Why unlock knowledge
one word at a time
As I sit down to narrate this story, I hear a voice inside my head speaking these very words, with the perfect intonation, emotion and a true raw nature in essence. It is as if those words are born newly into this specific chain of thought, by which I mean to say, that the words I use right now are familiar to and already known by me as a knower of this language, however, to them, their existence is special, pertaining to this very chain of thought. If we are to assume for a moment, hypothetically, for these words to have some element of consciousness from the moment they sprout into existence inside my head, the most they can gather from their immediate surroundings is this specific chain of thought. Here we also assume that all the words that sprout in my head, also stay in my head for an infinite amount of time regulated by my wish. A moderately “meditative” word might be able to figure out the link between the previous word, the next word and itself in this seemingly infinite string of words. Thinking slightly harder, it might go on to know the number of words, and put them together. However, for it to know what exactly do all the words in this string mean together, or intend to do, their reason to be, the reason for their specific placement and arrangement, the cause behind similar of them appearing at certain parts of this string (or simply even knowing that similar of them do exist somewhere before or after), their birth, the reason for their birth and finally, what happens now, given that they are born —
the word will have to literally “be” me, the creator of this particular string of words, to get an answer for all the above stated questions. Firstly, it will have to have some scent of my possible existence. Next, it will have to pursue knowledge about the nature of my existence. This pursuit is endless. The more it tries to know me, the more there is to know about me. It keeps happening, and it hopes that at some point in time, it will “fully” know me, the narrator, who created it. Almost poetically, that point will be when it has truly transformed into me. Sounds so perfect, doesn’t it?
However, there is a problem here. The moment the word starts being me, it stops being a word from this string of words. And more importantly, it now speaks my language. It has forgotten the language of ‘words’. It has elegantly sat itself down into me as a narrator of this story, by being in a state of complete empathy towards me, because only then it can truly and fully feel me. It no longer has any memory, any trace of remembrance of all the questions which troubled it while it functioned as a word, because, they lost relevance the second it ceased to exist as a word. Essentially (and ironically), by becoming the creator of itself, there is absolutely no problem remaining to be answered. As a narrator of this story, I wouldn’t care if some word in my story is going through an existential crisis, given the assumption it can be aware. The word is so lost in being the narrator of this text, that it has forgotten who it really was before. Why it did ever become the narrator of this text? Did it choose to be the narrator, or did it sprout from nothing as a narrator? W H Y?
So, to truly figure out its own self, the word must stay aware as a word, even while it is being the narrator. It shouldn’t shroud itself in the regular functioning of the narrator of this story, which is, to keep sprouting words, and keep typing them on some keyboard till they are materially visible on some screen. It is actually pretty easy for the word if it doesn’t let go of anything that it carried along on its way, on its journey towards becoming the narrator, from its actual birth as a word, in the very initial moments of transforming into a narrator. And importantly, it should know the way in, but also the way back (niche reference to Abhimanyu)! Preferably, it is best not to let that W H Y slip away, because if it does, one might keep scurrying at and vainly grasp the fleeting remains of it, just the way one tries not to let that one dream slip into oblivion, moments after waking up from sleep. It’s funny how the key is to become fully aware and not get overwhelmed by the results of that awareness, as it can immediately throw you into another system of oblivion. Hypothetically, if the word maintains the continuum of awareness without faltering even for a second between its transition, it has to transition twice in one go. Once, while becoming the narrator, and once while turning back into itself, a word. Both ways, it carries something. It has questions while going to, and answers while coming back.
Why do you transcend? You transcend for answers.
What do you transcend with? You transcend with questions. With memory.
There are multiple tiny nuances here.
Not always is this transcendence, as I like to call it (call it rebirth, birth or anything), into a superior realm of reality. You may tend to get attracted to a realm which earns your immediate trust, which assures you of those lucrative answers to your ever troubling questions.
There might also be differences in the levels of awareness possessed by each word. An ignorant one may indulge itself in, hypothetically, some predefined tasks, whose knowledge was imparted through its “nurture”. The real questions about itself might hit much later in its life as a word of this story. A highly conscious one may also manage to think about the existence of many such simultaneous strings of words on another canvas, by some other creator similar to the narrator of this story, the existence of many such other stories happening all at once, differences in the nature of elements of other stories and ‘words’ as elements of this story, and even the existence of a similar realm or realms for all the creators of such infinitely many stories.
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Another subtlety, beauty, poetry, yet irony, of this process lies in the necessity of losing awareness once you are aware. That is, willingly letting go of the questions you had as a word, and mindfully forgetting that you are a word who has momentarily become a creator, as you transform into a narrator. This might sound heavily contradictory to my earlier argument about not-letting-yourself-slip-in-the-process-and-knowing-who-you-are-always, however, there is a chasm of difference between the two. Here, the word doesn’t mindlessly lose itself to oblivion, slur upon its questions or stumble upon its existence because it cannot fathom the transition it undergoes. If all of this does happen, it means that the word was indeed aware enough, but not ready. It also means that the word has now truly forgotten the way back, and must start from zero to figure out the true nature of itself, but this time, as a narrator. Nevertheless, the process remains the same, which is, awareness-knowledge-transform. Now, let us assume that the word is currently undergoing transformation. Here, I argue that the word must willingly store all that it had somewhere safe, in the possession and security of someone or something, till it has accomplished the same process of awareness, but this time, by being a narrator. This step is essential to fully undergo the process of gaining awareness, even as a narrator. The process has now successfully become that of awareness-knowledge-transform-awareness-knowledge-transform and so on. Which means, it is endless, and will keep happening till some realm of answers keeps existing. And such a realm will exist so long there exist questions of an aware being, which will continue to exist as long as the being is aware. Beautifully enough, either way, the word gets a chance to achieve its mission, in different forms. In the mindless process, it might have to start from scratch. In the mindful one, it can keep accumulating answers in place of its safely stored questions for its benefit during each transition. And that exact safe space of storage is what I term as eternal awareness. This eternal awareness acts like a bank of knowledge, which is completely unaffected by the transitions the being may go through. Ultimately and hypothetically, if a being reaches the end of this process, it will define the end of knowledge, and since the existence of the being is also a form of knowledge, that being will culminate into its own accumulated bank of knowledge, and eternally exist as EVERYTHING.
Is this the happily ever after of our story? Not really.
The point I try to make here, is that awareness and its stored form of eternal awareness or knowledge, is essential for survival. And I intend to convince the reader of this statement.
Consider the ignorant word. Let us assume that it never had even an ounce of awareness in the entirety of its existence. Then birth or death doesn’t really mean anything to it, since it wouldn’t care any less if it stopped appearing anywhere after this story. It wouldn’t care if it appeared infinitely many times either. It wouldn’t even care, which means, it isn’t aware enough to perform the function of caring. Hence, its existence concerns nobody, so nobody would try to keep it “alive”. Say if I care deeply about an ignorant word, I would try to bring it out multiple times in my story, to keep giving it a chance to care about itself. If neither an external entity, nor the word itself is aware about its existence, then there is no survival, because there is as good as no existence! This is the second scary state to be in. Oblivious to everything. This is as good as dead, because performing any tiny function internally would require that tiny amount of awareness. Externally, I can toss and throw the word anywhere, and that ignorant fellow won’t blink an eye.
The scariest state to be, is a half aware word. It somewhat knows, but it doesn’t try to know any further. And here is where the biggest problem lies. Here is where awareness becomes a necessity for survival. From this half aware state, the word has two paths ahead of it, which are, to either slip into the second scary state of complete oblivion, or become the highly aware word which has been described at length previously. One of the reasons for this state being the scariest, is because of the choice lying in the hands of the half aware word. For an aware being, this state is an opportunity to reclaim the past slip during transition, or start freshly, while for an ignorant being, this is another good opportunity to let that knowledge slip away in indulgence (which has enough conviction to disguise as eternal awareness and fool the word down this lane) and achieve pure oblivion. Indulgence can be understood as the spurs and temporary moments of the the feeling of eternal awareness. This choice can be visualized as a continuum. At one end, we have complete death, which we can understand as total ignorance. There is no coming from it, and no going back to it, once you are inside it. At the other end, we have complete awareness, which will ultimately lead to eternal awareness that will encompass even the state of complete ignorance. So factually, the other end is a state higher and superior to the state of total ignorance. Another reason why this is scary is that everything seems to be an opportunity. I make it sound as if the being has entire autonomy to decide its life, and no external factor plays a role. In fact, I indeed intend to say the above statement, literally. Disadvantage is a contextual hierarchy which ceases to exist the moment one decides to do something of their own, which in other words, is performing a function with a solely internal force, which in other words, is to take the first step towards awareness. A being on this path will stop identifying itself by this contextual label, rather, any external circumstance or effect. This is why we see a high level of detachment in highly aware individuals. I do not intend to overlook the circumstantial delay in this process caused by any disadvantage, and fully acknowledge the existence of many such types of disadvantages. My only point is that they stop affecting an individual who is already on the path of awareness, which forms the context of our discussion.
The reason why this state determines the survival of our half aware word is that it can either fully die and never take birth again, which is, total oblivion, or keep trying to reach the stage of proper transformation. The scary part also lies in the fact, that for a word to be identified as one who is not ignorant, itself affirms its capability to achieve a state of awareness that is just right for beginning transformation, and if it is still not our fully aware word from before, it might slip away and get stuck somewhere halfway, before the transition ends. It is likely to try and return during the transition, if it loses bits of awareness while transforming. Transition here being injective, going back isn’t possible, hence it is forever stuck in between. It doesn’t carry the motivation and pursuit of our fully aware word to complete the transformation, because of the miniscule amount of half-awareness that keeps the possibility of slipping into ignorance open at all times. The reason why a half-aware word might still be able to transform is that it knows it can, but the reason to freeze mid-transformation is because it also knows it cannot. The halt, which appears in a half-aware entity as hesitation, confusion, fear and some degree of external influence in awareness, is the danger posed on the survival of that word. This, in other terms, can be understood as the widely seen phenomenon of the fear of ceasing to exist. As seen in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras as one of the Kleshas, this is literally, the instance of Abhiniveśaḥ (Sutras 2.3 and 2.9).
This entire discussion revolves around a word that sprouted as I sat down to write this story. It does have to come to an end sometime or the other. This conclusion is abrupt, unfinished and may be unnatural. However, it is real. This is because, nobody knows yet, if our word was fully aware, half aware or ignorant. All we know, is that the protagonist of this story was a word. But why would we even care about the survival of a word? It may not even have awareness in human reality.
Imagine if this word was us. We would indeed care about our own survival.
The next unanswered question lies in H O W. How does one gain complete awareness? How does one know which word are they?
That would be a discussion for some other day. It would then be a story of language. It would carry on from here. It would narrate how to unlock knowledge, one language at a time.
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