There is a variable in this existence that is not constant, and perhaps this variable is what turns blessing into suffering, and suffering into blessing. The very thing that a person enjoys today may, at some moment and for some reason, turn into a source of pain. And the thing that used to cause him pain may later become a source of happiness.
And here begins the question that has long insisted upon me: What is the secret behind the reversal of things?
Why can the thing that makes you happy cause you pain, and the thing that causes you pain make you happy? And why is there no fixed cushion upon which a person can lean without its significance changing? If there were one specific thing that always made a person happy, and another thing that always disturbed him, the dilemma of existence would be much simpler. But this is not the case. What makes you happy today may disturb you tomorrow; what you believe to be salvation may turn into a constraint; and what you believe to be a constraint may become a gateway to salvation.
Even simple things reveal this reversal to us. A person may long for winter, and when winter arrives, it disturbs him and he wishes for summer. He may love summer, and when it arrives, it exhausts him and he wishes for the cold. He may say, "I am lacking this need; if I obtain it, I will become happy," and then he obtains it, only to find none of the happiness he had expected.
Thus, it seems that the matter is not related to the things themselves as much as it is related to an absent inner secret, the secret of reversal.
The Same Thing Brings Joy and Sorrow
Perhaps there is no final preponderance on the basis of which we can say that something is absolute good or absolute evil, always comforting or always painful.
A person may enjoy the very same reality through which another person suffers. The reality is one, but it is not the "same reality" in terms of experience. It may bring me joy and cause you pain, and it may cause me pain and bring you joy.
And this is what makes the matter more complicated: Why do those who rejoice derive joy from the very same reality that disturbs those who are disturbed? Why does the same thing become a source of two contradictory meanings?
Indeed, a person is capable of turning against himself.
He may be comfortable with something, then suddenly turn against it, so that the thing that used to comfort him becomes a source of disturbance. He may build something with all his strength, and then, as he approaches its completion, his pleasure turns into a desire to demolish it. At first, his pain was in demolishing the structure and his pleasure was in building it; then his pain becomes in keeping it, and his pleasure in uprooting it from its foundations.
The same thing happens with pursuit. A person may pursue something for years, and when he reaches it, he flees from it; because he no longer wants what he had originally been pursuing. And a person may want what he used to flee from.
As though a person searches each time for a new story, and then, when he reaches the end of the story, he loses his desire for it, because the story has ended and he does not want it to end.
The Outside Is Merely a Story
I remember how, during my childhood and early adolescence, I would become deeply immersed in television series and films. The immersion would sometimes reach a degree at which I became detached from reality, believing what was happening within the story and wishing that it were real.
Then comes the moment when I realize that it is merely a series.
That moment would strike me with a strange disappointment; because I had given the story a real dimension, and then discovered that it was merely written, filmed, and edited events. Even the creator of the story does not necessarily ask you to believe that it is real; rather, at the beginning of the work, he may explicitly tell you that the events are fictional, and that any resemblance to real persons or institutions is purely coincidental.
He wants you to watch, to become immersed, to observe, and perhaps to feel, but he does not want you to forget that it is a story.
And from here came another question: What if what happens outside, no matter how real it appears, is merely a story?
If you become absolutely attached to the story, its ending will hurt you. The actors will return to their lives, the production team will dismantle the filming location, and the scene will end, while you had placed your very lifeblood within it.
And this applies to relationships, ideas, emotions, and everything to which a person can become attached.
Intense attachment means that you have placed an enormous part of your existence into a single possibility.
The Danger of Attachment
Attachment is not merely loving something; rather, it is for something to become a center that consumes your relationship with everything else.
When a person becomes intensely attached to someone, he may become detached from all other possibilities. That person becomes the only possibility, and the remaining possibilities become something that must be extinguished for the relationship to be completed.
And here lies the danger.
A person may reach a point at which he forgets eating, drinking, studying, and resting, because he has given all his energy to one thing. Thus attachment becomes a kind of separation: the more connected you become to one thing, the more separated you become from everything else.
Then comes the moment when you discover that the thing for which you sacrificed everything was merely one chapter of the story.
Therefore, attachment may be harmful not because the thing to which one is attached is bad, but because you made it larger than its size and granted it absolute value.
From Attachment to One Person to Attachment to Everything
After many stages and experiences, a person may reach a state in which he thinks he is no longer attached to anything.
But the paradox is that not being attached to one particular thing may mean being attached to everything at an equal distance.
In relationships, for example, a person may initially be attached to a particular woman, to the degree that he closes all other possibilities. Then he reaches a stage in which he is attached to no particular woman, because he wants to keep all possibilities open.
Here he has not necessarily escaped attachment; rather, the form of attachment may have changed.
He was attached to one person, and became attached to the possibility of everyone.
And this is an important point, because remaining at an equal distance from everyone may sometimes be an instinctive behavior arising from fear: fear of disappointment, fear of losing possibilities, and fear of approaching someone who may hurt you, while the person from whom you have distanced yourself may not be there to help you.
It is a form of caution, but it may also turn into a savage behavior; because the person does not trust any particular individual and does not allow himself complete attachment.
Can Two People Become Attached to Each Other in the Same Way?
Here another paradox appears.
Can two people be absolutely attached to each other, such that each one is, for the other, the only and absolute experience?
The matter does not seem convincing.
Not because mutual love is impossible, but because attachment itself, in its extreme form, rests upon some imbalance within the relationship.
If two people are attached to each other in the same way and to the same degree, then attachment loses part of the meaning that we discover when separation occurs.
Therefore, a relationship can often be viewed as being between one person who is attached and another who is not attached to him, even if the other party is attached to something or someone else.
Here the image of the lamp hanging from the ceiling appears.
The lamp is attached to the socket, the socket to the cord, the cord to part of the ceiling, and that part is attached to another part, and so the chain of attachments continues until it reaches a higher point.
It may appear that things attached to one another are directly attached to one another, but in reality they enter into a chain of attachments. Every element is attached to something else, and not necessarily to the element that we see directly beneath it.
Thus, the person who is attached to you may, in depth, be connected to another person to whom you yourself are attached.
Seeing the Other Side of the Story
Suppose that a person was attached to a particular woman, whom we shall call "A." According to this conception, "A" is not attached to him, but is attached to another person, "B."
The man separates from "A" and moves on with his life.
Then a new woman comes and becomes attached to him just as he had been attached to "A".
At first, he thinks that this woman is completely different from "A." But when he looks deeply, he may discover that the way the new woman treats him resembles the way he used to treat woman "A".
Suddenly, he sees the other side of the story he had been living.
He had seen himself in the position of the attached person, and now he sees himself in the position of the party to whom the other is attached.
And here he understands something he had previously been unable to understand.
Nothing Escapes
At first, a person may live while pursuing things because he is afraid that they will escape from him.
But observing life reveals another paradox: perhaps nothing truly escapes.
The one who escaped from you pursues something else, and the one who became free from you may be attached to another person. And what you see as difficult to attain may be very easy to attain for someone else.
The person whom you desire and cannot reach may be the very same person who means nothing to someone else.
And this is one of life's ironies: what you see as the greatest possibility may not enter another person's calculations at all.
This alone is sufficient to broaden a person's perspective.
The Value We Give to Things
Here we arrive at a harsher idea, but one that, within this conception, is necessary for understanding attachment.
The thing to which you are intensely attached does not necessarily possess value in itself; you may be the one who gave it value.
A person can give enormous meaning to another person, an idea, or a relationship, and then behave as though that meaning existed within it absolutely.
But what if value itself is transferred?
What if the person who wants to remain attached to something forever then becomes a person who wants others to become attached to him?
Here a chain takes shape:
A person gives value to someone who is not attached to him.
And this person receives the value, so the former loses value because he gave his value to someone who is not attached to him. He then wants others to become attached to him so that they may give him value in return; he will give it again to the one to whom he is attached. Here we see that one person gives value to another, and that person gives it to someone else. Value is always bestowed and continuously passed among people; it does not stop at only two particular parties.And the other, in turn, may search for another person.
And thus value moves from one being to another, in an endless chain.
It resembles a successive accumulation of value: this one gives it to that one, and that one gives it to another, and then the matter moves to another.
At the end of the chain, the meaning may reach something that has no meaning in itself, but has become a beneficiary of the value that others have given to it.
Excrement as a Symbolic Image
This idea can be extended symbolically to something more strange.
What does a person get rid of without looking back?
It is what he no longer needs: waste, exhaled air, sweat, urine, feces, and everything from which he has absorbed what he needs and then expelled it.
The thing from which a person has freed himself becomes, for him, without value.
From this symbolic perspective, one can say that the being or thing that is abandoned and dispensed with may later become desirous that others become attached to it, because their attachment to it restores to it the feeling of value.
Thus, the exploiter and the exploited become part of the same chain.
And the one who was attached to the other, gave him all the value he possessed, and made him the center of values, wants others to become attached to him.
Because he wants to recover the value he lost.
The Theory: The Outside Is the Previous State
There is another idea that I see as a key to understanding all of this.
What we see outside — people, animals, trees, inanimate objects, things, events, and everything that enters the range of our sight, hearing, and senses — can be regarded as the previous state of our existence.
Everything before you is, according to this conception, among the possibilities, and the people and others whom you see outside are previous possibilities of yours that you had abandoned in favor of this possibility or this role.
I am here because I relinquished other possibilities, and you are here because you relinquished other possibilities.
I chose this role, and you chose that role.
Therefore, when I see you, I can see you as a possibility that I relinquished, just as you can see me as a possibility that you relinquished, meaning that your attachment to your role is because you became free from or left my role, and my attachment to my role is because I became free from or left your role.
And here the secret of attachment appears.
Attachment and Regret
If a person becomes attached to someone, the attachment may be connected to regret over abandoning that person.
As though attachment says, at its core:
I left this possibility, and I regret leaving it.
And the greater the regret, the greater the attachment.
For this reason, the thing we see before us may be part of the "previous state" with which we are dealing now.
Every possibility we relinquished may return to us in a different form: a person, a relationship, an idea, a situation, an opportunity, or an experience.
This makes the external world resemble a vast mirror of what we previously chose and left behind.
The principle remains one: You are in this state because you relinquished the other states.
Falling and Enlightenment
If there are many roles, and a person chose a particular role because he excluded other roles, then judging the other roles may be what keeps him separate from them.
We do not see the other roles as possibilities, but as rejected roles.
We judge them, classify them, and say: this is better, and this is worse; this deserves, and this does not deserve.
But enlightenment, according to this conception, is not to choose the "correct" role and despise the other roles, but to realize that the program that chose your role is itself the program that classified the other roles.
You have judgments concerning the other roles, while you do not possess the same judgment concerning your own role.
Enlightenment, on the contrary, is to see all roles without treating them as absolute deficiency, in the sense that you cease judging any role you left, so that you do not need to judge anything in order to leave it and separate yourself from it. And, in the first place, why should you judge a previous state or possibility of yours?
When I exist here, this does not mean that you do not exist here. I am not a negative state of your existence, and you are not a negative state of my existence; my existence and your existence are shared.
The Past That Does Not Want to Die
Suppose that I want to move toward the future, while there is a person who is intensely attached to me.
I feel that he is something from the past that does not want to leave me.
He, from his side, may see me as the only possible future for him.
Here the tragedy occurs.
I flee, and he holds on to me.
The more I flee, the greater his fear of losing security becomes, and thus his attachment increases. And the more his attachment increases, the more I feel that the past is pursuing me.
Thus a circle arises:
He wants me because I am his future, and I flee from him because he is my past.
But both parties are governed by regret and fear.
Therefore, true liberation does not require hatred of the past.
If a relationship ends, there is no need to judge the other party as bad, or to declare the experience a failure, or the person evil.
Judging the previous state may obstruct its transformation.
You do not need to hate the past in order to reach the future.
It is enough to acknowledge that the state has changed.
There Is No Total Separation
Perhaps there is no total separation.
A relationship may end along a particular path, but this does not mean that the person's existence has disappeared from existence as a whole.
You may never meet again, and that may be impossible along the path you both follow, but there is no "cosmic prohibition" that makes the other's existence nonexistent.
You interact with existence, the other interacts with existence, and existence itself interacts with both of you.
Therefore, it may be mistaken to say: "I have completely gotten rid of him."
You may have gotten rid of the form of the relationship, but you cannot ban his existence from existence as a whole.
Your existence does not cancel his existence, and his existence does not cancel yours.
We Are All the Origin
Here another problem appears in relationships.
A person may think that he is the origin and see the other as a secondary state, while the other sees himself as the origin.
But perhaps both are correct from their respective perspectives.
My existence does not mean your nonexistence.
And your existence does not mean mine.
For me to be, I do not have to cancel you; and for you to be, you do not have to cancel me.
My existence and your existence can be one in terms of existence, without that meaning that we are the same person or the same experience.
And this eliminates a large part of the conflict that earthly relationships create when they turn into competition over existence and value.
Earthly Relationships: Regret, Fear, and Loneliness
Many relationships may be based, at their core, on three things:
Regret, fear, and escape from loneliness.
One person is attached because he regrets.
Another pursues people because he fears loneliness.
A third wants a relationship because he feels that his existence is incomplete without it.
But if existence is one, what is actually missing?
The thing you believe is missing may itself be the thing you relinquished when you chose the state in which you are.
And relinquishment is not necessarily final.
It is like placing a ring on the table: you put it aside, but that does not mean it has disappeared from existence.
Choice, relinquishment, and retrieval may all be movements within a single experience.
We Do Not Trade Wholesale
Existence can be compared to retail trade.
There is no one who possesses everything, sells everything, and buys everything.
Every being deals with a part.
Even the one who thinks he deals in "wholesale" ultimately deals with parts of the whole.
No one possesses the entire universe.
No one buys all possibilities.
And no one sells all possibilities.
Each person lives a part of the picture, and then sometimes thinks that the part in his hands is the entire picture.
This is one of the reasons for attachment: treating the part as though it were the whole.
Iblis and the Fall as a Chain of Suffering
If we carry this conception to its extreme, we can read the image of Iblis and the Fall through a different symbolic reading.
Iblis may become the fallen one, and the human being the fallen one, with each one tormenting the other in some way.
I remind you of your deficiency, and you remind me of mine.
I see my existence as deficient because of you, and you see your existence as deficient because of me.
Thus suffering becomes mutual.
From this perspective, the "Iblis function" can be understood as a function of division and classification: dividing human beings into groups, classifying them, making each group see the other as a deficiency, and then making them produce their suffering with their own hands.
Instead of prisoners needing a permanent jailer, they may become their own jailers.
They fight, torment one another, consume one another, and reproduce what causes them pain.
Here the Iblis function — in this symbolic reading — becomes not merely direct torment, but keeping the chain going.
The Same Chain Tempts You and Torments You
The most dangerous thing about attachment is that the very chain that tempts you is the one that torments you.
And the chain that you think preserves your bliss is the same chain that preserves your suffering.
As long as you say: "I cannot live without this," you have made the thing the source of your life, and therefore made it capable of becoming the source of your psychological death when you lose it.
This is a profound meaning of the phrase: the world turns.
Do not become tyrannical when you occupy a certain role, because the role may reverse, causing you to crush yourself through the tyranny of your former role.
What torments you today may be the thing that brings you bliss tomorrow, and what grants you bliss today may become what torments you tomorrow.
Testing the Past in the Present
Perhaps the present is the place where we test the past.
What is before you now is not merely an independent present; it may also be the traces of previous states, the result of old choices, and possibilities that were relinquished.
According to this conception, the present tests the past.
You look at what is before you, and process what was.
And from the way you deal with the past in the present, future possibilities are formed.
It is as though a person continues reviewing his old files, not to live within them, but to change his relationship with them.
The more he is able to see the past without regret, without hatred, and without attachment, the more expansive the future becomes.
And the longer he continues to reject the past or worship it, the longer he remains its prisoner.
Conclusion
Perhaps the problem is not with the things we love or hate, nor with the people with whom we connect or from whom we separate, but with the meaning we give them and the amount of attachment we place in them.
The thing that makes you happy may hurt you because you have changed your relationship with it.
And the thing that hurts you may make you happy because you have seen it from another perspective.
The thing you pursue may be something you flee from once you reach it.
And the thing you flee from may one day become the thing you pursue.
The person whom you thought impossible to reach may be easy for someone else to reach.
And the person who was, for you, the future may see you as his past.
And what you see now outside may, according to this conception, be a previous state or a previous possibility among the possibilities of your existence, while what you are in now is merely one state among infinitely many states.
Therefore, perhaps true liberation is not in becoming attached to nothing, but in realizing the nature of attachment itself.
To know that the value we give is not always an absolute value inherent in the thing.
To understand that separation does not mean erasure.
And that the ending of a relationship does not require hatred.
And that the past does not need to be judged in order for us to leave it.
And that the existence of the other does not diminish our existence.
And that our existence does not require the cancellation of the existence of the other.
And that every role has two faces, every state has two faces, and every choice carries within it the possibilities we left behind.
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