a lifetime of seeking

Puddle, 2023

Dear Robert,

I wanted to write to you mostly to thank you for saving me from what would probably be a lifetime of seeking. I have read both of your books and feel I’ve started to understand what you are getting at. I have been ‘seeking’ for at least 10 years now. I’ve read almost every book out there and I’m only thankful that I never got involved in any spiritual groups. Mostly because I’m a loner and have always despised ‘group think’. I’ve always found the emulation/sucking up that goes along with these groups a bit sickening. It all seems like a bit of a joke. Rather than constantly trying to change my experience for something better, I am what I am now. Every thought, feeling, and emotional sensation is me. Full stop. Nobody is controlling it or making it happen. Decisions happen but nobody is making them happen. What I experience as ‘the world’ is also me. What causes those sensations of a world is a mystery that I can’t explain. It’s not that there’s no me. It’s just that “me” isn’t what I thought it was.

I also see now where so much of the spiritual misinformation comes from. It’s very easy when you feel that you are one with everything to try and draw conclusions with that. A bit like in days gone by, our experience of the Earth led us to conclude that it was flat and the centre of the universe. Feeling one with everything could make you conclude that there is only consciousness or that we are part of some big meta-consciousness that is ‘self-aware’. But the way I see it is that that is going too far. I can see that everything I perceive is ‘me’ but how can I conclude that there is nothing outside of that? How can I ever know what causes this? For all we know, we could be living in a computer simulation and we would be none the wiser!

I always believed that to ‘get it’ I had to understand how everything worked. That’s the idea that’s peddled in the spiritual world. You will never stop seeking until you understand how the universe works and realise it’s all made of consciousness etc. The problem is no matter how hard I tried I could never prove this to myself beyond all doubt. For example, I can see that objects depend on consciousness to exist but then when you think about it, consciousness also depends on objects to exist. For what would consciousness be without something to be ‘conscious of’? Your work has helped me understand that I don’t need to solve all these dilemmas and that in all likelihood nobody ever will be able to either. For that, I will be eternally grateful.

With gratitude, Richard

Hi, Richard. Thanks for writing. I also feel gratitude—appreciation for your writing this and sharing it with me. The metaphor of the Flat Earthers who were perfectly certain that Earth was at the center of the Universe is right on the money. How different their imagined certainties were from what we know today. In two sentences, you have managed to capture the marrow of my disagreement with the philosophical idealists who, like the Flat Earthers, seem delusionally sure of themselves, even to the extent of claiming that their speculative metaphysics about consciousness being the only reality constitutes “Truth."

"I can see that everything I perceive is ‘me,’" you wrote, "but how can I conclude that there is nothing outside of that? How can I ever know what causes this?”

Yes. Precisely. You can’t and neither can anyone else. To understand and accept our inability to comprehend reality other than subjectively is the essence of what I mean by “awake.” Just like the Flat Earthers of the Middle Ages, we experience this aliveness with our present-day human sensory and intellectual abilities, and perforce cannot see anything else. How ironic that denying our human limitations is considered “awake.”

As you said, it’s like a joke, but the spiritual idealists and non-duality mavens, who proclaim with total certainty that nothing "really" exists but consciousness, don’t get it.

I wish you well.