WHERE DOES ACTION BEGIN?

What does it mean — to do?

Where is that boundary beyond which something becomes an action?

I will try not to answer this question through knowledge. Not to recall philosophy, physics, religion, or neuroscience. Just to look.

I began to act.

Stop.

What happened?

Not movement.

Not thought.

Not intention.

First, a connection happened.

Happened — precisely. For some reason, it seems impossible here to say, “I created a connection.” Because then there would already have to be that very “I” who creates something.

But it does not exist yet.

Something simply came into contact with something.

And at that moment, distinction occurred.

This is one thing.

This is another.

Between them — a connection.

And perhaps it is precisely here that I appears for the first time.

Not as the cause of what is happening.

But as the fruit of the first distinction.

As a point that emerged between “this” and “that.”

As the trace of the first contact of something with something.

Before connection, it is impossible to say “I.”

Because for “I” to exist, there must already be a “not-I.”

There must be a boundary.

There must be distinction.

There must be relation.

Connection.

And this is where something remarkable begins.

I stop acting.

Stop again.

What happens?

I stop distinguishing.

First, the need to name anything disappears.

Then it becomes unnecessary to determine where I am and where I am not.

The familiar division between the observer and the observed disappears.

Deeper still, the very question of what is cause and what is effect disappears.

So completely that even what this effect had once been caused by is forgotten.

Causes disappear.

Effects disappear.

History disappears.

Time disappears as a sequence of events.

The mind — this extraordinary machine of distinction — no longer separates anything.

And what remains is…

I do not even know whether it is correct to say “I” here.

Because any “I” already requires a boundary.

Presence remains.

Bare Consciousness.

Not consciousness of something.

Not someone looking at something.

Not someone listening to something.

As though you hear, see, and feel with everything at once.

And everything at once.

Yet even the word “everything” divides too much here.

It is difficult to put this into words, because words exist only where distinction has already occurred.

For a word to appear, one thing must be separated from another.

Named.

Defined.

A boundary drawn.

But here, there is no boundary yet.

Nothing.

And yet this “nothing” strangely does not resemble absence.

Quite the opposite.

It is as though nothing is missing from it.

There is simply nothing that needs to separate itself from anything else.

And again —

stop.

We switch on.

Where does the first action arise from?

This is what seems truly interesting to me.

If, in a state of complete non-distinction, there is no separate “I,” no separate world, no goal, no cause, no effect, not even a direction —

what exactly takes the first step?

What happens immediately before distinction?

Why does a connection suddenly arise from indivisibility?

Or, more precisely:

perhaps action begins with connection itself?

It is not “I” who enters into connection with the world.

The opposite.

A connection happens — and as a consequence of this connection, both “I” and “the world” appear.

This turns the familiar picture upside down.

We usually think:

I → perceive → act → enter into relationship with the world.

But seen from that silence, the sequence may be the opposite:

Connection → distinction → I → action → the world of experience.

Then “I” is not the beginning of the process.

“I” is already its result.

A very early one.

A very fundamental one.

But still a result.

And then something else becomes clearer.

Why, in deep inaction, you can seem to lose yourself — and yet not disappear.

It is not existence that disappears.

It is the distinction of existence that disappears.

The familiar sense of:

“here I am”

is no longer there.

What remains is:

is.

Without a noun.

Without an owner.

Without a biography.

Without the need to explain who is present.

Simply —

is.

And then something happens.

Connection.

The first distinction.

The first tension between one and another.

And from it, the world is born again.

And together with the world —

I.

So now I am no longer as interested in the question:

“What is action?”

There is another question that seems far more interesting:

what exactly happens in the moment when stillness first becomes connection?

Perhaps this is where the most fundamental mechanics of Life can be found.

Not inside things.

Not inside the human being.

Not inside consciousness.

But between.

In the very fact of relation coming into being.

The two do not exist yet.

But the connection has already happened.

And only after that do those whom it connects appear.

Perhaps this is why Life cannot be found inside any separate object at all.

It is not an object.

It is the event of connection.

And if that is so, then the first verb of Life is —

not “to be.”

not “to do.”

not “to think.”

But:

to connect.

No.

Even that word is too active.

More precisely:

To happen as connection.

And everything else arises from there.

WAIA
Connecting people
BETWEEN YOU AND YOU