Descartes' Mistake [View all]

The fundamental realization of the spiritual journey is the unity of the seeker and the sought. The seeker and all further seeking dissolve in that moment of understanding.

However, even in that transcendent moment “self understanding” can be a slippery thing. Am “I” pure awareness? Or does awareness simply provide the container within which this sense of I-ness arises, along with everything else? Should “I” even strive to understand the answer to that question?

For me the most profoundly satisfying answer to the question “What am I?” is, “I don’t know.” Regular entry into that level of Unknowing resets the balance and profoundly changes everything I am.

No knower, nothing known. No awareness, only Void. This may be where the big mistake of the Western scientific quest was made – by Rene Descartes, who never persevered to that point, and settled for the relative poverty of "I think, therefore I am." We have been stuck with the consequences ever since.