Do You Exist?
April 6, 2008 by Chris
Here is our first video! It is rough, but it is a start.
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Chris
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Hey, Chris,
Nice presentation, well done. The lead question gives coherence to the exercise and the editing gave it a nice flow. I liked the background music and images. Keep it coming. Stay tuned for next post, which will be a deconstruction of the Cartesian Cogito (= ‘I think’
and the Theosophical doctrine of multiple selves.
Descartes’ methodical meditation on his own consciousness—leading to the famous phrase ‘Cogito ergo sum’ or ‘I think, therefore I exist’—was an essential ingredient of the emergence of modernity. Descartes move was a committed and methodic grasp for certainty in a life-world that experienced both certainty and its opposite in unprecedented and extreme forms. On the uncertain side were the many, often mutually exclusive, intellectual and religious claims of Catholicism, Protestantism, Humanism, Hermeticism and science; the devastating theological, political and military clashes of the Reformation and the Counter-reformation; the radical transformation of the perceptions of earth, sun and universe to new dizzying dimensions; the accelerated change of socio-economic life through the rise of capitalism and early globalism; etc., etc. Meanwhile the freeing of philosophy, science and mathematics from the clutches of mediaeval dogmatism paved the way for new experiences of procedural exactitude, intellectual certitude and psycho-spiritual security.
Descartes was on the edge of many of these developments and he resolved for himself, and subsequently for the rest of western civilization, to attain a firm grounding for his meditative thoughts through methodic doubt. In this process he not only threw out all claims based on authority, like any of the theologies and sciences around, but even his connection to the world through his body and its senses. Having arrived at the limit of his doubt he reflected on his doubt and found that the last thing he could not doubt anymore was his own doubting. Ergo, he found a firm bottom of his thought and being.
The subsequent problem was for Descartes to reconnect with his body and the world, but he found that he was unable to dig himself out of the bottom of the solipsistic well that he had stepped into. He then made a leap of faith by postulating that God would guarantee that what he experienced in the world as a psycho-physical being was indeed truly the case, for God’s goodness was such that He would not deceive poor René. If you are a believer this might work.
The obvious inconsistency is that Descartes started out with doubt and suspicion, got into a space from which there was no exit and then had to rely on an act of faith to get out, which was tantamount to suspending his initial doubt as far as God was concerned and therefore invalidate the method on which the whole exercise was built in the first place. (To be continued)
Question: is there any way that the Cartesian Cogito can be compared with either any of Theosophy’s selves or any of the terms conceived by Krishnamurti, or any other ‘system’? Or is the Cartesian Cogito an original, unprecedented product of several operations of consciousness upon itself, which, though we can execute it ourselves in either a thought-experiment or as a real meditation, has not received the full philosophical self-clarification to really understand what the process actually consists of?
Great video! I’m always a sucker for watching a video than reading long blog postings, although I’m sure I’m quite guilty of that myself. The video cuts were great and well timed, and I enjoyed the background music.
Two suggestions: first, see if you can get the volume normalized…I had to keep turning the volume up and down; second, a few shorter videos rather than one long one would be nicer…I had to pause it after 3 minutes because I wasn’t ready for a long time commitment to watch the video.
Great job, though, and keep up the good work!
Dean, thanks! You are absolutely right about the sound levels. It was my first video and I’m still learning. I think I figured out the problem, so the next one should be better. Unfortunately, I can’t easily go back and correct the first one.
Your comments serve as a powerful reminder of the shifting expectations for information delivery and new media. Many people are dismissive of the attention spans of the younger generation, and their reliance upon moving images.
You are a perfect counterexample. Absolutely no one can doubt your intellectual acumen, or the fierce dedication and perseverance you have shown in the difficult academic path you have taken. Yet you readily admit that you would rather watch a video than read a long post, and a three minute video rather than a ten minute one.
I am not one to waste time on fallaciously romantic, nostalgic or simply cynical critiques of this change. If we theosophists are truly committed to keeping the ageless wisdom contemporary and relevant, we have to see these new demands as a challenge, and be exciting by the opportunities they provide (see my post on Pecha Kucha for the same point).
In other words, ‘Stay tuned!’
Govert: I somehow missed your comment before. Thanks for raising some great questions. I will respond in time.
Hi, Chris.
Who´s asking? If you… then you exist. jajaja.
Maybe the next question is: what does to exist mean?
Maybe you can find good answers encompassed in two perspectives: Krishna´s perspective and Arjuna´s perspective. Unity/Diversity.
Maybe if you stood up in the middle of a avenue convinced of the reality of Maya theory… seeing how a truck aproaching…
Sorry, but my english is not the best. I am thinking in Plotinus statement, in spanish (Vivir a solas con El SOLO) something like (to live alone with the LONELY). I imagine this is related to Tat Twan Asi.
Buen Día.
Chris -
I am catching up on reading your blog. The video is great - I hope more will be coming. Are you guys on Facebook?
This collective entity isn’t a presence anywhere else. I don’t know if individual authors are elsewhere (I’m not).
Yes, I have begun work on another video, Part 1 of a series on the sevenfold constitution. This entry is meant to be a lead up to it: http://theosophist.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/one-with-everything-an-atman-project/
I have almost an hour of raw video of people discussing how they are one with everything. I just need to find the time to edit. Stay tuned, and keep exploring the archives. There is already a lot of great material on this site, and a lot of open discussions that are being forgotten as new ones develop.