It has become ever clear to me as I progress through my life, speaking so far that I am only 23 as I write this, that the necessary and appropriate advance of humanity is that of the capacity of a society to teach and practice ego separation through identification and abstraction out of said ego, and to exist within life as a totality, naturally, not overtly through forced and willfully detached practice, sub-servant to an external power. This is not a new concept, in fact, it’s as old as written texts exist, our first look into the minds of our fellow humans.
The quest for immortality we see in The Epic of Gilgamesh in the 2nd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia outlines just this concept that the Homo Sapien is innately curious of. With the gift and curse of consciousness (being able to regard it as either is a testament to this binary), there exists also the underlying urge, the underlying capacity of consciousness, not limited to human consciousness mind you. I speak of that which is separate from the “I” and is rather the “I am”.
This statement, “I am”, so simple and so poignant and key to this separation of the ego. The “I am” is not reserved to humans, but to animals, trees, the sky, atoms, the cosmos, all that exists, including all perceived not by our limited bodily faculties.
When we speak of immortal life and eternal life, we speak of, insofar as my understanding is currently, of an ultimate state of existence. Immortal life is not to say that this physical body of mine, this animate husk that my consciousness propagates and occupies, it is not to say this body exists indefinitely on this planet. Rather it is the capacity of the human, innately, to be able to identify the fear of death, the concept of death, the concept of life, the fear of life, and to see those not as innate human characteristics, but characteristics of the anxiety of the individual’s conscious, i.e. their ego.
Believing that who you are is what is directly perceivable to others and to your bodily faculties, such as your body, voice, clothes, sexuality, gender, is a fabrication that inevitably comes about through the inescapable variance and subjectivity of the human mind, particularly so when humans congregate and form societies in which there is reliance on each other. This inevitably comes about through the body and mind’s needs, such as the security of food, water, shelter, and connection with other humans. It is hard to blame any human who believes that they are just that, a member of the human race who wants to be accepted within a society, not go hungry or thirsty, and be happy and content.
However, behind all of this bodily and mental security (and this comes along with the capacity to discern right from wrong), is the capacity of the individual to be able to abstract out and identify these characteristics as not the true self, but rather necessary to keep the body alive and conscious within the bounds of time. I often call this idea the divine reality, the divine existence, and it is what I believe brought about myths. The incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of a deeper nature that exist and are weaved throughout all existence, that which precedes our ability to even consciously recognize it.
Evoking this divine reality, this mystery, not of a god mind you, but of that which creates our ideas of gods, is what has and needs to continued to be harnessed. Its more than curiosity and introspection, it’s what has fueled culture and creativity. And it is this, the human capacity for creation, that is absolutely key here. We have the capacity, as humans to introduce completely new things into this world that can influence the conscious viewers thoughts and conceptions. This is why I paint and make art, to evoke this sublime and divine reality within myself, digging deeper through each painting through the evocations of juxtapositions and relationships of elements; what they rouse within the deeper self is my reason for existing and staying alive. The innate search for truth, as I often find myself describing it, is within every single one of us, and it is not our “duty” (to assume so would be egotistical) to find truth, but the inevitable inclination of the human capacities.
And the way we progress towards this? Awareness. Awareness is what frees us, to be able to identify and abstract out all perceptions, everything. Ignorance is ego, ego is ignorance. I am only “John Bucher, 23 year-old biological male who has dark brown hair, etc.” insofar as an ego can identify it as such. However, this is merely my body.
My ego is “John Bucher”, but in truth “I am”, as are you and every existence. This declaration and truth, if accepted by a mass group of people, namely societies and major cultures, is what will progress humanity. Sounds counterintuitive to say such a statement, as the progression of humanity is worldly and not of a divine reality. I make such statements out of my love and relationship with all life and existence, as for what little time I have on this planet, I hope to evoke within others these truths as they have been evoked within me through creation.