Cogito ergo sum
Why it should rather be: non cogito ergo sum
It is not true that because I think, I am; but rather because I think, feel and act, and even while I am doing any or all of these things, can transcend the thought, feeling and action, therefore I am. Because I manifest, I am, and because I transcend manifestation, I am. The formula is not so clear and catching as the Cartesian, but there is a fuller truth in its greater comprehensiveness. — Sri Aurobindo [EDH 8‒9]
I began thinking about what many consider to be the most famous statement in Western philosophy when I read the following anecdote from a piece by David Rothkopf.
When I was a little kid—and I mean, really little, like two years old—my Dad decided to use me as a prop for a little high brow comedy. He wanted to impress his friends, mostly fellow scientists, with how smart his tiny first born son was and, by extension, what brilliant parents that child had.
As some of you who have followed my writing here know, my Dad was a research psychologist who did a lot of early work at the intersection of how human brains work and how modern technology could help. He got his training in educational psychology and so was well familiar with all the techniques that had been developed for teaching dogs (Pavlov) or, to pick two more examples, rats and pigeons (Skinner). So what he knew was perfect for training a creature like me.
His approach was this. For a number of weeks before a dinner party to be attended by a several of his colleagues, he put his finger to his temple in a thoughtful pose and taught me to say “Cogito Ergo Sum.”
Each time I would say the phrase correctly after getting the cue, he would give me some form of positive reinforcement. Like the treats the dogs, rats or pigeons would get in prior experiments.
Finally, the big day came. The friends gathered. I climbed up into my booster seat to join them. And then, when the crowd was appropriately hushed, my father said, “What did Descartes say?” and then he touched his index finger to his brow, waiting for me to respond.
I however, was unfamiliar with the twist in this game that involved mentioning the French philosopher and mathematician (whose works I had barely started studying at that time.) So, when he asked the question, I tried to figure out what “What did Descartes say” meant. And so I responded with two year-old insight, “Meow.”
At first my father (and perhaps everyone) was disappointed. But, then he realized that I was actually listening to him and had deciphered what he meant in his Austrian-accented English as, “What did the cat say?” And the rest is family history.
The verb cogitare is usually translated as “to think” (hence cogito, I think), but Latin dictionaries offer various further translations such as to consider, reflect on, ponder. Cogitare is a contraction of co(m) (together) and agitare, which is the form of agere (to move, drive, draw out or forth) that adds frequency or intensity. The most accurate translation of cogitare thus seems to be “to ruminate” — to turn a matter over and over in the mind.
Descartes set out to determine what, if anything, he could be certain about. His strategy was to doubt any claim that was false or could be false. There may exist, he reasoned, an evil demon (sometimes translated “genius,” “genie,” or “spirit”) who has the power to control all of his thoughts, tricking him into believing anything. It was the 1637 equivalent of the 1999 film The Matrix. Cogito ergo sum does not prove that Descartes has a body or a brain, or even that other minds exist: these can all be doubted. But some perceptions
are so transparently clear and at the same time so simple that we cannot ever think of them without believing them to be true. The fact that I exist so long as I am thinking, or that what is done cannot be undone, are examples of truths in respect of which we manifestly possess this kind of certainty.1
It is noteworthy that “I exist so long as I am thinking” suggests that I might cease to exist the moment I stop thinking. Let’s stick a pin in that.
The evolution of the ability to ruminate represents to Sri Aurobindo “a stage of being in which Nature becomes self-conscious in the individual, tries to know, modify, alter and develop, utilise, consciously experiment with herself and her potentialities”:
In this change a momentous self-discovery intervenes; there appears something that is hidden in matter and in the first disposition of life and has not clearly emerged in the animal in spite of its possession of a mind; there appears the presence of the Soul in things which at first was concealed in its own natural and outward workings, absorbed and on the surface at least self-oblivious. Afterwards it becomes, as in the animal, conscious to a certain degree on the surface, but is still helplessly given up to the course of its natural workings and, not understanding, cannot govern itself and its movements. But finally, in man, it turns its consciousness upon itself, seeks to know, endeavours to govern in the individual the workings of his nature and through the individual and the combined reason and energy of many individuals to govern too as far as possible the workings of Nature in mankind and in things.
This turning of the consciousness upon itself and on things, which man represents, has been the great crisis, a pro-longed and developing crisis, in the terrestrial evolution of the soul in Nature.
There have been others before it in the past of the earth, such as that which brought about the appearance of the conscious life of the animal; there must surely be another in its future in which a higher spiritual and supramental consciousness shall emerge and be turned upon the works of the mind. [HC 102‒3, paragraphs and emphasis added]
As you can see, Sri Aurobindo hardly ever misses a chance to disabuse us of the hubristic notion that homo sapiens represents the crown and culmination of Nature’s evolutionary nisus. He keeps reminding us that man is a transitional being which “stands at the turning-point of the whole movement”:
The step from man towards superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth’s evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence — inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature’s process.... The difference between man and superman will be the difference between mind and a consciousness as far beyond it as thinking mind is beyond the consciousness of plant and animal. [EDH 157; ca. 1930]
The past has been the history of a slow and difficult subconscious working with effects on the surface — it has been an unconscious evolution; the present is a middle stage, an uncertain spiral in which the human intelligence is used by the secret evolutionary Force of being and participates in its action without being fully taken into confidence — it is an evolution slowly becoming conscious of itself; the future must be a more and more conscious evolution of the spiritual being until it is fully delivered into a self-aware action by the emergent gnostic principle. [LD 735‒36; 1940]
If … the hidden truth of our birth into Matter … is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in Nature. [LD 879; 1940]
[M]an is essentially a journeyman. He is skilful in putting things [up], buildings, a job, a swindle. In pulling down he is perfect, a destroyer ne plus ultra. The world is full of his constructions, but more pervasive is his destruction; but that leaves few traces. But still the great doers are few in number, the good doers are many, the poor doers are legion, the evil doers hardly less. All this shows that he is a transitional and evolving animal. [EDH 234; middle to late 1940s]
While the movements of the animal mind are “so involved in the life movements that it cannot detach itself from them, cannot stand separate and observe them,” thought and will in the human mind “can become detached from them, observe and control them, sanction or cancel their functioning” [LD 886]. With us, the evolving consciousness has learned to ruminate. What it has yet to learn is to stand back also from the mind’s ruminations, to detach itself from them, to observe and control them as well.
[A]s the inner evolution proceeds, this is precisely what can, must and does happen — it is the long-delayed but inevitable next step in our evolutionary destiny. There can be a decisive emergence in which the being separates itself from thought and sees itself in an inner silence as the spirit in mind, or separates itself from the life movements, desires, sensations, kinetic impulses and is aware of itself as the spirit supporting life, or separates itself from the body sense and knows itself as a spirit ensouling Matter: this is the discovery of ourselves as the Purusha, a mental being or a life-soul or a subtle self supporting the body. [LD 886]
If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw into the Self’s spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there re-create our existence. [LD 363]
Sooner or later, therefore, the following duality presents itself to the spiritual seeker:
On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation.
Entering exclusively into the witness consciousness he becomes silent, untouched, immobile; he sees that he has till now passively reflected and appropriated to himself the movements of Nature and it is by this reflection that they acquired from the witness soul within him what seemed a spiritual value and significance. But now he has withdrawn that ascription or mirroring identification; he is conscious only of his silent self and aloof from all that is in motion around it; all activities are outside him and at once they cease to be intimately real; they appear now mechanical, detachable, endable.
Entering exclusively into the kinetic movement, he has an opposite self-awareness; he seems to his own perception a mass of activities, a formation and result of forces; if there is an active consciousness, even some kind of kinetic being in the midst of it all, yet there is no longer a free soul in it anywhere.
These two different and opposite states of being alternate in him or else stand simultaneously over against each other; one silent in the inner being observes but is unmoved and does not participate; the other active in some outer or surface self pursues its habitual movements. He has entered into an intense separative perception of the great duality, Soul-Nature, Purusha-Prakriti.
But as the consciousness deepens, he becomes aware that this is only a first frontal appearance. For he finds that it is by the silent support, permission or sanction of this witness soul in him that this executive nature can work intimately or persistently upon his being; if the soul withdraws its sanction, the movements of Nature in their action upon and within him become a wholly mechanical repetition, vehement at first as if seeking still to enforce their hold, but afterwards less and less dynamic and real. More actively using this power of sanction or refusal, he perceives that he can, slowly and uncertainly at first, more decisively afterwards, change the movements of Nature. [SY 121‒22]
Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha’s assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails — slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. [SY 217]
The good news is that we do not cease to exist the moment we stop thinking. Quite the contrary: if we can step back from the goings-on in “our” mental, vital, and physical nature, so as to experience “our” thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions impersonally and undistorted by any sense of ownership, authorship, or responsibility, then we can not only become aware of the true origins and determinants of said thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions; we can also become aware of “the true immortal Person” [SY 217] that we are. Non cogito ergo sum. I am because I do not think.
This gist of this has been beautifully expressed in the Mundaka Upanishad (Chapter 3, Section 1):
Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow.
The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the one common tree; but because he is not lord he is bewildered and has sorrow. But when he sees that other who is the Lord and beloved, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him.
When Sri Aurobindo rephrased these verses [EPY 52], he clarified that “it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection — in one word māyā, ignorance and illusion, ceases to touch him.”
The bad news is that learning not to think (and therefore to be) is not easy.
[F]or the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace. [SY 316]
I know of only two individuals for whom learning not to think was (relatively) easy. The first is Sri Aurobindo. Quoting from an outline of his life up to his arrival in Pondicherry:
While his fame as a nationalist leader was at its height, Sri Aurobindo met a yogin named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. Sri Aurobindo explained to him that he wanted to practice yoga in order to obtain spiritual strength for his political work. They retired to a secluded place, and within three days Sri Aurobindo realized the state of consciousness which in India had come to be looked upon as the consummation of all spiritual seeking. In the absolute stillness of his mind there arose “the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality” which was “attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world.” By a strange irony, Sri Aurobindo had been engulfed by the very experience that is the solid basis of the illusionistic philosophy which he had previously rejected. “There was no ego,” he recalls, “no real world, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indiscernible, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely and solely real.”
Here is Sri Aurobindo’s account of the experience:
“Sit down,” I was told [by Lele], “look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside. Before they enter, fling them back.” I sat down and looked and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head and was able to push it back concretely before it came inside. In three days — really in one — my mind became full of an eternal silence — it is still there. But that I don’t know how many people can do.
He adds:
One (not a disciple — I had no disciples in those days) asked me how to do Yoga. I said: “Make your mind quiet first.” He did and his mind became quite silent and empty. Then he rushed to me saying: “My brain is empty of thoughts, I cannot think. I am becoming an idiot.” He did not pause to look and see where these thoughts he uttered were coming from! Nor did he realise that one who is already an idiot cannot become one. Anyhow I was not patient in those days and I dropped him and let him lose his miraculously achieved silence. [ABN 247]
To Sri Aurobindo, this experience “came unasked, unsought for, though quite welcome”:
I had no least idea about it before, no aspiration towards it, in fact my aspiration was towards just the opposite, spiritual power to help the world and do my work in it, yet it came — without even a “May I come in” or a “By your leave”. It just happened and settled in as if for all eternity or as if it had been really there always. And then it slowly grew into something not less but greater than its first self! [ABN 250]
The second of the aforementioned two individuals is the Mother. What follows is from an account of her own experience [The Mother’s Agenda: July 25, 1962]:
Even before coming and meeting Sri Aurobindo, I had realized everything needed to begin his yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. Magnificent! A superb mental construction ... which he demolished within five minutes!
How happy I was! Aah! ... It was really the reward for all my efforts.
Nothing! I knew nothing any more, understood nothing at all — not a single idea left in my head! Everything I had carefully built up over so many years (I was past thirty-five, I think), through all my experiences: conscious yoga, non-conscious yoga, life, experiences lived, classified and organized (oh, what a monument!) ... crash! It all came tumbling down. Magnificent. I hadn’t even asked him….
I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed and the work had to be done all over again. That’s all I had told him (not in great detail, in a few words). Then I sat down near him and he began talking with [Paul] Richard, about the world, yoga, the future — all kinds of things — what was going to happen (he already knew the war would break out; this was 1914, war broke out in August, and he knew it towards the end of March or early April). So the two of them talked and talked and talked — great speculations. It didn’t interest me in the least, I didn’t listen. All these things belonged to the past, I had seen it all (I too had had my visions and revelations). I was simply sitting beside him on the floor (he was sitting in a chair with Richard facing him across a table, and they were talking). I was just sitting there, not listening. I don’t know how long they went on, but all at once I felt a great Force come into me — a peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mother sweeps her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here (gesture at the chest). When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained — I no longer knew anything or understood anything, I was absolutely BLANK. So I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.
And I was very careful not to disturb it; I held it like that for I don’t know how long, eight or ten days. Nothing — not one idea, not one thought, nothing — a complete BLANK. In other words, from the outside, it must have looked like total idiocy.
But I was living in my inner joy — nothing stirring. I spoke as little as possible and it was like something mechanical, it wasn’t me. Then slowly, slowly, as though falling drop by drop, something was built up again. But it had no limits, it had no ... it was vast as the universe and wonderfully still and luminous. Nothing here (the head), but THERE (gesture above the head); and then everything began to be seen from there.
And it has never left me — you know, as a proof of Sri Aurobindo’s power it’s incomparable! I don’t believe there has ever been an example of such a (how can I put it?) ... such a total success: a miracle. It has NEVER left me. I went to Japan, I did all sorts of things, had all possible kinds of adventures, even the most unpleasant [see here], but it never left me — stillness, stillness, stillness...
And it was he who did it, entirely. I didn’t even ask him, there was no aspiration, nothing (there were my previous efforts; I knew it had to come, that’s all). But on that day I hadn’t mentioned it to him, I wasn’t thinking about it, I wasn’t doing anything — just sitting there. And outwardly he seemed to be fully engrossed in his conversation about this and that and what was going to happen in the world....
That’s the real way. But I have never been able to do it for anyone — not like that, with such plenitude — never, never.... It’s fantastic! It was stupendous! ... Truly we can say that only the Lord can do such a thing, He alone. Without the slightest effort, without even seeming to ... he didn’t even seem to concentrate, nothing, just like that.
I conclude with a poem Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1934. It’s titled “Nirvana”:
All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema’s vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still,
Replaces all, — what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 2, p. 104 (Cambridge University Press, 1984).