Let's start with a very big picture overview of an age-old question, "What is
reality?" For thousands of years, mystics have said that there is one energy in
the universe, that the universe and everything in it is the play, the dance, the
vibration of one energy--that underneath the seeming multiplicity, everything is
made of the same substance. This energy, then, is everywhere, and "everywhen."
This idea of Oneness is sometimes described as Omnipresence, or God. The Hindus
and Buddhists call this principle, Sat: one energy, everywhere, making up
everything, always, past, present, and future.
Quantum mechanical physicists, for several decades, have been saying essentially
the same thing. They noticed that on the sub-atomic level, particles come into
being, seemingly out of nothing, and dissolve and disappear back into nothing;
that two or more particles collide, and one, two, three, or more particles,
often of a different kind, appear from the collision; or that all the particles
cease to exist. There is a "something" that everything comes out of and returns
to and which makes up, or is the background of, everything.
Consciousness
The mystics, however, went one step further. In addition to noting that this one
energy makes up everything, and is everywhere, forever, they also said that this
one energy is aware of itself being everything and everywhere and
everywhen--that it is conscious, that it has consciousness. The mystics called
this second characteristic of reality Chit.
Consciousness, in this sense, is not the same as what we would ordinarily
describe as knowing, in a cognitive sense. This is not the same as your senses
and your brain knowing or recognizing something, though that's one of the only
reference points we have, intellectually, for understanding the term
consciousness. Ultimately, you have to experience being it...
So this oneness, this unity, is aware of itself being everything. Pretend for a
moment that you are this one energy. If you were everything, there would be
nothing outside of you to fear. That would be like fearing your own hand. If
everything is you, and you're everything, there's nothing to fear.
There would also be nothing to get, nothing you could lack, since you're
everything. There would also be nowhere to go, no journey to take. Seeking would
be unnecessary. You're everything, always, everywhere, with nothing to want,
nothing to fear, nowhere to go.
If you were established in this awareness of who you are, knowing that there was
nowhere to go, nothing to get, and nothing to fear, you would be...happy,
peaceful, blissful. The third characteristic of reality, then, according to the
mystics, is called ananda, which means bliss.
The mystical explanation of reality, then, is that reality is satchitananda,
which means one energy, everywhere, out of which everything is comes, that this
energy is aware of itself being everything and everywhere and everywhen, and
that as a result of this awareness, it is blissful, happy, peaceful.
This, according to the mystical view, is who you really are. Your fears, your
desires, your idea that you have to get to somewhere, the idea that you lack
something, is, in this view, an illusion. You are not a separate ego in a bag of
skin, but, rather, this Oneness.
Why am I miserable?
But the question comes: If this is true, why am I so unhappy so much of the
time? Why do I feel so powerless? Why does it seem as if I am a separate
creature in what looks to be a pretty dangerous and perilous world?
To live, I need a constant supply of air, and without it I die in just a few
moments. I need food on a regular basis, or I die within a few weeks. I need my
environment to stay within a very narrow temperature range or the chemical
reactions that keep me alive cannot happen. And then there's ultraviolet rays,
and other dangerous electromagnetic forces, and poisons, and dangerous people
who want to hurt me, and if I get just a few miles away from the surface of a
planet that needs a certain atmosphere, at a certain temperature, and which
needs to be a certain distance from a certain kind of star, I can't survive.
This is hardly the perspective of peace and bliss and the knowing that I am the
One energy of everything.
The mystics have an answer for this: you aren't happy and peaceful and in touch
with the fact that you are all and everything, everywhere, eternally peaceful
and blissful, because of your mind. Your mind is in the way of your experience
of who you really are. Your mind, through your Conditioned Internal Map
of Reality, is creating an alternate reality that acts, in a sense (to use a
metaphor from Eastern philosophy), like dust covering a mirror, keeping you from
seeing who you really are.
Meditation
Realizing that the mind gets in the way and obscures your true nature from you,
the mystics came up with methods for gaining the ability to perceive reality
directly, without the filter of the mind. The most effective and most popular of
those methods is meditation. Meditation is designed to still the mind, until
eventually you gain enough control that you can experience reality directly,
rather than filtering it through the mind and creating a representation, a map,
of reality (hence the term Internal Map of Reality).
As long as you attend to what the mind creates and see its creation as the
reality, you miss everything else. When the mind wildly jumps around, creating,
without your intention, your entire universe, inside and out, that universe will
grab all your attention, and that's all you'll see.
As the mind becomes quieter, you begin to see the spaces between what the mind
creates, like parting the branches in a thicket to see snatches of the meadows
and mountains beyond.
One...or Many?
In describing reality, the mystics said something else very interesting: that at
the moment of creation, this one energy of all and everything polarized itself
into a seeming duality: good and evil, up and down, male and female, here and
there, black and white, off and on, yin and yang, and so on. There is a tension
between the two sides of each of these poles, and the mystics say that this
tension between polar opposites is what causes the universe to manifest.
Notice that this duality is described as a "seeming" duality. There are two
reasons why this duality, these opposites, only seem to exist. The first is that
each side of the duality depends on the other side for its existence, which
means that they really make up one thing, a unity. "Here" makes no sense without
"there." "Not me" makes no sense without "me." "Good" makes no sense without
"evil." Each of these exist only in relation to the other.
Each of these seemingly opposite poles are one thing, not two. In being
opposite, they are also inextricably tied to each other, and cannot exist
independently. They're like two sides of the same coin. You can't have a
one-sided coin, and the two aspects of duality cannot exist separately either,
nor can one win out over the other.
The other reason is more basic, and consists of the fact that dividing anything
into this and that, or any other divisions, happens in the mind only, not in
reality. These divisions happen conceptually, and where the division made is
entirely arbitrary. Because we socially agree on where many of these divisions
are made, they often seem to be "real" but they are not.
This tension between
polar opposites described by the mystics, interestingly enough, is reflected in
the human brain--or, you might say that because the brain/mind creates these
divisions, it isn't a surprise that the brain is structured in a split manner.
The divided mind
Your brain, as you know, is divided into two hemispheres, a left and a right
hemisphere, connected by a small piece of tissue called the corpus callosum.
And, it's possible for one side of the brain to be more active, more dominant,
than the other at any given time. This is called brain lateralization, and the
more the brain is lateralized--the more unbalanced it is--the more likely we are
to chop the world into separate things and see the two sides of any supposed
duality as being separate and opposite.
On the other hand, the more balanced the brain--the less the brain is
lateralized to one side or the other--the more we naturally see how the two
sides of any duality are really one thing, and the more we perceive how
everything is connected, and that the divisions are created in the mind and are
not intrinsic to reality. When we see in this way, we get more and more in touch
with that satchitananda I described.
I hasten to add that dividing the whole into separate things is a handy thing to
do sometimes. It's when we forget that we did it, conceptually, and that these
divisions are not a part of reality, that we get into trouble.
When I say that the mind gets in the way of seeing and experiencing who you
really are, it would be more accurate to say that the lateralized mind, the
lateralized brain, gets in the way of seeing who you really are: the one
timeless energy of all and everything.
When you do see who you really are, you relax. When this happens, there's no
where to go, nothing to get, nothing to fear, and you relax and experience
yourself as happiness, love, peace, and bliss.
Meditation is designed to balance the brain, which allows you to increasingly
experience who you really are. Meditation, in balancing the brain, helps to get
the mind out of the way, allowing you to experience yourself, and reality,
directly, and when this happens, everything flows.
The two worlds...
Let's look at a couple of implications of this description of reality I've
proposed. We have two worlds, or two ways of looking at things. We have the
world of the mind, and all its creations, what we would normally think of as
"reality" or the universe. Then we have what most people refer to as the
spiritual or metaphysical world.
As a way of understanding these two worlds, consider the concept of foreground
vs. background. When you read a book, you look at the foreground, the printing
on the page, and you really don't notice the background, the page itself. The
printing is where all the information is, after all. When you drive into a town,
you see the buildings, the people, the trees, the cars, and so on. Again, you
could consider these things to be the foreground, and everyone would agree that
that's where the action is. You don't really pay attention to the space in which
these things are situated, which is the background.
For the foreground, whatever it is, to exist, there must be a background against
which the foreground can be seen. Even though the blank page has no information,
the printing cannot exist without it. The page is blank, and contains no
information in and of itself, but without it, there can be no printing, no
information, no story. In the town I mentioned, there can be no people, no
buildings, no cars, no trees, unless there's the space in which these things can
exist. The space, as with the page, is blank, empty. It has no characteristics,
in fact, other than its blankness, its potentiality. But without this blank
background, there can be no foreground.
Buddhists have a saying when talking about reality. They say, "Form is
nothingness, and nothingness is form." When they say this, they're talking about
the background and the foreground, and the fact that they "go together," they
depend on each other. The foreground is form, and the background--that which the
form comes out of--is nothingness. But this is a very real nothingness, in the
sense that without it, form could not exist.
Here's another interesting way to look at this idea of duality, of polarity, of
background and foreground. We interface with the world through our five senses.
In a way, though, we really have one basic sense, touch. All the other senses
are a type of touch. We touch light waves with our eyes, we touch sound waves
with our ears, and so on. The neurons that sense these things really notice two
things. They either notice "on" or they notice "off"--that the phenomena of
being "touched" is happening or not happening.
You probably know that by using combinations of zeros and ones--another form of
on and off--computers create very complex patterns of data that can encode and
express pretty much any information you can think of, from numbers to music to
video--anything.
On and Off, Black and White
We live in a universe where everything is vibrating, and whether we think of
vibration in terms of waves or particles (or wavicles, combining the two), no
crest of a wave can occur without a trough, and no particle can occur without a
space or interval between itself and other particles. There are no half-waves,
nor are there particles without spaces between them. There can be no on without
off, no up without down.
Our senses are constructed in such a way that when they "touch" something in the
world, we notice and respond to the "on" but miss the "off," in the same way
that we see the writing but fail to notice the page. But the fact that we don't
notice the "off" or the background doesn't mean it isn't there, and that doesn't
mean it isn't essential. The dark, the silent, the empty, the off interval, are
ignored, but all of them are necessary. Consciousness ignores the interval
between one "on" event and the next, but we would be unable to notice the "on"
without the existence of the "off."
Earlier I mentioned the town and the space it occupies, and brought to your
attention that we pay attention to the solid objects but fail to notice the
space they occupy. With this in mind, consider that the entire universe is the
on/off vibration of space and solid, but we notice only the "on."
This fact is very closely connected to why you feel separate and at risk in the
world instead of feeling at one, as you really are. There are two reasons why
most humans continue to have the illusion that they are separate egos trapped in
a bag of skin. First, we fail to recognize that all the so-called
opposites--light/darkness, sound/silence, solid/space, on/off, inside/outside,
cause/effect, and especially life/death--are poles or aspects of the same thing.
What you can learn from a cat...
Second, we are so absorbed in a type of narrow, conscious attention that we fail
to notice what is real. Alan Watts describes a person who has never seen a cat.
He looks through a narrow slit in a fence as a cat walks by on the other side.
First he sees the head of the cat, then the front legs, then the body, then the
back legs, then the tail. Then, the cat turns around and walks in the other
direction and he sees the same sequence again. After a few times, he concludes
that the head causes the front legs, which cause the body, which cause the back
legs, which cause the tail.
We look at life through a narrow slit of conscious attention, focusing on one
thing at a time, in a linear way. This makes each thing seem to cause what
follows, making each thing seem to be the effect of what went before. But what
if the world, the universe, your life, was all one thing, like the cat?
A scanning process that looks at things one bit at a time makes us think the
world is a collection of bits, causing and effecting each other. With this type
of attention, we have the feeling that the world is made of many bits and that
we are just one of them. We fail to see the space between the bits, and how it
connects them to each other. We fail to see the "off" and we fail to realize how
crucial it is.
The Game of Black and White
Alan Watts calls this The Game of Black and White--separating the on and the
off, the up and the down, the me and the not-me, the cause and the effect, the
good and the evil. And then, we add a rule to the game, that "White Must Win."
Good must win over evil. Day must win over night. Having must win over losing.
When the vibration is fast, we don't notice the "off", but when it slows, as
with night and day, or life and death, for instance, we can clearly see the
"off" half of the vibration. When this happens, we think the "on" half must win,
we think the light must win, and we fear the dark--as if light could win over
dark, when the reality is that the two are really one thing. This is a game we
cannot win, and really wouldn't want to if we could.
And, ultimately, life must win over death.
The mystics speak about attachment causing suffering. Attachment is really
nothing more than not realizing that "on" must become "off," that up must become
down, that life must become death, and that clinging to one over the other is
futile. When I have discussed the principle of letting whatever happens be okay,
I'm really asking you to stop trying to play the game of "White Must Win."
The only way to achieve what is known as "enlightenment" is to stop identifying
with the mind and its creations. As long as the mind and its creations pull at
you, as long as they call out to you, as long as your awareness is focused on
them, as long as you either desire the creations of the mind or are repelled by
them, those creations will be real to you, they will grab your focus, and you'll
stay in that realm.
Once you realize that the realm of the mind is a make-believe created by the
mind, you can make the leap into the realm of satchitananda. You can still
participate in the realm of the mind, but when you do it's like participating in
a play or a movie. You participate, but behind it all you know it's just a play.
This takes the pressure off, and allows you to enjoy life to the fullest.
Ultimately, nothing matters
Ultimately, none of this enlightenment stuff matters. I hate to tell you that,
since I know it's very important to some of you. Ultimately, you are this
background I've talked about, this one energy of all and everything, this
oneness that is obscured by, hidden by, the mind, and nothing can change that
fact.
At the same time, you are the foreground, which is constantly changing. And,
even more, you are the relationship between these two poles of the magnet of
life, the magnet of existence. You are the "on" and the "off" rather than just
being the "on" you thought you were. Nothing you can do can make it otherwise.
So ultimately, whether you "become enlightened" or not doesn't matter, because
you are IT no matter what you do. It's like having a dream, and whether or not
the guys chasing you in the dream get you or you get away, it doesn't matter,
because it's only a dream.
The idea is to step out of the dream, to know it's a dream, and then, to
continue to play your part, but to have it be fun because you know it's a dream.
When you do this, you can play with the dream and make it into whatever dream
you want. Or, if you like, let the dream be whatever it is, because you know
nothing can hurt you and that everything is fine, everything is perfect.
The only way you can suffer is to think that the creations of the mind, that
which always changes, is the only reality, that the "on" can somehow exist
without the "off," that the words can somehow exist without the page, that solid
objects can exist without the space between them. The only way you can suffer is
to think that White Must Win.
frank
What Is Reality
Frank,
I hate to say it, but you're like a person who has read a pocketbook about China and thinks he's an expert on the country. You have to go there for a long time in order to truly understand.
You are pulling an unwise.
Become enlightened yourself then talk about these things. Until you do you'll just seem like a fool.
I hate to say it, but you're like a person who has read a pocketbook about China and thinks he's an expert on the country. You have to go there for a long time in order to truly understand.
You are pulling an unwise.
Become enlightened yourself then talk about these things. Until you do you'll just seem like a fool.
- Scott
Frank,
My other trick is telling you how to tread the path:
Sit down in front of a white wall and don't move a muscle besides breathing and swallowing. Stay alert.
When you move at all, you obviously don't follow the rule of "don't move a muscle". When you sleep, you break the rule of "stay alert". When your attention drifts into daydreams you also break the rule. Be there with your body. When thoughts and feelings come, observe them and identify them. If you're feeling like getting up to get a glass of water, recognize that feeling and just observe it. Don't satisfy it. Just hold fast to the rules described before all else.
If you hold to this practice, you'll do well. By just doing it an hour a day you'll learn a lot. I'm not enlightened, and I don't know if an enlightened person would prescribe this practice, but in my opinion it'll at least take you far.
My other trick is telling you how to tread the path:
Sit down in front of a white wall and don't move a muscle besides breathing and swallowing. Stay alert.
When you move at all, you obviously don't follow the rule of "don't move a muscle". When you sleep, you break the rule of "stay alert". When your attention drifts into daydreams you also break the rule. Be there with your body. When thoughts and feelings come, observe them and identify them. If you're feeling like getting up to get a glass of water, recognize that feeling and just observe it. Don't satisfy it. Just hold fast to the rules described before all else.
If you hold to this practice, you'll do well. By just doing it an hour a day you'll learn a lot. I'm not enlightened, and I don't know if an enlightened person would prescribe this practice, but in my opinion it'll at least take you far.
- Scott
OK to Breathe.
OK to Swallow.
Stay Alert.
When "The Ascended" have the need to face (stare) at a white wall, something is awry here...
Whether one is at a beach, in a lion's cage, middle of a busy street, in a Russian gulag, sitting on a cornflake, stretched out in a casket, or somewhere on Mt. Kennedy, Alaska, ... breathing is pretty much a given.
Swallowing? I've gone 14 hours without swallowing ... that is a voluntary response. One must control the eating & drinking aspect of "meditation" (for lack of a more profound word) to control the swallowing thingy.
Stay alert. Yeah right ;)
Tomas (the tank)
VietNam veteran - 1971
OK to Swallow.
Stay Alert.
When "The Ascended" have the need to face (stare) at a white wall, something is awry here...
Whether one is at a beach, in a lion's cage, middle of a busy street, in a Russian gulag, sitting on a cornflake, stretched out in a casket, or somewhere on Mt. Kennedy, Alaska, ... breathing is pretty much a given.
Swallowing? I've gone 14 hours without swallowing ... that is a voluntary response. One must control the eating & drinking aspect of "meditation" (for lack of a more profound word) to control the swallowing thingy.
Stay alert. Yeah right ;)
Tomas (the tank)
VietNam veteran - 1971
You forgot the sitting without moving a muscle part.OK to Breathe.
OK to Swallow.
Stay Alert.
Who is "The Ascended"? There is a reason why you are in front of a white wall...so your stupid mind isn't distracted by useless things. Like the ocean, or a lion, or cars, or a gulag, or a cornflake, or a casket or the Alaskan scenery...so the subsconscious can come to the surface. So you can not be distracted from the pains of your body.When "The Ascended" have the need to face (stare) at a white wall, something is awry here...
Give it a try and see what I mean, instead of just balking.
If you've gone 14 hours without swallowing, meaning you intentionally forced yourself not to swallow, then you must have had some determination. Why would you try to not swallow for that long?Swallowing? I've gone 14 hours without swallowing ... that is a voluntary response. One must control the eating & drinking aspect of "meditation" (for lack of a more profound word) to control the swallowing thingy.
What do you mean by you must control the eating and drinking aspect?
- Scott
