White Biocentrism

Douglas Mercer
November 5 2024

Siddhartha was born a prince among princes, a prince of the blood, he came from one of those good homes and from a High Aristocratic lineage who can trace back their family tree well past the mists of time. His father had revered the gods and his mother as well; they lived in a spacious and sumptuous palace and as the first born Siddhartha was viewed with a special benevolence; and so his father decided that an experiment was in order, a human experiment, one that would make his son shine above all humans that had ever been and beyond even those who were to come.

Being a powerful Prince on a spacious estate far removed from the daily life of the people, being in command of a large array of servants and factotums and housekeepers, he believed that he could enact this experiment, which required much secrecy.

It was said later that at his son’s birth the father had donned the purple robe and, and looking at his son, had said as if in augury or a visualization: this is the ruler of the world, the oldest one in the world and the youngest; this is the last birth and from henceforth there will be no more becoming. He recalled his own upbringing which was of a practical bent and though he loved both mother and father neither of them were able to understand the desires he had for something beyond a good and proper and powerful life.

He knew from a young age that when the time came he would take a different approach with his son; and what he was most convinced of was that what one saw and heard, what one was taught, and what one believed, was the sole reality, or could be. And that the day-to-day reality that men labored and suffered under was considered reality by the millions only because of their poor education and the paucity of their imagination.

If each human was a fresh start at perfection the only reason that this perfection had not been achieved is that no one really, not in their hearts, thought that it was attainable; it was always the lack of belief, not any obstacle in the external world, which hindered one along the way. As he grew older and took a wife he became more and more convinced of his idea; he himself tried to believe in all his heart and he made great strides and was able to perform feats which, had anyone known of them, would have had him feared or ostracized or deemed a sorcerer. He told no one about them for they meant little to him; for whenever he was able to get in what he thought was a pure state of concentration eventually some obscure memory, some quotidian recall, would enter into his mind and would in itself cast some doubt and the spell, as such, would be broken.

It was said of him that his power of focus was nearly legendary but he knew that it was not true; that it was never intention or will that made manifest: it was not even belief, but a state of being where even the idea of belief, or non-belief, were in question; that is it was the exact opposite of what had been taught in the schools; not unknowing but knowing; that is all one had to do was know and be certain.

And so when the time came and his wife was pregnant he began to rationalize his plan and he knew that more than any philosophical reasoning that he possessed his most important possession was the raw power that he held over his part of the world; that is his word was not only unchallenged it was considered deeply disrespectful to even question his doings, even in private, so much so that the people who lived both in the castle and nearby internalized it as a taboo. That is his word was law and unchallengeable; and he knew that complete and total control of the environment was the minimal requirement for success.

What Siddhartha’s father did was with great foresight manipulate his son’s world and his education and the people with whom he had contact were investigated and told the story that they were to relate: the story being that all of them and most certainly Siddhartha were immortal and that change was an illusion; to this end anyone the moment he became sick was banished from the child’s sight; any plant that might wither was removed, and a continual process of cleaning was undergone, though always outside of the sight of Siddhartha’s eyes. As all men do Siddhartha believed what he was told for the dreams was beautiful after all and he had no outside frame or reason to question it; Siddhartha was also told that of all the immortals he was the special one, the one for whom they had been waiting; for Siddhartha this was not a matter of pride for any kind of rank or comparison had not been introduced into the system; his distinction was simply one fact among the others, neither more nor less.

As he grew to be a man Siddhartha was able to roam freely within the castle and also on the castle grounds; the idea of their being a beyond the grounds, which were more than spacious enough to entertain his growing imagination, never occurred to him as nothing of the sort had been imprinted in his head. That is he simply took the world as it had been given to him and he saw no reason to object. And so he took all things with the equanimity and equipoise which befitted a god; a serene and beautiful life where all things were ordered and in place; and every day the same routine met him in his quiet joy.

Once the father became convinced that his deception had been complete he began to see it bear its fruits; that is the miracle of instruction had freed the mind of his son to tap into its theretofore latent but always also infinite potentials. As a young man he was always loved but also a little feared among the servants who though they would never voice it always wondered where this project was heading, and the uncanny calm and piercing stare he had unnerved many though even they had to admit that it seemed to come only from a place of love. Certainly in after times when the experiment was dissected and looked at for its conception and execution people tried to determine the fatal flaw of it. And as they did so some exaggerations accrued around it; but we who know how that design played out have no reason to disbelieve in any of what were considered to be outlandish claims.

In his meditative absorption which we know now to be called a flow state, a condition of pure focus where the worm of doubt never enters wonder emanated: the annals record instances of temporary duplication of himself, of teleportation, manipulation of the elements, walking on water and through walls, and disappearing and reappearing; to say that this seemingly superhuman activity gratified the father goes without saying; and the father was able to keep the acts hidden and within bounds as he had inculcated in his son the notion that all of these power needed to be used as mere means of practice, that is there was nothing special about them except as a final means; it is true that we only have his notebooks as a way of knowing this but to us so rudimentary do these acts seem that we, from our perspective, as was said earlier, haven no a priori reason to disbelieve; and so take them at face value.

Even given the early stages of knowledge at the time this exercise went on there is no reason in theory that it might not have culminated in success. The father had after all total power and all the time in the world; and as for the natural processes that would occur to himself and others he had a readymade stories; after all the logic of the world that young Siddhartha dwelt in was controlled by him and he had no motive or even opportunity to question it. So as the wrinkles began to form on his face the father felt no pang of fear; when the time came he would simply say that he had to leave on business, after all the immortals were known to be willful and capricious and what used to be known as cause and effect held no sway; that is a story told held its own inner logic and compulsion.

And he did have deputies who had been deeply schooled in the plan and who were trustworthy to carry it out. And the hope of course was by the time that any of these maneuverings became necessary on a large enough scale his son would have matriculated past the space of feats and attained the goal of controlling both space and time, and then not through a fantasy of inwardness but in a frank interaction with realty achieved those universes above universes where things moved by the command of the mind and no sooner than a thing was wished for than it was had which in after time became common and is so well known to us.

Alas, as all know who have read this, it was not to be. We now know that the project was doomed from its inception. To be fair to the father by the time we achieved our successes in this realm we knew a lot more than him; and, indeed from the vantage in time in which he operated he did quite well and we learned much from him. That is he was a pioneer and now that we know the solution we see his ideas as quite intriguing if a little off kilter and of course doomed. For the moral that we take from his story if that if you want to change reality forever it does no good to ignore it, or take off on flights of mind, but you have to look it square in the face to see what it is; and above all work hard and long and of course it goes without saying that it never helped anyone not to know the facts of life, concealment and deception being the only sins which remain.

No one is sure what happened but somehow, through inadvertence perhaps, he wandered off his pristine reservation; perhaps he was very adventurous for some reason that day or willful himself and took a circuitous walk while one of the employees was shirking; perhaps a malcontent was involved; we shall never really know.

Yet what one can imagine as he got farther and farther away is how he must have looked to them: shining and radiant and the picture of health and a noble and high born bearing which once went by the name of terribleness so anomalous was it normal people; but how they looked to him, those fantastic and phantasmagoric figures, must have been grotesque; even the ones who were in good health were but among the common folk who did not possess the pure beauty and austere good looks that come from breeding; he saw miscast eyes and people speaking speech other than in purity; there words were even hard for him to understand as they could not pronounce them even though nominally they spoke the same language.

Their words were to him like a novice swimmer who flailed around in the water while he effortlessly made his way; if we are to believe the reports it was these average specimens who veered him ever so slightly from his quiet mind and who made him uneasy with their uncomprehending and open mouth awe; but as he got further away he saw figures of a different order; he saw the old and the infirm and the diseased and whatever slight queasiness the others caused him these pierced right to his soul and horrified him with their terrible shapes.

He saw the lesions and the deformities, the stunted and the twisted limbs and the yellow eyes contorted in all different positions and the smell that came from them and the smell of their hovels: when he first saw them he fled as soon as he could in order to retain his composure; but soon as if by some magnetic power he went back again and again with at first a kind of macabre fascination but soon with a sorrowful gaze that such wretches shared with him the earth; soon he needed to find someone who could make sense of it; who could tell him the meaning of the smell, stench, decay, degeneration and death, for lifeless bodies he saw as well and it was they who held his gaze most often even as he felt something inside crack at the sorrow.

In this bewildering state he withdrew to the part of town where it seemed things were somewhat in order and he met someone who owned a black smith shop; the blacksmith himself was shocked by his presence standing there, so noble in features but so innocent and naive as well. Siddhartha asked him: what is this? When finally the blacksmith saw that he meant this literally he said in equal frankness: this is life.

It took a few hours but when the blacksmith found that he had wandered from the castle and heard strange tales of godhood and immortality he was able to piece it together; many had long wondered why the prince of the blood as all said in times past would never ride on horseback to inspect his people, this lack seemed strange. And slowly together they were able to find out the stark truth of what happened. None of this solution of course did anything to allay the mounting fear and anxieties that grew within Siddhartha; but at least his trouble now had a name.

Could the experiment have worked? For a time perhaps. But the flaw in the system was that it was a race against time and a gamble; would Siddhartha’s flow states have enabled him not to decay in his body? We know it is possible but when time is of the essence the chances are less likely. And the other flaw was that there could always be a shock to the system which would derail the project and not even something as extreme as what did happen would have been necessary to do it. For in the end where we were successful and where Siddhartha’s father was not was that we have mastered the arts of the mind. For what that pioneer had not understood was not the threat of decomposition but that of decompensation, and the delicate balance of the brain; that is what he did not have was mind science.

For what compensation is is making up for something, some lack; a compensation can be a crutch or a prosthetic device such as an artificial leg or glasses or hearing aids; indeed, in former times a car or a computer or a phone of a flying craft could be deemed to be compensatory in nature: to make up for something one lacked; but for our purposes compensations are in the mind: rationalizations, sublimations, reaction formations and defense mechanisms of all kinds; living in his direct and unmediated reality or sweet dreams of immorality Siddhartha had no need for such compensating things as he lacked nothing.

But suddenly confronted with undreamt of horror he was badly in need of being defended; but his psychological immunological system was non-existent as if he had been a mental neophyte; and so just as the decompensating patient will be overwhelmed by a reality he can no longer guard against and cannot bear he splits.

So too Siddhartha was forced to allow every horrible imagining infect his brain; and so what he experienced was what finally came to be seen as the queen of psychology even when psychology was fast becoming the queen of the sciences: trauma. And in his case the trauma and shell shock was so sudden and so extreme and so unaccountable that it was accompanied by or rather occasioned a break with reality, a psychotic break; it went so far that Siddhartha denied that most basic of things; he denied reality itself and deemed it an illusion.

That in our day such a claim is seen to be the bedrock of insanity is well known; but to the grieving Siddhartha, who grieved for his immorality, it was the one and only thing that might just keep mind and soul together and was the first, the very first thing for him that was compensatory; lose eternity and lose the world with it and in that way defend against monstrosity of the real. For the sudden burst of horror, the knowledge that he had been deceived, the flooding of traumatic sensation literally blew his mind away and with no defense he decompensated; and then in turn he made up for his lack with a story that convinced him but was patently false.

To understand this process one might imagine a tightrope walker, gracefully balancing on a thin wire high above the ground. Now picture that same performer suddenly losing their footing, arms flailing as they struggle to regain equilibrium. This precarious moment, teetering between stability and chaos, is not unlike the experience of psychological decompensation. It’s a state where the mind’s carefully constructed coping mechanisms begin to falter, exposing vulnerabilities and threatening to plunge an individual into emotional turmoil.

And Siddhartha’s decompensation vaulted him back on all he was sure of: the resources of his own mind and to regain even a precarious balance he stood up and said: this all is an illusion, your world, your pain and my pain, and all the suffering is unreal; and by entering into the illusion he claimed he could strip away one illusion after the next until he got to the core of what is not real but the very bottom of the illusions. In fact he did find it, or said he found it, what he called the void: what he painted colorfully as nirvana but which is nothing other than oblivion. They say when he was in his cave his father went to see him; by that time Siddhartha was so immersed in his false reality that the animosity that his father expected him to be bear towards him had long since evaporated.

Despite the calm and quiet in his son’s eyes when he spoke a little to him he could not help but think of the bright future that he had prophesied; and though he loved his son he knew that the entire project had dispersed in so much incense and smoke, that is he knew a dead end when he saw one and that those miraculous rains had come and gone and ended up on an ash heap somewhere as only one more bitter experience.

With great patience the father looked at him and heard him out: he denied reality and told him he had a world within which would evolve inwardly into an ever ascending succession of states; as any reasoning was beyond hope the father kissed his son but walked away defeated; his son was now lost in the bitter illusion that he had hoped to claim victory over once and for all; he feared that regarding becoming there would be no end; though somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped that his experiment would become widely known, and his failures recorded, so that someone somewhere, who knew when, would finally find a fool proof way to achieve what the world had been created for in the first place.

We see that this gesture of faith has been vindicated and we only tell the tale of Siddhartha as a curiosity or work of art; that this was high drama and histrionic psychodrama was clear to the very first who heard it, and every recounting, though they do not do it justice, at least gives one a sense of what it might have been like in those strange days.

All in all though even the most sanguine will believe it a most salutary case if there ever was one for denying reality, though tempting, is a fool’s paradise, a fools’ errand, a wild good chase and a red herring; it’s why we teach this tale in the little grades as an object lesson in how not to proceed and we sum it up by saying, a bit sententiously I suppose, when reality sets in it is imagination alone that becomes the mortal enemy. You can immerse yourself in it for as long as you are able and with enough courage and tenacity it could in theory be forever, but the façade must be always kept up. And one slip, as they say, and that’s it.