Examining Human Existence and Human Action
No One Wants to Face the Fact
STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN MIND
Human beings devote enormous energy to understanding themselves. Psychologists analyze behavior, neuroscientists study the brain, philosophers search for meaning or wisdom, and spiritual teachers speak about consciousness and transformation. Entire traditions and disciplines have formed around the attempt to explain the human mind and guide human beings toward clarity, freedom, or peace. Books are written, methods are developed, research is conducted, and teachings are offered in every generation. Humanity appears deeply concerned with understanding the nature of its own inner life.
Yet despite this immense effort, the fundamental structure of human life remains strikingly familiar. Conflict continues between individuals and nations. Fear continues in relationships and in the mind of each person. Ambition continues, competition continues, comparison continues, and division continues. The world changes technologically and scientifically, but the psychological movement of human life appears remarkably similar across centuries. This raises a serious question. If humanity has spent so much time studying the mind, why does the basic structure of human life remain essentially the same?
Behind this pattern lies an assumption that is rarely examined. Humanity assumes that someone, somewhere, understands the human mind well enough to explain it and guide others. The philosopher believes he understands the intellect or the deeper layer of the mind. The psychologist believes she understands behavior. The scientist believes research can reveal the structure of consciousness through studying matter. The spiritual teacher believes insight or practice can transform the mind. These positions differ in language and method, but they share the same underlying confidence: that the human mind can be examined and understood from a position of knowledge.
But this assumption contains a difficulty for a serious person hard to ignore. The philosopher who interprets the mind and the movement of thinking is himself a human being who thinks. The psychologist who studies fear is himself a human being who experiences fear. The scientist who investigates consciousness is himself operating within consciousness. The spiritual teacher who promises transformation is still a human being living within the same psychological structure shared by everyone else.
The person who is asking or investigating is not outside the thing he investigates or questions.
Human beings approach their inner conflicts as they would approach a technical problem. Something is wrong, so it must be analyzed, explained, and corrected. Methods are proposed, systems are developed, experts offer guidance, and individuals attempt to improve themselves. But the one attempting to solve the problem is the same human being whose way of living produced the problem in the first place.
The person and the problem are not separate.
If the observer or the expert is part of the movement being observed, then every attempt to analyze, explain, or transform the mind remains the mind operating within its own limits. The mind becomes both the investigator, the expert, the questioner and the object of investigation. Under these conditions the search for understanding may continue endlessly, yet never move beyond the structure in which it began.
Even when authority is rejected, another assumption quietly appears. Many people no longer trust institutions, teachers, or systems. Instead they believe that somewhere within themselves exists a higher form of knowing capable of understanding their minds and themselves completely. This belief appears in many forms. It may be called higher awareness, pure consciousness, awakened insight, the soul, inner wisdom, or divine knowing. Though the language differs, the structure remains the same. Each suggests that within the human being there exists a position from which the mind can observe itself completely and finally understand its own movement and solve its problems.
Yet humanity refuses to face this. Is this supposed observer actually different from the thing which is being observed? Or is the mind or entity once again placing itself in a new position and calling it deeper understanding?
Before agreeing or disagreeing with this criticism of authority, a more uncomfortable question must be asked. You may be a scientist, a philosopher, a therapist, a meditator, or a critic of society. You may reject religious teachers or distrust institutions. You may believe that careful analysis or deep reflection allows you to understand the human mind. But are you included in what is being described? Or have you quietly assumed a position outside the disorder of the human mind?
Aren't you part of the movement you are analyzing? What actual distance, if any, exists between you and the problems you are trying to understand?
If you are, then the situation becomes very different. The observer is not separate from what he observes. Under these conditions the search for explanation may become something strange: the mind studying itself while remaining the same mind throughout the entire process.
This realization is both serious and deeply tragic. The very movement attempting to understand the problem is the same movement that sustains the disorder. Human beings will continue to live in conflict with one another. Fear continues, violence continues, division continues, and the suffering human beings cause each other continues across the world. And while this is happening, humanity occupies itself endlessly with everything else—political arguments, economic debates, cultural disputes, technological developments, and the constant search for personal satisfaction or spiritual fulfillment. The deeper question is never faced.
Humanity is not serious about the actual problem.
The real question is not whether we can produce new explanations, new methods, or new forms of knowledge about ourselves. The real question is whether we are serious enough to face what we actually are and what we are actually doing to one another—not as a theory, not as an idea, but as a fact in our daily lives.
The Inquiry continues.
Part of an ongoing examinationation into human existence and human action.