The Human Incompleteness Theorem

This is a theme that has been running in my mind for a while now and yesterday, while cycling home, this title surfaced and I more or less felt it was time to start writing about it. After all, if I don't do it, I'll probably end up forgetting it.
(for a while at least, these things do tend to come back again, reformulated, at a later stage, as if everything had its own cycle or appearance, disappearance, transformation and reappearance)
Kurt Gödel was the mathematician that proved MATHEMATICALLY that any single system we might come up with will never contain enough tools to be able to prove every possible affirmation about that system.
To put it more simply, if you want to know EVERYTHING about the box, you need to be OUT of it.
Bringing this theme closer to home, if we want to know everything about ourselves, or consciousness or whatever it is, we simply have to accept the fact that we can't, because, whatever the tools we employ, the very tools will end up limiting us.
We have a physical body, mind, consciousness, karma, spirituality. All these things (either we know exactly what they are or not it doesn't matter) will define how much we can know about ourselves.
It is our nature (well, for most of us it is it seems to me...) that, as soon as we realise something we jump on to the next.
And to the next.
And to the next.
It's a never-ending process of "searching for".

For better or for worse Kurt Gödel comes to clearly state that we will never reach everything.
If anything, it will be the reverse, the more we know, the more we will become keenly aware of the astounding array of possibilities. And if our perception of things changes then chances are we'll add even more to what we already had. Every new thing will expand our system, perhaps making us feel even more incomplete than before.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago about this. I told her that this isn't a pessimistic vision of things but merely a call to accept one of the most basic rules of the game. That, in fact, this theorem revolutionised mathematics, making it a much more fertile ground. It was a huge leap in terms of attitude and my personal stance is that it still hasn't even been fully integrated in the scientific community. It's too big and it goes against our natural desires. Therefore, it's acceptance is more on logical and scientific terms rather than heartfelt or experiential ones.

To me, as soon as I discovered Vipassana and had the chance of experience deeper stages of the practice, I made the connection between Buddha and Gödel immediately. It was an obvious one. Gödel had simply reached a mathematical framework for something essential to the Buddhist teachings. The experience of the incompleteness and limitation of self.
In a way we can think of the Incompleteness Theorem as a mathematical assertion on the nature of desire, on its omnipresence, on the acceptance that the drive for knowledge is something that binds us and that keeps pushing us forward but that, ultimately, we're fighting a losing battle. That even though it is important that we continue to expand our vistas, it is crucial to accept that we cannot reach the Absolute with our minds or any kind of construct. You see the Incompleteness Theorem reveals the fine boundaries that are in place at all levels of experience. And, subtly, just like the Buddha encouraged us to go and seek and see for ourselves, it teaches us that the best thing we can do is perceive that these are in place, accept them and let go. Thus allowing us to integrate them. Grow closer to them. And expand.

I think in a very subtle way Gödel is telling us there is more to life than mathematics and mind. The Buddha simply said, and you can see it for yourself. You can experience directly the breaking point of normal perception into something much vaster than no longer depends upon the mind's conceptualisation.
By experiencing the end of mind one gets as closely as possible from getting out of the box.
In fact, we reach the walls of our box. We become part of them.
Perhaps we cannot look on what's on the other side.
But we've reached all that we could, the maximum of our possibilities.
And I believe that when we return to the inside of the box (all of this may only take a moment to happen) we will find that it has considerably expanded.
And by travelling between these two very different experiences we will be able to wholly transform and expand the whole of our world view.
For the good of all beings.

Peace.