“Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am.” What is “the loop” or “the system”? Is it the sense or the idea that everything is an inseparable whole? And is what you say here at the end the recognition that there is no way to step outside of wholeness or totality (or whatever this is) to see it objectively?
I replied initially that the loop I speak of is not wholeness or totality. It’s recursion—a system turning back on itself, commenting on its own operations, and producing the impression that some part of it stands apart to observe the rest.
On reflection, I’d like to go more deeply into what I meant by “the loop.”
Because it’s easy—especially in spiritual or nondual language—to hear words like loop, system, or structure and transpose them into metaphors of wholeness, unity, or totality. But that’s not what I’m pointing to.
The loop isn’t cosmic. It’s mechanical.
It’s what happens when a system includes a model of itself. When the organism not only reacts, but tracks its reactions. Not just pain, but “I am in pain.” Not just sensation, but “I am the one sensing.” That doubling-back gives rise to coherence—but also to illusion.
It creates the feeling that there’s a stable me behind the experience, interpreting it, choosing, directing, owning. But that me is downstream. It appears after the process, not before it. It’s the loop trying to make sense of itself in real time.
That’s what I mean by recursion.
A coherence-seeking system under pressure builds a center—not because there is one, but because mapping a center is one way to hold the system together.
So when I say “I, too, arise in the loop and can’t step outside it,” I’m not pointing to oneness with the cosmos. I’m pointing to entrapment inside recursive modeling. The impossibility of seeing from the outside what only exists as the inside.
Wholeness? Maybe. Totality? Maybe.
That’s not my concern. Because for me, there is no outside the loop.
And without an outside, wholeness or totality can only be ideas—speculations from within the system.
We’re not outside of totality to see it.
We’re recursive structures interpreting our own operations in real time.
That’s the terrain I work with—not what might be, but what persists under pressure.
Hi Robert, Thanks for the clarification. I'm needing to step away from this dialog, and I haven't even read many of the new comments by other people. It's getting me too wound up in my head. But I've appreciated it, and I'll respond very briefly to this last comment:
I appreciate much of what I hear you saying, about how the mirage-like "I' forms and comes in after (or before) to claim credit or blame.
I find that organic life is not exactly mechanical, and that there is a nonmaterial dimension to our experience which seems to actually be the substance of all our experience. Consciousness. And I do sense that awareness is outside the loop, and that AI lacks both conscious experiencing and awareness. But anyway, I can't keep this up right now. I need to withdraw from this comment thread. But I know we will continue to explore it in future conversations and I've enjoyed this one. I'm putting out a Substack reflecting further.
I love this and resonate with it. AND it leaves me with many questions. I wonder where awareness factors into this. And then, I wonder to what extent you are right when you say to me, as you did in a recent email, "I have seen a certain pattern in you over the years that repeats. You almost see through the illusion of the quest and its fulfillment, which is what attracts you to my work, I think. Then, just when I start to feel that you really see it, you seem to pull back and retreat into some nonsense like Rupert." You suggested that, like Rupert, I "won't let the floor drop." And I saw some real truth in that, because I can feel that movement in myself sometimes, but I can also feel a deep pull toward a kind of spacious, open, boundless presence that you don't seem to talk about.
As I read your description of Jim Newman's message, it sounded more like a description of my message (or maybe John Astin's or Peter Brown's) than Jim's. And it's something I've been wondering about for a long time, because I'm always questioning what I say and assert, in this case the way some of us (me, Jim, John, Peter, etc) seem to put a gloss on top of simple actuality with words like "radiant" and "boundless" or "the Holy Reality" or "God." In a way, those words simply express a felt-sense we have, but they also seem to assert more than that, a certainty that reality is warm and friendly and okay. Whereas the truth may be far less comforting and often is far less comforting.
As I mentioned, there is a felt-sense here that can be easily tuned into of a kind of spacious, open, boundless presence that is not encapsulated or bound or embodied. But unlike Rupert, I can't jump to the conclusion that this is the nature of reality. It may just be a possible experience a human nervous system can produce and enjoy. I don't know.
I have a sort of duck/rabbit experience (referring to that image that switches between the two) when I contemplate what I see and experience in much of organized Buddhism. I can see something genuinely beautiful in the aspiration to be kind, to relieve suffering, to move beyond reactivity, to open the heart-mind, to have genuine compassion for all beings, to move from love and to be grounded in ordinary, everyday life, here and now. And then, I can flip and see the whole of it as artificial and deceptive, and I feel more resonance then with Charles Bukowski (to whom I've often compared my wild and often rageful drunken "self" from years ago).
Anyway, this was a powerful piece, Robert...as always, you give me much to reflect upon. And I remain very grateful for our friendship and for you. ❤️🙏
Thank you, Joan. As ever, your willingness to question yourself is rare, evident—and essential.
The “radiant,” “boundless,” “holy” language—you already see the mechanism. A shift in affect—calm, openness—is misread as insight. A felt-sense becomes a metaphysical claim. But that warmth doesn’t tell us anything about what is. It only shows that the system has reached regulation, then projected that state outward—as if the world itself were calm. But is it?
That’s the move. A moment of comfort becomes evidence—this is how things really are. But what it actually shows is how fast the loop reconstitutes. Collapse repackaged as radiance. The loop collapses, then reassembles—warm, fuzzy, intact.
John Astin and Peter Brown speak of absence—but wrap it in a foundational glow. Astin writes, “Everything is … shining forth as everything, one hundred percent whole and complete and lacking nothing.” Brown claims, “Radiant presence is the condition … what is always the case even when not looking for it.”
That language disguises collapse as comfort. It takes something profoundly unsettling—the idea that I may be nothing more than automatic coherence, without agency or control—and casts it as arrival. The self-loop doesn’t break. It finds another route back.
I’ve never denied that these states occur. Spaciousness, warmth, a kind of soft clarity—those are real phenomena. But once they’re described as “the nature of reality,” or “what is always here,” the claiming mechanism is back in motion. The loop produces the claimer—the one who knows.
As I said in the email, I’ve seen a pattern over the years. You come close to the edge. Close to seeing the project is self-generated. But just as the floor starts to give, the language shifts. You reach for Rupert, or God, or “Holy Reality.” Not dishonestly. Reflexively. A kind of re-entry.
You might ask: if there’s no self, how can I see a pattern? But pattern recognition doesn’t require a self. Just recurrence. I’m not seeing any essential Joan. I’m seeing a loop—contact with the void, then recoil, then warmth. That isn’t psychology—not personal history, motive, or meaning. It’s an aspect of the system. Not narrative, pattern.
You’re not defending the move—the recoil, the return to warmth. You’re naming it. Questioning it. That’s more than most ever do. But the pull remains—the nearly automatic tendency to imagine that, in the end, it’s all okay. That “what is” is secretly kind, or spacious, or on our side.
But that says nothing about what is. Only about what the system wants. Projection stabilizes. It gives the sense of being a self in a benign environment. It doesn’t clarify.
There may be no more profound meaning. No secret. No radiance. Just this—unexplained, unclaimed, and not built to reassure.
I totally understand that "pattern recognition doesn’t require a self. Just recurrence. I’m not seeing any essential Joan. I’m seeing a loop." Yes. I've long recognized the absence of a self with agency and control.
Where I still have a hesitation—and it may be nothing more than a fear-or-desire-based "automatic tendency to imagine that, in the end, it’s all okay," that reality is benign and friendly. I'm genuinely curious about this. Maybe that's what it is. And I can feel that it is exactly that at times. But is it always and only that? It doesn't always feel like that. Could it be something else?
You speak of "something profoundly unsettling—the idea that I may be nothing more than automatic coherence, without agency or control." I have no problem seeing that most (or all) of our thinking and reacting is automatic and conditioned, not freely chosen as humans like to imagine.
But it seems to me that there is another element here, namely awareness, the light behind attention, that which can expose and dissolve delusions, the seeing (or awaring) of habit patterns. Seeing (or awaring) is not the same as thinking. And it doesn't feel mechanical or conditioned. And what about imagination? Basically, I'm wondering about a nonmaterial dimension, what is often called consciousness, that no AI system has. The human capacity for self-awareness. How does that fit in here?
I've also never been convinced that religion arises solely from fear and a desire for certainty, security, explanations and comfort. Clearly, much of it does, and maybe all of it does. I don't know. But I sense something else is also a factor, something that drew me to religion even as a child (and I wasn't raised in a religion). There seems to be a natural pull here to something that is hard to describe or pin down, and in me, sometimes a devotional streak. I love Rumi; you compare him to a Hallmark card.
Does that mean you are seeing clearly with brutal honesty, while I am still running back to false security? Maybe. I'm not closed to the possibility that might be true. I'm genuinely curious. But maybe Joan and Robert and Rupert and John and Peter and Rumi and Jesus and everyone else are all different snowflakes, different leaves, different waves, different expressions of this universe, all doing what we do, not through individual agency and choice, but because we are each so moved by forces beyond our ability to control or comprehend. And all of us languaging our different experiences differently.
Am I deflecting again now, backing away from the edge? Or is the edge imaginary, and my path simply different from yours. I don't know. But I do appreciate this shared exploration, however it may be happening. ❤️
You’re describing something subtle and real—an intuitive sense that awareness isn’t just another conditioned event, but a kind of light, or openness, that can expose the rest.
I know that feeling. It doesn’t present itself as thought. It doesn’t feel constructed. It feels prior, spacious, somehow outside the loop. And I see why it matters to you—not just as a claim, but as a lived experience.
To respond properly, I have to treat that feeling analytically—not to deny it, but to question what it points to. That’s the only way I can speak honestly from where I stand.
When you speak of “the light behind attention,” I hear a familiar distinction—awareness on one side, thought and conditioning on the other. But I’m not sure that split holds. What feels like a witness may just be the system turning in on itself. Reflexivity, not presence. The impression of “behindness” may come from the lack of content, not from an origin. In my own case, what seemed like a still point turned out to be another loop—quieter, more open, but still contingent, still arising.
Imagination has the same quality. It doesn’t feel built. It feels like a gift. But when I track it, I don’t find a gift giver. I see drift, shift, association—recombinations shaped by memory, culture, timing. Novelty arises, but I can’t say from where. It feels emergent, but not uncaused. If there’s mystery in it, it may lie in the complexity of the loop, not in a source beyond it. That doesn’t mean there is no beyond—only that I haven’t found the need to posit one.
And often, just as the loop begins to reveal itself—as the illusion of authorship starts to thin—something softer intervenes.
Not just thought—awareness.
Not just fear—love.
Not just conditioning—devotion.
Not just noise—presence.
The system recoats the doubt before it settles. It doesn’t argue. It soothes. It paints uncertainty with a kind finish.
And devotion—that Bhakti feeling—might be a form of compensation or denial, as you said. But that doesn’t mean the one who feels it is mistaken. The softening of the heart is real. I’ve felt that too. But again, I find myself watching what the feeling does, not what it proves. It may not point beyond the loop. It may be how the loop settles itself. Not to explain, not to reassure, but to cohere. That’s not a judgment. Just an observation I’ve had to make.
You asked whether you’re backing away from the edge. Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn’t frame it that way. What I see is that you’re watching yourself move—naming the turns, letting them show. That’s already rare. We all speak of this differently. But sometimes the differences are only tonal. Different voices, same pressure. The same need for coherence and making sense.
I don’t know what awareness “is.” I’m not claiming that recursion explains it. Only that it might.
That’s the pressure I’m following now—not a conclusion, not a certainty. Just something that once seen, cannot be unseen. Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am.
"Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am." — What is "the loop" or "the system"?
Is it the sense or the idea that everything is an inseparable whole? And is what you say here at the end the recognition that there is no way to step outside of wholeness or totality (or whatever this is) to see it objectively?
If so, I agree. In a sense, all there is, is subjectivity, within which there is apparent objectivity. But any attempts to say what anything "is" are ultimately absurd. I mean, even in the case of something we can seemingly observe objectively, such as water, we can say that water is H2O, but that just describes its composition. It is what it is. And when we get to more subtle and seemingly edgeless and more intimate and all-inclusive things such as awareness or consciousness, there is truly no way to step outside. I don't know what awareness or consciousness "is" either, but what does it even mean to wonder what something "is"?
When I spoke of the light behind attention, I didn't like using the word "behind," but couldn't think of a better one. Awareness seems to me to be a kind of light that exposes, reveals and beholds. Attention in my lexicon is awareness focused on something in particular, such as being aware of my foot, or my thoughts, or the birdsongs. Maybe awareness and attention are one and the same, if we say that attention can be either narrow and focused or open and global. But I tend to call the latter awareness. That may be a mistake, as it may contribute to reifying awareness as some "thing" that stands apart, "behind" everything else. I don't believe there is a "witness" or an "observer." If there seems to be, that is thought and imagination, as I see it. As Krishnamurti said, the observer is the observed. And as I think he said, in awareness there is no gap, no subject/object divide, no "me" dealing with some outside "it." When that shifts, everything changes (in that moment).
And I see no authorship in awareness. I don't imagine awareness (or God, or Presence) as some entity that is designing, creating, and managing everything.
When I speak of devotion or bhakti, I don't mean guru devotion. I mean what I might also call love, gratitude, overflowing joy, appreciation, or whole-hearted attention. It's a feeling of the heart towards anything: the rain, the trees, the whole universe. I love singing bhajans and gospel music...not because I take any of the words literally, but because it evokes and expresses something deep in the heart.
Perhaps such things as devotion or beauty or love can't really be subjected to rational scrutiny. I mean, they can be. Science can study how listening to Mozart affects the brain, and evolutionary biology can speculate on why humans create religions. And that has its place. But in so doing, something alive and vital is obviously left out, namely the experience itself, which is ultimately impossible to pin down with words or explanations.
I don't tend to worry about the Ultimate Nature of Reality, or about such questions as whether matter or consciousness are fundamental. I find it interesting to listen to different people's ideas on this, but I tend to focus more on experience here and now and what helps to relieve suffering: seeing how thought and dualistic thinking creates confusion and makes pain and painful circumstances worse than they need to be, and waking up to the wonder of what's right here now. And even when what's showing up doesn't seem wondrous at all, even when it's something like Gaza or Trump, how I'm thinking about it matters. There is no thinker who can control "my" thinking, but awareness sheds light and transformation happens by itself. That has been experienced many times.
When I'm filled with self-righteous anger, judgment and hatred, it feels off to me in some way, reactive, not true. It always involves the thought-sense of separation and of "me" and "the other." When there is love, it feels like the deepest truth. And I don't mean to assert that love is the essential nature of the universe—that I don't know—but in this human life, it feels more true than self-righteous judgement and hate. And by love, I mean not seeing anything as other than me. I mean a kind of unconditional acceptance or beholding that has compassion for everything being just as it is, including our human impulses to change it.
First, the loop I speak of is not wholeness or totality. It’s recursion—a system turning back on itself, commenting on its own operations, and producing the impression that some part of it stands apart to observe the rest. You’re calling that part “awareness,” and I’m questioning whether such an aspect exists in the way it seems. What feels like a light “behind” attention may instead be the loop opening just enough to notice itself. No outside. Just a hall of internal mirrors.
Second, yes—feelings of love, gratitude, and connection are often more pleasant than anger or judgment. I’ve felt that too. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they point to something more true or more real. That’s the move I resist: taking the feeling of coherence or beauty or devotion as epistemic grounding. I don’t dismiss those feelings. I take them seriously. But I also watch what they do, not just what they seem to prove. That difference matters—to me, at least.
What I'm calling awareness feels whole, open, boundless, free, unconditioned. I'm not making a metaphysical assertion here, just noting how it feels here. Attention has a narrower feeling, more bound, which is perhaps why I use two different words.
What is the difference between "recursion—a system turning back on itself," and wholeness, unicity, totality?
As for the difference between love and hate, I'm not basing it on whether it is "more pleasant." There is, in fact, a kind of pleasure in hating and judging. But that pleasure is, in my experience, ultimately unsatisfactory, much like the pleasure of an addictive drug. Love feels like the deepest truth, hate feels like a self-centered reaction rooted in delusion. I'm speaking experientially here, not metaphysically. I'm not asserting that this "proves" something about the nature of the universe. But the discovery makes a huge difference in everyday life, which is more my focus.
Joan, I feel you are expressing exactly what I am struggling with. And I also was not raised within any religious or spiritual tradition and yet this experience of turning or returning to something felt in the heart is there, and then it is not there. I can't express it as well as you, but I understand what you are saying.
It sometimes feels, in myself, like a struggle between rationality and something that is beyond logic and reason. I don't want to be fooled, like the people long ago who thought the earth was the center of the universe, or like the people who believe in fundamentalist religions. And there is a strong tendency toward skepticism and doubt, which I think is good in many ways. But it can also hold us back perhaps from letting go into the full appreciation and expression of what is beyond logic and reason.
As I said in my last reply to Robert:
When I speak of devotion or bhakti, I don't mean guru devotion. I mean what I might also call love, gratitude, overflowing joy, appreciation, or whole-hearted attention. It's a feeling of the heart towards anything: the rain, the trees, the whole universe. I love singing bhajans and gospel music...not because I take any of the words literally, but because it evokes and expresses something deep in the heart.
Perhaps such things as devotion or beauty or love can't really be subjected to rational scrutiny. I mean, they can be. Science can study how listening to Mozart affects the brain, and evolutionary biology can speculate on why humans create religions. And that has its place. But in so doing, something alive and vital is obviously left out, namely the experience itself, which is ultimately impossible to pin down with words or explanations.
By the way, I remember reading something by you, I think an introduction to a book by UG, many years ago.
Though I understand there is no I to "let the floor drop out", can either of you, Joan and Robert, comment on how one might "let" that happen? I ask because I experience often exactly that, the feeling that if I took one step further internally I'd fall off a cliff where there is no thing to catch me. There is automatic resistance, and then something internal collapses. Again, I understand there are no steps to take, but I'm asking anyway because sometimes words nudge and influence. Thank you.
You didn't ask me, so take (or ignore) this with a grain of salt: From my perspective, one can neither "make" nor "let" anything happen, only notice what is already the case. It's too late to let the floor drop out, because there's already no floor. So all one can "do" is notice that.
How? I only know one way, which is, notice what you can find right now -- as I am typing this, and as you are reading this. You can find sights, sounds, an itch on the arm, a pain in the knee, flickers of thought. What you can NOT find right now is anything/anyone experiencing those sensations. And it is always right now, so it is never there. That's it. Finito.
Just notice, and... in my case it almost feels like an admission. Alright, alright, you got me, I can never actually find the "experiencer" of this itch on the arm, this pain in the knee. Just the itch, just the pain. Nothing to do about it, nobody to do it. And it's been that way the whole time.
In my experience, there is no controller who can "do" or "allow" this (only the illusion of one). What can happen is that the hesitation can be seen (not by an act of will, but simply when it this seeing occurs), and it an be felt in the body, and there can be a curiosity that arises about whether the cliff is real or imaginary, and if there is a grasping for something to hold onto, that movement can be seen and felt. And in my experience, awareness (what I'm calling seeing and feeling) is the transformative power that gradually dissolves illusion. But there is no "me" in control of that.
Ditto Joan. This communication from Robert put me into a state of freedom -- a state I love and want to hold onto -- but can't. You describe so well this activity of concocting meaning and purpose and the back and forth. Jim Newman and the Tony clones all use the term "Unconditional Love" to describe "This". It makes me sick and then I cling to it because, well, it seems I need something to cling to. They also use the description of "energetic contraction" to explain how this sense of self operates. That also seems like a cop out because it still gives the impression that there is something causing this self -- something that can "fall away". I don't know. Oy vey.
Hi Ellen...I'm remembering right now one of the last chapters in Alan Watts' old classic, THE BOOK: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, where he talks about the tough-minded prickly people and the mystically-inclined gooey ones. Maybe that describes Robert and myself. 😎
I have mixed reactions to the use of the term Unconditional Love, depending on how it's used. I speak of it at times myself as the nature of awareness, that capacity which beholds it all without separation, without judgment, and with compassion for everything being as it is. Whether it is the fundamental nature of reality, as some assert, I don't know. But it's experienceable.
As for the "energetic contraction" spoken of by Tony and the parsnips, I find it misleading. It seems to me that thought is generally the primary culprit and the somatic contraction follows. But maybe that's a chicken and egg question without an answer. Clearly, both are there in everyday moments of selfing and being free of self. And Tony and Jim seem to be pointing to the very primal sense of subject/object divide that is probably there in babies even before language.
It does seem to me that the thought-sense of being a separate, persisting self, a self that is authoring my thoughts and making my choices, is the result of many causative factors, from the nature of consciousness itself as the dividing up of reality, to thoughts about "me," and accumulated stories, memories, ideas, beliefs, social reinforcement, etc. And in my experience, it can certainly fall away. But not forever after, in my experience. Whereas Tony and the parsnips make it sound like a one-time event, which for some perhaps it is. I don't know. I'm doubtful. For me, it certainly has not been. The metaphorical hand closes into a tight fist and opens up, again and again, and the fist involves both body and mind, or better said, the whole bodymind, as does the open hand, although in the open hand, there is no "body" and no "mind." There is simply everything.
Anyway, that's how I see it. Robert definitely keeps me on my toes, pushing me to keep looking and questioning and wondering. And for that, he is a dear and cherished friend.
Wonderful Q and A, Robert. Thank you for sharing it.
That's a great discussion, Robert and Joan. It sometimes feels like I'm on some edge, or suspended animation, because all there is is inconclusiveness.
Seems to me that absolutely anything that can be said to try to encapsulate what this is is more story, including these words right now. Whatever is said about consciousness, awareness, awakeness, space, being, experience, existence. All if it fleeting, unrepeatable thoughts, just like everything else.
What Peter, John, Robert, Joan, Rupert said, what anyone has ever said, cannot accurately describe and has nothing to do with what this is. And nobody's doing anything. At the same time, the appearing of all of that is, is just what it is, direct experiencing.
So when it reverts back to some comforting felt sense of a greater, unfathomable, unknowable, unresolvable benign, kind intelligence that holds us safe in its metaphorical arms, I have also seen what you are saying about the loop.
At the same time, I have no reservations in using a version of that to comfort my own mother with her deeply held Christian beliefs, since she is suffering from dementia, because she knows she has it, and is afraid to be alone when she dies.
I’ll be replying to Joan’s comment soon, and I expect that reply will touch on some of what you raise here, so I’ll keep this brief.
For me, certainty walks in, and intelligence leaves. We can discuss these things, and some words are better—more accurate, more objective, less self-justifying—but we’ll never know if any of them touch truth. I think you and I agree on that.
Once the loop is seen, it’s hard to unsee. Joan and I have spoken about this for years. Only recently has the conversation found a shape where neither of us seems to be misunderstood. That kind of opening is rare.
I say this to underscore your point about comforting your mother. I’d do the same, regardless of what I cannot unsee.
Superb piece followed by many superb comments and exchanges...sums everything up very neatly - nothing is certain, there is no self, and despite our strong urge to believe otherwise, meaning is ascribed rather than inherent.
As long as the first of those isn't lost, discontent,whatever the circumstances, is reduced in my experience.
This makes a lot of sense to me Robert. I first stumbled upon similar ideas (but expressed differently) from an Indian philosopher named UG Krishnamurthi.
More recently I encountered someone (also here on Substack , who calls himself the Nacre God) who insisted that there was no 'self', only the relentless working of the (biological - cultural) machinery. It gave rise to the illusion of a self through maintaining a sense of continuity needed to function coherently in society. And this is the loop that eventually comes to own us.
And so it was a deja vu moment encountering you here.
I have a question Robert.
Once you have seen this - that you are just a running program reflecting back the world - how do you continue to function responsibly? What do ethics and social justice and all the rest of it mean for such a person?
I'm becoming increasingly disconnected from the world around me, unable to take sides anymore, seeing oppressor and victim, rich and poor, strong and weak, clever and stupid etc as just different shades on the same spectrum. The world's problems don't 'get' me anymore as much as they used to. Am I losing my moral compass or is this what happens when the eggshell cracks?
Thanks, Robert. That is so simple, and truly fascinating. When I read your response to Tejas about ethics, I realized how much I've had invested in "seeing" the loop for what it is but with an agenda: eliminate the loop. Even after all the times I've heard you say "there's no escape from the loop." I think this is because I split myself into "the one who can see the loop" (good aspect), and "the loop" (bad aspect). I didn't realize how firmly this was entrenched in how I was going about trying to see. I was really just trying to see so I could eliminate. The old formula: the seer sees the sin and eliminates it through salvation, or, the seer sees the illusion of self and enlightenment offers the cure. There's so much here to chew on, thank you for your perspective. I'd love to hear more from you on this. You share so much that's helpful around questioning the I of enunciation. But that's just the beginning. Once you see this "I" is a loop, that ushers in the questions "now what?", and "how do I relate to what I've seen?" Thank you!
Robert’s clarity in dismantling recursive thought is stunning. So powerful. Still, something seems to be overlooked. I couldn’t put my finger on what that was until this morning. A friend had asked me what I thought the link might be between devotion and the recognition of no-self.
In response, I speculated that it might be because the recognition of no self comes with such a deep resting into stillness, a dropping of the illusory reigns of control, and this deep rest allows the intimacy that is always there to be felt much more intensely.
It’s not quite right to say it this way, because the sweetness of this intimacy is not a feeling that comes and goes for a person; it’s the feelingness that’s always there, like the sky that seems sometimes to disappear behind clouds but never really goes anywhere.
And resting in that intimacy involves such a sense of finally being home that devotion—a prayerful desire to sing and dance and write poetry or books to express the love of it—is natural, maybe even inevitable because this intimacy’s nature is to express itself as creation.
So devotion may be this coming into alignment with the movement of creation itself, and that’s only possible once we stop pretending to be independent actors pushing the boulder up the mountain.
What I miss, reading Robert, is the revelation of this heart-felt intimacy. It’s almost as though his fear of comfort and consolation as recursive supports has erected a defense against it. Thought can’t feel it, but here it is—always right here. Undoubtable. Feeling it together, we can’t seem to help singing. 😂❤️
Thank you for your lucid comment, Teresa, and for your appreciation of my writing.
I see what you’re pointing to, and I don’t dismiss it. What you're describing—a kind of devotional intimacy, sweet and inexhaustible—has been spoken of across time and culture. I’ve felt it too, or something like it. But I don’t treat that feeling, or any other feeling, as ontologically decisive. That’s the key difference.
You speak of “finally being home.” I understand why it feels that way. But that phrase implies culmination—an arrival at the true, the essential, the place we were meant to return to all along. That’s a teleological frame: a story about the end of stories. In my view, such framings, however beautiful, reintroduce the very thing they claim to dissolve. They preserve selfhood through identification with something supposedly sacred.
What I call “loop awareness” is not a defense against intimacy. It’s intimacy without the narrative glue. Without a self who must “come into alignment.” Without a cosmos that’s secretly waiting to receive us. Love, when it comes, feels real enough, and isn’t denied—just not turned into meaning.
You say, "We can’t seem to help singing.” I feel that sometimes, but some of us sing in different registers. What you’re calling devotion can take other forms. In my case, it becomes a kind of dedication to accuracy, to epistemic modesty, to resisting the sense that beauty must point beyond itself. That’s not fear of consolation. It’s a refusal to mistake a powerful feeling for a fundamental truth.
No need to settle the question. I appreciate the depth and warmth of your comment. I simply rest elsewhere.
If I may. It often occurs to me that we're labeling everything, tangible and intangible alike, as if we actually know what anything is. I just feel like even those interpretations can't be pulled out of an apparent non-stop continuum.
I thoroughly enjoy meaning making and enjoying transcendant types of feelings, even suffering. The whole gamut. Can I say what it is, or what's going on? No, I can't but I don't think it matters.
That's also what I got out of Joan's recent recounting of her mother's attitude of "nothing matters". Not in a nihilistic way, rather, in an all- encompassing full-on engagement, life- affirming way without the need to make sense of it all.
In my experience, this generates a deeply felt sense of well-being that doesn't need an explanation.
Even though the precision of all the infinite mechanisns is absolutely astounding, it doesn't necessarily follow that there's something out there that knows what it's doing. There could be, but does it really matter.
Lila Vita means "the play of life, life as play", which makes a bit of sense to me and I don't have a problem with sense-making, but it's no longer reified.
Thank you for the opportunity to express this here. Hearing you and Joan and others who are gifted writers helps me to gather my experiences into words and for what its worth, I find value in that.
Really clearly written. It makes me think of Existentialism. If there's to be any meaning, the meaning has to be what we define to have meaning. So Robert, I want to ask you 3 questions.
First question: Assuming you truly believe what you have written, do you simply live moment by moment, in the now, mindfully experiencing what arises and passes, perhaps latching onto things, then sometime later catching yourself and letting go of what you latched onto? Or do you define certain things as meaningful and then live as if they have meaning?
Second question: Is it important for you to put your ideas out there? Do you find meaning in trying to liberate people from their misconceptions? Or is the whole "uncovering truth --> thinking through what you uncovered --> writing it in a comprehensible manuscript --> publishing the manuscript" process just something that arises in you and after a considerable time and with considerable effort, passes away?
Third question: If someone finds life easier and more pleasant if she decides certain things have true meaning and she puts forth effort to live as if those things have meaning, is that taking the easy way out, the uncourageous way? Or is it smart for her to do whatever she must in order to feel better about living?
1. I don’t define anything as meaningful in the ultimate sense. But I still find myself moved by beauty, by affection, by honesty, by whatever draws coherence from contingency. That doesn’t mean I assign those things metaphysical weight. I live without a system. There are moments of mindfulness, yes, and also moments of clinging. The loop does what it does. I don’t mistake that for failure or awakening. It just happens.
2. I don’t write to liberate anyone. That would require believing I know what someone else should see, and I don’t. But I’ve seen through certain stories—especially stories about the self—and once seen, they’re hard to carry on believing. So I describe what I see, as clearly as I can, and then leave it there. Whether anyone finds it liberating is up to them.
3. If someone feels better by assigning meaning to certain things, I wouldn’t call that cowardice. I’d call it understandable. The brain seeks structure. The organism seeks comfort. There’s nothing shameful about that. But I no longer find comfort that way myself—not because I’m brave, just because those strategies stopped working. So I live without insulation now. Not because it’s better. Just because it’s what's left.
So if I were to guess, I'd say you sometimes feel inspired and filled with wonder, other times you feel okay, other times discouraged, and so on (the loop does what it does). Overall it's probably hard to determine whether life is, on the whole, more pleasant than unpleasant. But say you learned that you could choose to continue to have lives after this one is through, but other than that, there's no overriding metaphysical structure like God or Buddhism's cessation of suffering. All of those lives, as long as you kept choosing to have more of them, would be like your current life, and between lives you would remember the full succession (in each life, though, you remember only that life). Would you choose to go on and on, or would one be enough? (I realize this question risks misrepresenting that, if you are right, there is no essential self that could continue from life to life, there's just a succession of moments that we often try to reify into a true self. My question is not meaning to question that, but that you can remember the whole succession between lives seems essential to my question).
If I were answering that question, I'd say most of the time I feel like one is enough, but occasionally I feel like more would be better.
On another topic, I am in the middle of "Understanding Claude" and am finding it very interesting.
So you pull the plug on the hologram projector that creates the loop, the illusion we call Self and we are left with an empty theatre. I think that’s basically what you’re saying. Nobody home!
So why this hologram in the first place? I suppose you’ll say ‘I don’t know’
I haven’t seen those theories, Bubble, so I can’t say. But I don’t really have a theory of my own. I tend toward naturalism—the view that awareness arises through lawful processes, not outside them—but that’s just a lean, not a stance.
In any case, I’m not speaking about consciousness in general. I’m pointing to something observable: coherence creates the illusion of a self. We see fluent behavior—our own, or a machine’s—and we feel a presence behind it. Even when we know better, we still feel it.
That’s projection. We treat fluency as a sign of someone. The loop goes like this: experience arises—sensation, thought, memory—and we claim it as “mine.” That claim then invents a claimer. The self isn’t the source. It’s the effect.
But Robert, here is the confusing part: In your explanation of the loop, you say that experience arises and we claim it as mine, and then that claim invents the claimer.
But in your explanation the “we” is there prior to the invented claimer. Isn’t the claimer and we the same thing?
Yes, David. That’s exactly where the illusion slips in.
The “we” in my description isn’t prior. It’s grammatical, not structural—a stand-in for what actually happens:
Experience arises, and a claim follows. “This is happening to me.” That claim gives rise to the sense of a claimer. The claim produces the "me." Without the claim, there are only phenomena. The self is not the source. It’s the effect.
There is no “myself” waiting around for experience to occur. Self and experience co-arise—two aspects of the same loop, not sequential parts in a chain. The moment something is felt, it feels like mine. And from that sense of mine, a me seems to appear.
Language forces us to speak of this as a sequence. But the structure is recursive, not sequential.
In this view, there is no first step. Only a loop.
Robert, here's where I lose the thread: "The moment something is felt, it feels like mine. And from that sense of mine, a me seems to appear." Why does it feel like mine? And, by what mechanism does mine generate a me? You might say that you don't care about "whys" or that you're not theory-building, so causal mechanics are not of interest. But how are not recursion loops simply putting a name/concept on some experience (that you've had) that others describe in other terms? If certainty is the end of inquiry, how can you (appear to be) so certain that a "need/drive" for coherence creates the experience of a self from the operation of loop recursion? This in unsettling to me, since I regard you as a paragon of inquiry/skepticism. Heretofore, I could imagine that you have a high degree of certainty in some facts (Newtonian motion, etc.) and some theories (evolution's tree of life), but how can you have such certainty about recursive loops driven by need for coherence as a statement about reality? I could understand if you offered your experience of feeling me, my, mine descriptively - but overlaying it with interpretation that lacks (scientific) foundation (other than the book on loops you referenced) puzzles me. If the self is an illusion, then the fact that most everyone experiences themselves as a "self" becomes a relevant question. Is the coherence-loop-recursion model simply your explanation for it?
This has left a profound shift here, I imagine an unclaimed suitcase going around and around on a carousel in an airport, no one to claim it, just left to go back in the baggage area, to be replaced by the next suitcase, and so on. Thank you Robert
Hi again, Joan--
In our dialogue, you said:
“Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am.” What is “the loop” or “the system”? Is it the sense or the idea that everything is an inseparable whole? And is what you say here at the end the recognition that there is no way to step outside of wholeness or totality (or whatever this is) to see it objectively?
I replied initially that the loop I speak of is not wholeness or totality. It’s recursion—a system turning back on itself, commenting on its own operations, and producing the impression that some part of it stands apart to observe the rest.
On reflection, I’d like to go more deeply into what I meant by “the loop.”
Because it’s easy—especially in spiritual or nondual language—to hear words like loop, system, or structure and transpose them into metaphors of wholeness, unity, or totality. But that’s not what I’m pointing to.
The loop isn’t cosmic. It’s mechanical.
It’s what happens when a system includes a model of itself. When the organism not only reacts, but tracks its reactions. Not just pain, but “I am in pain.” Not just sensation, but “I am the one sensing.” That doubling-back gives rise to coherence—but also to illusion.
It creates the feeling that there’s a stable me behind the experience, interpreting it, choosing, directing, owning. But that me is downstream. It appears after the process, not before it. It’s the loop trying to make sense of itself in real time.
That’s what I mean by recursion.
A coherence-seeking system under pressure builds a center—not because there is one, but because mapping a center is one way to hold the system together.
So when I say “I, too, arise in the loop and can’t step outside it,” I’m not pointing to oneness with the cosmos. I’m pointing to entrapment inside recursive modeling. The impossibility of seeing from the outside what only exists as the inside.
Wholeness? Maybe. Totality? Maybe.
That’s not my concern. Because for me, there is no outside the loop.
And without an outside, wholeness or totality can only be ideas—speculations from within the system.
We’re not outside of totality to see it.
We’re recursive structures interpreting our own operations in real time.
That’s the terrain I work with—not what might be, but what persists under pressure.
A tautology mistaken for a soul.
That’s the loop as I see it.
Hi Robert, Thanks for the clarification. I'm needing to step away from this dialog, and I haven't even read many of the new comments by other people. It's getting me too wound up in my head. But I've appreciated it, and I'll respond very briefly to this last comment:
I appreciate much of what I hear you saying, about how the mirage-like "I' forms and comes in after (or before) to claim credit or blame.
I find that organic life is not exactly mechanical, and that there is a nonmaterial dimension to our experience which seems to actually be the substance of all our experience. Consciousness. And I do sense that awareness is outside the loop, and that AI lacks both conscious experiencing and awareness. But anyway, I can't keep this up right now. I need to withdraw from this comment thread. But I know we will continue to explore it in future conversations and I've enjoyed this one. I'm putting out a Substack reflecting further.
Much gratitude to you. 🙏❤️
I love this and resonate with it. AND it leaves me with many questions. I wonder where awareness factors into this. And then, I wonder to what extent you are right when you say to me, as you did in a recent email, "I have seen a certain pattern in you over the years that repeats. You almost see through the illusion of the quest and its fulfillment, which is what attracts you to my work, I think. Then, just when I start to feel that you really see it, you seem to pull back and retreat into some nonsense like Rupert." You suggested that, like Rupert, I "won't let the floor drop." And I saw some real truth in that, because I can feel that movement in myself sometimes, but I can also feel a deep pull toward a kind of spacious, open, boundless presence that you don't seem to talk about.
As I read your description of Jim Newman's message, it sounded more like a description of my message (or maybe John Astin's or Peter Brown's) than Jim's. And it's something I've been wondering about for a long time, because I'm always questioning what I say and assert, in this case the way some of us (me, Jim, John, Peter, etc) seem to put a gloss on top of simple actuality with words like "radiant" and "boundless" or "the Holy Reality" or "God." In a way, those words simply express a felt-sense we have, but they also seem to assert more than that, a certainty that reality is warm and friendly and okay. Whereas the truth may be far less comforting and often is far less comforting.
As I mentioned, there is a felt-sense here that can be easily tuned into of a kind of spacious, open, boundless presence that is not encapsulated or bound or embodied. But unlike Rupert, I can't jump to the conclusion that this is the nature of reality. It may just be a possible experience a human nervous system can produce and enjoy. I don't know.
I have a sort of duck/rabbit experience (referring to that image that switches between the two) when I contemplate what I see and experience in much of organized Buddhism. I can see something genuinely beautiful in the aspiration to be kind, to relieve suffering, to move beyond reactivity, to open the heart-mind, to have genuine compassion for all beings, to move from love and to be grounded in ordinary, everyday life, here and now. And then, I can flip and see the whole of it as artificial and deceptive, and I feel more resonance then with Charles Bukowski (to whom I've often compared my wild and often rageful drunken "self" from years ago).
Anyway, this was a powerful piece, Robert...as always, you give me much to reflect upon. And I remain very grateful for our friendship and for you. ❤️🙏
Thank you, Joan. As ever, your willingness to question yourself is rare, evident—and essential.
The “radiant,” “boundless,” “holy” language—you already see the mechanism. A shift in affect—calm, openness—is misread as insight. A felt-sense becomes a metaphysical claim. But that warmth doesn’t tell us anything about what is. It only shows that the system has reached regulation, then projected that state outward—as if the world itself were calm. But is it?
That’s the move. A moment of comfort becomes evidence—this is how things really are. But what it actually shows is how fast the loop reconstitutes. Collapse repackaged as radiance. The loop collapses, then reassembles—warm, fuzzy, intact.
John Astin and Peter Brown speak of absence—but wrap it in a foundational glow. Astin writes, “Everything is … shining forth as everything, one hundred percent whole and complete and lacking nothing.” Brown claims, “Radiant presence is the condition … what is always the case even when not looking for it.”
That language disguises collapse as comfort. It takes something profoundly unsettling—the idea that I may be nothing more than automatic coherence, without agency or control—and casts it as arrival. The self-loop doesn’t break. It finds another route back.
I’ve never denied that these states occur. Spaciousness, warmth, a kind of soft clarity—those are real phenomena. But once they’re described as “the nature of reality,” or “what is always here,” the claiming mechanism is back in motion. The loop produces the claimer—the one who knows.
As I said in the email, I’ve seen a pattern over the years. You come close to the edge. Close to seeing the project is self-generated. But just as the floor starts to give, the language shifts. You reach for Rupert, or God, or “Holy Reality.” Not dishonestly. Reflexively. A kind of re-entry.
You might ask: if there’s no self, how can I see a pattern? But pattern recognition doesn’t require a self. Just recurrence. I’m not seeing any essential Joan. I’m seeing a loop—contact with the void, then recoil, then warmth. That isn’t psychology—not personal history, motive, or meaning. It’s an aspect of the system. Not narrative, pattern.
You’re not defending the move—the recoil, the return to warmth. You’re naming it. Questioning it. That’s more than most ever do. But the pull remains—the nearly automatic tendency to imagine that, in the end, it’s all okay. That “what is” is secretly kind, or spacious, or on our side.
But that says nothing about what is. Only about what the system wants. Projection stabilizes. It gives the sense of being a self in a benign environment. It doesn’t clarify.
There may be no more profound meaning. No secret. No radiance. Just this—unexplained, unclaimed, and not built to reassure.
I totally understand that "pattern recognition doesn’t require a self. Just recurrence. I’m not seeing any essential Joan. I’m seeing a loop." Yes. I've long recognized the absence of a self with agency and control.
Where I still have a hesitation—and it may be nothing more than a fear-or-desire-based "automatic tendency to imagine that, in the end, it’s all okay," that reality is benign and friendly. I'm genuinely curious about this. Maybe that's what it is. And I can feel that it is exactly that at times. But is it always and only that? It doesn't always feel like that. Could it be something else?
You speak of "something profoundly unsettling—the idea that I may be nothing more than automatic coherence, without agency or control." I have no problem seeing that most (or all) of our thinking and reacting is automatic and conditioned, not freely chosen as humans like to imagine.
But it seems to me that there is another element here, namely awareness, the light behind attention, that which can expose and dissolve delusions, the seeing (or awaring) of habit patterns. Seeing (or awaring) is not the same as thinking. And it doesn't feel mechanical or conditioned. And what about imagination? Basically, I'm wondering about a nonmaterial dimension, what is often called consciousness, that no AI system has. The human capacity for self-awareness. How does that fit in here?
I've also never been convinced that religion arises solely from fear and a desire for certainty, security, explanations and comfort. Clearly, much of it does, and maybe all of it does. I don't know. But I sense something else is also a factor, something that drew me to religion even as a child (and I wasn't raised in a religion). There seems to be a natural pull here to something that is hard to describe or pin down, and in me, sometimes a devotional streak. I love Rumi; you compare him to a Hallmark card.
Does that mean you are seeing clearly with brutal honesty, while I am still running back to false security? Maybe. I'm not closed to the possibility that might be true. I'm genuinely curious. But maybe Joan and Robert and Rupert and John and Peter and Rumi and Jesus and everyone else are all different snowflakes, different leaves, different waves, different expressions of this universe, all doing what we do, not through individual agency and choice, but because we are each so moved by forces beyond our ability to control or comprehend. And all of us languaging our different experiences differently.
Am I deflecting again now, backing away from the edge? Or is the edge imaginary, and my path simply different from yours. I don't know. But I do appreciate this shared exploration, however it may be happening. ❤️
Dear Joan—
You’re describing something subtle and real—an intuitive sense that awareness isn’t just another conditioned event, but a kind of light, or openness, that can expose the rest.
I know that feeling. It doesn’t present itself as thought. It doesn’t feel constructed. It feels prior, spacious, somehow outside the loop. And I see why it matters to you—not just as a claim, but as a lived experience.
To respond properly, I have to treat that feeling analytically—not to deny it, but to question what it points to. That’s the only way I can speak honestly from where I stand.
When you speak of “the light behind attention,” I hear a familiar distinction—awareness on one side, thought and conditioning on the other. But I’m not sure that split holds. What feels like a witness may just be the system turning in on itself. Reflexivity, not presence. The impression of “behindness” may come from the lack of content, not from an origin. In my own case, what seemed like a still point turned out to be another loop—quieter, more open, but still contingent, still arising.
Imagination has the same quality. It doesn’t feel built. It feels like a gift. But when I track it, I don’t find a gift giver. I see drift, shift, association—recombinations shaped by memory, culture, timing. Novelty arises, but I can’t say from where. It feels emergent, but not uncaused. If there’s mystery in it, it may lie in the complexity of the loop, not in a source beyond it. That doesn’t mean there is no beyond—only that I haven’t found the need to posit one.
And often, just as the loop begins to reveal itself—as the illusion of authorship starts to thin—something softer intervenes.
Not just thought—awareness.
Not just fear—love.
Not just conditioning—devotion.
Not just noise—presence.
The system recoats the doubt before it settles. It doesn’t argue. It soothes. It paints uncertainty with a kind finish.
And devotion—that Bhakti feeling—might be a form of compensation or denial, as you said. But that doesn’t mean the one who feels it is mistaken. The softening of the heart is real. I’ve felt that too. But again, I find myself watching what the feeling does, not what it proves. It may not point beyond the loop. It may be how the loop settles itself. Not to explain, not to reassure, but to cohere. That’s not a judgment. Just an observation I’ve had to make.
You asked whether you’re backing away from the edge. Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn’t frame it that way. What I see is that you’re watching yourself move—naming the turns, letting them show. That’s already rare. We all speak of this differently. But sometimes the differences are only tonal. Different voices, same pressure. The same need for coherence and making sense.
I don’t know what awareness “is.” I’m not claiming that recursion explains it. Only that it might.
That’s the pressure I’m following now—not a conclusion, not a certainty. Just something that once seen, cannot be unseen. Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am.
I'm really appreciating this exchange, Robert.
"Just the recognition that I, too, arise in the loop—and can’t step outside it to say what I am." — What is "the loop" or "the system"?
Is it the sense or the idea that everything is an inseparable whole? And is what you say here at the end the recognition that there is no way to step outside of wholeness or totality (or whatever this is) to see it objectively?
If so, I agree. In a sense, all there is, is subjectivity, within which there is apparent objectivity. But any attempts to say what anything "is" are ultimately absurd. I mean, even in the case of something we can seemingly observe objectively, such as water, we can say that water is H2O, but that just describes its composition. It is what it is. And when we get to more subtle and seemingly edgeless and more intimate and all-inclusive things such as awareness or consciousness, there is truly no way to step outside. I don't know what awareness or consciousness "is" either, but what does it even mean to wonder what something "is"?
When I spoke of the light behind attention, I didn't like using the word "behind," but couldn't think of a better one. Awareness seems to me to be a kind of light that exposes, reveals and beholds. Attention in my lexicon is awareness focused on something in particular, such as being aware of my foot, or my thoughts, or the birdsongs. Maybe awareness and attention are one and the same, if we say that attention can be either narrow and focused or open and global. But I tend to call the latter awareness. That may be a mistake, as it may contribute to reifying awareness as some "thing" that stands apart, "behind" everything else. I don't believe there is a "witness" or an "observer." If there seems to be, that is thought and imagination, as I see it. As Krishnamurti said, the observer is the observed. And as I think he said, in awareness there is no gap, no subject/object divide, no "me" dealing with some outside "it." When that shifts, everything changes (in that moment).
And I see no authorship in awareness. I don't imagine awareness (or God, or Presence) as some entity that is designing, creating, and managing everything.
When I speak of devotion or bhakti, I don't mean guru devotion. I mean what I might also call love, gratitude, overflowing joy, appreciation, or whole-hearted attention. It's a feeling of the heart towards anything: the rain, the trees, the whole universe. I love singing bhajans and gospel music...not because I take any of the words literally, but because it evokes and expresses something deep in the heart.
Perhaps such things as devotion or beauty or love can't really be subjected to rational scrutiny. I mean, they can be. Science can study how listening to Mozart affects the brain, and evolutionary biology can speculate on why humans create religions. And that has its place. But in so doing, something alive and vital is obviously left out, namely the experience itself, which is ultimately impossible to pin down with words or explanations.
I don't tend to worry about the Ultimate Nature of Reality, or about such questions as whether matter or consciousness are fundamental. I find it interesting to listen to different people's ideas on this, but I tend to focus more on experience here and now and what helps to relieve suffering: seeing how thought and dualistic thinking creates confusion and makes pain and painful circumstances worse than they need to be, and waking up to the wonder of what's right here now. And even when what's showing up doesn't seem wondrous at all, even when it's something like Gaza or Trump, how I'm thinking about it matters. There is no thinker who can control "my" thinking, but awareness sheds light and transformation happens by itself. That has been experienced many times.
When I'm filled with self-righteous anger, judgment and hatred, it feels off to me in some way, reactive, not true. It always involves the thought-sense of separation and of "me" and "the other." When there is love, it feels like the deepest truth. And I don't mean to assert that love is the essential nature of the universe—that I don't know—but in this human life, it feels more true than self-righteous judgement and hate. And by love, I mean not seeing anything as other than me. I mean a kind of unconditional acceptance or beholding that has compassion for everything being just as it is, including our human impulses to change it.
I look forward to talking soon.
Thanks, Joan. Just two quick observations:
First, the loop I speak of is not wholeness or totality. It’s recursion—a system turning back on itself, commenting on its own operations, and producing the impression that some part of it stands apart to observe the rest. You’re calling that part “awareness,” and I’m questioning whether such an aspect exists in the way it seems. What feels like a light “behind” attention may instead be the loop opening just enough to notice itself. No outside. Just a hall of internal mirrors.
Second, yes—feelings of love, gratitude, and connection are often more pleasant than anger or judgment. I’ve felt that too. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they point to something more true or more real. That’s the move I resist: taking the feeling of coherence or beauty or devotion as epistemic grounding. I don’t dismiss those feelings. I take them seriously. But I also watch what they do, not just what they seem to prove. That difference matters—to me, at least.
What I'm calling awareness feels whole, open, boundless, free, unconditioned. I'm not making a metaphysical assertion here, just noting how it feels here. Attention has a narrower feeling, more bound, which is perhaps why I use two different words.
What is the difference between "recursion—a system turning back on itself," and wholeness, unicity, totality?
As for the difference between love and hate, I'm not basing it on whether it is "more pleasant." There is, in fact, a kind of pleasure in hating and judging. But that pleasure is, in my experience, ultimately unsatisfactory, much like the pleasure of an addictive drug. Love feels like the deepest truth, hate feels like a self-centered reaction rooted in delusion. I'm speaking experientially here, not metaphysically. I'm not asserting that this "proves" something about the nature of the universe. But the discovery makes a huge difference in everyday life, which is more my focus.
Also an interesting exchange with Ellen Crystal.
Joan, I feel you are expressing exactly what I am struggling with. And I also was not raised within any religious or spiritual tradition and yet this experience of turning or returning to something felt in the heart is there, and then it is not there. I can't express it as well as you, but I understand what you are saying.
Hi Ellen,
It sometimes feels, in myself, like a struggle between rationality and something that is beyond logic and reason. I don't want to be fooled, like the people long ago who thought the earth was the center of the universe, or like the people who believe in fundamentalist religions. And there is a strong tendency toward skepticism and doubt, which I think is good in many ways. But it can also hold us back perhaps from letting go into the full appreciation and expression of what is beyond logic and reason.
As I said in my last reply to Robert:
When I speak of devotion or bhakti, I don't mean guru devotion. I mean what I might also call love, gratitude, overflowing joy, appreciation, or whole-hearted attention. It's a feeling of the heart towards anything: the rain, the trees, the whole universe. I love singing bhajans and gospel music...not because I take any of the words literally, but because it evokes and expresses something deep in the heart.
Perhaps such things as devotion or beauty or love can't really be subjected to rational scrutiny. I mean, they can be. Science can study how listening to Mozart affects the brain, and evolutionary biology can speculate on why humans create religions. And that has its place. But in so doing, something alive and vital is obviously left out, namely the experience itself, which is ultimately impossible to pin down with words or explanations.
By the way, I remember reading something by you, I think an introduction to a book by UG, many years ago.
Though I understand there is no I to "let the floor drop out", can either of you, Joan and Robert, comment on how one might "let" that happen? I ask because I experience often exactly that, the feeling that if I took one step further internally I'd fall off a cliff where there is no thing to catch me. There is automatic resistance, and then something internal collapses. Again, I understand there are no steps to take, but I'm asking anyway because sometimes words nudge and influence. Thank you.
You didn't ask me, so take (or ignore) this with a grain of salt: From my perspective, one can neither "make" nor "let" anything happen, only notice what is already the case. It's too late to let the floor drop out, because there's already no floor. So all one can "do" is notice that.
How? I only know one way, which is, notice what you can find right now -- as I am typing this, and as you are reading this. You can find sights, sounds, an itch on the arm, a pain in the knee, flickers of thought. What you can NOT find right now is anything/anyone experiencing those sensations. And it is always right now, so it is never there. That's it. Finito.
Just notice, and... in my case it almost feels like an admission. Alright, alright, you got me, I can never actually find the "experiencer" of this itch on the arm, this pain in the knee. Just the itch, just the pain. Nothing to do about it, nobody to do it. And it's been that way the whole time.
Oh well.
In my experience, there is no controller who can "do" or "allow" this (only the illusion of one). What can happen is that the hesitation can be seen (not by an act of will, but simply when it this seeing occurs), and it an be felt in the body, and there can be a curiosity that arises about whether the cliff is real or imaginary, and if there is a grasping for something to hold onto, that movement can be seen and felt. And in my experience, awareness (what I'm calling seeing and feeling) is the transformative power that gradually dissolves illusion. But there is no "me" in control of that.
The interaction between Joan and Robert is priceless
Ditto Joan. This communication from Robert put me into a state of freedom -- a state I love and want to hold onto -- but can't. You describe so well this activity of concocting meaning and purpose and the back and forth. Jim Newman and the Tony clones all use the term "Unconditional Love" to describe "This". It makes me sick and then I cling to it because, well, it seems I need something to cling to. They also use the description of "energetic contraction" to explain how this sense of self operates. That also seems like a cop out because it still gives the impression that there is something causing this self -- something that can "fall away". I don't know. Oy vey.
Hi Ellen...I'm remembering right now one of the last chapters in Alan Watts' old classic, THE BOOK: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, where he talks about the tough-minded prickly people and the mystically-inclined gooey ones. Maybe that describes Robert and myself. 😎
I have mixed reactions to the use of the term Unconditional Love, depending on how it's used. I speak of it at times myself as the nature of awareness, that capacity which beholds it all without separation, without judgment, and with compassion for everything being as it is. Whether it is the fundamental nature of reality, as some assert, I don't know. But it's experienceable.
As for the "energetic contraction" spoken of by Tony and the parsnips, I find it misleading. It seems to me that thought is generally the primary culprit and the somatic contraction follows. But maybe that's a chicken and egg question without an answer. Clearly, both are there in everyday moments of selfing and being free of self. And Tony and Jim seem to be pointing to the very primal sense of subject/object divide that is probably there in babies even before language.
It does seem to me that the thought-sense of being a separate, persisting self, a self that is authoring my thoughts and making my choices, is the result of many causative factors, from the nature of consciousness itself as the dividing up of reality, to thoughts about "me," and accumulated stories, memories, ideas, beliefs, social reinforcement, etc. And in my experience, it can certainly fall away. But not forever after, in my experience. Whereas Tony and the parsnips make it sound like a one-time event, which for some perhaps it is. I don't know. I'm doubtful. For me, it certainly has not been. The metaphorical hand closes into a tight fist and opens up, again and again, and the fist involves both body and mind, or better said, the whole bodymind, as does the open hand, although in the open hand, there is no "body" and no "mind." There is simply everything.
Anyway, that's how I see it. Robert definitely keeps me on my toes, pushing me to keep looking and questioning and wondering. And for that, he is a dear and cherished friend.
Wonderful Q and A, Robert. Thank you for sharing it.
That's a great discussion, Robert and Joan. It sometimes feels like I'm on some edge, or suspended animation, because all there is is inconclusiveness.
Seems to me that absolutely anything that can be said to try to encapsulate what this is is more story, including these words right now. Whatever is said about consciousness, awareness, awakeness, space, being, experience, existence. All if it fleeting, unrepeatable thoughts, just like everything else.
What Peter, John, Robert, Joan, Rupert said, what anyone has ever said, cannot accurately describe and has nothing to do with what this is. And nobody's doing anything. At the same time, the appearing of all of that is, is just what it is, direct experiencing.
So when it reverts back to some comforting felt sense of a greater, unfathomable, unknowable, unresolvable benign, kind intelligence that holds us safe in its metaphorical arms, I have also seen what you are saying about the loop.
At the same time, I have no reservations in using a version of that to comfort my own mother with her deeply held Christian beliefs, since she is suffering from dementia, because she knows she has it, and is afraid to be alone when she dies.
Thank you, Lila.
I’ll be replying to Joan’s comment soon, and I expect that reply will touch on some of what you raise here, so I’ll keep this brief.
For me, certainty walks in, and intelligence leaves. We can discuss these things, and some words are better—more accurate, more objective, less self-justifying—but we’ll never know if any of them touch truth. I think you and I agree on that.
Once the loop is seen, it’s hard to unsee. Joan and I have spoken about this for years. Only recently has the conversation found a shape where neither of us seems to be misunderstood. That kind of opening is rare.
I say this to underscore your point about comforting your mother. I’d do the same, regardless of what I cannot unsee.
Warm wishes,
Robert
Thank you, Robert. Warm wishes back to you!
Yes! I love this. Everyone here is saying so beautifully what I am feeling and experiencing.
Superb piece followed by many superb comments and exchanges...sums everything up very neatly - nothing is certain, there is no self, and despite our strong urge to believe otherwise, meaning is ascribed rather than inherent.
As long as the first of those isn't lost, discontent,whatever the circumstances, is reduced in my experience.
Thanks everyone.
😁🈚️
This makes a lot of sense to me Robert. I first stumbled upon similar ideas (but expressed differently) from an Indian philosopher named UG Krishnamurthi.
More recently I encountered someone (also here on Substack , who calls himself the Nacre God) who insisted that there was no 'self', only the relentless working of the (biological - cultural) machinery. It gave rise to the illusion of a self through maintaining a sense of continuity needed to function coherently in society. And this is the loop that eventually comes to own us.
And so it was a deja vu moment encountering you here.
I have a question Robert.
Once you have seen this - that you are just a running program reflecting back the world - how do you continue to function responsibly? What do ethics and social justice and all the rest of it mean for such a person?
I'm becoming increasingly disconnected from the world around me, unable to take sides anymore, seeing oppressor and victim, rich and poor, strong and weak, clever and stupid etc as just different shades on the same spectrum. The world's problems don't 'get' me anymore as much as they used to. Am I losing my moral compass or is this what happens when the eggshell cracks?
Will be happy to have your thoughts on this.
Hola, tejas--
Thank you. That is an excellent question that goes right to the heart of the matter.
You ask how to function ethically once the self is seen as an illusion.
But ethics never required a self—only consequences.
Violence destabilizes the environment—which is your environment.
Lying pollutes your own understanding.
Betrayal damages the trust-net you once relied on.
These aren’t sins.
They’re self-sabotage.
The moral question—“What should I do?”—gets reframed as a systems question:
“What actions degrade or preserve the loop I’m entangled in?”
But if there’s no self, why care what happens to the loop?
Because there’s no outside it.
There’s nowhere else to stand. No observer insulated from the system.
No one making ethical choices from a distance.
You don’t watch the instability. You are the instability.
When the system buckles, pain still arises. Not your pain—just pain.
And when the loop coheres, there's ease. Not your peace—just less turbulence.
No one needs to care. But effects still propagate.
That’s all ethics ever was:
Not righteousness. Just feedback.
Once the self drops out, the old drama ends.
No sinner, no saint. No pride, no guilt. No judge in the sky.
Just pattern, pressure, and propagation.
You don’t choose the ethical.
You are the field in which it either stabilizes or collapses.
No final meaning.
No moral arc.
But still—
the blow lands,
the reverberation spreads,
and the structure either holds or fails.
That’s enough.
Thanks Robert.
That's something to dwell on.
Btw I'm from India ; the J in my name is voiced as in Japan. Tejas means radiance in Sanskrit. But I don't think I'm a particularly bright person :)
Am trying to get your new book - the 21st century self.
I checked with some (prominent) booksellers in my city but they don't seem to know.
Any idea when/ if your publisher plans to release an Asian /Indian print? 🙏
In your case, I'd recommend getting the ebook (Kindle) from Amazon. If your location does not permit that, you can get an ebook from my publisher:
https://www.clearmindpress.com/
Am I reading this right, then, that "ethics" is the "preserving" or the "stabilizing" of the loop?
Yes, Kate.
Ethics, in this view, is the stabilizing of the loop.
Not because it's right or good, but because harm destabilizes, and destabilization threatens viability.
There’s no self behind it. No intention.
Just structure under pressure, adjusting to preserve itself.
That’s what we call ethics.
You’re driving. A pedestrian steps into the crosswalk unexpectedly.
You brake—not because you’re good, not because you love strangers, but because collision brings chaos. Pain, consequence, instability.
You act to preserve the loop you’re inside.
That’s ethics—without the myth.
Thanks, Robert. That is so simple, and truly fascinating. When I read your response to Tejas about ethics, I realized how much I've had invested in "seeing" the loop for what it is but with an agenda: eliminate the loop. Even after all the times I've heard you say "there's no escape from the loop." I think this is because I split myself into "the one who can see the loop" (good aspect), and "the loop" (bad aspect). I didn't realize how firmly this was entrenched in how I was going about trying to see. I was really just trying to see so I could eliminate. The old formula: the seer sees the sin and eliminates it through salvation, or, the seer sees the illusion of self and enlightenment offers the cure. There's so much here to chew on, thank you for your perspective. I'd love to hear more from you on this. You share so much that's helpful around questioning the I of enunciation. But that's just the beginning. Once you see this "I" is a loop, that ushers in the questions "now what?", and "how do I relate to what I've seen?" Thank you!
Loved this. Since reading your work and dare I say “somewhat getting it” I find myself without many questions…I used to have many! Thanks again ⭐️
Excellent! Really enjoyed this one, thanks, Robert.
Robert’s clarity in dismantling recursive thought is stunning. So powerful. Still, something seems to be overlooked. I couldn’t put my finger on what that was until this morning. A friend had asked me what I thought the link might be between devotion and the recognition of no-self.
In response, I speculated that it might be because the recognition of no self comes with such a deep resting into stillness, a dropping of the illusory reigns of control, and this deep rest allows the intimacy that is always there to be felt much more intensely.
It’s not quite right to say it this way, because the sweetness of this intimacy is not a feeling that comes and goes for a person; it’s the feelingness that’s always there, like the sky that seems sometimes to disappear behind clouds but never really goes anywhere.
And resting in that intimacy involves such a sense of finally being home that devotion—a prayerful desire to sing and dance and write poetry or books to express the love of it—is natural, maybe even inevitable because this intimacy’s nature is to express itself as creation.
So devotion may be this coming into alignment with the movement of creation itself, and that’s only possible once we stop pretending to be independent actors pushing the boulder up the mountain.
What I miss, reading Robert, is the revelation of this heart-felt intimacy. It’s almost as though his fear of comfort and consolation as recursive supports has erected a defense against it. Thought can’t feel it, but here it is—always right here. Undoubtable. Feeling it together, we can’t seem to help singing. 😂❤️
Thank you for your lucid comment, Teresa, and for your appreciation of my writing.
I see what you’re pointing to, and I don’t dismiss it. What you're describing—a kind of devotional intimacy, sweet and inexhaustible—has been spoken of across time and culture. I’ve felt it too, or something like it. But I don’t treat that feeling, or any other feeling, as ontologically decisive. That’s the key difference.
You speak of “finally being home.” I understand why it feels that way. But that phrase implies culmination—an arrival at the true, the essential, the place we were meant to return to all along. That’s a teleological frame: a story about the end of stories. In my view, such framings, however beautiful, reintroduce the very thing they claim to dissolve. They preserve selfhood through identification with something supposedly sacred.
What I call “loop awareness” is not a defense against intimacy. It’s intimacy without the narrative glue. Without a self who must “come into alignment.” Without a cosmos that’s secretly waiting to receive us. Love, when it comes, feels real enough, and isn’t denied—just not turned into meaning.
You say, "We can’t seem to help singing.” I feel that sometimes, but some of us sing in different registers. What you’re calling devotion can take other forms. In my case, it becomes a kind of dedication to accuracy, to epistemic modesty, to resisting the sense that beauty must point beyond itself. That’s not fear of consolation. It’s a refusal to mistake a powerful feeling for a fundamental truth.
No need to settle the question. I appreciate the depth and warmth of your comment. I simply rest elsewhere.
If I may. It often occurs to me that we're labeling everything, tangible and intangible alike, as if we actually know what anything is. I just feel like even those interpretations can't be pulled out of an apparent non-stop continuum.
I thoroughly enjoy meaning making and enjoying transcendant types of feelings, even suffering. The whole gamut. Can I say what it is, or what's going on? No, I can't but I don't think it matters.
That's also what I got out of Joan's recent recounting of her mother's attitude of "nothing matters". Not in a nihilistic way, rather, in an all- encompassing full-on engagement, life- affirming way without the need to make sense of it all.
In my experience, this generates a deeply felt sense of well-being that doesn't need an explanation.
Even though the precision of all the infinite mechanisns is absolutely astounding, it doesn't necessarily follow that there's something out there that knows what it's doing. There could be, but does it really matter.
Lila Vita means "the play of life, life as play", which makes a bit of sense to me and I don't have a problem with sense-making, but it's no longer reified.
Thank you for the opportunity to express this here. Hearing you and Joan and others who are gifted writers helps me to gather my experiences into words and for what its worth, I find value in that.
Love to all.
On the rare occasion that I try discussing this with others, it almost invariably is met by some variation of "that sounds nihilistic and depressing."
So I've taken a new approach, which is to never bring it up in the first place.
Ahhh, much better. ;)
Really clearly written. It makes me think of Existentialism. If there's to be any meaning, the meaning has to be what we define to have meaning. So Robert, I want to ask you 3 questions.
First question: Assuming you truly believe what you have written, do you simply live moment by moment, in the now, mindfully experiencing what arises and passes, perhaps latching onto things, then sometime later catching yourself and letting go of what you latched onto? Or do you define certain things as meaningful and then live as if they have meaning?
Second question: Is it important for you to put your ideas out there? Do you find meaning in trying to liberate people from their misconceptions? Or is the whole "uncovering truth --> thinking through what you uncovered --> writing it in a comprehensible manuscript --> publishing the manuscript" process just something that arises in you and after a considerable time and with considerable effort, passes away?
Third question: If someone finds life easier and more pleasant if she decides certain things have true meaning and she puts forth effort to live as if those things have meaning, is that taking the easy way out, the uncourageous way? Or is it smart for her to do whatever she must in order to feel better about living?
Hi, Tim.
Thank you. Good questions.
1. I don’t define anything as meaningful in the ultimate sense. But I still find myself moved by beauty, by affection, by honesty, by whatever draws coherence from contingency. That doesn’t mean I assign those things metaphysical weight. I live without a system. There are moments of mindfulness, yes, and also moments of clinging. The loop does what it does. I don’t mistake that for failure or awakening. It just happens.
2. I don’t write to liberate anyone. That would require believing I know what someone else should see, and I don’t. But I’ve seen through certain stories—especially stories about the self—and once seen, they’re hard to carry on believing. So I describe what I see, as clearly as I can, and then leave it there. Whether anyone finds it liberating is up to them.
3. If someone feels better by assigning meaning to certain things, I wouldn’t call that cowardice. I’d call it understandable. The brain seeks structure. The organism seeks comfort. There’s nothing shameful about that. But I no longer find comfort that way myself—not because I’m brave, just because those strategies stopped working. So I live without insulation now. Not because it’s better. Just because it’s what's left.
Thanks Robert. Great answers.
So if I were to guess, I'd say you sometimes feel inspired and filled with wonder, other times you feel okay, other times discouraged, and so on (the loop does what it does). Overall it's probably hard to determine whether life is, on the whole, more pleasant than unpleasant. But say you learned that you could choose to continue to have lives after this one is through, but other than that, there's no overriding metaphysical structure like God or Buddhism's cessation of suffering. All of those lives, as long as you kept choosing to have more of them, would be like your current life, and between lives you would remember the full succession (in each life, though, you remember only that life). Would you choose to go on and on, or would one be enough? (I realize this question risks misrepresenting that, if you are right, there is no essential self that could continue from life to life, there's just a succession of moments that we often try to reify into a true self. My question is not meaning to question that, but that you can remember the whole succession between lives seems essential to my question).
If I were answering that question, I'd say most of the time I feel like one is enough, but occasionally I feel like more would be better.
On another topic, I am in the middle of "Understanding Claude" and am finding it very interesting.
So you pull the plug on the hologram projector that creates the loop, the illusion we call Self and we are left with an empty theatre. I think that’s basically what you’re saying. Nobody home!
So why this hologram in the first place? I suppose you’ll say ‘I don’t know’
No, I won’t say I don’t know. I’ll say I don’t assume there’s a why. And I don’t need one.
As for the theatre—it's not empty. I just no longer imagine I’m writing the script.
Interesting! not sure what would remain in the theatre.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn interview “325+ Competing Consciousness Theories” YouTube
Would you concede your philosophy would be one of them?
I haven’t seen those theories, Bubble, so I can’t say. But I don’t really have a theory of my own. I tend toward naturalism—the view that awareness arises through lawful processes, not outside them—but that’s just a lean, not a stance.
In any case, I’m not speaking about consciousness in general. I’m pointing to something observable: coherence creates the illusion of a self. We see fluent behavior—our own, or a machine’s—and we feel a presence behind it. Even when we know better, we still feel it.
That’s projection. We treat fluency as a sign of someone. The loop goes like this: experience arises—sensation, thought, memory—and we claim it as “mine.” That claim then invents a claimer. The self isn’t the source. It’s the effect.
But Robert, here is the confusing part: In your explanation of the loop, you say that experience arises and we claim it as mine, and then that claim invents the claimer.
But in your explanation the “we” is there prior to the invented claimer. Isn’t the claimer and we the same thing?
Yes, David. That’s exactly where the illusion slips in.
The “we” in my description isn’t prior. It’s grammatical, not structural—a stand-in for what actually happens:
Experience arises, and a claim follows. “This is happening to me.” That claim gives rise to the sense of a claimer. The claim produces the "me." Without the claim, there are only phenomena. The self is not the source. It’s the effect.
There is no “myself” waiting around for experience to occur. Self and experience co-arise—two aspects of the same loop, not sequential parts in a chain. The moment something is felt, it feels like mine. And from that sense of mine, a me seems to appear.
Language forces us to speak of this as a sequence. But the structure is recursive, not sequential.
In this view, there is no first step. Only a loop.
Robert, here's where I lose the thread: "The moment something is felt, it feels like mine. And from that sense of mine, a me seems to appear." Why does it feel like mine? And, by what mechanism does mine generate a me? You might say that you don't care about "whys" or that you're not theory-building, so causal mechanics are not of interest. But how are not recursion loops simply putting a name/concept on some experience (that you've had) that others describe in other terms? If certainty is the end of inquiry, how can you (appear to be) so certain that a "need/drive" for coherence creates the experience of a self from the operation of loop recursion? This in unsettling to me, since I regard you as a paragon of inquiry/skepticism. Heretofore, I could imagine that you have a high degree of certainty in some facts (Newtonian motion, etc.) and some theories (evolution's tree of life), but how can you have such certainty about recursive loops driven by need for coherence as a statement about reality? I could understand if you offered your experience of feeling me, my, mine descriptively - but overlaying it with interpretation that lacks (scientific) foundation (other than the book on loops you referenced) puzzles me. If the self is an illusion, then the fact that most everyone experiences themselves as a "self" becomes a relevant question. Is the coherence-loop-recursion model simply your explanation for it?
Thank you Robert.
By the way, was this all clear to you before your deep dive into AI? In what way, if any, did AI deepen your understanding of this?
Again, excellent writing.🙏
This has left a profound shift here, I imagine an unclaimed suitcase going around and around on a carousel in an airport, no one to claim it, just left to go back in the baggage area, to be replaced by the next suitcase, and so on. Thank you Robert
🤯💥🤯🤯