The cat with the head tail

I was reading a philosophy book today (yeah, I know, what else?) and I want to share something with you.

The philosopher was talking about cause and effect, and it was part of this whole big discussion about whether it’s true that we humans are separate from the rest of the universe or if the same energy flows through us that flows through everything else. He was saying that it is the illusion of separation that makes us feel so depressed and so isolated from the world and alienated from everything.

Anyway, he’s talking about all this, and then he mentions this cat, and I like cats, so I start to pay a little more attention. And he says:

We believe that every thing and every event must have a cause, that is, other thing(s) or event(s), and that in turn it will be the cause of other effects. So how does a cause lead to an effect? To make matters worse, if all I think or do is a set of effects, there must be causes for all of them going back into the indefinite past. If so, I can’t help what I do. I am simply a puppet pulled by strings that go back to times far beyond my vision.

Again, this is a problem that comes from asking the wrong question. Here is someone who has never seen a cat. He is looking through a narrow gap in a fence and on the other side a cat walks by. He sees the head first, then the less distinctively furry trunk, and then the tail. Extraordinary! The cat turns around and walks back, and again sees the head, and a little later the tail. This sequence begins to look somewhat regular and reliable. Once again, the cat turns and witnesses the same regular sequence: head first, then tail. He then reasons that the head event is the invariable and necessary cause of the tail event, which is the effect of the head. This absurd and confusing gibberish stems from his inability to see that head and tail go together; everyone is a cat

The philosopher says that this is a bit like we see the world, as a collection of bits. He says we have the kind of consciousness that is narrow, that can focus on one thing at a time and blank out everything else. It’s a bit like when you’re in a dark room and you look at things with a very narrow beam flashlight.

The philosopher says: The truth is that as we look at the world little by little we become convinced that it consists of separate things, and so we pose the problem of how these things are connected and how they cause and affect each other… No we see that the world is all in one piece like the cat with a tail on its head.

This comes from The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts