Everything is nothing

My last post was about reality and perception, and last night I finished a book which dealt with, among other things, the loss of sense perception. This is a quote from it that seems to me to encapsulate the frustrating nature of our consciousness, bound to and limited by the senses and their subjective impressions, aware of itself but so rarely able to step outside of itself, and terrified of its own impending extinction at the point of death.

 

 

"There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. The images of things are not the things in themselves. Awake, I  am in a continuum with my dreams. I feel my typewriters, my table, my chair to have that assurance of a solid world, where things take up space, where there is not the endless emptiness of insubstantial thought that leads to nowhere but itself. My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in. ...how awful is this awareness that is irremediably aware of itself."
"Homer and Langley", E.L.Doctorow, 2009



  "Personal Values", Rene Magritte  (1951-2)