A circle is a ‘self-referential’ kind of thing, we might say – a circle is a self-referential kind of thing because every point on its circumference has the very same relationship to the centre, which is also the circle, just like the circumference. We need hardly point out that this is the very definition of a circle – that every point on the circumference is equidistance to the centre. Any deviation whatsoever and the circle is no longer a circle, and so we can – quite uncontroversially – say that a circle gets to be a circle by being self-referential.
This is a very curious thing, however. It’s a very curious thing because this definition shows that – informationally speaking – a circle, like any other regular geometrical figure, is an exercise in redundancy. A circle is made up of an infinite number of identical radii such that if we have the information relating to the details pertaining to just one of them, then that tells us all we need to know about that circle. All the information we would need in order to construct a circle is contained within a single straight-line segment, therefore.
Instead of talking about circles therefore, we could just talk about the straight line that can be drawn from the centre to the furthest point of extension of that line, the furthest point of remove from the centre. We are ‘cutting to the chase’ here; we’ve reduced everything to expire essentials. But, when we look at their straight-line segment that stretches from the centre C to the furthest point of extension of the centre, C+, then we can see that this too is an exercise in redundancy. We can simplify things still further, therefore.
The straight-line segment which runs from C to C+ is redundant because the origin and the destination are the same thing. The centre and the extension or projection of that centre (which we have called C+) are the same thing because no new information has entered the picture. No new information is required to describe C+ – it’s the same point only displaced along a linear axis and the operation whereby a point is displaced along a linear axis is fundamentally empty or null. There is no transformation going on here only duplication – we have said the same thing repeatedly and that isn’t meaningful. We’ve ‘stuttered’ (mathematically speaking, that is) and there’s no actual information in that.
If we wish to dispense with redundancy here therefore – in this case the redundancy of the straight line – and get down to the ‘bare essentials’, then we would do this by just saying the thing only once, by erasing all the copies or duplications of the original. What we are left with then is the original geometrical point, therefore – we’re left with a geometrical point without extension into any dimension (needless to say, the very definition of a point requires that it is dimensionless). In terms of self-reference therefore we can say we’re left with is a ‘self’ with no ‘referentiality’ (if we may put it like that). What we’re left with is a totally bare, stripped-down geometrical point (or at least, that’s what we might think).
It might sound as if we have now finally got to the very bottom of things and have uncovered the real deal, the magical thing which isn’t a redundancy, which isn’t a ‘trick of the light’, but this simply isn’t the case. If we think this then we’ve started to relax too soon – there’s still a way to go yet! We still can’t ascribe any genuine self-existent reality to dimensionless point (or rather we can ascribe it if we want to, but it wouldn’t be a legitimate – a point is an abstraction, after all). What a point is – if we were to look into it – is the visible part of an arrangement involving what we might provisionally describe as two elements – on the one hand there is the ‘nominated point’ (which gives the superficial impression of existing independently, since it is definitively located and can therefore be exhaustively described) and on the other hand there is the ‘assumed framework’ (which is what allows us to locate and define the point). Without the assumed FOR there can be no such thing as ‘location; no such thing as ‘definition’.
We say that the framework is ‘assumed’ (or ‘taken for granted’) because it isn’t there of its own accord. It isn’t there in any independent way. There are no frameworks just ‘floating around the universe waiting to be utilised’ – they are ‘our own device’; they exist only in our heads. By means of this handy device we create the point – we create the point by emphasizing (or stressing) it so that it stands out from everything else (everything else which hasn’t been stressed. We do this ‘via the framework’, we do this by trusting on the authority of the framework, by accepting its authority as a standard (its authority as a measure) without question. The framework tells us that the coordinates are real (it tells us that ‘defined things are the only real things’, so to speak) and we trust its authority. None of it is true though, the frameworks or authority is utterly bogus and nothing it tells us is worth a damn. We choose to accept the framework’s authority we willingly submit to it and this is how the business works via sleight of hand. This is nothing but trickiness. It’s pure hocus pocus.
There is no point because the point depends upon the framework and there is no framework. We have to imagine the framework, and because we are imagining the framework we are imagining everything else too. ‘The geometrical point which has been defined by the FW’ and ‘the FW’ are the same thing. Hence, Krishnamurti says,
The controller is the controlled, the thinker is his thoughts, and the experiencer is the experience.
And elsewhere,
Thought has separated itself as the analyser and the thing to be analysed – they are both parts of thought playing tricks upon itself.
What’s happened here therefore is that we have taken a bold leap from mathematics to psychology; we have jumped from talking about a ‘geometrical point’ to discussing ‘the self’ and this might – at first view – seem to be rather a strange thing to do. This is however an ‘intuitive leap’, not a rational inference – the experience of <being a self> is the experience of being precisely and specifically ‘localized’ or ‘boundaried’ (i.e., I am here but not I am not there, I am me but I am not you, and so on) and to be localized / boundaried is always to be ‘a centre’. I am – subjectively speaking – the centre of all I survey (just like a king is always the centre of his kingdom). The experience of being the self is necessarily ‘self-centred’. We can’t help perceiving it to be the case that we are right there at ‘the centre of things’ – we simply can’t run away from this perception. That’s the illusion of being this ego, being this self.
Obviously, in purely practical terms we can’t all be at the exact centre of world (there can only be one centre), but this is nevertheless the experience we have. The experience of being a solid concrete ego is the experience of being a ‘me’ which opposed to ‘the world’ (or ‘self’ as opposed to ‘the other’). The central reference point which is me (and my way of looking at things) is utterly taken for granted and what we’re talking about here is ‘the default state’ which is the state of sleep or unconsciousness (or ‘identification’) that mystics talk about. We can therefore say that the self is the ‘centre’ and that the ‘circumference’ is all of our projections, either attractive or aversive in nature, and that this circumference is also ‘the self’ (since the circumference is a tautological restatement of the centre). The thought-created identity can never escape itself.
The self is created by the limits which it cannot see but which it takes for granted wherever it goes (and in everything that it does). Or – as we could also say – the everyday (empirical) self bootstraps itself into existence with its hopes and fears, with its ideas, with its unconsciously enacted projections. This is a neat trick when seen one way (a miracle, even), but not such a neat trick when seen another – the world that is a tautological restatement of my hopes and fears (or ‘the world which is a tautological restatement of my initial assumptions’, which is the same thing) is necessarily a null world. It’s a hollow world – it’s a cartoon world in which stuff seems to be happening but never does. It is a world in which I myself seem to be happening, but amn’t…
Image credit – culturalwednesdays.co.uk
