Think your way to an impasse, over freedom, over consciousness, truth, purpose, life, any key term you like and you bump up against something from outside something you can't think past. It's how you proceed from that small shock that matters. You can fold thought over on itself and assume a sort of second-order attitude, you can attitudinise, plant your flag, go and search out what others have said on arriving at the same place. The frontier is lively, the possibilities are endless, a sort of festive atmosphere prevails. But all of this would be to refuse to leave the mind, to get off the train, to refuse to believe that you've arrived at the end of it. To do otherwise you'd have to let meaning fall away and take to pure experience, that is, what can only be yours, can only be here and now, that stands for nothing but itself. This is the destiny of meaning, to give itself up to non-meaning, without a fuss, taking its bearings in solitude, stepping forth, going home.

You could base your politics on the whatever stands as the minimal conditions for the fostering of what you love. But what if what you love isn't good? It isn't politics until it is about the good, love by itself is just lawlessness. However, what you love is unambiguous, or pretty well so because the reference point is within yourself. What is good is abstract and hence shrouded in contradictions. Say you believe in humanity's spiritual destiny, its unique way of bringing cosmic Being to self-awareness. This is an evolutionary ideal and hence indelibly linked to a progress in time, and this already begs the question in favour of the cognitive, the technological, of matters in which the idea of progress is intrinsically present. What if the closest approach to perfection were in respect of those parts of the spirit which don't evolve, which don't progress, for which progress is a form of betrayal? Do we put these on hold for a time when our technology will enable us to better realise them? But it is just such a bargaining that they are destroyed by. Better to stick with love and face the perils that go with it.

Experience isn't just a stream of structured qualia, of noemata, there is also a noetic stream without which, naturally, there wouldn't be anything at all (Is there anything at all? Open question.) Since it can't be known then what sort of presence could it have? A sort of negative 'perception' of the 'I'-shaped hole in the middle of experience. You can only speak of it in indirectly evocative terms. Does it change in size? Yes. Does it have a 'fringe'? Yes, very radiant and colourful - time and space, all the grounding categories stream out of it. Is there a feeling tone? Yes, a quite delicious one, literally lovely, even though it is a black hole of the blackest kind. Does it seem to be located somewhere in the body? Yes, most certainly around the (metaphysical) heart, in the centre of the chest.

You are looking for an event in the understanding of experiencing that is as clarifying as falling in love would be in interpersonal relations. So the rush of certainty is more important than whether it is true? But each love is always the one and only true love - truth serves love as love serves truth. You look each moment in the eye and wonder, is it you? An experience that reveals your destiny, an experiencing that you would address as 'thou'? (If this was being written in a language with an intimate second person form would that be used in place of 'you'? All of the time, some of the time?) An event that seizes you from the outside, a response from reality beyond your worth - an event in value, that overturns all values, more than in knowledge. Knowing is the mobility, the vehicle. All the striving, the trappings, fall away when the destination nears.

To take the world as the seat of the ultimately determining instance means to view it as the embracing nexus of causes extended out and in as far as imagination can go, informed by every kind of persuasive knowledge. That's the world inside the world you want to see as beautiful in itself, as beautiful in mere being, as the only sustainer of beauty. The phenomenal is always tainted by something imaginary so to go beyond that to mere being you have to integrate mind and world, the seeing and the seen, the knowing and the known. Allow the phenomenal to melt into dreaming and then allow the dreaming, now completely weightless and infinitely insubstantial, to re-become the world reconciled to appearance. As if you have ever so delicately filleted your reality, opened it up and removed the bones and then sealed it up again, and behold, it has finally and fully become itself - the bones, of all the hidden and transcendent parts that made it up were what was most you, were the purest life of the mind surrendered, of the seer, as of course, they could only ever have been. 

A scholar of Eastern religions at a Buddhist conference declares that  any enlightenment will always conform to the descriptions prescribed by the tradition through which it has arisen - each will verify the truths of their tradition, however distinctive these happen to be. If a Vedantin or a Christian experiences shunyata then they are deluded, etc. This statement greatly upsets the Zen practitioners in the audience who attempt to argue it down. Their behaviour merely indicates the shallowness of their realisations, they could at least treat have treated it as a sort of koan. Similarly some advocates of spirituality believe it is important to acknowledge an underlying cosmic force which has guided evolution above and beyond the pure randomness asserted by the scientists. Again, the putting forward of such notions shows a complete misunderstanding of both science and spirituality. Finally, a self-professed non-dualist expects that realisation of the ultimate must be totally formless, "pure white light". These are all versions of the same misunderstanding - forms of "spiritual materialism", or category errors, an insistence on yoking together incommensurate things, or conversely the failure to embrace the absolute identity of samsara and nirvana. 

Emotion is a feeling state that encysts identity while desire is a feeling state that expels identity. This is a structural distinction, like that between fermions and bosons. You cannot escape from identification with your emotions, whether you want to or not, so that identification seems as if it is itself a kind of emotion. While desire is never actually accomplished is always in some measure a desire to desire. This is also why it is comparatively easy to disidentify from desire, to detach from it, and also why there is a tendency to parade identification with desire as if it were something to be proud of - in fact it is an endless task of reconfiguration - desire escapes like mercury. In the same way, there is a certain pride that is taken in detachment from emotion - which is entirely bogus, a matter of bad faith, of masking one emotion with another or of substituting desire for emotion.

Three levels of identification: I is this human person (psyche or soul), I is the knowingness (witnessing), and I is being or That (you could say thatness but the adverbial 'that' is better, as verbs are better than nouns.) But what do you mean by identification? It can't describe some sort of action, a sort of projection like identifying with a fictional character, without begging the question. It's more like a reference level, a plateau where going backwards rests, an implied ground-state. This is to try to go backwards where projection goes forwards - the co-projection, you could say, reversing all the intentional arrows. Again, what it could mean is whatever mode of disidentification it requires. Every form of identification is the limit of the prior for of disidentification. That's how you come to use the idea - it doesn't need to mean anything more, in fact can't mean anything more. There is no limit to how far this could go.

It's not the mind but the soul that mediates being. This resists capture in thought even if you've understood it only through its projection in thought, leveraged it into ideas. The organ of the soul is what is called living, which means that the world you find yourself engaged in is your soul's reflection. Look for the places where certain kinds of feeling, and memory, of subtle music, are concentrated - see how the circus of cultures contains and exposes these - not without adding its own commentaries - and how they are repeated in your body. You end up right back where you started. Infinite trajectories of myths and stories - the heart's subversion of the mind. To face all of this is to become transparent, to disappear within the rumours of spirit.

"A signifier is what represents the subject to another signifier" - this Lacanian formula contains the understanding that the subject is never presented but only represented in every crossing between two signifiers or images. There are many such crossings but only one subject, but that subject is a kind of indelible illusion, its oneness being only its otherness, its not-one-ness and its otherness its oneness. None of these combinatorics or topologies produces the subject in any sense; it is not the result of the success or failure of any process, or of the in-itself's attempt to found itself. All such formulations seek to maintain an essentially social, and hence split, understanding of the subject. It has an inside and an outside but they don't match up, and so on. It seems that every such notion, given enough of a twist that it fails to resolve in any way, is adequate for generating human psychology with most of its quirks. That is a property of any system that retreats before inquiry leaving behind a series of nested death-masks of the inquirer. There is a little machine hidden within the smokescreen of paradoxes, a little machine which is just there in the forever outside, that plays the role of reality stabiliser. All of this reveals more and more the architecture of a dream.   

Say there are only images which in themselves wholes, like grains of sand which are understood to be worlds appearing as such. And say that these are effectively and in particular held within a master image three at a time, so that one is the object of attention, the second is that through which the object of attention appears and the third is is what is pushed into the background so that the other two can be in that relation. For example the object of thought, the image of the thinking mind and the image of the body-in-the-world in which that mind is lodged. Viewed statically there is no place for the subject in this picture but when considered dynamically, so that the terms or their equivalents can switch places in kind of shuttling weave then the illusion arises of the subject being held within the structure arises. There is a play of reflections, as if each of the images contains a displaced reflection of the other two, and so it can seem as if an infinite regression of reflected reflections is possible and so then, even though the true subject or witnessing never appears it can seem to be caught, or trapped within a crystal. The reflecting structure accounts for why it can never be grasped because nothing in it is ever quite where it appears, and this is how what is called identification arises. It is held in place by image-thoughts which are always off-stage, while off-stage itself is reflected in the image. To flatten out this topology would be to break free from the fascination inherent in the structure. There being no fascination outside of it.

The 'I'-ness is what is most intimately you but also what is not you at all. It is as if the 'I' in the mind is borrowed, is on loan. What makes it seem like that? It peculiar absence, its being just exactly what you can't fix or grasp in any way. Something like Hadrian's anima vagula blandula - the weird recognition that the soul does not belong to you - but different as well because it is not separate. This is captured in the impossible idea that the is only one 'I' - not just for every human, but every sentient being. You can't make sense of this, you shouldn't even try to, but somehow you know it is true. Perhaps the best you can do is to realise that different logics belong to different levels of being - and then that there are no different levels of being, not even one.

When you perceive some object, by sight, sound, taste, smell or touch and when again you think a thought, or think of the thinker, all of these actions are of a par, are experienced in the same way, as if by the same experiencer and never by each other. Your seeing is not mediated by thinking, nor your thinking by seeing, and the self you arrive at through thought is an object of thought and doesn't itself experience anything; it has no other role to play than as object of thought. So, while the mind thinks of itself in the image of a complexly hierarchical and mediated network, as if one mental moment could be the subject or experiencer of another mental moment, it is really all entirely flat, a two-dimensional field which reveals nothing about the experiencer who is never in the picture. This simplicity is obscured by the complexity of the mind's objectives, by its ability to generate new objects to fill every thought-born gap it can imagine. You enjoy being lost in the labyrinths of experience and your enjoyment is there in the same plane as what it enjoys - a delightful paradox that never ceases to fascinate.

The cogito is something like a signature of human-reality at least of a broad class, but is not necessarily embedded in it. Spelled out as 'I think therefore I am' it contains two clauses asymmetrically linked and sharing a common subject. The two verbs are different, thinking is not being and being is not thinking. Whatever it means to be is not the same as whatever it means to think. Furthermore since the subject is the same it is implicitly telling you that it does not reveal anything about the 'I'. There are some who explicitly deny that the 'I' is essential to this formula, that it ought to reduce to something like 'thinking is' but that is to miss the whole point. What does the 'therefore' correspond to? It appears to be a logical term, but as such it ought to link two hypothetical propositions which is not the case here. The contrapositive 'I am not therefore I don't think' is nonsensical since it is already an act of thought, and even transposed to the form 'If I were not then I wouldn't be thinking' it is at best a tautology. No, something happens rather than is stated in the enunciation of the cogito, and whatever it is it hinges on the 'I'. The 'I' is the transition from the verb to think, or more generally to experience, and the verb to be. If you say 'it thinks therefore it is' it is only because when you say 'it thinks' you mean it has an 'I'.   

The world is made of mind and mind is made of significations. If you ask what significations are then you are only calling up further significations, so that one thing you know is that mind forms an effectively but not necessarily closed world, turned on itself. You know also that every signification is open ended, is not final, is never what it is. Perhaps you also know that mind is an ongoing process and that its acts are internally split into say, matter, act and meaning, each of which are themselves split into matter, act and meaning. All that is not mind is nevertheless mind, mind being closed under every form of negation, but in spite of this mind is not its own foundation. In this context the cogito reads simply, mind has a foundation. The foundation of mind is neither mind nor the negation of mind. Further, it constitutes mind without being mind-like in any respect - being its own foundation. Neither materialism nor panpsychism can indicate this being themselves mental constructions. If you choose to call it consciousness or God you do not mean consciousness of God in any way at all. Metaphysics breaks down, but before it does so it tells you that you cannot have moved one iota outside of your ground.

There is a thing you do that you think of as turning attention inward which provides your primary reference point for the sense of being a self in its world. These actions are amazingly naive considering all the efforts you have put into inquiring into this process. Attention goes to inner-body sensation, to breathing, to the feeling inside the head, to the space imagined behind the eyes and in which the inner monologue seems to be located. The point of view from which the observer you are seems to look is always a little way behind you and perhaps somewhat to the right almost as if it could whisper in your right ear. What is so naive is the presumption that you can immediately locate, or localise in a space half physical and half ideal, the very context of self-reference, the first approaches to revealing the subject. It is as if you were to say, 'This is where I must start to look, it is the place where I was just a moment ago.' All of this is just chasing your own tail, it is no more sophisticated than that. Before it is reflective it is an immediacy, as if of course you would know, but all of the assumptions that you make are concealed within this presumption of immediacy, of naturalness. It is right there that you have to plunge the wedge of 'I don't know' as deeply as you can.

Continuous flowing of emotional states which modify the topology of the world, or the other way around, continual transformation of the topology of the world, of what is near and what is far, of what matters are close and distant from each other, of their order of precedence, of what promises and what threatens, of what is sunk in dullness or shines like jewels, what is deviation and what is ground, is what you know as your emotional state - two ways of looking at the same thing because the world and your bodily presence in it are not separate. But this is not like an adventuring through some misty dream world where phenomena like clouds flow over you and immerse you in their shades, because what is always at stake in every such state is the truth - these modifications are the bending of the light of truth so that it shows, no less insistently, from a new angle. Without understanding the importance of the reference to truth implicit in every state you would mistake them for phenomena. Just as you play an irreducible role is every state so does the place of truth. They are not the same but mysteriously concomitant. No version of the self that is not also a theory of reality, which is why you can never think your way out of them, even as you observe their continual changes.

These heart spaces are nice to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. It is strange how much of the exigency of truth attaches itself to these states without their actually being connected to any truth at all. There is an emotional amplification of empathy in which it looms large and portentous, but the emotionality arises from confusion and uncertainty, and empathy is only one of the more insistent idols of the tribe. You have to rely on multiple and contradictory auguries each pitched at a sort of worst case. The medium is that of stories, which means that they are staged, narratives in which you and all of the other parties are represented, narratives to which credence has already been given. You dither around in these states maintaining their intensity by whatever means you can while pretending that you are seeking to diminish it. There is nothing to be resolved here but it affords a glimpse of unavowed attachments whose contingency is starting to emerge.

The true seer remains unrevealed, even to turn attention around on itself is almost impossible. You think you have been courting it, progressing in the way of it, clearing away misapprehensions, but what stands in the way of it is frankly everything, the whole clutter that you've built in head and heart and will. Head work alone means nothing, it is only a game of trying to fool yourself with a mask of earnestness. The ruses of thought are far too much for you, and even if you feel comfortable trying to disentangle the odd knot it's not really where you belong. Heart work is needed and that will be endless because there is no boundary between your own heart and the hearts of others. And as well, you have no idea how to speak of it.

What things are made of is explained to us by science, but these are phenomenal explanations of phenomena in terms of other systems of phenomena - all of which very nearly makes sense. There are a few holes in the picture but you assume that they can and will be filled with more of the same. But what are the phenomena made of? That is a different kind of question. You can say that they are made of mind. In just the same way as in a lucid dream you can be fascinated by the apparent solidity of the objects you are surrounded by. You can pick at them, scratch them, throw them around and they are wonderfully solid even though you know that they are made out of dream stuff, that they bear certain assumptions which you are free to change by an act of fresh imagination. The fact that you can't change the world-stuff in the same way doesn't make it essentially different, it is just that it is rooted in a deeper layer of mind, or in consciousness which is so much more vast than anything you can encompass within your individual reality. It is like living next to a staggeringly huge mountain which you have grown so used to as the background of everything you've ever known that you no longer see it. If you can unblock your vision you will be filled with awe, not at the sublime otherness of it, but at the familiarity with which it has created the stage for everything you have ever experienced.

Whatever the current predicament happens to be it is what mostly occupies the mental world of monlogues, rehearsals, schemes, projections and such. It is inescapable despite being understood to be of only temporary importance, fleeting and superficial, a bit of drama wrapped up in a song that will soon complete its shuttling rounds and give way to something else. But it also serves to anchor you in a comfortable and tactile reality, and in an episodic temporality, and in that sense it is a medium for reassurance even when its tone is agitated and discontented. There is a comfort in having familiar kinds of problems, it is through them that you keep within your safe map of reality. Matters that claim attention because you can't quite handle them actually remind you there is so much you can 'handle', that control is for your grasping. The first shift away from this grounding reality is to see it not as a definite place but as a medium, that what you are doing is living through it, or in a different metaphor, that you are riding it like a horse. Now you identify with the emotional tone, the active mood, with which you are piloting it, a smaller brighter space that is detached, concentrated and unstable - that could, that can, let go. There is nothing that can stop your reality from changing completely. Its stability is something you choose to bring about, an attitude you deliberately take up in relation to the varied tendencies that are at play in your dream of life. 

The so-called big five personality traits are a persistent finding of psychometrics. If these can be taken as more than just contingent facts emerging from statistical methods applied to data then they must be taken to signify some underlying reality from which they emerge in a systematic way. For example one might begin by grouping them in a certain way, say, openness with neuroticism as concerned with objective and subjective abstractions; extroversion and agreeableness as concerned with other selves as objective or subjective; and conscientiousness as concerned with objective reality. In each case the possibilities are mediated by functions of exploration, approach and avoidance. Following through with this line of thought, if the underlying reality is taken to be neuro-computational or evolutionary then the true subject of the human reality which the traits describe is either computational or evolutionary in the metaphysical sense, and thus either timeless mathematical necessity or pure temporal (retrospective) contingency. These are highly speculative extrapolations of some of the current syntheses. In every case what is at stake is an elision of the pure subject such as was glimpsed by the no longer current phenomenology. Nothing seems to be more natural and easy than such an elision - it's like falling off a log - making the pure subject out to be an effect. This is what used to be called inauthenticity or mauvaise-foi.

Consciousness has no interest in the mind and so no interest in bringing the mind's self understanding to a true reflection of itself. The mind can only be what it is through being illuminated by consciousness but it finds its own state so delightful and interesting and with it the belief that consciousness is nothing more than a by-product of its own experiments in self-reflection, that it has no interest in attaining a true alignment with its source. It cannot rightly conceive of such a project since if such a project were to arise it could only be at the vanishing point of all interest. The only way forward is thus for the mind to stumble upon this truth in the course of some motivated researches into its own functioning. Such motives are typically negative, suffering or disillusion, or positive, surrender or love, and exceedingly rarely anything resembling intellectual curiosity.

Mental reality is imaginary but consciousness is real. The imaginary relies upon the real but knows itself as unreal through and through - it is haunted by the real and can't let go of it, it plays against it. However the distinction between imaginary and real is purely imaginary. The imaginary is imaginary.

Impossible for consciousness to be an illusion, since if it were then who or what would be subject to that illusion. But it is quite possible that the nature of consciousness is illusory, which means only that there is nothing that it is like. It is not like light, or vision, or intelligence or any functioning of mind. And for the same reason it is not possible to say that it exists, since if it did it would be delineated in some way, would have a boundary, and this is not possible either since for whom or what would that boundary be drawn. The only conclusion is that consciousness is everything, not in the sense that it is the stuff out of which everything is made, being the nature of appearance itself, but like the universe of sets which cannot be a set. When you think about numbers there is a sort of symmetry between zero and infinity, technically via a compactification. No such symmetry operates between the empty set and the universe of all sets, and so between the nothing which is integral to the existence of any thing and the universal which is consciousness.