The Corporeal Fantasy

by Martin Butler

  We need to do this challenging and painful work of looking into our real nature, the drive to survive, the need to keep going at any cost, and what we do both to ourselves and other people to make ourselves feel more powerful. The whole thing is about power at the end of the day. This work is only attractive to a very very small number of people, most people are looking for somebody else to do the work. Maybe they are looking for a new age guru to do the job, and usher in a new era. It's not going to happen.

  In summary, nothing out there is going to change. The only thing that can change is your own self, and you achieve that through work. There are no free lunches.

  EXISTENTIAL CALCULUS

  The dynamics of existence is a power play between the actors.

  All sentient creatures believe they are the center of the universe and see other creatures as objects.

  Every creature strives to ensure its existence.

  A diminishing of survival prospects creates pain.

  An enhancement of survival prospects creates pleasure.

  The effort to exist is driven by pain and lack.

  Pleasure is the temporary satisfaction of survival desires.

  Pleasure comes from the increase in survival prospects.

  Pain comes from the decrease in survival prospects.

  All creatures strive for pleasure.

  If I am weaker you are stronger.

  If you are weaker I am stronger.

  Every creature must devour other creatures in order to survive.

  The pleasure of one creature is predicated on the suffering of others.

  PI = Pleasure index

  SD = Increase in satisfied desires

  UD = Increase in unsatisfied desires

  OS = Increase in satisfied desires of other creatures that affect us

  OU = Increase in unsatisfied desires of other creatures that affect us

  PI = SD - UD - OS + OU

  Notes

  All creatures, apart from empathetic people, treat other creatures as objects. Animals seem to have no awareness that other creatures are sentient.

  Striving to exist is the very essence, the root of all creatures, and they will do anything to continue existing.

  A diminishing of survival prospects might come through injury, illness, starvation, reduced status in the herd, and so on. For humans it might involve financial distress, social isolation, and the items listed for other creatures.

  Enhanced survival prospects involve plentiful food supply, increased status in the herd and improved fitness. For humans it might involve those just listed plus financial gain and increased social standing.

  The effort to exist is wholly driven by a sense of lack. We eat because of hunger, drink because of thirst, socialize to alleviate isolation, exercise to keep the body well, take medicines to cure illnesses, work to make money - and so on. Existence is inherently painful.

  When a desire is satisfied we feel pleasure - an increase in survival prospects. These pleasures are always temporary until we once again feel lack and make the effort to satisfy our desires.

  Pleasure is not simply how well we are surviving, but the increase from one level to a greater level. It is the increase that is felt as pleasure, and not the actual survival status.

  Pain is the result of a decrease in survival prospects. It is not the result of the actual survival status, but the negative change.

  All creatures strive for pleasure. At a basic level this is striving to obtain food, shelter, a mate. For humans it might include fame, wealth, entertainment and being part of a group.

  If I am weaker I am less competition for you, and hence it should be easier for you to gain the resources you need and want.

  If you are weaker you are less competition, making it easier for me to gain the resources I need and want.

  One creature devouring another manifests at a basic level through killing others to eat them. In human society it can mean one person devouring the effort of another in order to profit.

  Pleasure is nearly always predicated on the suffering of others. Clearly this is the case for animals devouring each other, but in human society it might mean buying cheap goods at the cost of low wages for those who have produced the goods. It might even be simply winning an argument at the expense of the other.

  WHY?

  Do you ever question why you read this kind of thing? What is it that drives you to leave the comfort of endless distractions to contemplate hard reality? So let’s state our predicament as briefly as possible.

  The great thinkers of ages (Buddha, Spinoza, Schopenhauer) all claim we are desire. We do not desire; we are desire. Spinoza says the essence of man is desire. Schopenhauer says our bodies are the objectification of desire. However, what kind of desire? At the root of all desires is the desire to exist. As the Buddha and Emil Cioran state, until that desire has died, we will suffer, only because all our desires cannot be met and we ultimately die. How can we rid ourselves of the desire to exist when we are the desire to exist? This is where the various sages differ. Spinoza would say go with it. Schopenhauer would say renounce it by seeing the sufferings it causes. The Buddha claims liberation is possible through his various truths. I go with Spinoza.

  What we resist grows in strength. To oppose the beast called the will-to-life is to make it stronger, and as a result, we suffer more. Both Gurdjieff and Spinoza state emphatically that we are slaves of the will-to-life, and the only options we have are to be an unconscious slave or a conscious one. To be conscious means we understand, and that power of understanding allows us to mitigate much suffering. Both Spinoza and Gurdjieff claim that understanding and its close relative being can confer some form of immortality. That these two sages lived two hundred years apart and said the same thing means there may be some truth in those statements. I’m not interested in those claims, living a conscious life that has fewer sufferings is good enough for me.

  Back to the original question. Why do this? Spinoza would say that your mind instinctively knows that the way to preserve itself is through understanding. What drives many people to steel themselves to stare reality in the face is the simple fact that nothing else has diminished their suffering. Perhaps staring the beast in the eyes will lessen our fear of it – of suffering and death. I have found this to be the case, although this is not a trivial undertaking or for the faint-hearted. Courage and perseverance are needed. The alternative is to suffer unconsciously, and as Gurdjieff states so brutally, to live as a “thing” and upon the death of the body to disappear forever. Whether that is true – no one knows.

  The endless distractions can provide temporary relief, but ultimately make matters worse – we become more neurotic. The only choice we have is to face the beast – the beast that we are. Having done this, we may discover that the beast is not as all-powerful, or ferocious as we think it is. It is easily calmed through the act of acknowledgment.

  I’ve said it many times. The work to understand and to see reality cannot be done in isolation. Real work, rather than entertainment and distraction, will only ever be of interest to the few. The price that has to be paid is great, but the rewards even greater.

  Part Two

  Bondage

  DESIRE

  Right at the heart of you and I is desire. Thus says Spinoza, Schopenhauer and the Buddha. It only needs brief observation of the inner state to see this is true. Sit and watch the desires come and go – they are endless with one feeding into another. Spinoza had a wholly different take on desire to Schopenhauer however, and it is worth exploring. For Spinoza “desire is the essence of man”, and particularly the desire to persist in existence. Each creature is given what he calls a “sovereign natural right” to exercise whatever power it has. The strong shall dominate and exploit the weak, and Spinoza sees nothing amiss in this. Nature, after all, has made each creature the way it is – we do not self-create. As such, since Spinoza equates this power of existence with God, he considers that the strong dominating the weak is a God-giv
en behavior. In fact, Spinoza equates the power for existence with virtue. However, all is not rosy in this garden. We can’t always get what we want, and so we suffer. And we cannot have a free-for-all in human life, or we suffer like beasts. So we have to sacrifice some of our power to the State in order to have an orderly society. Spinoza is telling it as-it-is, with no apologies and no value judgment. This is the way things are and so we had better organize our lives so we suffer as little as possible.

  Schopenhauer takes a wholly different approach. He was heavily influenced by Eastern religions and particularly Buddhism. So his take goes something like this. Our bodies are desire manifested in time and space. This desire is the same in all things, and he called it the will-to-life. This is a blind, unconscionable force, causing each creature to see itself as the center of the universe. In order to exist creatures have to impose suffering on other creatures (eat them, exploit them, fight for dominance, mating rights etc). He sees the whole thing as completely lamentable, and while any creature is driven by this force it will suffer and cause other creatures to suffer. And so, at the end of his masterwork, The World as Will and Representation, he proposes the denial of the will-to-life. In other words, something within us looks at this blind force and turns away from it. Obviously, this is similar to renunciation in the Christian religion, and most religions have some form of this. Of course, it is very rare that any individual can do this, but maybe the Saints and some sages have turned away from the will-to-life.

  Each approach has its merits. Spinoza simply insisted that we exercise our power as much as possible, and simply bear the fact that it isn’t always possible to get what we want. Schopenhauer is effectively advising that we suffer the pain of denial up-front while seeking liberation from all desires. Personally, I take what is useful from both approaches. Schopenhauer sets before us the terror of the situation and gives an emotional angle, whereas Spinoza presents a rational approach with methods for dealing with desires.

  In summary, Spinoza sees desire as legitimate and he deals with it as it is. Schopenhauer sees desire as a blind and ruthless thing, and if possible it should be denied.

  SLAVERY

  If you are suffering from a hangover, feel depressed, are looking for hope - or any of those things, don't read this now. There is no hope here - abandon hope all ye who read this. I want to talk about the topic of slavery, which was supposedly banished a hundred years or so ago, although it does still exist in some places. Anyway, I'm talking about a different kind of slavery - slavery to life. For example, most of us cherish the idea that we have free will. We have no free will. The debate still rages as to whether we do or don’t, but my opinion is that we don't. If you read people like Spinoza or Schopenhauer or Gurdjieff, all of whom I will quote, then you will become reasonably well convinced that free will is just something of the imagination, and that we are some kind of automata. We respond to things in the only way we can respond to them in any given moment in time, and that leads to a whole other discussion which I shall avoid. So, let’s get to this idea of slavery - the idea that we are slaves to life, slaves to nature. To be a slave means that you do the bidding of your master and that your master cannot be disobeyed. In fact, it is impossible to disobey unless you want very extreme punishments. Well, this word ‘slavery’ probably isn't strong enough for what I'm talking about here. This is not slavery where you can disobey and be punished, this is slavery where you have absolutely no alternatives. But, hopefully, you will see at the end of this, that there is a kind of freedom that can be got through accepting this slavery.

  Anyway, let me start with Spinoza. Spinoza was a ‘happy little chappy.’ He was an optimist. Having said that, if you read his works, you'll find undercurrents of a certain lack of acceptance. He tries to accept everything. Then you'll find a little comment about ‘the mob.’ The mob is the rest of the human race. If everything is fine in Spinoza’s little world then why does he call the rest of the human race ‘a mob’? Anyway, this is Spinoza. The ‘happy little chappy’ who tries to put a good face on everything. I'll quote from his Short Treatise. He says:

  “In the first place, it follows therefrom, that we are truly servants, aye, slaves of God (Nature), and that it is our greatest perfection to be such necessarily.”

  As you may or may not know, for Spinoza, Nature with a capital N, is the force behind manifestation, not manifestation itself, but the force behind manifestation, and is just another name for God. He uses the words ‘slaves’, and if you read The Ethics, then Spinoza effectively demolishes the notion that we have free will. He implies very, very strongly that we are slaves of desire, but he does make a claim that by understanding how this desire works and how we respond to it we can attain some level of freedom from it. My opinion is that Spinoza is correct, and you'll find that it ties in with what Gurdjieff and Schopenhauer have to say. Spinoza is unambiguous here, we are slaves. What does it mean to be a slave? It means that you are driven by something, a master, whether you know it or not, and that you have no choice in what you do. These are just words. You must think about that, to contemplate on it, meditate on it, establish whether it makes sense, whether it's true and see it in yourself. Otherwise, these are just words, and you pass on to the next exciting idea.

  Let's talk about Gurdjieff. He was reasonably brutal about the whole thing, and you can see in the following quote, he uses the word greatness in quotation marks. I think it’s a little bit of irony in the way he's using the word greatness. He says:

  “All people without exception (without exception) are slaves of this “Greatness,” and all are compelled willy-nilly to submit, and to fulfill without condition or compromise what has been predestined for each of us by his transmitted heredity and his acquired being.”

  Now you should know that for Gurdjieff "being" is very closely linked to understanding. Maybe as you understand, then things can change for you. Gurdjieff as you probably know has a complete cosmology, which I don't buy into, but his statements about the situation of man seem to me to be wholly correct.

  Then we get to Schopenhauer, who says:

  “But now, as the known in self-consciousness we find exclusively the will.”

  This term “the will” needs a little bit of explanation. For Schopenhauer, the real is the will. It's a poor word, in my opinion, he should have used the word desire, and it would have meant pretty much the same thing. When we think of will we think of some pre-meditated determined action, some sense of power that we have within ourselves. He's not talking about that, he's talking about us being driven by desire. Here's a little exercise you can do. You sit down and try to meditate, and of course, when we meditate, we get lost in daydreams. The interesting bit is to see what happens as you come out of the daydream when you suddenly realize you're supposed to be meditating. If you can take a snapshot of what you were daydreaming about you'll find it's always desire. Perhaps what am I going to cook for lunch or how am I going to impress this person that I'm meeting this afternoon or how am I going to impress people with my writing? It's all that kind of thing. Schopenhauer is certain here that the only thing you are going to find in yourself when you look is desire, or will, as he calls it. Then he goes on to say:

  “For not merely willing and purposing in the narrowest sense, but also striving, wishing, shunning, hoping, fearing, loving, hating. In short, all that directly constitutes our own weal and woe, desire and aversion, is clearly only affection of the will.”

  Let me dig down into this a little bit deeper. The thing that pushes us along, and I've spoken about this many a time, is what Schopenhauer calls the will-to-life. We can think about that and think ‘well, yeah it sounds right, because I'm driven to get a job so I can buy food and get shelter and reproduce and maintain my health as best I can, and all that kind of stuff.’ All the things that consume most of our waking hours. Why do we do it all? We do it to maintain our existence. This effort is the will-to-life. It may not be flattering for you to think that your daily existence is
pushed along by a largely unconscious will, or set of desires, but that's essentially what you're doing - you satisfy this will-to-life through all the efforts you make to maintain your life.

  Spinoza sees this as a wonderful thing, as he would because he's a ‘happy little chappy.’ Gurdjieff sees this as slavery and Schopenhauer thinks that the whole thing is completely lamentable. You get three different approaches to it. Spinoza's approach to it is to transcend it through reason and understanding. For Gurdjieff, there is a way out of this situation, and, it’s fairly like Schopenhauer's view on the whole thing. You must remember that these people lived hundreds of years apart. From Spinoza to Gurdjieff is a couple of hundred years and yet they're saying almost the same thing. In fact, what they are both saying is that we can be a slave consciously or unconsciously. To be a slave unconsciously, which is basically the way most of us are, is to pursue all these things - get a job, get a family, to get shelter, get people around us so we feel a bit secure, which means basically selling out to the herd instinct to some extent, all that stuff is basically about maintaining our life. This force can be lived consciously or unconsciously. It is unconscious for most of us because we just do it, we don't even think about it. We are unconscious slaves and Spinoza says very explicitly in his ethics that to live life unconsciously means that you are just a thing being used by the force of life. What Gurdjieff and Spinoza claim, and remember these people are two hundred years apart, is that by living consciously and being aware of your life (I will get onto that in a moment too), you can use the force of life to some extent for your own benefit to gain understanding, Gurdjieff would use the term Being. I don't know if that's true. What I do know is that there is a huge difference between living life unconsciously and consciously. But there is a catch. To live life consciously means that you must acquiesce to it. What it means in practice is you must understand the nature of the beast that you're dealing with, the will-to-life as Schopenhauer calls it, the “greatness” as Gurdjieff calls it. God or nature as Spinoza calls it. You must understand that you are almost entirely a machine operating at the behest of Nature or God or whatever word you want to use. You must acquiesce to that, and if you look at the definition of acquiesce, it means reluctant acceptance. The word acquiesce is the word that Spinoza used a great deal. Reluctant acceptance is precisely what we must do, and, you can only reluctantly accept when you understand what it is that you are accepting. You are accepting that you are a machine driven by nature, and that requires a good deal of honesty within a person - to see ‘yeah, well actually, I'm pretty much doing everything for my own benefit, it’s all self-serving, this is the beast in action, and for all intents and purposes I am the beast.’ To acquiesce to that, and then to live your life consciously, you can say to yourself I am cooking this food because this is the nature of the beast - it wants to eat.