The Doorway of Contradictions


wistful man with documents at table in dark room

The impact of a self-contradictory statement can either be meaningless or mind-blowing.

Never both.

Unless it is both.

A poetic self-contradiction can open your eyes in wonderment and wordless insight. You might even laugh. When the limits of square logic are challenged, we find it delightful. Thrilling. Hence, the love of a good joke or poem. It does not make sense, yet it does. Meaningful things that make no sense to our reason gifted mind, resonate within a hidden place, quickening our heartbeat, stopping us in our tracks and bringing laughter to bobble up or tears of relief to our eyes.

Someone said: “When you hear a self-contradictory statement, agree with it.”

Why is it that a contradiction from a four-year-old such as, “I want ice cream! No! I don’t want ice cream.” is annoying? Because it is self-limiting and just stays within the realm of wanting or not wanting the ice cream, it is happening inside a closed loop of things and desire/aversion. It takes place within just one category of reality (physical object and desire) and does not question its nature or validity. This contradiction does not inspire us or bring any insight.

If on the other hand someone said: “The desire for ice cream is the desire to be free of all desire,” it opens a whole new avenue leading to insights into the perception of identity, desire, possessing and being. It expands outside the category of desire /aversion to ice cream—saying that the desire for ice cream is in fact a desire for something much larger belonging to a different and vaster category. This contradiction questions the hierarchy of categories. It takes us towards the edge of reason.

A meaningful self-contradictory statement is self-transcending because it expands into unknown territory by abandoning the hierarchy of categories set up by the intellect.

A self-transcending self-contradictory statement is a knot connecting language/mind with what is beyond language/mind. It is a bridge between the practical mind tool and the power of pure consciousness that shines through the mind.

A famous mind-boggling question is: Describe the category that contains all categories.

The accepted answer to the above question is: It does not exist because the category containing all categories would belong to its own uncontained category.

Naming and categorizing the world is an endless task, it never stops, it is infinite in all directions. Inwards the attempt produces smaller and smaller categories, outwards it gives rise to larger and larger categories. Infinite fractals.

But what about the categoriser? Your intellect is the categoriser. Your consciousness is in this very moment aware of this categorizer. YOU are also aware of your individual consciousness. Is that YOU the absolute category of infinite consciousness containing all categories?

We will come back to that later.



What you give a name stops existing as everything and what you do not name does not become anything.

Think of a specific oak tree and you have negated it as being one with the universe. Think of the universe as one swirling flow of space, time, energy and consciousness and the idea of a specific oak tree has vanished. This way of thinking makes the part and the whole mutually exclusive. Our very way of relating to reality is fragmented and self-contradictory and point to a larger unified whole beyond the concepts of a unity consisting of parts.

That is why poetic contradictions are appreciated and spiritual insights so often find expression in poetic contradiction through jokes, anecdotes, or parables.

Why? The human mind cannot know what is beyond its own limitations, but only the human mind can think about it and probe its own limit. Why does the mind want to think about its limitations? Because something in us wants freedom through knowledge. That something is the pure intelligence or consciousness that powers the individual mind (call it by what name you like).

You may argue that this contradicts your ideas, that consciousness is just a chemical reaction in the brain. But is the brain an excretory organ, like the liver or pancreas? Does it excrete consciousness? Why would we have an organ asking about its own limitations? What if we suppose that it is consciousness that modifies the chemical processes in the brain and body? The truth is that science cannot tell us what consciousness is. The wonderful self-contradiction is that although science is impossible without consciousness, science cannot see the consciousness; it cannot see the tool it employs to know the details of this world. We see, but we don’t know who the seer is.

We miss half the equation. An eye cannot see the power of seeing. Mind cannot perceive consciousness objectively, at least not within the limits of scientific thinking. But if you try, you can train yourself to observe the limits of your mind’s capabilities. And self-contradiction points to that limit. What observes the limit of mind must by nature contain what we call mind. It must be a larger consciousness, a larger category.

What does this indicate? Does it mean that mind is consciousness, but that consciousness is not mind and mind is not non-consciousness?

Think about the obvious statement: The desk is made of wood, but wood is not made of desks and wood is not non-desk.

A wonderful self-contradictory gateway.

So, if you are game let’s explore the idea or you can also stop reading here.

Let’s for the sake of conversation use the word “mind” and say that this individual mind is an entity floating in a life bringing ocean of pure impersonal consciousness. Like a jelly fish in the sea. As a body in the biosphere. Separate but inseparable. The sea is not the jelly fish, but without the sea there would be no jelly fish. And without you, there would be no one to categorically divide the ocean and name it: sea and jelly fish, and Me. Without Me, no one would name andobserve the phenomena of Mind, Intelligence, Ego, Intellect, Body, World.

Without you, the possibility of self-contradiction would not arise. Self-contradiction happens specifically in your mind and points to something beyond the grasp of your mind. It points to something I would call the ocean of pure consciousness. This “ocean” is not somewhere else, it is all permeating. We could say that it is a realm of undifferentiated existence that we cannot perceive with our differentiating senses, or name with the separating intellect. Yet we suspect that some state of undying freedom is there. We long for it, we long to abandon the narrow corridors of our meaning-making, result-producing, fault-finding, solution-oriented mind. With self-contradiction we have a chance to bump up against the inside of the fish tank we call the material world. We get a glimpse of what lies beyond the limited senses, and it thrills the freedom-loving part of us. What is that part? It is the consciousness that knows the unlimited because it is infinite. The inner ocean is the same as the outer ocean, that is why they recognize each other. Limited mind wants to flow freely into unbounded existence, like a river surrendering itself to the sea.

So how to become free of the limitations of mind?

Know that you are already free by liberating yourself from the bondage of thinking you need freedom.

Ahh?!

That Ahh! That pause of appreciating but not understanding, indicates that you have just bumped up against the limit of the human mind. You have fumbled over the inside of the eggshell of mind and found a crack. That crack is a point of navigation. Through it shines wisdom and joy.

A contradiction is a door. Walk through it and it will no longer be a contradiction.

“So, who is it that recognizes the contradiction and goes, ahh!?”

It is your mind.

“And who passes through the door of the contradiction?”

Actually, nothing passes through anything at all. You just expand your awareness and shift your angle of perception.

The mind is a tool with its specifications. It is not the mind that passes through this door, it cannot expand beyond its capabilities.

“So, what passes through? Do I have two kinds of minds?”

Pass through the contradiction and you—as well as the door—will be gone.

“So, what happens to me?”

Your true name will erase you.

“But my name is truly Tom!”

What you give name, ceases to be itself, but only what you name exists for you.

What?

Yes, that is the effect of a meaningful contradiction, it ambushes the rational mind by pointing to a truth beyond the map.

And the mind says: I don’t see it… I get it but I can’t explain it. It sounds wrong but feels right. Or it sounds right but makes no sense.

Somehow a meaningful contradiction points to a part of us that we are vaguely aware of, but that is in itself the expansive freedom we long for.

So yes, an important question: Do we possess two kinds of minds?

Let’s say there is the mental faculty belonging to and defining Tom. It describes his world of things and action, his body, his inner life, his story. That faculty works in the realm of, “I want ice cream, or maybe I don’t want it, or I might want it in the future, because I liked it in the past, I hope they have the flavour I like because it made me happy to eat it last time… for a while.” You can call it the mind of things, ideas, opinions, emotions, and plans, and it works only by identification with the central isolated thing that we call “Me or Tom.” Without “Me” the mind would have neither direction, nor existence, and nothing to do. Mind counts, names, deciphers, and makes meaning of the world “outside” of it, including sensory signals, thoughts, ideas, and emotions.

“Why do you call them all things? Is a thought a thing?”

Things must have limits to be perceived and named. That is how a thing is perceived to exist as a thing. A thing exists as a category in our mind due to the way our senses work. Can you think of a category without a limit?

Yes, infinity!

You can say the word, but can you truly conceive of it apart from it being some “thing” that is really, really big?

Hmm…

You may say that there is no such thing that can be called an infinite object, and so we call true unfragmented infinity a no-thing because it has no beginning and no end. It is not a thing. It cannot be perceived by the mind.

So, what is it?

Our minds cannot grasp an infinite no thing because it makes no sense to our senses. Therefore, we call the infinite nothing. Then, because we cannot talk about it or point to it, we forget it.

That is the limitation of thinking I am the mind.

The tragedy of Descartes’ famous sentence in 1637, “I think, therefore I am”, is that it appears we stopped wondering what we are, when he presented us with this definition of being. It seems Descartes’ sentence is just describing the mind, which does not exist without thoughts. He says that the mind is you.

This sentence has formed our belief of who we are ever since. Most people today believe they are defined by their thoughts. So, we are caught inside our minds and we think that stepping outside mind is death.

If he or someone had just asked, “Who is the ‘I’ that thinks? Is the ‘I’ not something that was there before it thought? Or did ‘I’ appear simultaneously with ‘thinking?’ If that is true, then where did ‘I’ and ‘thinking’ come from? What or who is then the perceiver of this phenomenon of ‘I think?’ What held the latent power of thought before it became thinking? If you can think ‘I am,’ you can also conceive of not being ‘I’ and of not thinking. Then who are you?”

If Descartes had not shouted “Eureka!” he might have thought a bit longer and knocked his head against a contradiction that might have gone like this: ”I think I am I, because I think I exist as me and that the thoughts are mine. Or if I think that thinking makes me exist, what initiates the thought that made me exist? Can I be aware of Me not existing or existing as not-Me?”

Who perceives the I? Not the I. Are there two Mes? Who can look at thought? Not thinking. Who knows the eye? Not the eye.

We are approaching a limit of logic and mind. But this limit is only conceptual (mind works in concepts, concepts are things with limits). This limit is created by the belief that I am the individual mind, which is a thing limited in space and time. This limit can be crossed by giving up the concept that we need to break the perceived limit. That there is a limited “I” that needs to break a limit, is itself the limiting power. When the desk knows it is essentially wood, nothing happens but a change of perspective.

Fall into yourself and out of this infinite universe.

That we can appreciate the paradox of self-contradictions being allowed in language, is an indication of what we truly are. Self-contradiction knocks against the realm beyond the self-limiting mind construct of name, time, form, and separation.

What is that realm beyond? Call it timeless, nameless, indescribable, eternal, God, unchanging, beyond, infinite… no words will suffice. But we sense it is there, hidden in the white pages holding the letters of the encyclopaedia of our minds. We know it in the blackness of deep dreamless sleep, in the pause of the breath and in the moments of brilliant causeless bliss that bless us for a reason that the mind cannot understand. Or for no reason at all. This “realm” is causeless because it is constant. It is not an effect because it has no beginning or end; it is not a thing nor a place.

Permanent existence exists as no thing, we call it nothing, but it is everything.

Mind cannot see it because mind, being transitory and limited, cannot think of anything permanent and infinite. The mind is a tool that contracts, focuses on detail. It connects, splits up and analyses processes. It deals with complexity and creates complexity.

Mind is a bubble in a field of expanded consciousness that is the infinite space between and in every thing. The contracted mind tool and expansive consciousness coexist in us. Like desk and wood. Letter and paper. Wave and ocean. Mind is the child of consciousness, but we have made mind the strict schoolmaster blocking the classroom doorway from inside. We think we can’t step out into the open innocence of pure consciousness.

However, contradictions, jokes, art, poetry, and non-dogmatic scripture holds the potential to indicate the hidden passages to freedom and wisdom.

Even the fake is real now that I have known truth.

Self-contradictions resonate with us on a deep level because our human nature is self-contradictory. We are the limited personal mind and universal consciousness at the same time. We are rational and irrational. We feel like God and animal in one. Light and dark in one. We feel infinite and we feel we are nothing. We feel life is short, but that time is not real. We feel timeless as well as mortal. We feel isolated from and connected to everything. We feel love can conquer all, but that love breaks our heart. We can hate the one we love. We kill the planet for our survival.

So, when we hear a self-contradictory statement, we resonate with it like a crystal glass subjected to a certain tone. If the self-contradiction is powerful enough it can resonate and even shatter the fragile glass case of the mind to allow consciousness to seek freedom and knowledge of itself as supreme consciousness.

The greatest self-transcending contradiction is a truly realized teacher. If you meet one you will know, because you will feel both amazingly clear and completely confused by his or her mere presence.

Before realisation you speak about truth incessantly, after you are realized you can no-longer describe it.

The fact that we can perceive the imperfection and incompleteness of mind is an indication of the perfection and completeness of universal consciousness. It is an indication of our essential nature.

A self-contradiction is a pointer to what our human nature is and how we can transcend and become free of self-contradiction by stepping through the self-contradiction into oneness, wholeness, evenness.

A self-contradiction is a sentence juggling defined parts while disrespecting their limiting definitions. This can only happen because we have agreed on a pre-set order of categorisation.

Jewellery is gold, but gold is not jewellery, this makes perfect sense.

There is no jewellery, only gold, on the other hand stretches the mind beyond the categories of jewellery.

This brings us back to the question of categorisation. Which category contains all categories?

If you think you have reached the ultimate everything-category, there is still something outside the category, looking at it, contemplating the above question; that something is you. It is you as universal consciousness standing outside. You are categorizing all the parts and you know that they are all you and also that none of them are you.

You see the mind and its categorization mania, you see its fear, its hopes and its loneliness and confusion. You see all the manifestations of life, on all levels and through time. You are the category containing all categories, you are the uncontained container, the one without a second, you are the I without the Am.

The centre and the circumference are one. The space in between is this universe.

The real answer to the riddle is: If you knew your true nature you would not need to identify with any categories, without that need, the problem with categorization would not exist. Without categories, meaningful self-contradiction would not be possible and would not be needed to point towards the realms beyond categories.

Why do we not know this?

Knowledge makes you ignorant, ignorance makes you all-knowing.

But why?

Because the problem is that you want to know the solution but not why the problem exists.

So, why does the problem exist?

To make you aware that the solution is to understand that the problem is an illusion.

So, what is the answer?

A true reply does not answer the question, it annihilates the questioner.

No, what is the real answer?

If you stop chasing the real, you will become real, but if you stop chasing the real you will never arrive at the insight.

How to arrive?

If you hurry you will get there in time, but if you slow down you have already arrived.

But don’t we need to move… to struggle?

When you move, everything slows down; when you are still, the speed approaches infinity.

But is the journey not far? They say it takes lives.

The distance between 0 and 1 is infinite. The distance between 1 and 2 is imaginary.

So… just sit in one place?

Be still and be everywhere at once. Non-locality is right here.

And, let go of all desires?

Desire only binds you when it is too narrow.

So, what should I desire?

Modest desires yoke you to this world, immoderate desires yokes the world to you; infinite desire annihilates both.

So, I will know at the end of my life?

Life has no opposite, but death does; It is this mortal body.

But wont I be reborn?

Birth is the beginning of death, neither affects life.

I am afraid of death!

Only death cures the fear of death.

I don’t want to die!

Die when you are alive, and you will remain immortal.

What will be left?

You. Placing nothingness after one, gives birth to infinity.

And what am I?

What remains nameless cannot be spoken off but is the source of all words.

And love?

Universal love loves nobody but itself.

What?

The door to heaven hinges on contradiction.

Heaven? But I want to be free!

Freedom is giving up the idea of being in bondage. 

Kaare Troelsen- Vijay Shyam, Dec 2020


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