Betrayers of Consciousness (pt 38)

To know one thing purely or clearly, even indisputably…we may come to understand is no small matter (or asking). We may say “I am”, assured to ourselves this is so, this is true, this is indisputable in all, and there think such foundation is firm. But what do any know (if knowing or believeing they do know anything) apart from change? If the “I am” is no less changing…even in such discovery of knowing (going from not knowing to now knowing, as in waking up) then at what particular point is that “I” of such stasis as can be known? Like trying to hit an ever moving target, or in some understanding of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle here applied to our own consciousness…the one observing the “I” in its ever moving estate, can never really know it fully.

If we add to this (who can’t?) some knowledge of death as the ultimate change in estate for the “I”, and as into which the I is ever proceeding…and our assumption is that there is a coming time in which the I will be not, and of such duration as imagined interminable (or indeterminable) and without end…then whatever small space (or length of time) such I may presently occupy along that infinite continuum is surely as nothing. Nothing at all. Even thus undoing any presumption of a sure present estate; for it is always in change, and always moving toward its not being.

Therefore “I am” may be far better stated “I am becoming not”…and that for a long, long time. Like forever after. Were we to “throw in” (so to speak) the time interminable before what says “I am” (before birth and awakening to consciousness)…we begin to see how weaker still is such presumption of knowing, as even most claimed fundamental knowing that “I am” is a firm foundation of any knowing. Yeah…it’s not only weak, but perfectly so. Even as I write, and you perchance read, our “I am” is in total flux.

So, what is?

Is anything in a full state of being of itself?

For if we say “everything is changing” as an a priori, or pooh pooh such considerations as absurdly framed cleverness, then we might as well go whole hog and say nothing is ever truly known. But even that statement contradicts itself if claiming to know that, or state that as truth.