02. Arising

We started with the mystery of time.  Each moment is new.  And yet we pretend that all kind of things are not new, that they persist over time. What gives us such confidence?

Is it easier for bookkeeping purposes to propose that most of what we see around us, including ourselves, is not new, and instead exists over time in more or less the same way?

Does it feel safer to presume a world that is stable to start with, and that only changes slowly -- in such a way that we can exert influence over the changes, and thus gain power to protect ourselves?

In chapter 0, Time, we contrasted appearance and existence.  We focused on what we would later call sheer appearance, in all its lively quality.  We saw how our belief in existence tends to dampen and freeze this quality of awe and inspiration, trading in the playful soul of fairy tales for the more rigid solidity of existence.  We then explored a particular working hypothesis: namely that appearance may be more fundamental than existence, even though we usually assume the opposite.

In chapter 1, Awareness, we looked at the ways in which appearance and existence present themselves through awareness and experience. Awareness presents sheer appearance as such.  In contrast, experience posits an experiencer that experiences only the mere apperance of what is considered to exist, and to exist independently of the experiencer. We finally explored whether we could shift from experience to awareness, as a way to switch from a world of existence to a world of sheer appearance.

In this chapter, we will continue that exploration, but with more of an eye on time.

2.1. Persistence

When we view the world in terms of existence, we find a world populated with objects that persist over time.  Clouds come and go in a matter of minutes or hours, mountains change over hundreds of millions of years.  Even a lighting flash persists for brief while, perhaps a fraction of a second.

Existence implies a degree of persistence, duration over time.  Time here is seen as having a three-fold structure: past, present, future. Whenever we look around, we find ourselves in the present.  But in an existence based picture, that present is understood to be of an incredibly short duration, in comparison with the far longer past and future that both stretch out for billions of years, before and after the present.

We have learned to firmly believe in the past, and the way in which it is unchangeable, fixed "for all times".  Similarly we have learned to believe in a future that is largely unknowable, and equally out of reach as the past.  Only the present is something that we can experience.

But there is a paradox here: all our memories of the past are present memories that carry messages that they pertain to the past.  Similarly all our expectations and anticipations of the future are present thoughts and present intuitions about what may yet happen in the future.

In short: empirically, we cannot know anything in any direct way about the past or the future.  We may firmly believe in a linear structure of time, as a line with a tiny present radically separating that line into two very long halves, past and future.  But even so, we have to admit that all our contact with past and future happens in that tiny little present time.

2.2. The Fleeting Now

When time is seen in this linear way, composed of a past-present-future structure, we are seen as inhabiting a fleeting now, an ephemeral little drop of time embedded in a bottleneck between one linear ocean of the `already' and another linear ocean of the `not yet.'  And we are like fish living inside a trap composed of that tiny drop.  We can never find our way to either ocean; we are condemned to stay in our miniscule water bowl called the present.  All we can do is to dream about the two big worlds out there, in either direction.

And dreaming we do: constantly.  We rarely ever pay much attention to our actual environment, the present where we live our whole life.  Instead, we are constantly preoccupied with what happened or what will come. Even though we can never leave our little bubble, our thoughts are constantly `at sea.'

Perhaps you noticed, while doing the explorations at the end of the previous two chapters, that a focus on appearance brought you back to the present, where you belong, or more precisely, where you actually already are, and always have been?

Why not take a few seconds right now.  First see the world in terms of existence for a couple seconds.  Then see the world in terms of appearance for another couple seconds.  Can you feel a change in the quality of the present?  It is too early to draw any firm conclusion; we will explore all this later in much more detail.  But it may be intriguing to get a little taste, already now.  It's so easy to allow the present to open up and come to life, just by switching too sheer appearance.  The more often we do it, the easier it becomes.

2.3. The Timeless Now

So far we've followed a view of the world in terms of existence.  If we view what is given in and around us in terms of sheer appearance, a totally different kind of present presents itself.  We still will be able to remember the past, and we are still able to make plans for the future.  But all of that is now felt to take place in a kind of a timeless now.  We could also call it an eternal now, not in the sense of forever lasting, but in the sense of being unlimited and no longer seen as hemmed in between past and future.

We can still act, and we can lead responsible lives, and we can do anything that others can do who firmly believe in existence and in linear time.  But in addition to that, we are also open to a kind of timeless spontaneity, and we don't take things as heavily as others who think they exist.  We can wear the illusion of linear time, like a dress that we are wearing lightly, as a convenience, without identifying with it.  And what is more, we can learn to wear our self image lightly.  Without taking the self too seriously, we can play its role whenever called upon, while also ready to set it aside when not particularly needed.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves: our belief in existence has been wrapped around us so tightly for so long, like a forever bandaid, that it may take quite a while to peel it off.  Let's continue to study the bandaid a bit longer, to get more of a sense of what it is doing there.

2.4. Creation

Back to a view based on existence.  When we see a solid world that persists over time, immediately the question arises where everything comes from.  How did anything get `into' existence?  How was it created?  Creation and destruction are the two bookends of existence.

The answer that science presents, for now at least, is that the Universe was created at the time of the Big Bang.  Whether there was anything before the Big Bang, or whether it even makes sense to talk about a `before' before the Big Bang, we just don't know.  Our best current theories break down at the intense temperatures and pressures that we figure were present at the very beginning of the Big Bang.

The answers that religions present are quite diverse, but in many cases one or more deities are credited with creating the world, leaving open the question who or what created the deity or deities.

In either type of explanation, the creation of the world is seen as having happened a long time ago, on a time scale far far longer than that of our own short life.

The result is that we see ourselves as little creatures, separated from the world out there in two ways.  Spatially, we only can see and interact with a tiny part of the Universe we find ourselves in.  Our planet Earth is a very small speck of dust in just one galaxy out of the many billions of galaxies visible with our largest telescopes. And temporally, we are far removed from the ultimate source of our existence.

2.5. Spontaneous Arising

What's the alternative?  If we believe in existence, we have little choice but to accept the whole package deal that comes with it: a view of the world in terms of subject-object distinctions, a way to deal with the world through experience, a sense of being locked away in a little point within an enormously long time line, and a belief in some kind of creation.  But what if we suspend judgment about this strange notion of existence?  What if we just stick with sheer appearance?

Well, let's find out.  What does the world look like, when given in/as sheer appearance?  How does it feel like, to live in timeless time, and to be free to fully enjoy the presence of all that appears?

First of all, timeless time, as in an `eternal now' does not imply that everything is fixed or frozen, on the contrary.  Timeless implies that nothing is fixed or limited by past or future.  A timeless now means that in each moment everything arises in a fresh way.  Instead of being created in a distant past, and slugging along through time, slowly deteriorating perhaps, a notion of sheer appearance implies freshness; a freshness beyond creation.

When the world arises anew, each moment, where does it come from, if not from the past?

The only reasonable answer is: the world, and all and everything that is given in/with/as it, arising spontaneously.

How else could it arise?

Without a belief in existence, there is nothing to hold on to, no creator, no experiencer, nothing that can be posited as standing outside the timeless now of sheer appearance.  The only answer that makes sense is: sheer appearance arises spontaneously.  Or to put it differently: sheer appearance self-arises.

2.6. Another Working Hypothesis

What I've outlined so far is not meant as a new kind of belief or theory.  Far from that.  The only reason to talk about sheer appearance is to point out the holes in the logic of existence, and to invite an active personal exploration of alternatives to existence.

A blind belief in non-existence would be equally ungrounded as a blind belief in existence.

So, let's not believe in anything, let's simply drop all beliefs.

Instead, let's introduce another working hypothesis.  How about this: let us take as a hypothesis that sheer appearance self-arises.  Or in other words, that sheer appearance spontaneously arises, without any need to stand on the shoulders of something else, something prior or more fundamental.  So our working hypothesis says: THIS IS IT.

Please take a moment to look around you.  Instead of seeing all that appears as so much proof for the solid existence of the world, and of you as the central observer, how about an alternative?  We've played with this already, in both of the previous chapters.  But while we did so, we still remained a bit timid.

So far, we have tried to make a switch beteen a view of existence and a view of sheer appearance.  But trying to make such a switch without bringing in time aspects isn't really radical enough.  When we switch between such views, we also have to switch in ways of the `givenness' of the world, in both views.  When switching from existence to sheer appearance, we have no choice but to switch from a created world to a spontaneously arising world.

So, let's look around us.  Can you entertain the possibility, and so far only just as a possibility, that all that you see, hear, feel, and so on, is spontaneously arising, right here and now, out of nothing, just by itself, without any agency, without any authority, without external agent of any kind?

Let's go really slow, this is a Big Thing we're about to explore.

For now, can you just calmly contemplate the possibility that all and everything: the world, you, self and others, the whole kitchen sink, the whole Universe, all time past, present, and future, all of that . . . . is simply spontaneously arising, right now?

No crutches?

No scaffolding?

No wizard of Oz behind the curtains?

Let's contemplate this notion for a few seconds at a time, many times a day, and see what happens.

If you like to be systematic, how about doing this for 9 seconds every 15 minutes, thus spending 1% of your waking time on exploring the nature of time, by yourself, without relying on any external authorities?