I yam what I yam

January 14,2018

Thus sayeth Popeye, borrowing from the Burning Bush. Great, he’s a tuber, but what yam I?  Isn’t this the most important question that can be asked? For this particular Yam there have been several different ways to look a this, borrowed – very loosely – from sources other than the Scriptures.

I am a perceptual process that stores and processes information, from which a self is extrapolated and out of which a future state is projected – this from Krishnamurti

I imagine that there are people and things and a universe out there, but its all and only electrical impulses in the brain – this from neuroscience (have you seen the 6 part PBS series “the Brain” by Dr David Eagleman?)

I imagine that I am a little control center just behind the eyes, that directs the activities of a sack of protoplasm, and that there is an in-here, me, that is separate from the out-there, the universe, caught in the imagining that I can be a separate thing from everything beyond my skin – this from Watts

I imagine that there is a mind-body-spirit entity called me, not aware that there is within a hidden and unknown essence of the divine – the pure state of the Self is identical with the Ultimate Reality – this from the Upanishads

I am like the sound of one hand clapping, an impossible illusion – no-self is the nature of all living beings – more or less Buddhist

And now, heres this entity calling itself Bill, sitting at this electronic device causing these characters to appear as though they were words and thoughts  – what is to be made of it, if anything?  Some Sufi mystic said something along these lines: “man is asleep – must he die before he awakens?”

Back to Popeye. Does Bill know, can he know,  what kind of yam he is?  If I awaken as a tuber it will be a surprise.