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              POINTING

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              SOMETIME IN THE 1730s, a young Scottish philosopher
              tried, and failed, to find himself.  David Hume
              reflected upon this experience in his first book, A
              Treatise of Human Nature (1739).  The passage is much
              quoted and anthologized.  I encountered it frequently
              as an undergraduate philosophy major, for my teachers
              regarded it as a watershed in Western philosophy.

              They revered David Hume -- progenitor of the
              hard-nosed, no-nonsense style of empiricism they
              professed and they amused their classes by reproducing
              in a Scottish burr a famous remark by the great
              philosophers mother:  Oor Davies a fine,
              good-natured crater, but uncommon wake-minded.

              Well, sons are sometimes hard on mothers, too.  That
              was why I had the afternoon last fall to take my two
              grandsons in a search for the self, some 260 years
              after Davie had looked in vain.  This Saturday my
              harried daughter needed a break, so my wife and I were
              at her house trying to load Paramesvara (age five),
              Bhaktivinoda (three and a half), and all their weekend
              gear into our car.  In the midst of a great deal of
              coming and going, Paramesvara and I found ourselves at
              one point alone together in the car.  We chatted.  I
              was struck once more by how bright this lanky,
              tow-headed boy was, and I wondered how much of the
              philosophy of Krsna consciousness he understood.  I
              decided to begin with what Srila Prabhupada called the
              first lesson.

              Making sure I had his attention, I said, Paramesvara,
              do you know youre not your body?

              Im not? he exclaimed in amazement. He looked at me
              expectantly, awaiting explanation.

              Thats right.  Youre not.  Youre the soul, the
              spirit soul.

              He knew plenty of Ka stories, but, it seemed, no
              philosophy.  Was he too young?  His astonishment told
              me he was ready -- my statement didnt just go past him
              or bewilder him.  Yet how could I get him to understand
              the soul?  I did not want him simply reciting stock,
              catechistic responses that had no meaning for him.

              Before I could go any further we were interrupted:
              Jaga!  Jaga!  Help me!

              This was Bhaktivinoda, stranded on the sidewalk with a
              spill of paraphernalia, calling his older brother,
              whose in-house name is Jaga or Jaga-bear. (I cant
              tell you why.) After we had packed the trunk and
              settled back-seat territorial disputes, Jaga went back
              inside to look for the trip snack-bag, leaving me alone
              with Bhaktivinoda, or, conveniently, T-Node. T-Node
              is a rolly-polly kind of kid with a pale, circular face
              thats surrounded by a sunburst of curly hair so blonde
              its nearly white.  A toddlers lisp overlays his low,
              gravelly voice.

              I had him alone:  How would someone this young
              respond?  Would he be interested at all?

              T-Node, I asked in a serious voice, do you know
              youre not your body?

              Im not? he exclaimed at once, his eyes wide with
              astonishment.  He looked up at me, waiting.

              No, youre not.  When Jaga comes back Ill explain
              it.  I began making plans.

              My wife agreed to drive, and by the time we made the
              turnpike I was ready.  I had remembered how Srila
              Prabhupada had taught some schoolchildren and decided
              to try it.

              I twisted around to face the boys in the back seat.
              Now Ill show you that youre not your body.  First
              stick your pointing finger out straight, like this.
              OK? Good.  Now just do what I tell you.  Ready?

              They were; they were into it.

              Now:  point to your nose! I pointed to my nose, Jaga
              to his, TNode to his.

              Now point to your belly! We all did.  I led them
              through a sequence:  elbow, eye, foot, knee, chest . .
              . (Once they got going I stopped pointing.) I hammed it
              up a bit and gradually gained speed until I reached the
              punchline: Now point to your self! Consternation.
              Pointing fingers waved about aimlessly, eyebrows knit
              together in bafflement.  They laughed . . . What?
              What? Jaga said, his finger looping around like a
              bottled-up fly.

              See! I said.  You cant point to yourself.  Thats
              because you are not your body!  Youre the soul.

              T-Node was thunderstruck; he had clearly undergone an
              intellectual breakthrough.  His face was lit up with
              the wonder of discovery.

              Do it again!  Do it again! T-Node begged.  We went
              through the sequence a few times, and each time it
              worked to both boys satisfaction.  Im not my body,
              I heard T-Node saying to himself.  I am the soul. It
              seemed to sound right to him.

              But I felt an unease, a mental chill, almost a
              presence.  It was the ghost of David Hume.  With suave,
              measured tones that nicely set off a hint of contempt,
              I heard the words of the Treatise announcing the
              position about to be demolished:

              There are some philosophers who imagine we are every
              moment intimately conscious of what we call our
              self.....

              But where, Hume asks, could we get the idea of a self
              from?  All real ideas are based on impressions -- on
              sensations, passions, or emotions.  We must be able to
              analyze or dissect ideas down to show ultimately the
              impressions that produced them.  If we cannot, then the
              so-called idea is meaningless.  What impression, Hume
              asks, is responsible for the idea of a single, simple,
              enduring, changing self?



              If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that
              impression must continue invariably the same, through
              the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed
              to exist after that manner.  But there is no impression
              constant and invariable.  Pain and pleasure, grief and
              joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and
              never all exist at the same time.  It cannot therefore
              be from any of these impressions, or from any other,
              that the idea of self is derived; and consequently
              there is no such idea.



              Yet dont we need a self to possess or unify all our
              particular impressions?  Well, where is it?



              For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I
              call myself, I always stumble on some particular
              perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade,
              love or hatred, pain or pleasure.  I never can catch
              myself at any time without a perception, and never can
              observe anything but the perception.



              A person may attest that he perceives something simple
              and continued, which he calls himself, Hume says,
              though I am certain there is no such principle in
              me.  Setting such metaphysicians aside, Hume affirms
              that humans are nothing but a bundle or collection of
              different perceptions, which succeed each other with an
              inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
              movement.

              Haunted by Hume, I kept on conversing with the
              metaphysicians in the back seat while the Pennsylvania
              croplands poured away behind them.  They were learning
              to discriminate between matter and spirit.  I held a
              rubber ball in my hand and beat it with a fist.

              See?  I can hit it over and over again -- hard -- and
              it never goes Ow!  It never cries.  But if I hit you
              -- they bobbed away from my slow-motion punch --youll
              feel it.  Youll cry.  Thats because there is a soul
              -- you -- in your body.  But theres no soul in this
              ball.

              This morning Jaga hit me and made me cry, T-Node
              said.

              If you hit a cat or dog, it feels it, Jaga quickly
              put in.  It is also a spirit soul.

              Even ants or spiders, I added.  T-Node looked down
              guiltily.  Hes been known to step on ants on purpose.

              How could Hume have missed himself?  Was he being
              willfully obtuse?  Imagine him conducting an inventory
              of his mental contents, like an auctioneer appraising
              the contents of an estate up for sale.  He walks
              through each room, examining each object.  Picking it
              up, setting it down.  Looking for something in
              particular.  Is this myself?  Is this?  Is this?
              After an exhaustive search, he reports truthfully
              enough-that he didnt find it.

              But who is looking?  Who is inspecting this memory,
              this joy, this love, this fear, this regret, this
              ambition, this or that train of thought?  David, you
              could not find your self in all that because none of
              that, taken separately or all together, is your self.
              The self is not the seen but the seer, not the
              experience but the experiencer.  You are not even David
              Hume, but rather the experiencer of being David Hume.

              Teaching my grandsons had given me a new insight into
              the Treatise.  Like T-Node and Jaga, David Hume had
              been playing the pointing game.  T-Node and Jaga played
              by pointing to different parts of their bodies, while
              David played by pointing to different parts of his
              mind-the subtle body.  I could take Davie through it
              point by point, running through the inventory of mental
              goods, until: Point to your self! And the indexical
              Humean finger wavers, finding no object.  See! Id
              say.  Youre not your mind.  Youre the spirit soul.

              For we are no more to be identified with our minds than
              with our bodies.  The mind belongs to the category of
              the not-self as much as the body does.  Both mind and
              body are material, the former being merely finer or
              subtler than the latter.  Vedic seers know this, but
              Western philosophers have conflated the spiritual and
              the mental; mind and soul are synonymous.  David
              Hume discovered in the Treatise that the mind was not
              the self, but he drew a false conclusion: there was no
              self, no soul, at all.

              My grandsons were doing better:

              What happens if I attack the soul

              with ninja swords?

              Nothing!  It cant be cut!

              What happens if I drop a huge rock on it?

              It cant be smashed!

              What happens if I put a blowtorch to it?

              It cant be burnt!

              How can I kill the soul?

              You cant!  You cant kill the soul!

              They were good students.  They made me wish I had Davie
              in my class along with them.  I thought about that.
              Since the presence of such a great philosopher might
              intimidate me, I would want his mother along too.  She
              sounded like a formidable woman, and she seemed to know
              her son.



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