Sentio Ergo Sum: I feel, therefore I am

“Me, Me, Me, I, I, I”; the biggest ever obstacle to a happy life …

… Not to mention a respectable one, she thought out loud, reflecting upon the various people she knew, herself included, who periodically availed of the services of one or another new age self-help or spiritual ‘guru’, each promising to reveal a magical short cut to enduring happiness by way of sermons that are no less than artfully adulterated versions of the fundamental tenets of either existential or neo-Vedantic philosophy, unilaterally calling for the self to be placed over and above all else …

… and even while the aforementioned philosophical movements were far more noble in their intent to first and foremost understand the nature of existence, for which a process of self-enquiry is as imperative as it is inescapable , they have bequeathed to the world a culture of supra-individualism that is not only counterproductive to the cultivation of the essential human quality of empathy, but also one of the leading causes of the compulsive and damaging self-absorption that prevails today; by all appearances, the 21st century human being appears to have modelled his life on the words of Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray …

“The aim of life is self-development. To realise one’s nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.”

… When in reality, it is quite the contrary, for the soul is all too visibly in the throes of starvation while it persists in seeking only for itself, the principle of ‘ask not what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for humanity’ altogether alien to the majority of human beings.

Needless to say, the single-minded pursuit of self-knowledge is both the luxury and curse of the privileged, happiness an increasingly elusive and costly commodity in their egocentric quest to investigate, define and distinguish themselves from one other, while for those forcibly engaged in a struggle to survive, adequate shelter and a wholesome meal are enough to bring a smile to a face and feeling of gratitude for simply being alive.

She had just returned from her first experience of an Osho ashram, nestled in the breathtaking Jia valley of the Himalayas, where she attended a three day course on how to balance one’s yin and yang, or in Osho speak, ‘inner man’ and ‘inner woman’, for which she and her fellow attendees had been required to shed each and every one of their alleged inhibitions , those that in fact qualify as civilized behavior, and instead unleash their primal instincts and carnal impulses, resulting in a complete betrayal of both poise and dignity. She had come away not only in a state of heightened internal conflict, but also ridden with an overwhelming feeling of disgust at her own preoccupation with herself, that fugitive entity which is often far better off subscribing to the wisdom of the idiom, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; after all, she had never found herself in any dilemma regarding her sexual identity and should perhaps have exploited Osho’s signature therapeutic practice of ‘free sex’ instead …

… Self-analysis is an unequivocally dangerous enterprise when unwarranted, the excessive scrutiny it entails similar to over-medicating a minor illness of the body rather than allowing its intrinsic healing mechanism to kick in; moreover, it acts as a preemptive strike on life, driven by an irrational resistance to allowing the identity of the self to remain fluid, to be inferred in the twilight of a life rather than deliberately perceived and prematurely forged, by which it becomes a prison, any departure from one’s preconceived notion of oneself a trigger for anxiety, self-doubt and despair.

As 20th century French playwright, novelist, screen writer, political activist, biographer, literary critic and one of the leading figures in existential philosophy, Jean Paul Sartre, once quite rightly conjectured, it is freedom the individual fears most; however, his radical theory of man being in absolute charge of both his own identity and destiny has served to not only breed an altogether profitless narcissism in human beings, but also done little to prepare them for their own death.

He who prided himself for much of his life on being an atheist, came to the realization of his powerlessness when confronted by his own end, thereby confessing,

“I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to god.”

A lifetime and by consequence the self are unequivocally meaningless phenomena unless one chooses to believe either in reincarnation and the law of karma, or in God and an afterlife, the value of the latter skillfully navigated and explained by 17th century French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and theologian Blaise Pascal in his famous work the wager, as purveyor of a sense of continuity and eternal existence, which even if wholly unprovable and largely opportunistic, brings some semblance of purpose to both living and investing in one’s present life …

… In the end, it is incontestably far more useful to get on with the business of living and make way for the self to evolve by virtue of experience rather than thought, the mind not only a vastly unreliable seat of human consciousness but also the intrinsic weakness of both philosophy and ‘self-help’; as 19th century German psychotherapist Fritz Perls once advised,

“lose your mind and come to your senses”

or to put it more elegantly, in an audacious revision of 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes’ venerated words, would be to say, ‘sentio ergo sum; I feel therefore I am’.