I think my flatmate, Dave is a bit of a nut case. See what you think. I’d been watching The Matrix on Netflix with my mate Jordie, and when the movie finished Jordie said, “Where’s Dave?”
I said, “I think he’s in his room.”
“Oh, I thought he was out,” Jordie said. “Has he gone to bed?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He sometimes just sits in his room in the dark.”
“Is he all right?” Jordie asked.
“I’ll have a look,” I said.
I opened the door to Dave’s room and I said, “Hey Dave, why are you sitting in the dark?”
“I’m looking for something,” he said.
“Well, you won’t find it in the dark,” I said. “I’ll turn the light on.”
“No leave it off,” he said. “In the dark is precisely where I’ll find it.”
“Really, what is it you’re looking for?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll know when I find it.”
“You’re not serious,” I said, and the conversation continued along these lines:
“I’m very serious.”
“You’ve lost the plot.”
“Well, maybe I’ll find it.”
“How?”
“I gaze into the darkness.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, what did you expect?”
“Something. I fix my gaze, a penetrating gaze. I peer deeper into the darkness, into the heart of darkness.”
“Conrad.”
“Yes. Perfect darkness. Darkness visible.”
“Milton.”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“No, nothing is good,” Dave insisted. “Nothingness is transcendent.”
“A meditative state?”
“Not exactly, but it does involve not thinking, turning off thinking.”
“What happens when you stop thinking?”
“I fall headlong into the void.”
“How do get out of the void?”
“I never really get in. I’m conscious of falling, I’m self-aware. I’m back to thinking, so I never actually fall in.”
“Well, if you did get in you might never get out. Have you thought of that?”
“No. But that fleeting moment of falling is transcendent. It feels so close.”
“Close to what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be close to death?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What then?”
“Hopefully, enlightenment.”
“I think you’re delusional.”
“Maybe. Have you ever tried to stop thinking?” Dave asked me.
“No, I prefer to think.”
“It’s not easy.”
“What? “
“Not thinking. The mind is restless. It’s a monkey on a chain. It’s a monkey bitten by a scorpion.”
“My mind’s not like that.”
“It gets like that if you try to turn it off. It doesn’t want to turn off. It has a mind of its own.”
“I turn it off when I go to sleep.”
“And you dream. I mean to turn off your waking mind.”
“What’s the point?”
“That’s what I’m looking for: the point.”
“This is just a circular argument. It’s sophistry.”
“Sophistry is faulty thinking. The goal is pure not thinking.”
“Well if you disappear into the void, how do you want to be remembered?”
“I want to be forgotten.”
“I’ll leave you to contemplate the void.”
“Contemplating is thinking.”
“Whatever.” And with that I left the room.
Jordie said, “What’s Dave doing in there in the dark?”
“Nothing,” I said.