W-wa Jeziorki: The Ego, the Soul and the Individual: thoughts occasioned by my 66th birthday

As I age, the flame of my ego turns down from a 7 to a 3; then on towards a 1 before being inexorably extinguished. Yet the flame of my consciousness grows in strength from year to year, as does my understanding of the world. And with them I grow in wisdom.

To what extent are we egos, and to what extent souls*?

The body is the vehicle that contains both. Which one controls your vehicle?

Two contrasting statements to ponder then:

1. "We live, as we dream - alone" - Joseph Conrad, from Heart of Darkness

2. {{ I am part of the continuous whole }} - an intuition I felt while walking in Jeziorki one day, probably sometime around 2004-5.

How to square the two? Are we individuals, or members of a collective? I have written about the existence in childhood of the conscious mądry Michaś and ego-driven głupi Michaś, and how the latter won control over the former in adolescence to rule uncontested until mądry Michał finally emerged victorious over the course of the past decade.

I can associate with both of those two statements above. Solitude is a comfort for those deep of soul. An ego alone is trapped - there's no audience to show off in front of. Or anyone to boss around. But the wise consciousness has no need to conform to the will of other egos, or to try to impose. You may wish to ascribe this to my 'low hierarchy status', a life lived upon a lower rung of the Ladder of Authority. That diagnosis, dear reader, is a mirage - an affect of the materialist worldview.

Yet the continuous whole - the cosmic consciousness - underlies space and time. Indeed, consciousness spawned space and time; space and time are the products of consciousness, and not the other way around. Increasing numbers of theoretical physicists and philosophers are now getting this.

To the materialist, there is only matter - there's no such thing as 'soul'. Consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon - a by-product of biological evolution, something found only within the brains of higher-order animals on our planet.

Whatever your worldview, the matter that is your body is subject - as is all matter - to entropy.

Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics. Decay. The destiny of all matter is to break back down into a state of random atoms. The material wonders of this world, brought about by complexity, are short-lived; finite. To the materialist, who scorns the very notion of a soul, who considers consciousness to be a constructed illusion that lies beyond empirical measurement, the process of ageing is tragic. One's youth fades, and all that there's to look forward to is decay.

But Consciousness abides. It was there at the beginning of all things; it will be there after their end. And it is present everywhere. It survives matter. Grasp this, and ageing, and what comes after death, hold no fear.

In my own place, I am comfortable.

I can see now that I have been a slow learner (due to laziness? Lack of focus? Attention deficit?), but I am a broad learner, a generalist, not a specialist. I am still learning. The constant chipping away at a rough-hewn block of stone from which emerges an exquisitely detailed sculpture. Our digital age has brought a wealth of knowledge to humanity - I wonder to what extent we're aware of that? Wikipedia, for example, is stupendous in terms of what it offers us all - for free! Plus the endless streams of podcasts, YouTube videos and TED talks covering every area of human knowledge - and our ability to plug into all that knowledge on the go via a smartphone. Ignorance is no longer the default state, but a conscious "can't be arsed to find out" choice. Curiosity, then, becomes the most important human quality after kindness.

[Kindness - cooperation and empathy - is the default setting of the winning strategy of the Prisoner's Dilemma - get on with your fellow humans all the time except after such occasions when they defect on you first (never, ever, be the first to defect!) - then retaliate and continue doing so - forcefully - until they relent, and then immediately return to cooperation. Should they defect again, retaliate again.]

Today, a year after reaching the Polish state-pension age, I have reached the UK state-pension age. I no longer need to work, but shall continue doing so for as long as it brings me fulfilment and sense of purpose. I should say 'slow down' to myself, but this is the busy time of year, with event after event galloping onward toward Christmas, it's not easy! I have long said that I shall work until Poland overtakes the UK in terms of GDP per capita (at purchasing-power parity). The gap between the two economies is narrowing each year (around 20% at the moment; it stood at around 40% ten years ago).

Below: back to the metaphysical. Prof Bruce Greyson from the University of Virginia, is one of the pre-eminent researchers in near-death experiences. In this YouTube video from 2012, he presents this slide, which I think squares with what a spiritual approach to life yields anyway, without the need to face death head-on. However, many of the subjects of his research had their near-death experiences at an earlier age than 66, so these may accelerate a change of worldview that might have occurred more slowly otherwise.