Stretching the Self
If the self is extended too much, then there is trouble; if we stretch the self too far then we create a killer jinx that we don’t know how to un-jinx again. “But how far is too far,” we might quite reasonably inquire, “is there some handy rule of thumb that might be of help here?”
There is a ‘handy rule of thumb’ as it happens, a rule of thumb that can be expressed very simply by saying that any amount of extension is too much, by saying that any degree of stretching will get us into trouble. Any degree of extension will tie us up in viciously insoluble knots. Only non-extension will save us from this, and not extending (or projecting) ourselves is an art we know nothing of…
To stretch the self is to enter into Psychological Time, which is — according to Krishnamurti — a dimension made up of nothing else but conflict. Psychological time may be defined as being a state of unending, irresolvable contradiction, therefore. The reason ψT is inherently conflicted — according to K — is that it starts off with a contradiction — I am this, but I want to be that; I am here, but I want to be there. It starts with a flat contradiction, and it cannot move on from it, no matter how hard we push or pull …
Psychological time (‘me-time’!) is the space or gap that exists between where I am and where I want to be, it’s the gap between the conception of an idea of how things could be, and the realization of that idea. It’s also the gap between conceiving the goal and not attaining it, failing to attain it. This also creates psychological time. ‘Not attaining the goal’ is the opposite of obtaining it, but both are illusions. Both don’t exist.
Whenever there is expectation then this equals’ a stretching of the self’ — we’re waiting for something to happen, either good or bad. We have an idea about what might be about to happen (or not happen) next. We’re playing The Waiting Game, whether we know it or not — we’re waiting for something to happen that absolutely can’t ever happen and we’re deluding ourselves that it will.
The ‘Waiting Game’ is another way of talking about psychological time therefore, and the pertinent point here is of course that we are — in our imaginations — continually extending ourselves into the (presumed) future. The WG is all we know, that’s where we hang out. We are — in a manner of speaking — ‘putting everything on hold’ until a particular specified event comes to pass. We’re ‘locked onto’ that possibility. We’re hanging on until that happens and we don’t care what anyone says…
In reality however, the expected / desired event won’t ever come to pass (no matter what its particularities might be). For the expected or desired event to take place the conditions in the projected future would have to be identical to the way that they were at the start, and the universe just isn’t like that. There is no ‘identical’, that doesn’t happen. Logical consistency isn’t a feature of reality. The real world isn’t like that; ‘we can’t step into the same river twice’, says Heraclitus. To be perfectly blunt about it, there’s no such thing as ‘projecting ideas into the future’. The future is our imagination, just as all our ideas are.
When ‘everything stays the same’ this means that it isn’t real it’s just a thought, just an abstract conception and the other way of putting this is to say that there are ‘no such things as things’. ‘From the very beginning, not a thing was’. [Bodhidharma]. The whole point of the Waiting Game is however that there have to be ‘things’ and — what’s more — those ‘things’ have to stay the same. A thing that has no logical continuity / consistency isn’t a thing — it’s just ‘flux’. Without ‘continuity’ or ‘consistency’ there can be no ‘one who waits’ and no ‘thing that is being waited for’; there are no goals (and therefore no successes or failures) in Universal Flux.
What we’re essentially taking for granted (when we’re playing the WG) is that ‘the one who initiates the game’ is also going to be there at the end of it, waiting eagerly to avail of the exciting prize (whatever that might be). We have ‘an eye on the future’ and this freezes us. The player must not change, and neither must the goal that is being played for (or else the whole thing will fall apart). In order for the awaited event to take place something has to happen that just can’t ever happen, and this is therefore just another way of saying that there is no such thing as psychological time.
This is what causes the trouble (or glitch) that we started off talking about — the trouble that comes about because we of us trying to an impossible thing (and not acknowledging it). ‘Achieving the impossible thing’ (which is not how we phrase it) has become the rule– the rule is that we should do something that can’t be done. This demand — fundamentally conflicted as it is — actually forms the basis of our whole philosophy, our whole way of life. Our whole way of life is orientated towards an absurd goal, our whole way of life is based on pretending that illusions are real. Thought tells us that we absolutely have to achieve something that we can’t.
This is therefore psychological abuse plain and simple. What we’re looking at here is a classic example of a ‘double bind’: we are given to understand that it is absolutely essential to complete a task which is fundamentally impossible to complete. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place here — the rock is the compulsion to do the thing that we are being told to do (or ordered to do) and the hard place is our inability to comply. We’re caught in the double bind — we can’t supposed to do the thing which are apparently able to do (but which we can’t) and so we end up ‘internalising the double-bind’ and blaming ourselves.
The impossible thing that we’ve been landed with is to successfully achieve whatever it is the self wants to achieve. The impossible thing is to ‘win the game’ therefore. On the face of it this looks perfectly sensible and straightforward — we can’t see anything impossible about it at all — but this false perception is merely the lure that sucks us in. When we go to try to complete the task however then we get caught. We get ‘caught’ just like a fish on a line and all our struggles to escape are going to be futile. The way a double-bind works is that the more we try to follow or enact the instruction the more we’re simply not able to, which means that we’re trapped in a self-contradictory game.
Playing a finite game means bringing everything back to the specified equilibrium value. Anything else anything apart from ‘the designated equilibrium value’ is error, is to be automatically rejected. Anything else is to be eliminated from the playing field. It could also be said that playing a finite game means ‘obtaining a specified goal’ (which is of course the same thing, seen the other way. It sounds simple enough to carry this out (i.e., simple enough to eliminate all the errors — but it isn’t — as we have been saying. There’s an inherent glitch, a killer glitch, which we are very resistant to seeing.
It’s not possible to obtain ‘the specified goal’ (or ‘the conclusion that we have in mind’). Or rather, it’s not possible to do this and yet remain in the real world at the same time! If we want to have the satisfaction of successfully obtaining the goal, successfully doing the thing that’s been set for us to do, then we’re going to have to arrange to put our own version of reality in place, a version that is static rather than flowing. The problem with doing this however is that having done it we instantly forget that we have. We incur instant amnesia in relation to what has just taken place, and so for us nothing has taken place. The event whereby ‘the real world was replaced by a simulation thereof’ never happened (as far as we’re concerned).
This is of course always going to be the case when groundless flow (the universal flux spoken of by Heraclitus) is replaced by a static system of representations. A static version of reality cannot model flux or flow — there’s no way that fixed or grounded terms can represent groundless flux (i.e., actual, honest to goodness real movement). Something that can’t itself change can’t model change. We can’t learn anything about openness by studying a closed system.
So if we want the satisfaction or pleasure of winning (the satisfaction of obtaining the outcome we wanted to) then we’re going to have to replace the actual world with our own version — with an artificial version, we might say — and whilst this may strike us on one level as being a neat solution so the problem, the price we pay for it is too much. The price we pay in order to bring about the artificial situation which we can take as reality (and thereby enjoy the satisfaction of getting our own way, the satisfaction of being a doer, a chooser, and a glorious heroic ‘achiever of the goal’) is that the whole endeavour has become supremely meaningless.
The trouble that we started off talking about — the trouble caused by the self ‘stretching’ or ‘extending’ itself — has to do with the way in which this action automatically plunges us into a thoroughly meaningless (or conflicted) situation that we can’t see to be meaningless (or conflicted); the way in which acting or thinking on the basis of the imaginary identity straightaway seals us off in a ‘closed reality’ that is made up of ‘the self’ on one hand and ‘the mental objects to which it is attached’ on the other. The mental objects in question (we might say) are the projections of the self, whilst the self is the ‘back-projection’ of these same mental objects.
This — although we are utterly unable to appreciate it — is a truly grim situation. It constitutes the very worst sort of trouble, Trouble with a capital ‘T’, which is (we might say) pain disguised as pleasure, foolishness disguised as good sense, blind craziness (or compulsivity) disguised as admirable confidence. Trouble like this can only get worse since we will inevitably respond to the unwanted consequences of our ‘illusion-based interference’ with yet more delusion-based interference and this clearly is not going to take us anywhere good! To extend the self is always trouble — there is no degree of extension of the self that does not plunge us into a world of conflict, a world of contradiction, a world in which frustration, suffering and confusion shall always reign supreme.
We actually feel attracted to this conflicted world — we feel attracted to it because — for us — it represents a chance to achieve something real, some treasure that we can claim for ourselves. We feel that we’re ‘in with a chance’. When we talk about this ‘world that is made up of conflict’ then we are talking about playing finite games — we don’t look at it like this of course, but that is because if we are to continue playing the game then we absolutely have to believe that it is possible to beat the odds and come out on top. The truth of our situation is something we mustn’t ever see! To be completely and utterly blind to the fact that we are playing a game is essential if we are to continue to play it…
When we’re playing ‘the Game’ (which is to say, when we keep ourselves from seeing that we’re trying so hard to achieve can’t be achieved) then we are fully motivated to enter the fray and try our very best to come out on top. We’ll ‘give it our best shot’. Culturally speaking, we prize this positive enthusiasm, this robust optimism, above all else (as if it were the main thing that we need in order to ‘succeed’ in life) and this is the greatest irony of all, given that this ‘prized motivation’ comes out of nothing but the purist, most profound ignorance of the nature of our situation, and that it is guaranteed not to help us ‘get somewhere in life’. Playing the Game (of saying reality is what it isn’t, just to suit ourselves, just to make sure we don’t ever get existentially challenged) is a copper-bottomed guarantee that we absolutely won’t ever get anywhere…
