I think about the observer effect a lot.
The idea that the very act of observing something changes the thing you’re trying to observe.
All these people trying to remove themselves from the situation they are studying, trying to be the impartial scientist, the direct documentarian. Is it even possible? To truly be a fly on the wall and not affect what you watch? I don’t believe so. Certainly science says it is impossible- spins changing when you peek. And I believe that link goes both ways.
There is no such thing as an objective observation- everything is filtered through the lens of memory, the warped pane of a lifetime of experience changing your perception of even the most brutally honest realities. And that pane, even as it passes the heat and light of new experience, melts and drips in the doing of it.
And so neither observed nor observer can survive contact with the other, without being forever changed.
What does this mean then, in respect to the Watcher?
That thing, at the core of all of us, the alien, untouchable being underneath all the other artifice of self? The entity in the deepest recesses of your conscious mind, who simply watches all that you say and think and feel. The Watcher who watches you read these words. Who watches you think about their meaning. Who watches you consider its own existence. The Watcher does not pass judgement on anything it observes. Judgement is higher up, buoyed by the ego beneath it, it floats far nearer the surface of your self than the Watcher.
The Watcher sits, still, much farther beneath the waters. It stays in the depths of your mind, and observes. The Watcher isn’t concerned with the birds which fly above, or the shore, or even the weather- not directly. It only cares about those things indirectly. It cares about them only in so much as they affect the lake; the self; you. The world can be ending above, the skies alight with fire while volcanoes spew death, but the Watcher will only take note of the ash falling to the surface, and how the once-calm waters have been stirred.
Here’s the root of it: observation changes both observer and observed- and every second of every day, even in our most private moments, we are both.
I find that the longer I spend “alone”, the longer I am with only my thoughts for company, the deeper the functions of my mind sink in this lake of the self. My perception, my emotions, my judgment- perhaps they are particles. Or algae or fish – the life of my lake. When I am alone, and outside interaction ceases- when the wind no longer stirs the surface of the water, and the sun no longer shines upon it; when the serene surface is untroubled by rain or snow or leaf or log- I feel it all start to sink. I’m left alone to consider my thoughts, just me and the Watcher, and I feel them all sink down, deeper and deeper. The cool, dispassionate waters of my depths calmly receive the senses and feelings and thoughts that once swirled so much nearer to the surface. And all the fathoms that I once imagined stood between Me and The Watcher slip away. When I am alone for long enough and I’ve sunk enough and the chill of the water has grown comfortable, I can scarcely tell the difference between It and I. I scarcely remember there is any.
When i am at my most lonely, and i consider the Watcher, and the Watcher considers me, i feel consumed, subsumed, lost. And there is not even enough left of me to mind. i become the watcher and in so doing become immortal, immutable, and devoid of life. My fear and shame is that in the absence of change, i might find myself incapable of effecting change. the master of no world, not even my own.
The Watcher, even in the absence of all else, seems to drag me down.
But I also know something that stops me from fearing that I might sink that far. A secret. A secret that is powerful both by its content and its very existence:
I’ve seen the watcher smile.
I’ve seen it frown and scoff and sneer. A thousand times, I’ve seen it stifle its laughter. I’ve seen it float a little higher in the water, and I’ve seen its frantic, discrete paddling to keep itself submerged. I know that for all it might try to be, it is impossible to remain objective. In its observance of me, in its very nature as a part of me, it has been affected by me; infected by me.
I alone, even in the absence of all else, elevate the watcher.
It doesn’t want me to know it isn’t as objective as it acts. It doesn’t want me to know that sometimes life at the surface is so very entrancing that it forgets itself and starts to swim. That it has to remind itself to stay so deep below the waves. The watcher doesn’t want me to realize just how subjective it actually is, in its mostly-quiet study of me. To realize it has a will. And then to take the realization one step further, by knowing that the only source of will in this lake of the self is ME and the watcher’s will is therefore MINE. That it and I are one. That just like in my fears, the watcher and I are united. But unlike my fears we are not united in cold, dispassionate death, but rather in love of ever-changing life. And that we will ever be so.
Here’s the root of it: observation changes both observer and observed- and every second of every day, even in our most private moments, we are both.