Knowing Who We Are #077
Aldous Huxley's Vision of an Ideal Society
Aldous Huxley, a writer of the mid-20th century, in his book "Island," describes the ideal society. One thing that the people in this society do in order to be happier is to not distract themselves from the world and also not to distract themselves from themselves. Buddhism and other philosophies of life often ask us to look away from the world that is considered a world of illusions and instead to concentrate on our inner selves and try to find out who we are. But Huxley thinks that this is not likely to work; this is likely to distract us even more from who we are. He thinks that we should instead concentrate on ourselves and on our relation to the world. We should look at the world; we should look at ourselves, and we should then try to see what we are not. Which images come to our mind of what we want to be? Which means that we are not this thing, or what we we, which is also not what we are. And by realizing what we are not, we will eventually come closer to what we really are.
The Path to Self-Discovery
He writes, "Good being is knowing who in fact we are, and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know moment by moment who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do." So we should examine our preconceptions about ourselves; we should examine the way we look at ourselves and realize that this is not how we are. And in the end, by removing all these ways we are not, we will find some truth about who we really are.
This reminds me of a similar concept I read recently in an existentialist philosophy book. I can't recall if it was Heideggar or Sartre, but it focused on 'nothingness' and how seeing what we are not can lead us to move towards that nothingness to make it a something.
I wish I could recall the specifics. I might dig the book out and find the exact details if you don't know them already, but I'm thinking perhaps you will.