Advantages Of Childhood, And The State Of Pure Consciousness

2/13/24

Coincidentally, and with only a little effort on my part, the same general concept happened to be presented to me three separate times on this one day.

The first of which occurred in the time between my peaceful waking, and the breakfast call. I woke up naturally, seemingly incapable of sleeping in past 7:30am, due in large part to the faint, yet distinct, reflected sunlight coming in through the open, south facing window. Outside of which views of sand can be seen, and nearby waves can be heard lapping at the endless coast.

At about 7:40am, with breakfast starting at 8:00am, and factoring in a 5 minute walk to use the bathroom and still be early, I figured I had roughly 15 minutes to read. I picked up Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger, and flipped to the back. I was reading, and have since finished, Teddy, the last of the book’s nine short stories.

In the story, a brilliant ten-year old Teddy speaks with a young man about, from my best guess, Teddy’s recent conversations with four professors of Philosophy and Religion regarding detachment through meditation, on a radio show. The following is a passage from the end of the conversation, where the young man, Nicholson, asks Teddy, “What would you do if you could change the educational system?”. He responds:

“I’d get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them... An elephant’s only big when it’s next to something else - a dog or a lady, for example. I wouldn’t even tell them an elephant has a trunk... I wouldn’t even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names.”

(Page 298 and 299, in my copy)

The second presentation of the concept was at about 1:30pm, while coincidentally in the same exact position as with the first. I had gone to breakfast, and work, but due to being in a state of recovery from a resent food poisoning, I had opted out of continuing on to the schools. So I lay in my bed again.

I was looking on Youtube for any worthwhile reviews, or analysis, of Salinger’s Nine Stories. Finding nothing satisfactory, I scrolled far enough to come across a 15-year old Yale University English lecture on another of Salinger’s writings, Franny and Zooey. While not about Nine Stories, I listened to the entire 45 minute lecture regardless. The lecture itself was enlightening, but it was a line from the book that the professor read aloud that stuck out to me.

Towards the beginning of Zooey, the title character sits in a bathtub re-reading a letter from his older brother Buddy, describing to him what Buddy and their eldest brother Seymour had been trying to accomplish with the spiritual development of their younger siblings. In the letter, Buddy says the following:

"Dr. Suzuki says somewhere that to be in a state of pure consciousness--satori--is to be with God before he said, Let there be light. Seymour and I thought it might be a good thing to hold back this light from you and Franny (at least as far as we were able), and all the many lower, more fashionable lighting effects--the arts, sciences, classics, languages-- till you were both able at least to conceive of a state of being where the mind knows the source of all light."

(Page unknown)

After spending the rest of the afternoon pondering these two similar statements in different short stories from the same author, I stumbled upon a 1974 film adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. An adaptation that I was not aware existed, and, since I have never read the entire book, was fascinated to watch.

The film begins with a boy who learns that he doesn’t like adults, and grows up to become a pilot because there are no adults in the sky. He then crashes in the desert and meets a young prince, and that's about as far as I've gotten. His distaste for adults comes from how they assume his drawing of a snake eating an elephant is simply a drawing of a boring hat.

The general concept that I pulled from all three was that it is better to not know anything at all. Having specific knowledge leads to making assumptions about that specific knowledge in order to make it fit best with other specific knowledge you have. It is better to be in a "state of pure consciousness".

In my experience, this is precisely how young children behave.

Earlier today the thought of going to schools scared me. It felt like work. But it occurred to me that children are the only people who think the way I like it to think, and the idea of being around them changed to feeling almost comforting. I like how unformed their thoughts are. I like how curious they can be. I like how much they enjoy playing. I like that they want to have fun. All of these things come from the fact that they don't know that much about the world, but they know how incredible it feels to be alive.

Maybe Salinger and de Saint-Exupery were onto something.