The ice will creep down shearing off civilization, But people will come up again. The earth will grow cold, But it will be replaced by another. For there must always be a place for people. A place on which to stand and sing.

(Francis Brabazon)

This self-consciousness from a particular point of view, meaning Me, has been haunting me for a long time now. Every moment I have had, when not engaged in one of the many things that captures one’s time as we live, I have pondered in my mind about who I am.

I remember as a child, when I started to become aware, that I was aware. Most of the time it felt as if I was in a sort of a dream state, fascinated with this thing of being, by the surroundings, people and nature, crawling ants, bright stars at night, and my own body. I sensed self-awareness in two ways. One, an undefined sensation of being, felt mostly in my head, as if a little dwarf was living inside, observing the world through my eyes, while at the same time feeling a silent room where I was.

The second way I realized my self-awareness was through the interaction with others, as they recognized me, paid attention, gave me and called me a name, embraced me, loved me, and related to me. I responded to this and identified myself with my name, body and so on. Arsenio from Puerto Rico, western civilization, Spanish ascendants, male, catholic, etc.. I played the role expected, for which I was trained, the body grew, and my mind accumulated this programming of interaction with others.

However, there were several moments and instants in which, for one reason or another, I would switch back into that undefined sensation of being, beyond senses and programming. I remember one time as a 14-year-old, when I was talking to my friends at night, under a lamppost in my neighborhood, about a friend whose legs were amputated because of a disease. We pondered whether he felt less whole than when he had both legs. Somehow we ended up imagining that there was a little dwarf living in our heads, who was our real self, and that the body was just a container, a transporter to deal with the world.

I carried that thought with me and pondered on it deeply as I went back home. I laid down in bed and was trying to move my eyeballs upwards, to look at my forehead, or rather behind it, to see if I could catch sight of the little being that was piloting my body. After some time of intensely trying to do this, all of a sudden, something happened, which I felt terrifying, unforgettable and amazing, I saw myself, meaning my undefined being, that self-awareness, up at the ceiling of the room looking down at this thin teenage boy in bed, who I knew as myself, now an outside object. I could see my crossed eyes looking upwards. I realized in an instant that I was not my body, that I was just using it as an instrument, a container. For whatever reason, this momentary separation got me into panic, and I fell back into my body. My young heart was beating as if I had been running a mile.

The bondage to one’s body and personality, for which we have been conditioned by culture and surround and perhaps inherited traits, is overwhelming, so that instantaneous moment of awareness, that separated the perception of being from this me, was frightening and not understandable, although it was more real than being this bundle of body and personality called Arsenio. There have been several other instants in my life, where I have felt a detachment from this me and experienced a moment of just being aware.

A few years back I survived a complicated emergency heart surgery. Since then I have been experiencing prolonged instances, not of total separation from me, but a kind of detachment, in which I see myself acting the role, fully being in it, while at the same time faintly experiencing, like through a veil, being a witness of my performance, from that awareness felt at the ceiling in my youth.

These consciousness phenomena, the raw unattached awareness of childhood, the out of body ceiling experience and the fade witnessing of my own performance, have provoked an intense curiosity trying to understand what life is about. To me, they are fundamental elements of the fascinating experience of life, the root consciousness which somehow is bedazzled through our interpretation by mind and senses, while at the same time unknowingly projecting this incredible universal show. Intuitively, I feel that the cosmic display that we observe from our fragmented consciousness of body and mind, is just a small piece of the story, and that everything is connected and interwoven through a consciousness of Being, that we all really are.

Curiosity has been a leading impulse throughout my life. As a child I was amazed at the context surrounding me. I remember asking my mother, as our car was at a traffic light where another kid was looking through the rear window like me, “why am I here in this car with this family and not in that car with that family”. I felt that I had “landed” in a set of circumstances and wondered why.

As I grew up, this curiosity about the processes of life became intense, and I was fascinated by ants and bees and birds and everything that was alive. So, I pursued a career in biology and chemistry, trying to understand how ingredients and their interactions produced such a show.

Now my life has almost been all lived. There were so many roads not taken, so many dead-end streets, as well as gardens, exciting rides and precipitous falls experienced. As they were happening they seemed so intense, yet after they were gone, they just looked as if scripted to continue building or deconstructing this me. And beyond that there was always the awe, the faded witnessing, a faint perception of a silent unknown knowledge, that everything was part of a blossoming process to manifest that consciousness I felt.

From stars exploding, generating chemical elements and planets, wherein exquisite processes unfolded leading into what Teilhard de Chardin called the phenomenon of man. It is too amazing, impossible, miraculous, beyond imagination and conception, to describe or understand, this existence, this thing of being, Being. It is well beyond reason and mind, inaccessible to theories and beliefs. The raison d être of this universe, of this me and you, with all its diversity, magnitude and vastness of the physical creation and the superstructure of culture, creativity, thoughts, fears, emotions, inspirations, music, feelings and love perceived multidimensionally, from an immeasurable numbers of points of view.

It frames and generates our biases, our greed, our ego posturing, attachments, and ignorance. Our insistence on being separate from each one to his/her own mode, while really being part of an intimately intertwined flow of an ever-evolving cosmic manifestation. All of it is woven together, the intergalactic explosions, the manifestations of evolving complexity and aggregation of energy and matter, the evolution of life, ignorance, our human erratic behavior, and the growth of consciousness and sensibility.

Now, after being on stage for 80 years, having subscribed and maintained so many opinions, beliefs, and points of view and with so much certainty, I just surrender and give up trying to understand the world, and this me, and that you, that circumstance, and the causes and effects of everything. I am now attached to this last point of view, giving up understanding.

To me, Existence, our beingness, our consciousness is absolutely unexplainable. The only thing I am aware of 100% now is that I am aware as a being, witnessing a parade within and without perceptions and feelings, from a particular point of view, and that sometimes I have a faint witnessing sensation of being beyond that character.

So much fuss has been generated in recent days around Artificial Intelligence (AI). This new toy of mind and reason, which addresses mostly the Me’s needs to understand, to categorize, to compete, to rationalize, to entertain themselves. An expanded ego-mind tool that incorporates and accelerates programmable mental stuff. Not feelings, not inspiration, not vulnerability, not the dark night of the soul, not the out of body ceiling view, not the love that overcomes self-love, and drives someone to give their life for another. Not the awe and humility experienced when you realize the miracle of the universe. Not the experience of the world with joyful detachment, beyond the ego and personality, as a living, flowing identity that transcends self-image.

There does seem to be a huge civilizational change knocking on our door, that might be followed or not by a gradual or a sudden debacle, a surge of a global humanity, which is not just connected as it is already now but communicated in the awareness of its unified essence of being, compassionate, with mindfulness that we are all on the same boat. Maybe AI, if applied conscientiously, could help us to liberate our mind from the menial job of thought and information processing, to understand and orchestrate a sustainable compassionate humanity, as natural intelligence certainly has not been able to surpass our opinionated biased nature to do that.

But in order for that civilizational change to be born within us, a change would need to happen in a realm beyond the thinking mind: sensitivity, intuition and love. That alone can make us comprehend that we are one family, one interconnected being, one conscious experiencing of an unfolding universe. We must go back to the fascination of the awareness of being experienced as a child and change our worldview from a fragmentary me and you awareness, to an awareness of us.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

(Arundathi Roy)