LIFE IS NOT A NOUN
 
 

        You will never understand what is going on  
        as long as you believe there is AN understanding;
        you can never understand what is going on
        as long as you believe that it can be explained. 
 
 

The situation is delicate, intricate,  
self-supporting & hidden from itself,
and yet it can be fully comprehended in a millisecond.
 

Man is the only form of life that displays a desire to understand what is going on,
both around him, and in him,
and concluded from his own best 
thought-based inquiries,
he is the sole creature with consciousness of the type
to make such inquiries possible.
 

Simple observation shows that all animals have a consciousness of their environment,
but man alone is also conscious of himself as something separate there from,
simply put: Man is conscious of being alive, and   
man wants to understand what  being conscious is.
 

As is observably obvious, men do not walk around constantly pondering this matter;
almost no one ever gives it any specific thought,
yet the reality of this innate desire to understand what it means to BE a creature who can understand, 
manifests itself continually in their everyday lives.
 

As far back as records record there has appeared
a person here and there who was driven to devote their life specifically to this inquiry into the nature of consciousness and the mind:
a task, singularly challenging 
in that the subject to be studied also provides
the only means available to do the studying.
Calling this situation merely “challenging”
verges on, insult-by-understatement;
from an honest view, “impossible” would comparably be 
a more accurate description than challenging,
except that it too ultimately fails, 
in that anything conscious mind can conceive of 
cannot be conclusively deemed as incapable of 
some sort of realization.
The radical rub in this instance is in the near IMPROBABILITY of anyone’s mind ever clearly
comprehending the full picture of a laboratory 
in which is nothing but a single microscope,
engaged in the single effort to --  examine itself;
to put itself under the light of its own lens,
and from such observations, 
obtain objective understanding thereof.
 

Under the routine conditions of ordinary men’s lives,
consciousness handles this 
non rationally handleable problem 
by the invention of a fictional character --
by referring to itself as a noun: the mind,
rather the verb that it in truth be.
 

The microscope is not an object --  it is an operation;
consciousness is not a tangible solid -- 
but a vaporous restlessness;
at the cellular level, consciousness understands this,
and in an attempt to yet make possible a study of itself in spite of such apparently prohibitive conditions,
it has given itself the alternative name, “mind,”
treating it almost like an imaginary playmate,
and assuming the position of it now being something
apart from mind, and thus capable of making 
outside judgments there about. 
 

Thus does consciousness perform it duties by 
seeing life in terms of objects, 
which facilities his being able to conceive of, 
then rearrange the of physical conditions of 
his environment to his advantage.


Consciousness slows and reduces
the ceaseless blur of uninterrupted, reality-the-verb,
into stilled, separate, and mentally-manageable, perceptions-of-life-being-nouns. 
 
 

Consciousness thus assumes the expedient position of considering itself to be a thing --  the mind --
(a noun, rather than a more difficult to handle, verb),
and it also employs this same useful fiction 
in its view of life.
 
 

As is the nature of human consciousness:
it operationally monitors life, 
not as an indivisible whole 
that is wholly beyond the comprehension of 
any of its components,
but rather, to make any attempted study of it 
even remotely possible, and promising,
it breaks life’s seamless, endlessness into what 
it finds to be --  manageable, mental pieces.
Since this posture meets practical needs,
consciousness observably then ignores this
bit of self-created, laboratory fiction,
the end result being, (for ordinary men, under routine
conditions), that consciousness treats life itself
as though it is a noun  --   
a thing composed entirely of discreet, stable things.
Consciousness is then confronted, (via its own,
normally forgotten, doing),
with a reality composed of pieces-of-fiction.
Ordinary men conceive of living in a world composed of such things as: patriotism; spirituality; truth, justice,
the right & wrong ways of doing things,
and thinking about things, and every other subject that no waiter can lay on your table to eat.
This arrangement certainly serves man well:
just look around at how much better off you are by your worst definition than any other earthly creature,
but if you attempt to employ only these 
naturally provided facilities of consciousness to 
STUDY consciousness, 
(and thus get to the very, rock bottom of 
everything conceivable),
you must extend yourself in a way not known, taught, 
nor discussed in city labs & circumstances.

Every time you accept consciousness’
talking about some matter that no one can touch
as though it is a thing --   a noun,
you have momentarily made certain that 
you will understand nothing about the matter;
in its fictional place-&-laboratory of, “The Mind”
consciousness will produce thoughts about the
”thing” --
just as consciousness in other men will 
produce in their minds, other thoughts about the
matter-cum-apparent “thing,”
often conflicting with the thoughts in your mind 
about it, but always at some variance, 
in that the fictionalized version of itself that consciousness has created to deal with life
on a practical, tangible basis
does not deal in understanding things,
which is unified sight,
as opposed to “thinking” about things,
which is fragmented.
 
 

Seeing life as a noun makes possible man’s 
alterations of physical conditions to his benefit;
seeing life as a noun makes impossible a man’s
understanding thereof.
 
 
 

Life is the only living thing that can be cut up, 
and still live --  which is because 
its cutting up is just a convenient  illusion;

--  convenient to the many  --   bad news for the few;
and, “bad news” only if never realized.

If you want a taste of understanding,
for one entire day take everything your mind thinks about as being a “something” --  a “thing”,
a thing that has a name as a noun,
and make your mind take away its status as a noun,
and picture it as a verb --  an activity --
which IS what it actually is,
regardless of how accustomed you and the world is
to thinking and speaking of it otherwise.
Do this faithfully for just one day, and before it is over,
you will get a glimpse of something that your 
mind has never suspected, but which
your consciousness has always understood.

         If you are truly one of the few --  
                                   this is what you’re after.

                                         J