We Two Are One

Neti Neti

"What?"

"We've just discussed the other things your body does without your assistance. Are you the one who thinks?"

"Ah yes. I'm the one who thinks."

"How do you do it?"

"What?"

"How do you think?"

"I just do."

"It just happens. If you examine your experience, you will realise that you do not choose your thoughts, nor your feelings; they just arise."

"But I can make myself think about things."

"I concede that. But most of the time your thoughts and memories and feelings arise in response to triggers from outside, or inside your mind. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that thinking happens, just like digestion or growing your fingernails. But for some reason you identify with the voice in your head more than you do with the itching in your feet or the gurgling in your stomach. But all of these are just processes."

"I see," Oswald said, but he didn't.

"Let's try something else. Listen."

Oswald cocked his head. He heard gulls, the wash of waves, the muffled sound of a car from over the harbour.

"What do you hear?"

Oswald told him. "And the high whine of tinnitus that never goes away."

"Good!"

"Good I've got tinnitus?"

Rupert ignored him. "Is the sound of the gulls you?"

"No."

"Is the sound of the car you?"

"No, of course not."

"Is the sound of the tinnitus you?"

"Yes."

"All of these sounds appear in your awareness, but some are you and some aren't."

"That's right."

"Now touch the carpet."

"Okay." Oswald did as he was bid. He touched the blue carpet to the side of his chair. It was soft and synthetic.

"Are you the carpet?"

Oswald laughed. "I hope not."

"The sensation you had when you pressed your fingers into the carpet—"

"Yes."

"—Can you please separate what was you in that sensation? Separate which part of the sensatoion that is you and which is the carpet so you have two separate parts."

Oswald furrowed his brow. "What do you mean."

"You believe you are not the carpet?'

'No, I'm not the carpet.'

'Then if you are not the carpet, there must be two parts to the sensation—that which belongs to you, and that which belongs to the carpet. So can you please tell me where you began and the carpet ended."

Oswald shook his head. "Are you telling me I'm the carpet?"

Rupert laughed. "I'm saying that there is no divison between you and the carpet. Another example—when you look out of the window at the boat. You believe there is you and there is the boat.'

'Yes.'

'You believe you have a little model of a boat in your mind?'

'Yes, I suppose.'

'And that model is not the real boat?'

'No. The model is inside my head.'

'Then where is the real boat?'

'Erm. Out there.'

'The truth is that there are not two things. There is no boat out there in the world and a model of a boat in your mind. There is only the experience of a seeing a boat. Neither object nor subject."

"Then what am I?'

'You tell me. What do you think you are?'

'I am my body. That's me."

"When you cut your hair and discard that hair. Is the hair in the bin you?"

"Not any more."

"If you have your appendix removed. Is that appendix you in its glass jar?"

"No."

"And the trillions of bacteria that live in you. Are they you?"

"No, they are parasites."

"But you can't live without them."

"Fair enough, but they aren't me."

"Where do you begin and other things end?"

"Well, I suppose of all the organs are me and not the limbs, because the limbs could be amputated.' He paused. 'But some organs can be transplanted. So I am those organs which can't be transplanted.'

'Perhaps soon we will be able to transplant most of them.'

'But not my brain.'

'So you are your brain? That few pounds of pink vascular fat?'

'Yes. I know it doesn't sound much, but that must be what I am really. I'm in my brain."

"But a surgeon could scan your brain, open up your skull and take a root around and they wouldn't find anything different from any other tissue. Inert, unaware.'

'Hmm, maybe.' Oswald did not know what to think.

Rupert said, 'I suggest to you that you are not your brain, any more than you are your liver or your heart or stomach."

"Then I'm my mind."

"Where is the mind?"

Oswald gave vague wave. "In my head."

"But we just agreed we can't find it in your head. I would suggest to you that your mind is nowhere."

"But my brain makes my mind."

"Some of us believe that it's the other way round. That your mind makes your body and in fact this whole world."

Oswald snorted. "I'm not responsible for all of this."

"But someone is."