The people are the characters that flitter about me in my awakening, always busy. They make and drive the machines, produce and consume products, mind their families and build relationships. They form tight-knit identity groups and fight with other groups. They are trapped in a perpetual cycle of conflict and resolution, desire and achievement.
The “Doozers” are a race of characters in the popular Fragglerock series in the 1980s by Jim Henson. The people are the same: ever-moving characters oblivious to my presence.
I have always felt separate and detached from the people. I have tried to be one of them by adopting their customs and rituals, in addition to simply assuming I was one of them. Had I asked myself even a year ago if I was a “person”, I would have instinctively replied “yes”, but without really considering the alternative. Of course, I am a person. What else would I be? That is the response I would have had.
But now I know that I am not a person. I am not a character that comes and goes in this experience that begins when I awaken. No, I am always here. I am omnipresent. I am at the very origin of this entire experience where the people exist. The people are only here if and when I awaken. The people cannot turn me on and off, but I can manifest and demanifest them at my will.
Do I do things that the people do? Yes, I do. I write. I work. I still share, though reluctantly. I put on clothing and I eat and bathe. I maintain a home, and I have a dog. When I speak to them I pretend to be one of them. I feign interest in what they say, and contort my facial features into shapes I believe they recognize. If I find myself in a group of the people, I try to “fit in” if I cannot escape.
The people maintain certain unchanging ideas: they contend that they were all born. Similarly, they believe they will all die. They believe they all live a specific amount of time, before they die. Death is a time of sadness. Most peculiarly, they are content not knowing or understanding their existence. They adopt quaint ideas of their existence as a group, and regurgitate little tidbits when asked. Otherwise, they simply accept that they exist and proceed about their painful, mundane existence.
And most importantly, if I encounter them, the people will treat me as if I am one of them, even though I am not. They give no indication that I am anything other than one of them. And if I were to explain that I am not one of them, they would not understand, and would probably label me as defective, regardless of the strength of my argument. If I persisted, they might display confusion, condescension, or outright hostility and even mockery.
I have adopted many or even most of these ideas and rituals of the people, even though I have always known that I was not of them. The fundamental difference between me and the people, is that I decide if they exist; they do not decide if I exist. I experience them as shapes of various sizes and qualities; some I have relationships with, but the vast majority I simply ignore.
When the people talk, they are willing to give way to a consensus reality. That is, they will abandon their own known, direct experience in order to forge a shared description with other people. Up until recently, I did this in many ways. For example, I pretended that I was also born, and that I will also die, even though I know that I was not, and will not. I would use plural singular terms such as “we” in an attempt to find common ground. My perspective was malleable, subject to change when pressed by these characters. I would cede what I knew to be the truth to some external sovereignty to which the people all submit.
But from a young age I was resistant to this popular (i.e., of the people) sovereignty. In my school days, the people embraced certain beliefs, values, and activities. Trends. I always resisted, even though I knew it would limit my friendships. For example, the people would follow a certain type of music and activity, but I rejected them because I did not value them myself. The group valued them, but I would not submit my own value to the group’s. The people all submit to this kind of popular sovereignty, and in this way are limited.
The people are characters I create when I awaken. They are not actors, for that would imply they are themselves pretending, and are something other than what I directly experience when I encounter them. No, the people are characters of my own manifestation and will. I decide which characters I manifest. Their responses, reactions, and qualities they exhibit to me in the moment are the extent of their existence; they do not exist in dimensions beyond that which I directly experience. My mother, for example, is in totality at this moment, a recurring idea in my head. There is not a lady existing independently of my secondself thoughts, sitting in front of her computer 12,000 kilometers away in some thirdself space I am not directly experiencing. The totality of my mother’s existence is fully compressed into a tiny blip in my secondself right now.
Thirdself and secondself-abolition depend entirely on me accepting that I am not a person. All people are characters that I manifest, create, and summon upon my awakening. They will want everything from me, because they sense that their existence is dependent on me. But I must not want anything from them. I have written these characters, the same way I might create imaginary characters in a fantasy novel. Like an author wanting relationships with the characters in his stories. To want anything from them is absurd. I must reshape the relationship I have with them. I must withdraw from the residual relationships I have with my characters.
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