Sense and Appearance
Agency, Inevitability, and the Category Error of “No Doer”
“Dear Shiv,
I was deeply struck by your last essay on Raw Being. There was resonance in parts that I would have expected to feel resistance. This surprised me and has given me much to inquire into. While the language could be read as nihilistic, the energy of the piece felt life-affirming in the deepest sense of the word. This has left me with a few questions on the subject of agency.
Your teaching on the inevitability of the right here and now seems to imply we don’t have any agency. Then how are we to move about engaging with the events of the world? Do we simply withdraw intention and allow action to arise if and when it does? I may be putting words in your mouth here since you have never explicitly stated so. Would love to hear your thoughts on my questions.”
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When you look out at the world - what do you see? Objects, shapes, colors, textures, boundaries. And does what you see describe the world as it is - or the way in which it appears to you? We know that objects are mostly empty space, colors are how the brain processes wavelengths of light, sound is the brain converting air compression frequencies impacting the ear into audial experience.
We do not see the world as it is, but as it appears to be. That is why we call it the “sense of sight”. We are not really seeing - we are sensing appearances.
Similarly, you possess a sense of agency that relates to the world at the level at which it appears to happen. Discrete events, discrete people, discrete actions, discrete relationships are how our brains interpret reality - but is reality a series of discrete events? We do not know what it is, only what it appears to be.
We may intuit its absolute nature - raw, undifferentiated, unchanging, eternal. At that level the question of agency becomes moot. Because in the absence of discrete phenomena to choose from - there simply is no requirement for the existence of a chooser. There is no one choosing simply because there is no choice to be made.
Yet, at the level of the Ten Thousand Things - there are also ten thousand choosers and tens of thousands of choices to be made. When choice appears, so does a chooser. They exist in-phase and give rise to one another.
At the relative level, reality functions relationally. Discrete objects, people and events, interact with one another giving rise to more discrete objects, people and events. We make things, we give birth, we build community, we wage war. There is always choice because there are experiences to choose from. And your sense of agency facilitates this choosing.
At the absolute level, reality does not ‘function’ - it simply is. There are no discrete entities and experiences - there is only isness. There is nothing to choose from and therefore no choice to be made and no chooser to make a choice. You do not have agency because ‘you’ do not exist as anything beyond this isness.
There is no paradox here. No contradiction. Just like you can have a favorite color while knowing full well that color is not a condition of reality but one of interpretation - you can also choose experiences knowing full well that choice is not a condition of reality but one of interpretation. Your sense of agency is as real (or unreal, depending on how you look at it) as your sense of sight.
The reason it feels confusing is that spiritual culture has perpetuated a misunderstanding by blurring the lines. It puts forward the half-baked idea that since there is no choice to be made at the absolute level - that incapacity must translate to the relative level. This is the equivalent of saying that since color does not exist, you don’t actually have a favorite color. Yet, it accepts the appearance of discrete events and experiences - just not the appearance of the one who chooses between them.
A simple analogy is that of your computer’s Windows (or Mac) desktop user-interface. Your screen is filled with icons - apps, folders, files and programs. When you click on a file and drag it into a folder - that is a choice you are making. Someone might argue - that it only appears you are dragging the file into the folder - and thereby feel a sense of agency. But at the level of the machine that action is simply a sequence of 1’s and 0’s computing.
This is true. But it is also true of the whole desktop. What appears as discrete actionable icons are also a stream of 1’s and 0’s in the machine.
The relative world is the user-interface - where icons exist, actions related to those icons exist, and so actioners who can take those actions exist. The absolute level is the machine code where only code exists - no icons, no actions, and thus no actioners of the icons.
Half-baked spirituality attempts to convince you that the user-interface is real but the user isn’t. Ignoring the fact that it’s a user interface. It is designed for a user.
Similarly, the relative world is relational. It is designed to evoke agency.
Agency and appearance are inextricably linked. They are in-phase. They are mutually dependent. To validate one while invalidating the other arises from superficial understanding.
“There is no doer” is an incomplete statement. It is missing its contextual counterpart. The complete version would be:
“There is no doer and no world in which to do anything.”
The non-dualists are quick to assert the first part of that statement but how many would truthfully assert the second? Walking around with eyes closed and saying, “There is no seer here”, doesn’t negate your sense of sight. It makes you delusional.
There is truly no seer only when there is no world to be seen. Not when one is willfully blinding oneself. Similarly, there is no doer only when there is no world in which events (doing) occur. Not because one has opted out of participation.
Sneaking the absolute into the relative is an age-old trick and the oldest powerplay in the spiritual handbook. Yet, this sleight-of-hand is quickly exposed by the discerning eye.
