Indra’s Net at Different Zoom Levels

How contradictory hot-takes aiming to define reality can be simultaneously true.

Maybe just for grass-is-greener reasons, with American culture so infamously individualistic, counter-culture spiritual seekers often become infatuated with the Buddhist concept of Anatta. Signifying the metaphysical assertion that it’s an illusion that we’re discrete, separate individuals, Anatta translates, essentially, to “no-self.” 

In the New Agey subculture to which Liminal Trickster Mystics belong, it’s often taken for granted that experiential knowledge of this fundamental truth ought to be the chief aim of a spiritual life. 

As a result, people embark on ayahuasca, LSD and mushroom trips seeking ego-death. They try to “annihilate their ego” via deep meditation. They—I should say, I—listen to countless hours of audiobooks, lectures and podcasts trying to transmute intellectual understanding into true gnosis.

And it is attractive. From the standard-issue perspective engendered by our fundamental and systemic abuse and exploitation, it can sometimes look like the culture that America exports is so destructive to the world precisely because it puts the desires of the individual center stage. 

The myth of homo-economicus maximizing short-term rational self-interest and driving the market’s Invisible Hand toward universal prosperity—the Gordon Gecko “Greed is Good” hypothesis—certainly does seem to have generated cultural, ecological and climate crises. 

Would we be so vulnerable to believing these absurd Capitalist myths if it wasn’t for our humanist elevation of the individual? As Daniel Pinchbeck writes of Charles Eisenstein, in a recent essay—one I was happy to see embody compassionate criticism more than flashy dunking:

…there is another level beyond this, where Charles perhaps misses the mark. The individual “self” is a necessary illusion or focusing lens for that underlying field of consciousness to discover its capacities, to create, to dream, and to love. As much as I may feel I am acting, in fact I am just a particular expression of the totality.

While our individual experience of free will is a necessary part of the illusion, it is, ultimately, illusory. We find happiness when we shift our locus of awareness from the personal and particular to the formless and absolute.

And then, preamble in praise of Anatta aside, Pinchbeck goes in for the gentle kill:

I suppose what I am saying (and I could be wrong) is that small errors in perspective – for example, overvaluing the individual self’s importance, its capacity for doing rather than truly surrendering into a non-dual perspective – can magnify into bigger errors over time. These errors might lead someone to believe in one’s own invented myths, to undergo ego-inflation, or to follow deeply flawed leaders on dangerous paths.

So there are dangers to buying into the Self illusion. There are valid reasons to want to jettison the whole concept and fade into a glorious We. To meld with the unified All. 

I feel the pull just as much as anyone.

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But is “illusion” really the right word for a model that isn’t 100% accurate?

All models are unavoidably inaccurate. That’s part of what makes them models. 

The map is not the territory. 

The subject of a piece of referential language is never perfectly captured by the words used to define it.

Because reality can’t be defined. It can’t be “made finite”—as the meaning of define suggests—because it is, literally, infinite.

In his subsequent essay on Eisenstein, Pinchbeck appears to deride this kind of thinking as a “relativist ‘post-truth’ tendency,” which may be fair. Just as fair as the previous essay’s hypothesis that overvaluing the individual self’s importance can magnify bigger errors of thinking. Though perhaps the two views are contradictory? Isn’t the presumption that Eisenstein is simultaneously guilty of promoting perspectival equality from a nondual premise and also guilty of being seduced by individualism into believing every person’s unique Self is real and important?

Both hot takes are just as fair, also, as my assertion that Eisenstein adroitly navigates the territories between “zoom levels” and has capacity for gently holding space for contradictions. For paradoxes to be simultaneously true. 

Although again, these descriptions of Eisenstein all being simultaneously true is a perfect example paradox in itself.

After all, Eisenstein is a human being. He is, therefore, the Universe. He is infinitely complex and any linguistic “map” of his beliefs, personality or follies is fundamentally not the “territory” of his True Self.

All models get the Universe a little bit wrong.

Alan Watts pointed out in The Wisdom of Insecurity that we are inundated in a post-enlightenment mentality in which we strive for utility in our models. 

The Scientific Method is great at creating and testing ideas. Great at uncovering the Universe’s tendencies and creating actionable plans to derive value from them. 

You can’t build a plane without understanding Newtonian Physics. 

Ultimately though, Newtonian Physics is only another incomplete model and it breaks down completely when you zoom down to the quantum scale.

Yes, there are other things to value besides utility, but in accordance with our culture’s prime directive of endless growth, adeptly creating testable hypotheses is highly valued behavior.

This is one explanation for an aspect of my own programmed behavior: to say things “are” a certain way, and to imply that they “are not” another way. 

Of course this denouncement of capitalist brainwashing… this is just another model. Another way to explain the infinite complexity of true reality.

An alternative exists. 

An alternative to endlessly attempting to elevate your new favorite model above the favorite of those Others. An alternative to a hot take driven social media culture where every participant tries to one-up each other with their superior and more original theory of everything.

(Although, perhaps in this pitch, I am doing the same thing.)

Still, this “relativist” option gains efficacy steadily as we continue to struggle more and more with keeping our heads above the flood of information. Confronting our inundation with every digital denizen’s opinion—soon to be multiplied by the incoming torrent of generative AI bullshit—it’s worth adopting the view that many contradictory things can all be—at least pragmatically—true at different “zoom levels.”

Indra’s Net is the best way to illustrate this “zoom level” take on reality. 

This ancient Vedic metaphor depicts reality as a web of fibers. All conscious beings, the jewels at the intersections of these threads of net, are connected to every other conscious being. And shining on the surface of each brilliant jewel, there is a perfect reflection of every other jewel. 

If you zoom in enough, you see only one jewel. This close, you can’t tell that the reflections dancing on its surface originate in the other jewels; they just seem like its own, unique personality characteristics. A scratch in one jewel might actually be the damage inflicted on another, but this close, it really isn’t important.

Philosophical pragmatism a la William James asserts that it doesn’t matter what you believe, so much as what the effects of your belief are. 

Zoomed in all the way with a single node in the net, as you might be when conversing one on one with a close friend or a romantic partner, you’ll get the best outcomes by treating them as a wholly complete and unique individual. It won’t foster connection to relate your conflicts to societal trends or cast the other as a stereotypical member of a cultural tribe. 

All those reflections of other jewels don’t mean a thing when you’re up close and personal. 

All that matters is the beautiful gem before you.

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On a certain zoom level “I” has a real referent. 

Individuals have boundaries of which they can consciously control the permeability levels. Although, ultimately, we’re a handful of degrees of separation apart from every other individual, the way we present in the world is dependent on our own autonomous decisions. 

We each have the free will to decide who we surround ourselves with and what media we imbibe. Through those choices, we control the characteristics of the ever evolving, ever shifting synthesis that is our personality.

But if you zoom out, a couple has the same circle of semi-permeable boundaries. Especially fresh couples in that impenetrable bubble of New Relationship Energy that relegates friends and family to the sidelines.  Couples choose who to hang out with; who to include in their mutual life together. 

So does any relationship.

Keep zooming out: a community has semi-permeable boundaries, a nation does, a culture does.

Zoom out and out and out… eventually you get to the boundaries of the universe, as far as we know. The border between everything and nothing.

Zoomed out this far, The All is an individual: a single, unified thing, unable to be divided further.

We’ve arrived back at Anatta.

But it’s not necessarily true that the model describing the tiny corner of The All represented by an individual is “illusory.” Just that it’s incomplete. To say that “all is The All” is also language; also an incomplete model that doesn’t account for individual autonomy and agency. 

The closest thing to the Truth is that which model is supreme only depends on how close you want to look.

While we are all the unified Net in sum, we are also, at the same time, perfect Jewels worthy of self-definition, authentic connection, reverent preservation, and Love.