The Mirror of Meditations

By Martijn Janssen

The purpose of this book is to reflect on a variety of common questions. Common, but difficult questions. What is the self? What does it mean to be conscious? What is morality made of? Is there logic in morality? Can reason alone justify moral action?

To answer such questions, this book does three things. To begin, it examines what the human mind is and what it is not. Then it examines how one might construct a moral system grounded only in observation and reason. Lastly, it examines by what means one may employ the mind towards morality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398472914

Martijn Janssen

Martijn Janssen was born in the Netherlands in 1996 and was diagnosed to be autistic there. In 2009 his family moved to Switzerland, where he attended a bilingual German-English schools. He obtained a bachelor at Harvard Extension School in 2020 and a Master of Science degree at Edinburgh University in 2022.

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About the Author

Martijn Janssen was born in the Netherlands in 1996 and was diagnosed to be autistic there. In 2009, his family moved to Switzerland, where he attended bilingual German-English schools. He obtained a bachelor at Harvard Extension School in 2020 and is currently working on an online Master of Science degree at Edinburgh University.

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Martijn Janssen 2022

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my many teachers. These include my professors at Harvard and Edinburgh University, and my teachers at Gymnasium Oberwil, SIS Basel and Minerva-Volksschule. I also want to acknowledge the influence of the many philosophers of times past and present who have inspired many parts of this work.

Foreword

Of What This Block Is Anyway

The Zeroth part, because context is useful.

Ein System von Gedanken muß allemal einen architektonischen Zusammenhang haben, d.h. einen solchen, in welchem immer ein Theil den andern trägt, nicht aber dieser auch jenen, der Grundstein endlich alle, ohne von ihnen getragen zu werden, der Gipfel getragen wird, ohne zu tragen. Hingegen ein einziger Gedanke muß, so umfassend er auch seyn mag, die vollkommenste Einheit bewahren.¹

The Master said, I am a transmitter, rather than an original thinker. I trust and enjoy the teachings of the ancients. In my heart I compare myself to old Peng.²

This text is a summary of my system of thought. It contains thinking on the nature of mind, of existence, and of ethics. It attempts to discern the nature of the Mind, what this says about its existence within the world, and finally what ethics might be constructed from there. The body of this text has a tripartite structure.

The first part serves to elucidate the nature of things. That is, it clarifies my ideas of what existence is and where and what I am in it. It aims to answer questions like those on the nature of reality, the mind, emotion, and the senses. Essentially, this volume is about what I can know as fundamental knowledge.

The second part takes these points and investigates their bearing on everyday existence. As such, it aims to answer questions concerning the nature of morality, of balance, of liberty, of choice and of responsibility, as well as other aspects of existing. As such, it establishes general principles and conclusions. Finally, this section establishes some basic principles of morality. Essentially, this volume is about what I can infer from what I know and what else may be observed.

The third part is devoted to extrapolating the implications of the previously established principles and developing them further. This section attempts to construct various tools for moral conduct, developing further from the previously established basic principles.

Essentially, this volume is about what I should do with the things I have established in the previous volumes.

The purpose of this text is to translate thoughts into words. However, it thus also has the obvious limitation of being a product of one mind. Hence, it is thoroughly bound to and limited by my perspective. All the inferences, truths, and beliefs it contains are entirely subjective. That is, this text is a mirror through which I see my thoughts. By studying their reflection, I aim for clearer understanding. Thus, this text is my Mirror of Meditations.

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¹ Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1818/19, P.1↩︎

² The Analects of Confucius, 7, 1↩︎

Volume I

The Nature of Things

The first part, on the nature of things which one must know true.

As the first part of this work, the following chapters investigate fundamentals. Their concern are existence and reality, the mind and consciousness and other basic principles. Its aim is to establish a coherent understanding of reality, of the mind’s place in it, of what can be known, of what the self is, and of what others are. The concern of this volume is to see what parts exist and how to understand them, in line with the path to comprehension outlined previously. For this reason, I begin here by examining the obvious things about life and the attached strings – general principles.

With this being the purpose of this volume, the first things that must be understood are the very tools used to understand. One who does not understand the tools cannot hope to wholly understand their products – to comprehend a whole one must ideally understand its parts first. Thus, deconstruction and investigation of each component is the main concern of this first volume.

The general method followed in this volume consists of two parts. First, this volume investigates the tools of understanding themselves. Thus, the first several chapters examine the mind and its accessories. Second, this volume examines existence in general as it is presented to us through the senses. That is, in the second part that which is understood with the tools from the first part is examined. Through these means a general understanding of existence and its implications is attempted.

The main tool used to develop understanding used in this volume is, as elsewhere, thought. In the first chapter, this thinking uses a method alike that employed by René Descartes. That is, thought is employed as introspection that attempts to remove all external factors and study the mind from within, in isolation.³

After all, before anything else can be done, two things must be demonstrated. These are existence and the mind. Existence must be demonstrated so any other thing can be demonstrated. Mind must be demonstrated so that means are available by which to demonstrate. Thus, let us now proceed to examine the Mind.

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³ Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Translator, Donald A. Cress, Hackett Publishing Company (1993), P. VII, 1–8↩︎

Chapter I

Thinking and Existence

Can there be a question without a thinker to ask it? Is there Thinking? The question is moot, for by existing, it answers itself.

That thought which is empty is still thinking. The Mind cannot be completely empty since it thinks itself.

Thought is the first thing that needs to be examined here. As considered above, comprehension requires full understanding of all parts of a whole. In the case of this text, thought is the one part which ties all others together and by which they are constructed. This chapter consists of two parts. The first examines what thought is and what can be known of its existence. The second part examines what may be learned by examining thought itself.

What Is Thought?

Superficially, thinking might just mean the processing of information. However, thought is also a central part of experience. Lacking thought there can be no awareness of existence since though an entity might exist without, it would not be able to notice this. That is, all experience is mediated by thought. However, what is this thought? And can one prove the existence of thought? Or must it be assumed to exist?

To investigate thought is peculiarly problematic. After all, to investigate thought is also to think. It is not possible to investigate thought from an outside context. Nevertheless, there clearly cannot be any thoughts if thought does not exist. Similarly, if there were no thought, existence would be meaningless as there would be no thinker to notice it.

Proving Thought?

Does thought exist? Let us consider this question and see what elusive ‘truth’ may be obtained. To examine thought in this manner has been done previously, notably by René Descartes. Thought is the subject of the first meditation in his Meditations on First Philosophy, and this approach is mirrored here. This text also makes use of the same mighty tool; introspection.

What does this mean though? Descartes aptly describes the required process of meditation as ‘demolition of the opinions’. His method means to remove the influence of the senses, of beliefs and of thoughts and to meditate. By doubting everything and trusting only things beyond doubt, Descartes aimed to ensure the accuracy of his findings.⁴

Logic as Axiom

Through the method of doubt, Descartes concluded that he could not doubt without thinking; that thought, and existence with it, is the precondition of doubt.⁵ Now, Descartes’ method suggests an additional, more general observation. That is, to draw any kind of logical conclusions on thoughts requires taking logic as an axiom.

To think requires logic. To think of existence does likewise. However, logic is in fact immune to doubt. The reason why it is thus is because doubt itself is subordinate to logic. After all, doubt is to be unsure of a truth-value. However, the truth-value of a thing is determined by logic. To doubt logic implies to doubt doubting itself, a paradox. Without logic there can be no inquiry. Logic is the prerequisite of doubt. However, logic itself is troublesome because attempting to create any completely consistent logic or argument means either suffering an infinite regress of causes, ending with circular logic, or making axiomatic assumptions.

The Mirror of Meditation

Thus, logic is a useful tool for constructing understanding, yet a tool with limits. However, such understanding may also be obtained by observation, to which one may default when logic reaches its limits. It is this purpose which is served here by introspection. Let us now see what use there is in this meditation, and what issues it presents.

Introspection

To perform introspection means to look inside, in this case into one’s Mind. Here the meaning is more specific – to look at the inside of one’s Mind, and at nothing else. The reason for this is simple; everything outside, all things external to the Mind itself are currently irrelevant.

What does this mean? It means to look only at thought itself, to see the inside of the mind, the self in isolation. All other matters must be ignored, all perceptions and the senses themselves are irrelevant here. One must also remove all internal information as well, memories, knowledge, all these must go away. One must stop thinking, stop performing any action involving the mind. If possible, one should even cease concentrating on the meditation itself and cast aside even the notions of existence and mind being examined here. To summarise, one should eliminate everything from the mind and empty it completely.

When one does this, one arrives in the empty ground state of consciousness. That is, one merely exists. It is from here that one may begin to construct an understanding of the self and of the world. So, what insights does introspection provide?

Of Dread Consciousness

What does one see when one closes the mind to all that is outside it and performs introspection? Having entered this state, where am I? What am I? How am I? If one eliminates all things and thoughts from the mind and meditate, what happens? What does one perceive?

Quite simply, if one enters the state of meditation described above, there is nothing. Nothing exists outside the mind, and nothing exists within it. One arrives at a silent void that lacks information or events. In this state one is an observer with nothing to observe. However, there is one clear exception to the nothingness, which is that it is being observed. It is there. It is known that it is there.

Observing the Observer

Here is the ultimate use of this exercise; to see that there is one thing alone that cannot be eliminated or ignored. That thing is the Mind itself – the thinking, active part of one’s being. While there is nothing to observe in the above state, the observer remains. Here in this meditation, one is left alone with the essence of the Mind. After all, the observer is the Mind, for clearly there can be no observations without Mind to make them.

Furthermore, even when there are no thoughts, the Mind evidently remains. Even in dread meditation, one remains conscious. That is, one is thinking – one observes that one is thinking of nothing. In essence, one is being aware of one’s ability to think. The ability to think may lie unused, but that does not remove it – it cannot be removed so lightly, as shall be considered later.

The meditation performed above allows one to draw a first conclusion from observation. That conclusion is that there is thought. More accurately, one may observe that presently, there is thinking going on or at least that the potential for it is there. A second conclusion follows immediately, which is that things can exist. However, two issues also present themselves.

One is the question of what this actor, this mind, this ‘I’ actually is. The other question is whether any surer knowledge than that of observation may be obtained. To answer these questions, let us now investigate thought and consciousness in detail.

The Limitations of the Mirror, The Limitations of the Philosopher

Now, as seen above, examining these matters is problematic, it must always be done in retrospect. Let us consider again. Descartes relied on doubt, and by extension on logic to arrive at true knowledge. However, this already means to assume some basic axioms, truth and means to arrive at it.

Ultimately, there are limits on philosophical inquiry – the mind can only ponder existence from within, never from outside. Because of this, all philosophy may use logic as a tool, but philosophy is not completely logical. This is because if one, if anything wants to philosophise, it must first do some other things. That is, first a philosopher must accept that they and their mind exist. Then they must accept that observation of self and world is possible. Only after this may logic be applied to observation to gain conclusions and insight.

Of the Reflections of Information

But, keeping the above in mind does not completely exclude examination of the basics of existence. Let us now do exactly this. So, can one be certain of the existence of thought? On the surface there is no easy, logical way to answer this question. However, the question itself is revealing when examined closely.

What is a question? To ask any question is an attempt to obtain information.