[0:02]Ego made this world. Ego and world are each a metaphor for the other, with a common origin which, when consciously experienced, can free the individual self from both.
[0:15]This experience is neither objective nor subjective. It is what I call panjective, which means it can neither be literally described nor solipsistically mooded up, only gestured towards.
[0:30]By critically exploring what it is not, and by metaphorically describing what it is like, this is what the present work does.
[0:41]To put this another way, reality is ultimately mysterious. A mystery that is everywhere you look, because it is that which is looking.
[0:51]This doesn't mean that unmysterious thought, the kind that reasons about subjective impressions and objective things is useless, or that the facts that it handles are illusions.
[1:03]It means that such thought reaches a limit beyond which it cannot pass. Something else has to cross over.
[1:10]A something else which, obviously enough, cannot be expressed with the thought it had to leave behind.
[1:17]If it does think or reason or attempt to express itself, it has to do it in another way. Through the means of expression we call metaphor, and again, this is what this book aims to do.
[1:28]As the opening to Darren Allen's Self and Unself, the meaning of everything.
[1:38]Uh, he does follow up the subtitle there, the meaning of everything with a not literally statement.
[1:45]Um, this was first published 2021, uh, by Allen's, Darren Allen's own, uh, imprint, Expressive Egg books.
[1:54]Um, those that are long-time listeners to the podcast will know that, uh, me and Darren Allen did originally have three conversations, one of which was on this book, uh, which since, since removed for, for Darren Allen's own request.
[2:12]However, I have since returned to this book twice, actually, uh, on Darren Allen's own, um, both in the book and personally, his own suggestion, which is that you read this book through twice or more.
[2:29]But, uh, I will get to those reasons, but I want to read out a couple more little excerpts from the introduction, and then what I'm actually going to do is talk around the book, which is a very annoying thing to do, but I will also explain why I have to do that.
[2:45]But a couple more excerpts from the introduction.
[2:48]The filtering mechanism is the self. It is a kind of psychological tool which is taken over the consciousness of mankind and become what we call ego.
[2:57]Ego doesn't like to be criticized and employs various strategies to deal with the threat of criticism.
[3:03]Its usual response is to ignore the threat, to ridicule it, to drown it out with opinion, or attempt to refute it with some kind of reasoning.
[3:11]An avalanche of facts disconnected from the point. But because ego is not merely conceptual, but also affective, it will start to feel under attack before it has discovered the intellectual reason why.
[3:23]Something will feel off, something not quite right here.
[3:29]Ego will then start looking for reasons why it feels uncomfortable. It will find sentences it does not understand and accuse the author of being pretentious, or deliberately obfuscating, or a poor stylist.
[3:40]It will look for and find evidence that the author is not properly qualified to speak, or it will look for and find again inconsistencies in the system here presented, and dismiss the whole thing as factually incorrect woo.
[3:55]Or it will take ideas out of context and accuse the author of being racist, sexist, homophobic, hypocritical or downright evil.
[4:03]Ego will find these reasons, and it will then declare that the reasons have created the feelings, when the opposite is true, as it nearly always is.
[4:12]Nobody ever reacts negatively to a truthful philosophy because of what it says, but because of how it makes them feel.
[4:19]And just one more excerpt from the introduction here, because it's important regarding what the text is like.
[4:26]In the end, it is better that people who find my style annoying, or who are already starting to feel a bit put out, stop reading as soon as possible.
[4:33]That those offended by my use of man to refer to humanity, because it is stylistically superior, give up in a huff.
[4:40]That those who wish to enjoy a beautiful view but aren't prepared to burn a few calories to do so, don't bother climbing that literalist, atheists and theists, rationalists and empiricists, physicalists and idealists, give up trying to literally understand the non-literal truth of what I say.
[4:57]And that readers who are attached to their beliefs and personalities, and who feel swelling outrage when they read an attack on all beliefs and personalities, throw the book out the window.
[5:07]It is better that the easily offended and the aggressively contentious, and the entirely conventional, and the completely rational, and the completely irrational, read books that they agree with, that are popular, that sell well, that are of the time.
[5:22]I have written self and unself for them.
[5:25]In fact, I have deliberately, I haven't written self and unself for them.
[5:30]In fact, I have deliberately written a book that is out of step, not just with this time, but with time itself, because I only wish to speak with people who are, even if there are only two of us.
[5:43]Now, uh, it should also be said that, uh, a little bit Darren Allen's own introduction, right at the beginning, he says, he is not qualified to write about any of these things. Thank God.
[5:56]So, much like, um, all of Darren Allen's work, um, and for those that have listened to the other book reviews, they will know that I also reviewed The Fire Sermon, um, The Unbelievable, Unacceptable Truth by Mundra the Monkey God.
[6:10]Um, they will know, uh, or anyone who's read Darren Allen's work will know, and this is my own thoughts, is that these are books that will give you a tummy ache.
[6:20]Uh, they will prod at you, and Darren Allen's introduction there is apt.
[6:27]Now, there's a difficulty because, um, one of the things with Darren Allen's work generally is that, uh, he's a very clear writer, he's not of obfuscatory, except, uh, when, uh, he needs to use certain language, uh, in terms to get a specific point across.
[6:45]I say that because it's very, it's often actually very easy to, uh, let's say, no, or grasp, but not necessarily understand in the sense of depth.
[6:57]Now, why that's a problem, and, uh, Darren Allen points this out, actually, explicitly in both in The Fire Sermon and also in Self and Self and Unself, is that there is a multitude of, uh, felt intellectual and egoistic reactions to his work.
[7:16]And what's going to happen, I'm really talking around the book, but I will get to a couple of the foundations of it, uh, in this, in this thoughts and review, is that the reactions are, the easiest reaction, probably the most helpful one, is one of hatred or egoic annoyance, or I don't really like this.
[7:29]At least there is a friction. Probably the least helpful and the least productive one is actually one of agreement that you read through it and you go, yep, yep, I agree, I agree, I agree, which is, uh, a sort of a egoic safety mechanism of the self, which I'll get to as per Darren Allen's own, uh, a own understanding of what's meant by the self.
[7:50]And of course, another, another reaction would be to throw it out the window, to just plain disagree, say it's all silly or something along those lines.
[8:00]Uh, what might be called, and this is a very managerial word, uh, a productive, uh, appreciation, a productive deep, uh, felt understanding is to, as per the sort of, um, one of the big influences of this book, Barry Long, what he would say is to sit with the felt discomfort, the, the, the felt pain of, uh, the parts of the book that disrupt something, that give you that tummy ache.
[8:30]Um, and ultimately, uh, to not just go with the ease of the ego, when it either disagrees, or agrees, which are one and the same cycle, but actually the agreement is worse because you, because you feel like, well, I've got it, there you go, I can move on or something along these lines.
[8:45]But what, what in the hell is this, really?
[8:48]Now, um, I think though this is a, admittedly, a somewhat often, lazy way of describing a book via comparison to other authors.
[9:05]In this case, the, the, the authors that, that, this is a book of rough and ready here philosophy, wisdom, spirituality, though that word is used in a turbulent manner, and, and we could say, sociology and sociological critique.
[9:24]Now, um, those four major things with philosophy, if you're, if you're going to the book, this book, Self and Unself, and you are philosophically, it's a continuation from Schopenhauer.
[9:38]Arthur Schopenhauer's work, uh, it is engaging with the language and philosophy of Schopenhauer with with regards to his continuation of Kant of the work of Emanuel Kant, but specifically, uh, and fundamentally with respect to, uh, representation, the thing in itself, phenomena, new phenomena, and what to do, what is this engagement of the subject, which for, for our, uh, Darren Allen is also the self, with the mystery that is the thing in itself.
[10:10]Um, spiritually, and once again, I use that word more so aligned with, um, something that you might consider to be more non-dual.
[10:21]So I want to emphasize that when I say spirituality in this sense, there isn't, there isn't a Godhead, there isn't anything which Darren Allen would consider to be a literal being behind that spirituality.
[10:30]So, spiritually speaking, one relatively unknown figure that that is a direct influence in the book is dedicated to Barry Long, Arthur Schopenhauer and Ivan Illich, uh, one is Barry Long.
[10:44]Um, that, that, the spiritual focusing on ego pain, suffering, unhappiness, and happiness.
[10:52]Um, and all, but also Advita Vedanta, um, non-dualism, uh, is another cornerstone, and key influential current, so running through this book.
[11:08]Um, and then if I was to, you know, Ivan Illich, Ivan Illich is another great big influence with respect to like the sociological critique.
[11:17]But if I was to throw in other, other thinkers that like in terms of temperament, we would be looking at people like Jacques Ellul, maybe even someone like Kaczynski, something that is really going to hammer home a point without any apologetics, without any safety net, uh, Theodore Roszak would be another one where the wasteland ends, John Michael Greer, uh, John Zerzan.
[11:38]I know a lot of these ran Pierre would be another one, um, a book that has come from a place of feeling and doesn't feel the need to scholarly apologize in some sense that it has anything to defend with respect to an ego.
[11:54]Maybe that's what draws all these authors together is that it's not so much that they had nothing left to lose from the position of the ego, but quite literally, they all understood, they had nothing left to lose and they never was anything to lose.
[12:08]Um, so that's sort of the background and the foundation of, of, of the book in terms of, of terms of influences.
[12:16]But in my own appreciation of what the book is, um, in terms of, okay, well, why am I, why, why, because it's become a very important book for me.
[12:24]Um, what is it? I mean, I think it's for people who've who've got to a place of of nothing, of really running through the gauntlet of seeking, of seeking alongside philosophy, as well, of grinding down, of realizing that the truth isn't aggrandizing.
[12:50]The truth isn't a matter of addition, that if anything, the truth is a constant matter of stripping away, and that the trajectory for so many, let's say, seekers is one of beginning with absolute, uh, part-based fragmentation in something like, um, discordianism, or chaos magic, or postmodern, um, postmodern forms of solipsism as per Darren Allen's own language.
[13:16]And then that, in that forward towards the truth, this process of simplification away from a grandizement, perhaps leads down to a mystical current, and then that moves through to a strict dualism, and then that moves through to non-duality, to the core.
[13:34]Um, a continual approach of refinement that is hinted towards in all traditions, that is one of refinement down to the finer and the finer, and the finest is the one, is the, the truth that is completely undeniable, that is being, that is, for Ramana Maharshi, uh, I am, for, um, Nisargadatta, I am that, um, for Darren Allen, the unself.
[14:03]So I don't want to try do this very quick mode of saying, that's like this term from this other thinker.
[14:13]But, uh, to, to the extent that Self and Unself is, is can be placed, not necessarily in a tradition, but as part of an ongoing, uh, dialogue away from that aggrandizement, and and toward feeling and the unselfed, and mystery.
[14:31]It's a book that is, that is, um, open and embracing of mystery in itself, of, of the mystery of being.
[14:40]Um, that, that it is, um, alongside books like I am that, or who am I by Maharshi, but, but, but, and it is a big but.
[14:50]Um, um, that in Darren Allen's engagement with, so shop Arthur Schopenhauer, um, in that sense, engagement with Western philosophy, but equally with his engagement with say Illich, and then equally with his engagement with the work alike Barry Long.
[15:10]It's not just you're not just left with say, I've only got mysticism, which is sometimes conceptually too open.
[15:20]Okay, you've got I am that, you've got the I am that of Maharshi, that's all you've got.
[15:23]Or if you were just left with Schopenhauer, you are left with what is arguably his supposed complete system that is kind of a failure at the end, but you're still just within the bounds of philosophy.
[15:35]Or just Barry Long, or just, uh, Ivan Illich, so, you know, you only have Medical Nemesis or Deschooling Society, that is within the bound of a certain genre, of a certain, um, current.
[15:49]Whereas Darren Allen in sewing all these together from a foundation, I'm really, I'm just going to speak of the foundation of Self and Unself, and then a little bit on suffering, is that what you find in this book, which is 400 pages long, and my very assinine comment, um, very, almost managerial comment is that, uh, Darren Allen, uh, for, uh, is accomplished.
[16:15]Um, there is an immense amount of threaded detail that sews those sort of four areas together in a way that they bolster each other.
[16:27]And this is something that Darren Allen highlights at the beginning of the book, that it's written, the book is written as, um, basically numbered sections that each, once, once again, why, why I emphasized and Darren Allen emphasizes, to read the book through, basically, multiple times.
[16:40]As you read it through once, it's not necessarily a linear book, though it does, it does build, so you can read it in the coherent fashion and make sense of it, of course.
[16:50]But equally, when you reread it through, it is a, it is a book where the sections are of a holistic whole, so each is then once you understand it, in, in the first through, the first reading, then each, um, each bolsters and comments and builds upon the previous.
[17:09]Um, as sort of, as in a sort of, uh, non-dualist type sense that it cannot be any other way.
[17:13]And so your, your first reading is one of parts that you're, you know, your ego is trying to nestle together, which is not the best way to approach it.
[17:20]And then the second reading or third, or however many you want to go through, is one where each is, it's a holistic whole.
[17:28]Um, and so, in that sense, it is an extremely accomplished book with an immense amount of detail that like, great books, and it is great, seems to comment on everything, or at least comments on everything in such a way that one is given a new found openness to, uh, move towards those things in a qualitative unselfed sense.
[17:56]Um, and there is, there is a question that comes up on the podcast many times, and for myself, which is one of looking at my bookshelf of works like, um, I'm going to name some greats here, but works like the works of Schopenhauer, works like the works of Spengler.
[18:10]These, these books where you read them and you think, who is writing these books, where, you know, an individual sits down and gets to the, gets to the root, the unselfed root of their truth and really puts it down.
[18:25]This is one such book that is an answer to that question of who is still bearing all out there.
[18:31]Self and Unself, the meaning of everything, is an emphatic example of that.
[18:40]So, with regards to Advita Vedanta, with regards to Barry Long, and also Schopenhauer, we really kind of begin with the self, and it's the self in regard to the thing in itself from Schopenhauer.
[18:54]And then this concept of, both the concept of the panjective and the unselfed that I really want to comment on, and begin with.
[19:05]And so, for those that, that, those that aren't super familiar with Schopenhauer, which is coming from Kant, and very quickly, we can, if I was to take off my glasses and then put them back on, we say that, um, the human being, in sensing the world, in hearing, in touching, in seeing, um, in tasting as well.
[19:26]The glasses you can, you can imagine as a metaphor, the glasses as a sort of filter.
[19:30]So now we are filtered into the sense, the sense world, which is then a representation of the world.
[19:40]So then the question arises of, if the world is being represented to us, and this is just phenomena, what is, let's say, prior to that, um, prior to that representation.
[19:51]So it is represented to we, we are always and only engaging, as this individual that is, um, sensually engaged with the world, we're always engaging solely with a representation, which Kant calls phenomena, but we'll go with representation, uh, which is the word that Darren Allen uses.
[20:06]What is that thing then that is before that?
[20:09]And that of course is the thing in itself, it is the numina.
[20:13]And from this, all these epistemological and ontological questions of, well, what exactly is the engagement between, uh, us as individuals, as subjects, um, as selves, as that which says I, what is our engagement with that thing in itself?
[20:31]Um, and for Darren Allen, of course, the self, the self is, Self and world are really one and the same.
[20:38]The self, that which says I, and for those that are familiar with Advita Vedanta and non-duality, can sort of begin, if they, however, what they know, they can begin to bring that in.
[20:47]And this is one of the most intriguing, fascinating things that Darren Allen is doing is sewing together these two currents, and then using that as actually a means to, to go out into the world, so, not many, not many books of philosophy, uh, if you want to call it that, do that.
[21:02]Self, um, generates its world, so the world that is generated in that representational sense, is generated by self, and self really only has causality, and facticity, or the causal and facts, which is an emphatically literal way to experience the world.
[21:23]And in this sense, the self, that which says I, that which is built from its memory of itself, engaged in causes and causality, and between fact, is imprisoned.
[21:38]The only self can never get outside of causality or fact, or time and space, because those are the very foundations of what it is to be a self, altogether.
[21:47]So this generation of causality, of facticity, is an inherent function of the self as a self, to even be a self, altogether.
[21:58]And so the question arises of, and when we just call that experience, the experience of that within us, if we want to put it that way, which, as it investigates and goes about the world and is experiencing, that which says I am experiencing, I am holding the book, I am wearing glasses, I am James, I am Darren, whatever it might be.
[22:21]How is it that that self with regard to the phenomena, the representation, which is, um, you know, my hand picks up the book and moves it across.
[22:30]So the fact, the fact that I'm holding a book, um, The Fire Sermon by Darren Allen, there's another fact for you, that is the book, and the causality is that my hand moves and it moves across.
[22:41]There you go, well that's the whole and I'm doing it, there is this thing apparently called I that is doing it.
[22:48]Now, behind this, of course, I see this, and there is like a light green on there, and there is sort of this pale creamy, uh, yellow type color and it's a small rectangular object.
[22:58]Um, how is it, you know, what's this relation of this representation to me, the I that says, I am James, holding this book.
[23:07]What is the relationship, um, between that and the mystery that is that thing in itself?
[23:14]Um, where is this all coming from?
[23:17]This, uh, this, this is the question that we're dealing with.
[23:20]Um, and so, this this problem of the relationship between basically what is non-experience to experience that can't be, or the unself to the self.
[23:28]Now, so, we've gone very quickly through that the self, what, what we call me or I, generates the world as this medial representational experience.
[23:39]Um, but in that way, of course, it's never going to be sure of itself, because all that it is, is only that which is generating itself.
[23:50]And so, in the, in the very knowledge of its of its generation of self's generation of self, self's generation of world, of cause of causality and facticity, um, as that which generates the literalness of its, of its reality.
[24:05]There is always a sort of, um, not being sure of itself, because of the very knowledge of that, because of our, uh, theoretical knowledge of that.
[24:14]But of course, the, the fault, and Darren Allen has multiple sections of this of abstract philosophy, is that immediately in its abstractly philosophical approach to, uh, that doubt and uncertainty of, well, of this not sort of knowing, knowing that we don't know, or sort of something along those lines.
[24:32]It almost always just falls back straight back into the self, and falls back into the, let's say, after the fact, or, after consciousness, after unself, manifestation, or machinations, theoretical thought-based machinations that are all just coming from the self.
[24:51]So Darren Allen in that non, non-dual sense, back to sort of Advaita Vedanta is going back to the roots, going back to the core.
[25:00]So this is where we bring in, uh, the panjective, uh, this is from page 29.
[25:08]And sec, the beginning of section eight, if there is something else in reality, something in the thing in itself that is not physically or solipsistically self, then it can neither be represented by self, nor make sense to it.
[25:21]If, that is to say, there is something in reality that is inaccessible to a self, which is either a literal object or an unreal object, then that something else must be both object and subject, both non-literal and real.
[25:39]Here, this is called panjective. Non-literal means non-factual or paradoxical, X is both X and non-X, and means not self-generated, it is uncaused, X is always X.
[25:53]Panjective reality is therefore absolute, meaning that it is real, but it is not known through the quantitative relations of its literal factual, factual causal parts.
[26:04]If the thing in itself is in any way absolute, self can create, self-graspable perceptions, conceptions, affections and motions from it.
[26:14]But there is something in the thing in itself beyond both objective knowledge or fact, and subjective knowledge or invention.
[26:23]The absolute nature of the thing in itself doesn't just mean that it is ultimately ineffable to self, but that its relationship to the world is also ineffable.
[26:33]That's from Schopenhauer. Self can say that the thing in itself spatially precedes or temporarily, temporarily causes experience of self, self can express itself dualistically.
[26:44]But if the thing in itself is somehow unselfish, then such dualism can only ever be non-literally or metaphorically true, for ultimately, there can be no relation between reality and representation.
[26:56]And this is where, uh, this set this, these couple of paragraphs is really where we see the melding of, uh, Schopenhauerian, um, philosophy and and Advaita Vedanta.
[27:10]These are rather unusual ideas. If, ultimately, reality is absolute, there is not just something else in the thing in itself, forever beyond the relative self, there must also somehow be nothing but something else.
[27:24]If there are ultimately no separate facts, and no separate causes, or factual associations, no time and space in the thing in itself, there can be ultimately no difference between anything and anything else, which means that again, ultimately there can be no difference between me and the rest of the universe at any time.
[27:42]This literally unbelievable idea, you would think, easy to verify.
[27:45]If I look around and find that I'm surrounded by separate things which are not each other and not me, things which include the entire past and future of the universe, then I can probably conclude that I am not all things at all times, that I am just me, my ordinary self.
[27:59]The question, however, is not what I am looking around at, but what the I is that is doing the looking.
[28:07]It may be obvious that myself is not everything else, but is far from obvious that I am myself.
