What am I?

134 Pages·2016·0.92 MB·English

by  Alasdair Forsythe

WHAT AM I?
Or,
The Nature of Existence

a subjective experience
limited by language
as interpreted by
a human being
in a space-time universe
within a binary reality
by the name of

Alasdair Forsythe
What Am I? Or, The Nature of Existence
by Alasdair Forsythe
ISBN 978-1-334-99903-1
Published by Passageway Press
An Imprint of FB &c Ltd. London.

First Edition

First Printing 2016

www.PassagewayPress.com

Copyright © 2016 Alasdair Forsythe
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visit the author’s website:

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Contents

Existence exists only by comparison......................................................................... 1
Everything is subjective ................................................................................................... 2
Interpretation ........................................................................................................................ 3
What is truth? ........................................................................................................................ 4
What is beauty? .................................................................................................................... 6
You only understand what you want to ................................................................... 7
To intellectualize is not to understand..................................................................... 9
Take everything to extremes ...................................................................................... 10
Where does knowledge come from? ...................................................................... 11
The nature of emotions ................................................................................................. 13
Honesty .................................................................................................................................. 14
The nature of good and bad ........................................................................................ 15
Everything is a shortcut ................................................................................................ 17
All secrets are hidden in plain sight ........................................................................ 18
Every question is the same question ...................................................................... 19
One consciousness ........................................................................................................... 20
Questions and answers.................................................................................................. 23
The beginning of creation ............................................................................................ 25
Continued creation .......................................................................................................... 27
Expanded creation ........................................................................................................... 31
Knowing by forgetting ................................................................................................... 33
How not existence works ............................................................................................. 37
Everything is resistance ................................................................................................ 39
Time and space .................................................................................................................. 42
How and why mathematics exists ........................................................................... 44
Universes in universes ................................................................................................... 45
Subjective reality is independent ............................................................................. 48
Change is change ............................................................................................................... 50
The nature of Self.............................................................................................................. 52
What is ego? ........................................................................................................................ 58
There is no separation between physical and spiritual................................ 59
The path of least resistance......................................................................................... 62
What is evil? ........................................................................................................................ 65
The opposite of evil ......................................................................................................... 68
Everything has purpose and reason ....................................................................... 69
The meaning of life .......................................................................................................... 71
Do we have free will? ...................................................................................................... 76
What happens when we die? ...................................................................................... 79
What are dreams? ............................................................................................................ 82
What is karma? .................................................................................................................. 84
What is acceptance? ........................................................................................................ 87
Memory is not your friend ........................................................................................... 88
Everything is transient .................................................................................................. 89
What is meditation? ........................................................................................................ 90
What are lower and higher states of consciousness? .................................... 91
What is enlightenment? ................................................................................................ 92
How to perform a miracle ............................................................................................ 96
The theory of magic ......................................................................................................... 97
Everything is life ............................................................................................................... 99
Why women have been historically oppressed ..............................................101
Why not commit suicide? ...........................................................................................103
The answer to all questions ......................................................................................104
Coming home ....................................................................................................................108
Why a new path? .............................................................................................................114
Nothing can ever be known entirely ....................................................................116
The purpose of existence ............................................................................................119
Beyond enlightenment ................................................................................................121
A final note on interpretation ..................................................................................127
What am I? 1

Existence exists only by comparison
One knows white
Only by black;
One knows love
Only by heartbreak;
One knows truth
Only by untruth;

Does any concept exist independently?
Can you know something only by itself?
Without fear
Would there be courage?
Without hard
Would you know soft?
How deep is a hole?
How tall is a tree?
Does a blind man know darkness?
Does a fish know water?

Happiness is to rise from depression;
Love is to return to what was once lost;

Would you know depression
Had you never been happy?
Would you know love
Had you never been rejected?
Would you know anger
Had you never been calm?

A concept exists only in contrast
To what it is not;
An experience can be known only
By comparison;
2 What am I?

Everything is subjective
If I experience rain and you experience rain,
Is it raining?
What is rain without a subject?
Is rain wet without a feeler?
Are clouds dark without a seer?
Is there sound without a hearer?
What is the experience of?
If I am senseless, blind and deaf,
Is it still raining?
Where is it raining?
Outside of you?
Have you been outside of you to check it’s there?

If one million people all agree it’s raining,
Does that prove it is raining?
Or that one million people are all experiencing rain?

If you collect rainwater and measure it,
Who is doing the measuring?
If you look at it under a microscope,
Who is doing the looking?

If we are unable to separate the rain from ourselves,
If we are unable to experience it without ourselves,
If we say it must externally exist
As a prerequisite to experience,
Objectively, not subjectively,
Can we prove that?

And if we believe rain does exist without us,
And yet we are unable to experience it
Without ourselves,
What is it that you think you know?
You have never experienced objectivity,
How do you know what objectivity is
Without ever having experienced it?

Are you an emperor with new clothes?
Is the cat in the box dead or alive,
Until you open it?
What am I? 3

Interpretation
If experience can be known only by comparison
Then experience can only be known
In contrast to what is already known;
If you knew only happiness
And a happy event occurred,
You would be neither happy nor sad,
You would not know the event happened at all;
But if an event without happiness occurred
Then you would know both unhappiness and happiness at once;
If the event were comparatively less happy,
You would be unhappy;
Yet if another person was less happy than the event,
The same event would be happy
For them;

If all life is like this,
And all experience is in this manner,
One person can be oblivious,
Another ecstatic,
Another angry,
Another sad,
About the same thing;
And if all experience is subjective
Then who is to say who is more reasonable?
If all experience is subjective
There is no right or wrong interpretation;
The event itself has no objective existence,
It exists as a different event for each witness,
And for some
Not existing at all;

If nothing can be proven to exist outside of experience,
Each experiencer lives in a different reality;

Our realities interact,
But they are not
The same place;
We do not both live
On the same Earth;
4 What am I?

What is truth?
If all we can ever know is via experience
And truth existed outside of experience
Then there would be no truth;
A truth outside of existence does not exist,
Hence it could not be true;
Therefore truth must be tied to experience;
This is why truth is so difficult to find,
Because you are looking for it outside of yourself,
But you cannot see outside of yourself,
Whenever you try you always find yourself there;

If existence is a continuous stream of experience
Then the only consistent truth
Is the experience
Of experiencing;
And all other truths come and go as experiences come and go;
So truth is synonymous with experience;

Yet if truth is synonymous with experience
And we cannot experience not experiencing,
How do we know truth?
Without having known untruth?

This is the nature of truth:
We don’t know truth,
We never can know truth,
Because we have never experienced
Anything untrue;
You’ve never found truth because
All your experience is true;
You have no idea
What you are looking for,
And so you will never find it;

What you think of as truth is belief;
Belief is a pattern of subjective experience
That you have accepted as a substitute for truth;
You think a belief which failed to predict the future is untruth,
But that is not untruth,
It’s contrast between experience and imagination;