I am indebted to Douglas Harding, author of "On Having No Head" and
"Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious", and to Cindy Hauska who
contributed material.
In the title of the essay
The Illusion of I,
the third in the quintology comprising
The I Essays,
"I" indicates me which doesn't exist
out-here.
When I look at this evidence called I, when I look at what I am or am
not or could be, I notice some profoundly odd things.
For starters I notice contrary to a worldwide widespread belief, I
don't have a
face.
You, from where you're standing, may find it far fetched when I say I
don't have a
face.
But from where I'm standing, it's very clear, it's suddenly
blindingly obvious
I don't have a
face.
A Matter Of Scale*
It may be a stretch for you to notice my I doesn't have a
face.
Actually if you look you may notice your I doesn't have a
face
either.
When I say that, I notice the next profoundly odd thing about I. We
language
I as if I have my own I and you have your own I. Yet on closer
inspection it may be there's only one I we all are, from
which we each have a unique
point of view.
If I don't
distinguish that, I couldn't say it's hard for you to notice
my I doesn't have a
face.
More than that, from where I'm standing it's very clear my I doesn't
have a head either.
The next thing I notice (if I tell the truth about it) is I really
don't have a clue about how I arose. I spend most of my
life as an
impostorpretending I know how I arose. Here I'm not speaking about
my physical birth. Yes I understand the biology of physical birth up
to a point, beyond which even though I don't understand it
all the way, I simply accept there's an explanation. What
I don't have a clue about is how I, my space, my consciousness, my
experientiability arose. Strange as it may sound, the most
comprehensible thing about I is: I is incomprehensible (as Professor
Albert Einstein may have said).
That, too, occurs to me as profoundly odd when I inquire into it. I, my
space, my consciousness, my experientiability is the single most
obvious evidence of my life. Actually it's more than that. I, my space,
my consciousness, my experientiability is Life itself. And yet I
don't have a clue as to how I arose, as to how I came about. But I
live my life as if I do. That's odd. I find that
profoundly odd.
When you inquire into the evidence called I, more sooner than later you
have to confront I's
matter of scale*
and I's size. How big am I? Do I have an edge ie a border? Do I have a
limit?
In the everyday way of looking at things I'm about five feet ten inches
tall and about six inches thick. However, if I look at I
experientially ie if I look at I in my
experience I can discern no edge to I, no border to I, no
limit to I at all.
Really.
In the ordinary way of looking at things I seem to be much,
much smaller than
Earth.
I'm dwarfed by
Earth.
Earth
is dwarfed by Jupiter. Jupiter is dwarfed by the Sun. The Sun is
dwarfed by Arcturus. Arcturus is dwarfed by Antares. And W Cephei is
more than three times the size of Antares. How many zeros are there
after the decimal point to say how much smaller I am than W Cephei?
But in
Zen
we ask "If a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear
it, does it make a sound?". So I ask this: is there a W Cephei, more
than three times the size size of Antares which dwarfs Arcturus which
dwarfs the Sun which dwarfs Jupiter which dwarfs
Earth
which I'm much, much smaller than, if I, my space, my
consciousness, my experientiability isn't there to be the
context
for it, to provide the
epistemology
for it? How big am I, then, if viewed this
Zen
way? Do I have an edge ie a border, then, if viewed this
Zen
way? Do I have a limit, then, if viewed this
Zen
way?
This presents an obvious
paradox.
I seem to be both microscopically small and at the same
time infinitely big. Again that's odd. I find that profoundly
odd. It's stays profoundly odd until I recall something
Werner Erhard
asked me to consider soon after I first listened him speaking, which is
this:
I am Everything. I am Nothing. I am ... everythingnothing
...
It's so rich. When I look at I this way, I see I'm the
source
of all possibilities. Actually I'm more than that. Spoken with
rigor,
I'm the possibility of possibility itself.
What I find profoundly odd about that is the
source
of all possibilities ie the possibility of possibility itself has a
social security number, a zipcode, and occasionally forgets to floss.
