The Only Thing That Provably Exists
If you allow me, I want to demonstrate how there is only one thing that provably exists.
That is a big claim, you might say. There is a multitude of things. Just look around. Trees, rivers, people going about their day, so many non-living objects, countless grains of sand. Are you mad, you ask.
I hope I am not. When you look around, you do see a multitude. Things with clear boundaries. But notice that statement: “When you look around, you do see a multitude”. If I doubt your claim that there is a multitude, you will try to point me towards it. Eventually hoping that I see it too.
The only objective way to prove something is to provide hard, objective evidence for it. But there is a catch. There is always an implicit requirement for a subject who needs convincing, and is eventually convinced.
Most people accept claims on the basis of authority. The scientific community for a particular area may ask the hard questions for them, collect data, reach a consensus, and declare that a particular theory is the best one they have for now.
This means that much of what you believe to be true or proven rests on shaky ground. Scientific consensus changes with time, because new data begets new theories.
There are also things you believe because of your own subjective experience. You might say that most plants are green. You are sure about this because, throughout your life, you have always seen most plants appear of that colour, and someone told you very early on that the colour is called green.
As you grew up, you heard the more rigourous explanations that matched your experience. For example, that light is reflected off plants in such a way that most frequencies are absorbed and the green frequency is not, due to the chlorophyll in the leaves. But I want to stress that your subjective experience of the greenness of leaves is the primary evidence. Knowing about chlorophyll did not change the colour of the leaf, it just added a new label to it.
First there was light in your perception. Much later came the theory of light, which says that light is an electromagnetic wave, travels into your eyes, hits the retina, and is converted by various cells into electrical signals that lead to your perception of green.
I am not saying this to dismiss scientific theories, which are indeed very useful if you want to manipulate this seeming multitude. But I am trying to point to the primacy of subjectivity, which is implicitly presupposed by all objective or scientific theories of reality. Everything relies on you, the perceiver and the believer.
In a dream too you experience a multitude. The dreaming mind even has all the necessary beliefs to explain away the multitude that you perceive in the dream. Even if we later laugh at the absurdity or inconsistency of it once we wake up.
If I am skeptical enough, I can deny the reality of all experiences in a similar way. What if I am dreaming right now? What if I am a brain in a vat? I have no way to prove that what I perceive has some real, physical existence. But there is one thing that neither I nor you nor anyone else can deny. That is our own existence. There is something that is doing the perceiving. Something that is present, that illuminates all other experiences. Cogito, ergo sum.
You may now say that there must also be a second thing, an object to be perceived. I then ask you a simple question. Where and how do you draw the line between the multitude of your experiences and the experiencer who has them? For the curious, this is where Sankhya ends and Advaita begins.
Everything you have ever experienced has been inside your awareness. You cannot step outside of it. Let us take the example of dreaming again. In your dream you see a multitude, but you wake up and realize it was all inside your mind. All the people, the grains of sand, the smells and sounds. All generated by one mind. Some neuroscience student may put an EEG on your head, and tell you that your brain was waving in a pattern that was different from how it waves when you’re awake. But that is just chlorophyll to the green.
After waking up from the dream, you still try to find explanations and words. Trying to find an answer within the multitude. But the whole dream was in your mind. In you. For that is the only thing that provably exists.
There is no second. Only a single flame. Self effulgent. Ceaselessly illuminating. Self-reflecting. Vibrating. An ocean of infinite awareness, that trembles with energy and casts thousands of ripples that you count and name. You call them many. But there is only water. Other times the ocean falls silent. You try to count the ripples and come up empty. You say there is nothing. But there is only still water. Kinetic turned into potential.
So I say again: only one thing can be proven to exist. Call it the Self or the Tao. Call it God or call it Him. Call it Her or call it That.
And That is You.