I was born for experience. Whether as a cell in something more vast, or as a bleak and proud individual I cannot say; and if I could say, I would not expect you to accept it. But I know that I was born for experience because that is my motivating force, against all moral reason.
And there are two modes of experience (or rather, the following division is convenient to my perception of experience): inner and outer . Both are polar, and both I have pushed over the edge in order to discover that the sublime leads to loss, and that the desolation of loss leads inevitably back to sublime pleasure; also that both these extremes can either be voluntarily and productively entered into with a sense of joy and even fun, or wilfully stifled.
Inner experience springs from the commentary we invent for ourselves concerning our own existence, as well as all those subjective perceptions which concern the grasp of our own being. Outer experience depends upon that which our senses are able to apprehend, either (unfortunately in many cases) through conditioning and preconception, or through effort or surprise, by journeying beyond the accepted spectrum of sense-perception.
Between these two fields the human state seeks nourishment. The inner commentary attempts to arrange the outer life so that it may prove to itself the validity of those observations it has made concerning itself. The outer, if we understand it well and take our outer life as openly as possible, seeks to challenge and upset this striving for sense and order. Natural death comes about when the tired inner order succeeds in finally overruling any new messages from the outer life and, if death is not due, then comes inner death, repetition and rigidity. The arteries of the soul clog up with surety, and certainty eats away the valuable subjective muscles of reflection, turning them to useless baggage.
Through the seeking of experience, certain laws become apparent. There is only reaction if we experience (inwardly or outwardly) more than we can apprehend. Sensing the development of a backlog (and backlogs lead to psychological knots and indigestion) the psyche cuts off somewhere short of the point of total satiety; the extreme in either area is therefore difficult to experience by an act of voluntary will.
After the cut off, there follows what is often mistakenly expressed as a sense of loss, but which is, in reality, the space in which we have an opportunity to fully apprehend the weight of the experiences now being missed. An endless flux of differing experience, without apprehending meaning, is as futile as the attempt to withdraw from all experience. The human state is thus a uniquely–balanced one, and somewhere between the hedonist and the ascetic lies either: the ideal human condition (if creatively approached), or a turgid and mediocre compromise (if passively drifted into). That is not to say, of course, that extremes should be avoided, but simply that there must exist a reference point for those extremes to become valuable and enjoyable.
June 1988. Revised: 17 Jan 2008