On our Odyssey you and I will encounter three obvious classics. Classics are views and ideas that do not suit anybody (completely), but are still worth studying to progress further. We make in this introduction a short detour along the three classics, “Solipsism”, “The universe is but a dream” and “Pantheism”.
Solipsism[1]
Solipsism knows and recognizes only one single consciousness that completely coincides with the awereness of the observer. In the original form of solipsism, there is no existence outside the consciousness of the observer. On our Odyssey, you and I will encounter many elements and forms of Solipsism.
[2]
At the first stage – described in chapter one – the oneness includes at first sight several features of Solipsism, but the oneness can easily avoid Solipsism, because oneness at this stage will be soon divided in two or more parts, and it may not be excluded that all these parts have a separate consciousness. In addition, one is the recurring initial divider of every prime.
At the second and third stage we will not easily encounter solipsism.
At the fifth stage, each of the five basic realities may easily degenerate into Solipsism, because every reality may regard itself as the only true consciousness within which everything is fully and completely enclosed, e.g.:
- Only natural science based on facts and logic is true: everything else is a delusion or worse. In this extreme form natural science migrates to religion, and currently religion is not included within the competence of natural science.
- Only feeling matters. Everything else is a reality from where we should keep ourselves.
- “Only in the void I can live, elsewhere I never found shelter[3]”. This is a pitfall for zealous practitioners of meditation. As lured by the Sirens [4] these practitioners are attracted into the void putting aside the other realities.
- Everything changes and only change counts[5].
- All is fully interconnected: outside this interconnectedness nothing exists. At the last stage on our Odyssey named “Zero – not one, not two” we will see how this manner of Solipsism is surpassed.
At our seventh stage we will encounter elements of Solipsism in all seven entities, e.g.:
- In the reality of Ishvara[6] – where you and I will meet god, gods and religion – only the reality of the own god, gods or religion is recognised as the existing reality. Other gods and religions are often contested with all possible means. Only the own god/gods and religion is regarded as the sole true reality outside which nothing exists (or is allowed to exist).
- Only the reality of “here and now” exists. Everything else is unimportant or does not exist.
At the end of our Odyssey on our homecoming at “Zero – not one, not two” we will look back if every manner of solipsism in the seven realities is surpassed.
The next post will cover the second classic “The universe is but a dream”.
[1] See also: http://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
[2] Source of image: http://www.huubmous.nl/2010/02/01/het-solipsisme-van-een-kind/
[3] Free rendering of a verse written by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff “Only in my poems I may live, elsewhere I never found shelter”.
[4] See also Homerus’ Odyssey.
[5] See also Heraklitus: “πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει”” meaning “everything changes and nothing remains untouched”. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
[6] A philosophical concept of God in Hinduism, see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishvara. In Sanskrit the word “Ishvara” consists of the noun “ish” meaning “god, ruler” – Wherein the German word “ich” may be recognised –, the noun “va” meaning “wind, ocean, water, stream, going” and the root “ra” meaning “give, influence”. Source: electronic version of the dictionary Monier-Williams – MWDDS V1.5 Beta.
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