The fundamental principle of the selfist model is that the entire truth can be directly and instantly known to me in my moment. Though this is a simple statement, it is packed with meaning, which I will explain in a separate piece. But assuming this is true, what is next?
What’s next is a simple decision: where do I start? Life is a complicated storm of movement and change. I can readily find innumerable theories of existence, all of which start with some basic assumptions. These are the primitive beliefs the author(s) assume to be true to the degree they can support the rest of the structure built on top of it. Without going into all of them here, I can explain why they all, at some point, fail to explain my existence: they are built on imagination rather than experience.
If my goal is to know the entire truth directly and instantly in my moment, then I must reconsider notions that are inherently unknowable. If my objective is to directly and instantly know now, how can I take as my starting point something I cannot know? For example, if I start with the notion that I am one of the billions of people inhabiting a small planet in a massive universe, I have already failed because I will never directly and instantly know the validity of those statements. I will never know that there are billions of people for I will never meet or count them. Nor will I ever know that “we” inhabit a small planet, because I will never experience the entire rock. And as for a massive universe — also something I cannot and never will know.
So if I start with those assumptions, then I am doomed to fail in my goal to know the entire truth directly and instantly in my moment. They are all imaginary constructs I can believe if I want to, but I certainly do not have to believe them.
If I do not start with the so-called “hard science”, then where do I start? I start with what I know rather than the mental prosthetic I acquired in years of schooling: my actual experience. Surely my actual experience is important; in fact, it has the biggest impact upon me, and everything else happens through the lens of my experience. Clearly, the most solid foundation I can build on is my experience now, at this moment.
I look for the constants that are present at all times in my moment, and which I do actually know right now. They are hard to see at first because I have spent a lifetime ignoring and taking them for granted. But with time and patience, I find more of these constants. And like the pieces to a puzzle, these unchanging constants begin to come together into a picture of my existence that is very different than the one I have held in my mind for so long. If my aim is to know, then I should start with what I know, not what I imagine. The constants are what I know.
I start with my actual condition. Not the condition of an imagined humanity inhabiting an imagined planet moving around an imagined universe. What is my condition right now as the being who is experiencing this moment? I am here after waking up this morning in my room. While I directly experience my bed in my room, this country I supposedly exist in is decidedly more imaginary. So the bed is quite concrete and experiential, but the universe is not.
There is a point beyond which my experience is no longer direct and becomes imaginary; this is my experiential horizon. Ten minutes ago, my bed was perfectly concrete and experiential because I was physically on it. However now, I can no longer see my bed, and I can only see the four black walls of my cell. So my bed is beyond my experiential horizon. However, I can remember my bed, so it is well within my imaginary horizon. The bed, the room, and all the “stuff” floating about my physical environment change from direct percepts I can touch, taste, and feel, to indirect concepts I can only imagine.
The takeaway is that while my room is present every time I awaken, it is a variable because it transforms from a direct to an imagined experience. While I tend to imagine that the room remains constant whether I am observing it or not, I really cannot say that for sure. And since I seek a model that allows me to know the entire truth directly and instantly in my moment, my room, and by extension the entire physical world, cannot be part of that because of its fluctuating nature. In the selfist model, my physical environment is my thirdself, and it stands to reason that my thirdself, by virtue of its constant change, is irrelevant to the truth I seek.
So let’s start again. I woke up in a place where I directly experienced my bed and room. Outside my room, I am certain I will find the same mountains that were there yesterday. And beyond that, the people of India and the country itself. Everything outside of the four walls of my room is imaginary at the moment; it exists beyond my experiential horizon but within my imaginary horizon. So if I throw all that out and then try to answer the question within the context of my direct experience, “where am I?”, my answer must necessarily be that I do not know. I imagine I am in a room, in Uttarakhand, in India, in Asia, on the planet, in the solar system, and in the universe. But I do not know that.
And since I seek to know the entire truth directly and instantly in my moment, I must toss that out. So in truth, I woke up in a strange room. I do not know where I am. In other words, I am lost because I am no longer somewhere that I know. And generally speaking, I do not want to be lost. So what should I do? If I woke up lost, I would want to go home. I would want to escape the place I found myself in and return to the place I came from. Where did I come from? I also do not know that, compounding my sense of being lost.
This is not figurative: this is my literal condition. I have woken up in a strange place, and naturally, I want to get back to the state of knowing where I am. If my objective is to make complete sense of my existence, then I must have a starting point. And based on the principle that I know the entire truth directly and instantly in my moment, there is an answer to the question “where am I”. I just have to learn how to see and accept that answer in place of the traditional answer that robs me of my ability to know (i.e., the answer that I am in a city, in a town, in a country, on a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a universe, etc).
How do I shift from seeking a geographical, coordinate-based answer to the question “where am I”, to one that I can definitively and directly know and validate in my moment? It starts by identifying the constants that are present at all times in my experience. These constants are the landmarks in my existential topography and free me from the limitations of an ever-changing, unknowable, and imaginary three-dimensional geography.
The selfist model is my plan to overcome being lost. If I cannot possibly know where I am here, then I must at least know where I came from so I can get back. The starting point is to redefine the topography of my existence and draw a new map.
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