This happened a few years ago.
I was travelling on a crowded subway train.
Nothing happened, no indication when suddenly I felt this wave of sadness inside.
It was not a specific kind of sadness but it was vague and indescribable.
I felt completely alone and lonely.
It felt like I was the only person alive.
Not in an egotistical way but this was different.
I felt like all the people around me, all the noises, the sound of the train was just
in my head and it seemed like I was completely alone in the universe, even the very concept
of the “universe” was inside me.
I was lost and I had a minor break down at that moment.
I was genuinely depressed because I couldn’t come up with any opposing argument.
Later, I described my experience to my friend and she said
“You are just talking about Solipsism”
So, what is Solipsism?
Solipsism is a philosophical idea that claims only one’s own mind is sure to exist.
You can’t actually know anything other than that, for certain.
Nothing of the external world and other minds can be verified.
It implies that the reality you perceive by your senses might not exist outside of your
own mind.
Solipsism is a massive philosophical idea.
There are many kinds of solipsism.
Metaphysical Solipsism claims that ‘self’, ‘you’ or however you want to call it is
the only reality that exists and other realities and people are the extension of your own self.
They are not independent.
Epistemological Solipsism claims that things that you cannot directly perceive through
your senses cannot be known, it is not false, but will stay unresolved.
Meaning, that if I am looking at Eifel Tower, I can’t surely say that Taj Mahal exists.
Methodological Solipsism has the famous ‘brain in a vat’ situation.
In simple terms, Imagine you are out in the beach swimming, but you might really be hooked
up to a computer, which has the swimming simulation on.
Everything can be doubted, is its core idea.
If we talk Solipsism, we can’t do so without talking about Rene’ Descartes.
Rene’ Descartes was a 1600’s French philosopher who refused to accept any ideas, opinions
and teachings of the outside world as truth.
He insisted on finding the truth by means of introspection.
He believed in answering even the biggest of life’s questions by splitting them into
several small questions.
He called it the ‘Method of Doubts’.
In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, he wrote
So, in simple terms, he questioned all his ideas and opinions on their fundamental level
and this quest led him to his famous quote “I think, therefore I am”, in his book
Discourse On The Method, because he found that everything, even our very reality, the
everyday thing that we take for granted can be questioned.
Like, when I was in the subway, I couldn’t be sure whether all the people and the sound
of the train that I heard in the subway were real or they were just in my mind and most
importantly why would that make it any less real, if it was just in my mind.
I cannot be certain of anything.
But one thing that is certain is that I exist because I am questioning my existence.
If there are questions, then there is someone who is asking those questions which solidifies
my own existence but everything other than that can be questioned.
They are not verifiable.
They cannot be known.
Some development psychologists believe that children are by nature solipsistic.
It is only when they grow up that they reason that other people must have experiences much
like themselves.
It is called Infant Solipsism.
As I began to take Solipsism or whatever I understood as Solipsism seriously, the immediate
question that I had was, if I am the only one that is sure to exist, why am I living
this particular life?
Why can’t it be that I can do whatever I want with a mere snap of a finger?
Why this struggle of going to a job, earning money, etc.
If this is all my own fantasy, then why am I not the one who’s running the world?
As my questions increased I was getting detached from my own reality.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Money, passion, even love, seemed like attributes of a simulation game and I wanted to just,
get out.
But get out, from exactly what?
I didn’t know.
Everything was getting vague.
I couldn’t focus on anything, and any fun that I had was because I forced my self to
do what I used to like.
I was becoming increasingly depressed as these ideas and constant hammering of my own thoughts
… My own thoughts?
Are we the thinkers of our thoughts?
That’s when I realized that my misery didn’t stem from Solipsism or my questions on reality.
My misery stemmed from the fact that I was thinking, constantly and I got carried away
with these thoughts, not my thoughts, but thoughts.
And that’s when I realized that even thoughts could be put under scrutiny.
Try not to think of a white rabbit.
What did you think about, just now?
Did you think about a white rabbit?
Or how about a black cat?
Did you think about a black cat just now?
So, are you sure that you thought it yourself or you thought those things because I asked
you to think.
At a first glance, it seems like you are the thinker of your thoughts.
But upon further investigation, it seems like thought arises independently of you.
You don’t decide which thought you are going to think about.
Thoughts appear to influence each other.
One thought would give way to another thought.
If you are not the thinker, then what are you?
Well, nowadays I meditate with a single aim, to go thoughtless; to find that which is beneath
the thoughts.
In order to achieve that, sometimes I label my thoughts.
Just to separate the thoughts and myself.
I would observe those thoughts.
I am aware of these thoughts.
So, what is it that is aware of the thoughts but is not thinking?
I feel like it is not even ‘I think therefore I am’, it should probably be ‘I observe,
therefore I am’.
I am the observer of thoughts.
I observe everything and without thoughts everything becomes irrelevant including Solipsism
because I am not thinking of anything.
I am just present, completely in the moment.
That’s it for today’s episode.
But before you leave, I have a thought experiment for you.
Ask yourself to think of a thought, any thought.
Just try to think of something on command when you least expect and let me know what
happened in the comments below.
I also have links to my previous videos where I talk about what might happen after death
and the simulation hypothesis.
So you can click and watch if you are interested.
If you liked this video please consider liking, sharing it with your friends in social media
and most importantly subscribing to my channel.
It really helps and I will be posting new videos every weekend.
So stay tuned.
Thank you for watching and see you next week.