The experience we humans have of being separated from life is due to the thinking-ability defining our understanding of life. By the thinking-ability is not meant words and thoughts, but the ability to imagine life as being divided into separate entities and to give these fictitious entities characteristics.

The imaginations of the thinking-ability are based on the person within whom it operates. First, the ability to think imagines this person as a separate entity, and based on this distinction, the rest of life is defined.

Thus the thinking-ability is an imaginative ability and therefore it cannot understand reality. It is an important function that is of great help to our well-being and survival, but the definitions of the thinking-ability are fiction. They cannot be used to understand what is true. The same is true of words and thoughts, which are a product of this ability.

As long as the thinking-ability is in control of the human actions and understanding of life, it seems that the thoughts and words that arise from this ability can be used to understand reality. When the control of the thinking-ability ceases, it becomes clear that this separative understanding of life is not true.

Not only can the thinking-ability not understand what is real, but we also have no other tools at our disposal that can give us this understanding. The thinking-ability is the only knowing faculty we have, and its knowledge is based on imagination and is pure fiction. Whether there is something that is true and real and what it is, if so, we can never know.

When the control of thinking ceases, we lose interest in finding out the truth. It becomes clear that it is neither possible nor important, so why should we spend time and energy on it? From then on we live in the unknown, in a liberating state of not knowing and not needing to know.

From servant to master

As mentioned, there is nothing problematic in the functioning of the thinking-ability. On the contrary, it is an important tool for our well-being and survival. It is the way in which man uses the thinking-ability that is problematic. The fact that we use the ability to think to define reality has today become extremely problematic for the well-being and survival of the human species.

The thinking-ability has not always had control over man. In the dawn of time it was our servant and not our master. It was available to us, but had no control over us. That was the role that the thinking-ability originally played for man.

At some point during human evolution the thinking-ability gained control over our actions and at the same time we also started to experience life through this ability. Therefore we now experience ourselves to be separate from life.

The experience of separation created by the thinking-ability’s control was undoubtedly beneficial to us when it first occurred. The increasing sense of uncertainty and anxiety created by the separative worldview made us more aggressive and self-protective. It is possibly the reason we still exist as a species and the main reason we humans have become so numerous and dominant.

Today, however, the control of the thinking-ability has become a hindrance. Because we experience life through an ability that cannot understand life, our actions are in conflict with life. We act like a bull in a china shop and no matter how carefully we try to move, we create chaos and conflict.

Back when we were not that many people on the planet and did not have much technological knowhow the thinking-ability’s control was not that problematic. Today it has become severely problematic. The thinking-ability’s control over us is the main reason that we destroy our surroundings and each other to the extreme degree that we do today. It is also the cause of the majority of our psychological and existential problems.

To change this situation it is not enough to understand that we are not separate from life. No matter how much we understand and believe that life and nature is one indivisible whole we will still experience the separation. It is our experience we act on – not our understanding or belief. As long as the thinking-ability is in control of us we will continue to act from a false and conflictive experience of life.

The solution

The human experience of existing as separate individuals makes life seem more true and problematic than it actually is. It creates a fundamental uncertainty towards it, even though we experience ourselves as separate from it. Furthermore, the false experience of separation makes you feel like something is missing and that life is not as it should be. Therefore, we search for meaning in life, more joy, security, peace, harmony and connection with the world around us.

What our search looks like is different. Some seek to achieve what they feel is missing by acquiring more material wealth and security. Others seek fulfillment through spirituality, psychology, philosophy, career, family values, sex, or otherwise. None of that works, however, as the dissatisfaction is not caused by there being something missing, but by us experiencing ourselves as separate. And none of that can end this experience.

Not only is our search futile, but it contributes to perpetuate the experience of separation. When we entertain the idea that something is missing, we insist that the experience of separation is true. The experience of separation cannot stop until our search stops. But if we try to stop, it’s more searching that perpetuates the experience of separation.

It may sound apathetic and bleak that there is nothing we can do to end our experience of separation, but is in fact the exact opposite. The more it sinks in, the more it sets us free to live life fully and completely now, without feeling inhibited or constrained by the belief that it ought to be different. What can be more positive and liberating than that?