me to death at times. To give one example: when I considered that the world might be a dream, hallucination or other type of illusion this seriously scared me, really paralysing fear. I felt like my world may crumble at any minute, my sanity collapse, I felt horrible pressure in my head and other psychosomatic sensations caused by the great fear and stress that some of my doubting had caused. I used to have recurring nightmares in which my senses were scrambled horrificially upon finding enlightenment.
Somewhere along the line my doubting-method turned back onto itself. I started thinking "I can doubt my method of doubting itself. What makes my method of doubting valid?" I began to wonder why maybe it wasn't just as valid to not doubt, but to instead just simply accept things as certain and inherently justified - the opposite of what I had been doing. Or perhaps I could try to justify my doubting method, but then I would have to justify that justification and then justify that justification and so on into infinite regress. Likewise I could doubt any further justification I made, or justify any doubt, or doubt any doubt, and on and on and on and on into infinite regress.
It seemed like I was at a dead end, I couldn't see how I could find a fundamental base from which to work, there was always a possible further level of justification, or a further level of doubt - even being in this current predicament was the result of a series of previous justifications and doubts. It was self-referencing infinite regress hell. I'm not sure what preceded it exactly, maybe I wore myself out from the endless doubt-justification-doubt-justication cycle of thoughts I was stuck in, but eventually I realized that I simply did what I did. I couldn't escape it: if I doubted I doubted, if I didn't doubt I didn't doubt, and that was that.
Then I had another realization about certainty: that which appears directly to me is certain.
It was an expanded version of the earlier realization that my sense perceptions were certain, but this time it also extended to my thoughts and my feelings and everything else that appeared directly to my consciousness. When I experienced a thought: it was certain I was experiencing a thought. When I experienced a feeling: it was certain I was experiencing a feeling. Now I realized that all direct appearances: thoughts, feelings, sense perceptions, were beyond doubt. It was absolutely certain that I was experiencing these appearances to my consciousness as I experienced them.
But it went further than that. Earlier I had decided that any reality beyond my direct experience was uncertain(some of my earlier doubting had come to this conclusion), and now I saw that that in actual fact my personal consciousness and direct experiences made up nothing less than the totality of reality and existence, and my consciousness and experiences were composed entirely of direct appearances. Taken together, this meant that at the most fundamental and all-encompassing level, the entirety of my existence and reality were direct appearances and certain and beyond doubt.
Finally I had realized fundamental and all-encompassing absolute certainty, and it was so utterly simple and obvious. Absolute certainty was before me at all times everywhere, it was in fact right in front of my eyes so to speak, and had been all along. The only difference was that I now consciously understood and acknowledged it.
As these realizations sunk in my understanding became more refined. Understood fully, in essence I could not doubt what simply is, and I expressed it also with the words "Things are just as they are", "Suchness" or "Isness".
It took a while for these realizations to really integrate into my thought patterns, I had so habitually searched for truth and doubted everything that I had a tendency to keep grasping at and doubting things. When I caught myself doing this I realized that no matter what I grasped at or doubted that this too was simply what is, Suchness: it was inescapable.
So my conclusion: that which is absolutely, ultimately, certainly and all-encompassingly real and true is: just simply and exactly what Is.
