Perspective and The Endless Forest of Knowledge: An Experiential Approach to Life
How we create labyrinths of delusions and enshroud ourselves in unreality
Leo Tolstoy wrote at length about his trials during his journey toward faith. His deep and painstaking, arduous endeavors to find the Golden Key — the answer to the most difficult question in life — only brought him to dead-ends. Wandering through the 'endless forest of knowledge’ he sought for the ultimate answers to life through the rational exploration. Tolstoy made ample notes of the futility he felt at poring through endless tomes on various subjects; no attempt to educate himself brought himself any closer to what he valued most. Still, no doubt that his moral and intellectual efforts paid off in an immense way, given his legacy.
But on the ultimate level, Tolstoy was unable to find what he was looking for via the proxies of various philosophy, or even through the intellectualizations of Eastern thought. And his awareness of this seemed to have reached some culmination in his use of the aforementioned metaphor. He realized that, without a doubt, he would find no ultimate answer through perspectives alone. No philosophy — a theoretically cohesive set of perspectives, a set of ways of looking at things — was going to give him what he needed. There was no golden key to be found in the forest, no door of all doors.
What he needed, though — this being an ultimate answer, in regard to the ultimate purpose of his existence — isn’t what I care about right now. What I’m concerned with, is how and why he came to find this metaphor. I also don’t know the degree to which Tolstoy’s life changed qualitatively, on the level of direct experience, after his revelation — but from what I can remember through reading, he seemed to have felt liberated after his awakening. He seemed to have realized that it was only through the ineffable act of having faith in God, and not through the intellect that he would find a final peace. And indeed, based on his subsequent writings, dropping everything and returning to the simplicity faith alone seemed to be sufficient for him. Yet, I also believe that the meaning of the metaphor he realized is profound in many other ways —especially practically speaking, but not necessarily only so — other than in our perception of the effect it had on Tolstoy’s ambitions.
“The forest of knowledge is endless” as a statement is untrue; in a sense, there is a limit to the Everything. Everything is the way that it is, and the grains of sand are numbered. Everything includes every-thing. Hence, the humanity of the metaphor. It is a relative statement that is true on the conventional level. Relatively or conventionally speaking — for all intents and purposes — the amount of possible knowledge is endless, just like the stars in the sky are “infinite” in number. Everyone knows this. They know this when they talk about concepts like infinity. No one could ever learn or see everything that there is; and whenever one learns something, one only learns or realizes there is more to learn. And nothing one learns seems to provide any insightful answer into the most painfully irrational questions that handle metaphysical issues like ‘purpose’ or ‘fate’ ‘destiny’ or ‘God’.
It is also a metaphor which seems to illuminate the subject-object paradox. It is a metaphor that I have always found to show the inevitability of subjectivity in even the most objective of concepts. No abstraction of the concrete world as-it-is, through the medium of language, is free from the view-point of its speaker. The idea of the subject-object paradox harmonizes with the Buddhist claim that we can only ever know things relatively speaking, and not on the absolute level: we can never truly “Know” something. Numbers are real, relatively speaking, but are not fully objective — they are only ever abstract representations of reality, and are still reifications. They are still a production of a conceptual apparatus, the thinking mind. They cannot be said to be Real in the Absolute sense.
Yet, numbers still “represent” something real: the concept of numbers is a perspective that is very harmonious with reality. Reality, or “that which is the case”, as Wittgenstein might say. And therefore, the perspective that calls for the taking seriously of numbers produces certain results that are useful for us, relatively speaking — ‘useful’ relatively speaking, that is, as they also open up the door to destruction. Using this reasoning, we remember to take only the truth from post-modernism, regarding the apparent usefulness of taking into consideration the fact that there is an infinite number of ways of looking at things — and to discard the trash, namely post-modernisms suicidal ideal of full relativity, which thinks this fact alone negates hierarchy. From the stand-point of a human being, it is not useful to hold the perspective from afar that a promontory leaning above a crashing ocean is nothing other than another peak in a sloping hill.
Even the claim that the world is “round” is subjective as it depends on the view-point and perceptual apparatus of the life-form responsible for the statement. Moreover, the language that we use to describe our understanding is never quite precise enough. For example, the use of the word “round” to describe earth is technically inaccurate and an over-simplification — it is a term which fails to take into account a complex set of phenomena, like the continual effects of erosion, climate-change, and human activity on its structure. And how can a structure rent with massive elevation changes possibly be considered as “round”? Also, at the sub-atomic level, insight into quantum mechanics proves that particles do not have definite positions until the time of their measuring, further proving the drastic effects caused by the imposition of perspective, or relativity, on any given thing. If anything, quantum mechanics, showing that perspective can change what is true, is the ultimate litmus test for the relative truth of the metaphor in discussion.
That being said, for conventional purposes, objectivity in all things is highly sought, and produces good results in science, practical wisdom, and so on. Yet, it’s almost haunting to consider the fact that ‘perfect’ objectivity can’t be attained; but personal revelations like Tolstoy’s, where he essentially admits his surrendering to infinity — the end of his pursuit for absolute answers — are in a way, staggeringly profound. There’s no end to the ramifications. Some might say such revelations are the gateway to the Buddhist concept of non-duality: everything is neither this nor that, empty nor full, round nor not round, black nor white. The merging of the absolute and the subjective.
So what does this all mean experientially? What does it mean that the forest of knowledge is endless? What does it mean, that when I say these things, I can simply substitute statements like ‘the forest of knowledge is endless’ with statements like “Everything is perspective, but some things are less perspective than others?” Because the only way to really understand some things is through contradiction. This is the way things are. The map is not the territory, but it can reflect it more or less accurately. Numbers, words, concepts — all of them can reflect reality more or less accurately, but at the same time, are not Reality. Just as a cloud is really just an admixture of certain vapors, particles, and droplets, and those are made up of even more divisible and possibly indivisible elements we assign other names to, our endless concepts are not Reality, but just fingers pointing to the moon — not the moon itself.
So to dig even a little deeper, then, we can create an example by asking ourselves what constitutes “bravery” — just one concept out of tens and thousands we are familiar with culturally. A hundred different people will have a hundred deep insights into what is a “brave” man — and each person may bring something valuable to the table — but who among them is really correct?
Aristotle thousands of years ago was probably the closest to the truth, giving a perspective highly balanced in regard to its adherence to both objective and subjective factors. Aristotle posits this: bravery as a reality exists in the Golden Mean, and relative to the subject — not in the extremes of cowardliness or recklessness, but at the same time also with respect to the individual person’s character, aspects, and other situational factors. Using the term the “Golden Mean”, Aristotle posits the objective factor of the concept, as he understands that words have objective meaning conventionally speaking, but also allows for the subjective factor. Moreover, the use of the concept of the ‘golden mean’ is in itself critical, in a conventional way, as it represents the consideration of the necessity for taking into account the dual-acknowledgement of extremes, or contradictions — an intellectual practice revered by the Buddhists, as it involves a sort of humble and realistic reconciling with complexity.
This is why Aristotle’s explication of the virtues and most of his other work is so timeless: it establishes both critically objective and subjective criteria in his philosophy. In this way, Aristotle is grounded, as he indicates his awareness of the elusiveness of so-called ‘knowledge’; he acknowledges that no single statement can ever perfectly encapsulate the “Truth” — what which Is — and deftly synthesizes the conventionally-balanced approach of the concept of the ‘golden mean’ with the ineffable concept of the subjective.
It is important to remember the nature of language when considering these statements and ideas, as all words on the absolute level are in themselves inconclusive; and, say in the case of definitions, merely only ever point to other words.
What does this intellectually understanding of things allow for us? Intellectually, there may be many answers. It may make us more perspicacious, more like a scientist, more painstaking and skeptical. Scientists, after-all, are taught to pursue cold, detached objectivity — and the very best of scientists all seem to eventually run into those contradictions which reveal to them the fundamental limits of infinity on their finite work. One might feel less judgmental, more understanding, maybe inevitably more empathetic, and smarter and wiser all around, and more peaceful perhaps — especially for those people like Tolstoy, who find themselves caught up in an endless cycle of searching for perfectly objective, final and once-and-for-all answers for subjective questions, deep in the bottomless folds of the Library of Babel. For many people, it is deeply painful to be on a road with no destination, but to be unaware of it all the while, and to have no recourse to the nagging prick in their mind — an internal splinter that can’t be taken out.
To create another example: this nature of things is also the reason I believe many certain kinds of people have no luck with therapy. After-all, how often is it the job of a therapist to merely provide for their client alternative views of themself or a particular issue? If the therapy fails to teach a person the process by which a person can arrive at an alternative perspective — say in the case of cognitive behavioral therapy — or more simply put, does not give and reinforce a particular, strong, new perspective on a given matter (perhaps a critically more truthful perspective), there comes to fruition the case of a person who is trying to fix the logic behind a broken premise, without realizing they are pouring oil in a broken engine. And although this is a very practical matter about discernment in life, it still speaks to the overwhelming desire of people to try and come up with answers to unanswerable questions, to switch one ephemeral idea with the next.
How then, can an experiential approach to life help to quell the damage created by our propensity to delude ourselves with endless amounts of perspectives?
Failing to realize the relative nature of our perspectives and to see how so much of who we imagine ourselves to be is simply what we imagine — and this gets into the messy territory of identity — we base one story about ourselves after the next, collecting more and more painful conditionings as we age, fabricating an ever-denser web of inter-dependent and inter-connected thoughts that we sink perpetually deeper within. One story or fiction is based on the previous, and forms the basis for the next. Our life becomes the greatest fiction, and we imagine the shimmering, ever-changing narrative in our minds to be static and by definition true. We try — like the Buddhists say — to pull out a thorn out of a rose with a thorn. We never realize that although we can use a thorn — a good perspective — to replace a bad perspective, there is ultimately no single satisfactory perspective about ourselves. Who is a person other than their name or identity? We are never anything we can ever conceptualize — in fact, we never fail to be more. Therefore, prioritizing imagination, and using one trauma as our basis, we create the next. Setting up ourselves an identity as a ‘healer’, we go about creating and believing in even more elaborate fictions, and are hurt and surprised or even terrified when even our so-called ‘healing’ or ‘fixing’ falls short, as it always does.
Frank Yang calls suffering ‘pain x resistance’; without the resistance, there’s no suffering, only pain. Or in other words, without the perspective, there’s no needless suffering, only the natural pain, the raw sensation of the moment, the purity of the physical data that creates the experience as it is, as it is and without the painful chains of conceptuality. Stories about ourselves become an endless weight instead of something beautiful and inconclusive. What this means a person can make what they will; but it just seems to be able to be a matter of direct, moment-to-moment experience. In this sense, it is fully empirical and phenomenological, only relating to the felt-experience, not philosophy or anything else.
The experiential approach then, just seems simply to regard the act of ‘seeing’ things for what they are with the light of awareness — the map recognized for the map, the territory for the territory. This gradual unfurling of oneself, and the recognition of things — leading to a so-called state of non-duality — is what is and always has been referred to as ‘Enlightenment’ by the Buddhists for thousands of years. Yet, regardless of the concept of Enlightenment and any theoretical descriptions of a potential culmination of a persons personal practice and experience, the existence of awareness is incontrovertible. Although ultimately awareness is, from a certain perspective, just another thought — what is “I”? (Our conception of ourself only seems to emerge when we are not present, when we are thinking; but when we are dissolved into the thickness of reality — in a state of extreme focus or a flow state or some other engagement — or are aware of our awareness and can see what what is looking at “I”, is something separate from it, our sense of self flickers and dims or even vanishes) — it is the factor responsible for attention the observation of other thoughts. On the conventional level, we see and pay attention through our awareness — it is the capacity that permits us to ‘see’ the relativity of perspectives, our thoughts, and feelings, and so on. They are separate from us, at the same time that they are intrinsic to us. There are of course some of the extremist-type like those of the Neo-Advaita and Hindu groups who claim we have no-self, that we do not exist, that we are ‘emptiness’ and that all is but an illusion — but who is it making such claims? It is precisely the person with a name of such-and-such, with an address, and a certain hair-color, etc, who is claiming they and the world are an illusion. But perhaps such view-points have their use, anyway.
Regardless, it is this ability to “see” which differentiates the experiential approach from the intellectual approach. Meditation, generally, is the practice many traditions have devised to facilitate this ‘insight’ into ourselves and our fantasies, fictions, and delusions.
How does this relate to the forest of knowledge? Finding ourselves out to be an adherent of a particular collection of view-points in a sifting forest of knowledge that changes based on our perception and point-of-view/frame of reference, we come to understand how much the content of our head determines what we believe to be ‘reality’; we come to see how much what is ‘absolutely reality’ is dependent on our subjective existence. A few thought exercises that explain this go as follows: we can ask ourselves what any particular object looks like from every angle at once; we can ask ourselves how everything looks like all at once, or can just simply ask ourselves, for example, what color a tiger really is, if it appears orange to us and green to some prey animals. There are many such thought exercises. This nature of things is also demonstrated in many of the traditional zen koans, many of which are very contradictory by design, purposefully crafted for illuminating the necessity of the experiential embracing of contradiction in order to understand. And although this essay has so far emphasized the importance of coming to terms with the relativity of things, it is not meant to communicate any sort of resolute adherence to relativity. The aspect of relativity in a view does not negate the Reality of a thing.
It is for these reasons I believe the light of awareness is highly curative. The three kinds of understanding — intellectual, experiential, and “realization” on the “deepest” or the cellular level — can help to illuminate this. One can intellectually grasp the limitations; then, one can use experience to actually see these limitations through awareness; and then, theoretically, one can ‘realize’ things and experience ‘permanent’ shifts in the hard-wiring of their mind. Not just playing about with the ‘soft-ware’ and moving things around temporarily and creating more conditionings, but upgrading the hardware itself, modifying the deep structures of the mind.
Of course in Tolstoy’s case, his recognition of his limitations seemed to have opened up the gateway to infinity; or in other words, he was able to accept life through what he called ‘faith’, and was able to seemingly able to continue living without acting on his suicidal urges. Like Elliot from Open Season 2 says, it’s only through the accepting of limitations that one can truly become limitless.
In this context, then: in our case, it is through the ‘seeing’ of what we actually are that we can either choose to try to accept or try to reject limitations. Or: it is through seeing that we can recognize our inhabiting a single position in infinity.
To predictably end non-conclusively, then, it may be worth considering what changes we can experience if we practice looking.