Contradictions...and whispered in the sound of silence(Simon and Garfunkel)

This is a funny thing...people ask me how is possible to ,,jump,, from
one extreme to the other?..How is possible to be something now,then,be
the opposite?
It comes down to whom YOU are,the real you I mean...not the fake
mental-temporal projections of what YOU are.
Not the ,,imagined,, you (for the ego must protect itself,and does it
in myriads way..)
Who are you?
Are you the college student?..the housewife?..the mighty Bill
Gates?..the one who knows?..the one who is single?..the one who is
married?..
What IF..what if ...you ARE not that?..
Once you ARE in the middle,you can become anything,this is the answer.
For you are stuck with the personal subconscious.
And that one is connected with the collective one.
And if you do NOT go back to the SOURCE(real you/spirit) you will
loose your attention.And the others will mold you according to their
image about you,sooner or later.

If I tell you a truth now..this is the greatest.

EVERYBODY you meet..it will try to mold you in their own
image.EVERYBODY you meet ..it will try to protect his self-image(fake
one) and will try EVERYTHING to protect his self-image.
The problem here is not the logical brain,but the subsconscious one.

If one could just ,,detach,, and be the ,,observer,,(spirit within)
One would understand the contradictions.
This is NOT possible without the meditation practice.Simple
impossible.Because one must direct the attention to the spirit
within,and to do that,one must meditate,and be in SILENCE.The sound of
Silence...
Daniel
.......

The Sound Of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again.
Because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping
and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the
sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone
`neath the halo of a street lamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp
when my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
that split the night and touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.
People writing songs that voices never shared, no one dared disturb
the sound of silence.

"Fools," said I, "you do not know, silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach
you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of
silence.

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made
and the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming.
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are written on the subway
walls
and tenement halls and whispered in the sound of silence."

I am saved and You are not

I Am Saved, And You Are Not


All of us share in the same fundamental nature. If we all come from the same original source, how could it be otherwise?

Furthermore, think about it: if everything is made of "Godstuff," nothing can made of more Godstuff than anything else since it is all Godstuff. Get it?

If so then fundamentally we are all liberated, all enlightened, all "saved" by virtue of sharing in that same fundamental substrate, that same fundamental nature, that same Godstuff, that same original being, that same .... whatever you want to call it or whatever religions choose to call it. You don't need to believe in anything or do anything to already be saved or liberated. You just have to REALIZE it. Not mentally realize it, but experientially realize it by experientially realizing that fundamental All-State.

Remember,that fundamental ground state is NOT a samadhi, or skandha experience, or experiential realm or visaya. It is formless, empty, beyond is and is not, being and no-being.

Now, it just so happens that one of the functions issuing from this original nature is consciousness, or awareness. If that wasn't one of its functions, we wouldn't have awareness or consciousness at all.

Why does our original nature possess this ability? It just does, that's just the way it is, so there's no use asking about. In religious striving, you simply try to get to the ultimate source behind awareness, the Ground state of All That Is, the primordial mind ground, the Suchness. You try to get to the ULTIMATE state, not any of the creations, however refined they are, such as the samadhi.

The problem as humans is, due to what we call "Ignorance" or mental clinging, we turn away from realization of our fundamental nature and hold on to things that screen us from our fundamental nature. That's why we are unenlightened. How do you get enlightened? You turn away from clinging to mental images, feelings, forms, sensations, impulses, mental scenarios, gong-fu and all sorts of forms, appearances, things that arise and depart.

None of them are real, but we cling to them in subtle ways which is like coating a film of ignorance over our perceptive capabilities of being fully enlightened. We are fundamentally enlightened but we cover over that fundamental enlightenment with ignorance and cling to what's non-real rather than the REAL fundamental nature. We cling to the realm of illusion or delusion that's always changing and never stays, that's defined by cause and effect ("interdependent origination"). If we let go of clinging to these things, by non-clinging, we can reach a state called emptiness, voidness, non-discriminative thinking, no-thought, selflessness, and so forth

That, fundamentally, is a description of the ontology of the spiritual path and the soteriology of the spiritual path.

So guess what always gives me a chuckle?

I know fundamental Christians who declare that because they believe in Christ, and you don't, they are saved and you are not. In fact, they are the ONLY ones saved. Pity on you! It seems you have to believe something or do something in order to be saved and if you were born thousands of years ago before those things were defined, tough luck.

I meet Jewish people who declare that God created a special Covenant with the Jewish people, and no one else, and therefore they are the elect and saved and no one else is. You have to be born into the Jewish faith to be part of this group, so lucky them and ... because you aren't part of the group, you don't really matter. They matter, you don't. After all, the Covenant is with them ... they are the elect. Ignore all the bad karma of the nation, that's part of the deal.

I meet Moslems who believe that only those who follow Mohammed are saved, whereas ALL others are not. So their job is to convert everyone. If you become Moslem -- if the whole world becomes Moslem -- then their job is done. How that further saves you, I don't know, but that's the goal.

I meet Taoists who believe they have secret methods for spiritual attainment, and you do not, so they are superior to you and will achieve immortality whereas you won't because you don't have those techniques. It doesn't even matter that THEY don't personally succeed with the techniques, but just having them makes them superior.

I know Tibetans who believe they carry the highest and truest cultivation path. In fact, they don't even believe Westerners can achieve samadhi or enlightenment, and even deny teachings to foreigners because non-Tibetans are not qualified for the path. Uh-huh, tell me about it.

I meet Buddhists who believe their own little sect is the right one, and that other Buddhist groups (from Tibet, or Chinese Mahayana, etc.) are not even Buddhist. Strange ideas abound also ... such that just reciting Amitofo's name can get you reborn in Amitofo's Land where you will live forever and never be reborn. When did Buddha ever say you could get rid of reincarnation? He simply said to try to get reborn in other places so you could further your spiritual progress. When you get enlightened you can CONTROL the process of reincarnation and where you will go next and what you will do, but there's no way to escape the Three Realms and no place of permanent rest.

What group did I forget? Oh, what the heck ... there are too many to go into.

These folks, like all the others, just create whatever they want to believe so that THEY ARE SAVED, THEIR GROUP IS SPECIAL AND SAVED and you are not, and THEY personally have very little work to do in terms of the work or practice of spiritual cultivation. Just believe something and you're saved or just become a member of the group-- that's the formula. Just go to church once a a week and you're okay and will be reborn in heaven. Just follow the Commandments or Islamic injunctions and up you'll go to heaven when it's time. No other work to be done.

Forget trying to teach such people. They want it spiritual practice to be easy, they want to be the elect, they want little responsibility, ... and I can't blame them. But it doesn't work that way.

Here's how it works.

We all share in the same fundamental nature. You CAN realize that fundamental nature through spiritual practice. All the spiritual practices rely on the principle letting go of experiential realms so that you are always in seamless tune or union with the fundamental nature. Usually they involve principles of cessation and contemplation as practice vehicles until you make the big breakthrough.

Spiritual practice takes training ... effortless training. Why? Because it's not training in doing something. It's training in LETTING go of the underlying, undercurrent, subtle ever present habit of clinging to mental realms, i.e. fundamental ignorance. That's why we say you cultivate emptiness. That's why the spiritual path is one of "non-effort" but it takes practice to achieve it. Spiritual practice is the practice of breaking habits so you are FREE. Get it? But don't interpret those words too superficially because there's lots of gong-fu involved -- physical transformations, samadhi, spiritual realms, and so on.

Here's what else is important. The path is nondenominational, and there is such a thing as gong-fu, or various ranks of partial realization.

You practice and you CAN achieve spiritual stages and experiences, no matter who you are or what religion you belong to. Sorry about the "saved elect" notions. The spiritual stages of attainment, as explained in my course, can be ranked in terms of gong-fu, skandhas, samadhi, levels of consciousness and so on. Anyone who practices, regardless of religion, can make spiritual progress. Gong-fu is nondenominational. No one is barred from spiritual progress.

So while Roman Catholicism says you can be excommunicated and barred entry into Heaven, and so does Mormonism, and so does etc. etc., is that logical? You decide. Wisdom is YOU figuring it out rather than me saying it for you. Wisdom is YOU figuring out why certain groups say these things and how it helps them.

All these sects would like to think they are unique and particular and different, and in many respects they are, but everyone shares in the fundamental nature, everyone is liberated or saved. So are animals -- so are any beings that have consciousness! You just have to practice to realize your fundamental, inherent enlightenment as the spiritual path. That's what's real. The conventional realm isn't real in the REAL sense. In the conventional sense it's real, but not in the ultimate sense. It's an effervescent, never staying, undependable realm that's defined by interdependence of infinite links between all phenomena. That's cause and effect, or karma.

In terms of the regular world, there's karma and the expression of interdependent origination through society, customs, and family relationships. They exist, but they're not real, but you cannot say they aren't real and ignore them because them karma will come up and bite you. So they are neither real nor non-real, get it? You act that way in accordance with societal rules, but you continue cultivating to realize your original nature. THE original nature.

So the spiritual practices you choose to follow as your spiritual path and doing them correctly and making progress with them -- along with proper conduct in the material realm of society with karmic entanglements -- are ALL the spiritual path. You have to honor both, recognize both, master both or you're one-sided, or lop-sided.

Get it?

Next time you hear someone say they are saved and you are not, just chuckle. That pencil in front of you has the same amount of Godstuff as you and your thoughts. That's why saints, adepts, masters, etc. say there is no such thing as a being. It's all one. Read the Diamond Sutra and maybe you'll realize what I just wrote, for I'm only seeding the thoughts to get you started.

Moral or conclusion?

It still all comes down to the personal responsibility and the discipline of personal spiritual practice to realize your Buddha nature. It also comes down to honoring/satisfying/corresponding to societal engagements, purifying your conduct and behavior, creating merit and cultivating virtue in the realm of karmic, interdependent origination that though non-real, still functions.

That's the Middle Path. I hope you realize it. Just focus on one side and you neglect the other. Complete enlightenment, perfect enlightenment is to realize your original nature and vow continue working in the realm of samsara, as unreal as it ULTIMATELY is, to help the beings there get rid of suffering and realize the Tao, even though they don't ultimately exist and are thereby ultimately saved.

That's the real path of spiritual practice. That's what I call pure cultivation. Now you know it, and hopefully have a little clarity on the issue.

Nice Poem..from Richard Rose

This poem is from a ZEN Master..his name was Richard Rose..too bad he died insane..loosing his mind from too much thinking ..since EVEN though there is POWER in the mind..forget it..he lived his last 12 years as a numb-nuts ..since he lost all his memory ..and he just survived,like an asshole should,indeed..

Very funny that he knew the mind essence ..as it shows in this poem..
But dying insane ..for me means he missed something..the good death....but of course he never really meditated..he thought he got the GOD by it's balls..but he understood this secret of magik ..anyway..
Kiss to him for the poem

love,danny(I've had some online interactions with his ,,disciples,,..he had NO method..yet they believe they got what he meant...is really ridiculous ..really....I just hope all end like him..lots of numbnuts..loosing their minds...so..in the tweeny town)(remember..you know a PERSON how he dies..not how he lives..for in that moment all your egos are taken away...like this fruitcake who gave no method,yet they worship him...ZEN master my ass..Zen Masters die sitting..not insane like Richard Rose..trust me...and the fact that he discovered the betweenes..didn't help him much when he died..did it?..
I also went poof into the light..do you see me bragging about it?
Hell no..
All he did in his life talk about how when his TRAUMA forced him into the absolute.
What was his trauma?..his lesbian girlfriend he was about to marry..
That was his TRAUMA..and he set in meditation AT last ..and knew the truth.
Looks like in his system we all males need to find a lesbian wife to get there..
Give me a break...morons....said the mahayogi...for I can explain his ,,betweenes,, on the spot..but not now..I'll explain later..now I'm eating a cheese hotdog..is better for me,than the lesbian solution of Richard Rose.
)
TWEENY TOWN
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
there lived a boy and maid.
And they went up and they went down,
but all their children stayed.
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
the two were free of sorrow.
For they delayed the ups and downs,
and looked for them tomorrow.
In Tweeny Town, in Tweeny Town
there were no rich or tragic,
Nor age or youth nor chain nor crown -
For between-ness was their magic.

Man is complex. The Truth is simple

Richard Rose was a ZEN Master..This means the right-path buddhist style using the MIND as the Path.
..............................
Man is complex. The Truth is simple. The path to the Truth needs to be complex only in coping with complex interference by man's mind. As that interference is removed, the path becomes proportionately more simple.
The questions that you must ask yourself naturally begin with a question as to whether you actually want to approach reality. The next question would ask yourself if you are going to postulate reality before discovering it. Are you aware that there is relative reality, which is the god of conventionality, and then there is reality, not yet attained fully, but which is understood to be ultimate or absolute reality.
Another question to ask yourself deals with the amount of time you can or are willing to spend in search of that Reality. Results are proportional to energy applied. Can you afford to waste twenty years of your life, probing and believing a system, only to find that it is incomplete, spurious or of an anodyne nature? That you lose your money in the process is not near as important as the time that is lost, because the older you get the more intractable and calcified the mental abilities become.
We should give some attention to the observations of life in relation to life's termination. Is memory synaptic or molecular, and not a spirit-attribute? If the former is true, what type of post-mortem survival can we expect? Is there any real immortality without the memory of previous or earthly actions and personality? Recent experiments with planaria, and with observations of the DNA molecule, lead us to believe that memory is physical.
It seems that if this is true, there are only two windows open by which we can hope to see immortality. One would be a system of spiritualizing physical memory, or of adjusting to a life after death that would be one of awareness only, or possibly of particularizing that awareness down to mundane and personality-memories.
Observing and tentatively accepting these ideas for the sake of planning future spiritual endeavors, we can see that wisdom, if it is at best only synaptic, cortical or molecular, ---will do us no good in any future life. So that many old systems of development aimed at the relative mind, and now meet with little response from the public that is more aware. And it does not matter if those systems were involved in magic, symbolic study, ritual, prayers, or in some arcane system of concentration. All is lost when the brain rots, or when the memory-bearing chromosome decays and allows the DNA molecule to disperse and deteriorate.
Man must first know that part of him which really IS, before he begins the cultivation of faculties. First know thyself. And this also implies that you must first become. The Albigen Papers include a system that tells you how to become.
They do not pretend to offer any somatic advantages or improvement of physical faculties, nor do they pretend to be a spiritual placebo, nor to improve your business, nor to flatter your estimates, nor to lengthen your life, --but they do hope to use some of that brief span of time to its best advantage in finding self-definition and essence-realization.

Richard Rose

Osho: The Rebellious Spirit?..Interesting

Up to now this is how man has lived: your yesterdays prepare you for your tomorrows. The very preparation becomes a hindrance. You cannot breathe freely, you cannot love freely, you cannot dance freely -- the past has crippled you in every possible way. The burden of the past is so heavy that everybody is crushed under it.

The rebel simply says goodbye to the past.

It is a constant process; hence, to be a rebel means to be continuously in rebellion -- because each moment is going to become past; every day is going to become past. It is not that the past is already in the graveyard -- you are moving through it every moment. Hence, the rebel has to learn a new art: the art of dying to each moment that has passed, so that he can live freely in the new moment that has come.

A rebel is a continuous process of rebellion; he is not static. And that is where I make a distinction between the revolutionary and the rebel.

The revolutionary is nothing but a reactionary.

He may be against a certain society, but he is always for another society. He may be against one culture, but he is immediately ready for another culture. He only goes on moving from one prison into another prison -- from Christianity to communism; from one religion to another religion -- from Hinduism to Christianity. He changes his prisons.

The rebel simply moves out of the past and never allows the past to dominate him. It is a constant, continuous process. The whole life of the rebel is a fire that burns. To the very last breath he is fresh, he is young. He will not respond to any situation according to his past experience; he will respond to every situation according to his present consciousness.

To be a rebel, to me, is the only way to be religious, and the so-called religions are not religions at all. They have destroyed humanity completely, enslaved human beings, chained their souls; so on the surface it seems that you are free, but deep inside you, religions have created a certain conscience which goes on dominating you. A rebel is one who throws away the whole past because he wants to live his own life according to his own longings, according to his own nature -- not according to some Gautam Buddha, or according to some Jesus Christ, or Moses.

The rebel is the only hope for the future of humanity.

The rebel will destroy all religions, all nations, all races -- because they are all rotten, past, hindering the progress of human evolution.

They are not allowing anybody to come to his full flowering: they don't want human beings on the earth -- they want sheep.

A rebel respects you, respects life, has a deep reverence for everything that grows, thrives, breathes. He does not put himself above you, holier than you, higher than you; he is just one amongst you. Only one thing he can claim: that he is more courageous than you are. He cannot save you -- only your courage can save you. He cannot lead you -- only your own guts can lead you to the fulfillment of your life.

Rebellion is a style of life. To me, it is the only religion which is authentic. Because if you live according to your own light you may go astray many times, and you may fall many times; but each fall, each going astray will make you wiser, more intelligent, more understanding, more human. There is no other way of learning than by making mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake again.

There is no God, except your own consciousness.

There is no need for any pope, or for Ayatollah Khomeini, or for any shankaracharya, to be mediators between you and God. These are the greatest criminals in the world, because they are exploiting your helplessness.

All the priests are pretending that they are mediators between you and the ultimate source of life. They know nothing of the ultimate source of life. Only you are capable of knowing your source of life. But your source of life is also the ultimate source of life -- because we are not separate. No man is an island; we are a vast continent underneath. Perhaps on the surface you look like an island -- and there are many islands -- but deep down in the ocean, you meet. You are part of one earth, one continent. The same is true about consciousness.

But one has to be free from churches, from temples, from mosques, from synagogues. One has to be just oneself, and take the challenge of life wherever it leads. You are the only guide.
You are your own master.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/writer273rus

From: "writer273rus"
Date: Thu Nov 3, 2005 8:53 am
Subject: a poem writer273rus
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i'm not guilty for having no verdicts
for my discourses rivers flowing upwards
for temples and libraries were made of cards
suddenly burst into laughing at once
i'm not guilty, not afraid anymore
for lie does not trouble my soul as before
for i'm no longer ironic to Love
so It breaking down, It blowing up
whatever - i used to believe – is decent
whatever – i thought – is my realization
whatever i reckon as exactly myself
no comment – just ego annihilation

Vladimir

The Paradox of Change

The Paradox of Change
by Bob Fergeson

"And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." - Luke 11:9

Both Jesus and St. Nicholas had one important thing in common: they were men of action, and taught through example. The theory came later, from those who recorded their lives and words. Neither of these men taught that we should wait around for them to save us, or that the inner kingdom was only entered by first gaining permission from paid priests and preachers. They taught that we must change first, in a fundamental inner way, and then the doors could be seen, knocked upon, and entered.

St. NicholasThe primary change that must precede any exterior change, is that of value or aim. Another way to put this is that what we love must change in order for our life to gain new direction. This inner or spiritual change comes first, an inner realization perhaps that things are not as they seem, and that if we are to find something permanent and unchanging, we can no longer put our faith in the ceaselessly changing outer world, a world of flux we now know cannot be depended on. This inner change causes or precedes the outer or psychological change. And from there, our actions too, may change.

A strange belief seen in some who profess to desire the truth is one that no effort or change is necessary, but that all one must do is wait, or believe, and that some force will do the work or changing for us. We should just sit, and perhaps talk high words of exalted states of complication or simplicity, and we will be enlightened or saved simply because we already are and just don't know it, or because our unconscious belief in our innate superiority will cause the gods and teachers to save us from the perils of life with no effort of our own. This is all nothing more than a rationalization for our own pride and laziness, or else fear of action and its consequences. While there is truth in the effortlessness of essence, and that the ego cannot create heaven in its own image, no matter the effort, this is only known after the fact, not before.

Waiting for inner change to occur without effort is actually the worshipping of our current psychological state. We do not wish for real change but for all resistance to our self-centered will to be removed, so that our self-survival mechanism can render us omnipotent and eternal. This is ego worship, nothing more. The willingness to change, in a real and drastic sense, is shown first by a willingness to accept the truth of ourselves as we are, regardless, and then by a willingness to work on changing our current psychological state. This shows the powers that be we are not afraid of mental change or emotional pain, and do not place our identification with our accidental state of being above fact of Truth, and our petty wants and worldly needs above love for Truth. We show we are willing to let go of our identification with our reaction-pattern, our "self," and face the unknown, knowing intuitively that the Kingdom is within.

This initial change of heart and mind, the change in our direction or aim, comes to each of us in our own manner. Some may find it through mental inquiry into their present state. Others may find it through an intuitive feeling, while still others come to it by the trauma of drastic events. Some may find it through contact with a teacher or friends. Whatever the path we take to this moment, and whether we are even aware of it at the time, the inner change is primary and causal. It works its way outward and affects our lives, whether we like it or not. We will eventually look back with understanding, perhaps, but always with gratitude and praise. If this has not happened to you, but you know for sure that your life can't be as good as it gets, then begin the effort: ask, knock, and seek, with all your heart and mind, and surely you will find.

Defining the Truth

Mr. Richard Rose had a unique presentation, unencumbered by pomp, pretense, or pseudo-logic. He spoke directly to the hearts and minds of his listeners, mixing penetrating insight with an all-encompassing humor that often stunned his audience, while simultaneously altering their view of the world. Many people came away from his talks with the distinct impression that, somehow, he was directly addressing their personal problems and inner states.

Defining the Truth

Most serious-minded people talk about the "Truth." But they take it for granted. They never get down to setting up measurements by which to gauge the Truth so that they will realize it when they hear it. They presume to be able to recognize it, and some go as far as to presume to be the fortunate possessors of it.
The Truth is a path more than a realization of measurability. The scientist feels that he is a pursuer of Truth, but the products of the scientific laboratory are more likely to be cannons and culture rather than inklings of the first cause or man's picture of ultimate destiny. And the same scientist who may be trying to crack the atom or split a chromosome, may privately have massive rationalizations about religion, personal definition, or personal destiny. So that he is a mechanical seeker, but not an entire and dynamic seeker,--even though he functions mechanically in his scientific quest much more valuably than most of humanity.
Truth is a path because it is never fully realized, and because many aspects of the search for Truth remain relative. Man is a being whose consciousness depends upon fickle senses and a mind largely capable of witnessing in a relative manner, and largely incapable of direct knowledge.
Truth may well be absolute in nature, but to bicameral man with the necessary bi-polar survey of all things,--a definition of absolute or abstract things or states may be readily seized and accepted in relative form, that is, with relative and possibly equivocal words.
Every last one of us thinks we are right. Which means that we think we have the Truth or that if we do not have it, no one else will do any better. But everyone has a different definition of it. And with this different definition upon the minds of men, we have a subtle, unseen Tower of Babel which stands between the minds of men so that they cannot strive together. There is much talk of the brotherhood of seekers for Truth, but this brotherhood is split up into myriad groups with no common language or understanding. And all of this is because they presupposed, a priori, that which they expected Truth to be, and so defined it, rather than sought it for whatever it might be when found.
The Bible indicates that we should seek if we wish to find. Yet with equal authority Christ exhorts us to believe in Him if we wish to be saved. Now finding the Truth and being saved may be two entirely different projects, but believing is not compatible with seeking. The believer does not seek; he accepts that which another extends.
And with this bit of ambiguity the Christian world, for one, is hampered in honestly seeking for Truth. Lazily each sect rests upon a belief rather than upon a conviction. They comfort one another with the mutual back-scratching, and make decrees to the effect that other religions are worthy seekers also, but perhaps less fortunate. They comfort their congregation and financial supporter by telling them that man was never supposed to learn the True nature of things, and dumbfound the mind with the cliche that the finite mind will never perceive the infinite.
It cannot be that terrible. Absolute Truth is not absolutely inaccessible to us, and relative truth is definitely accessible. We must desire the Truth, and have a capacity for it else we could not receive it even if it came to us by accident.
We cannot shut our mind to any phase of reality, and still have a capacity for Truth in another field. For if we rationalize about one thing, then rationalization may well be a mental habit cooperating with our laziness or desire-thinking, and we are liable to rationalize about vital things. We cannot lie to ourselves in little things, or what we consider little things, and still be competent to receive knowledge of that which we admit to be more vital or more important.
The divergences of beliefs among men, whether these beliefs be religious, philosophic, or political, are not an indication of the infallibility of the masses nor of justification for the idea that everyone is correct to a degree. We like to think that the divergent observer is just looking at Truth from another or oblique angle. And rather than solve the problem, the divergent parties democratically vote everyone to be correct.
These procedures make for compatibility and social harmony, but they put the mind to sleep. We are either right or wrong. And if we are honest with ourselves and true to ourselves we do not wish to wait for twenty years to outgrow a religion. It is our sacred right as profaned animals to understand our state. It is our sacred right to doubt and to question. It must remain our valued trust,--that we trust no authority. We must listen and sit down with an occasional book, but any acceptance should be tentative until we have a complete picture.
When I say that we are either right or wrong, I am speaking of relative truth-seeking. In the absolute state, things may well be neither right or wrong, or both. And while we aspire to an absolute state, and to absolute Truth, it remains doubtful if we will ever attain the absolute Truth if we compromise relative truth, or shut our eyes to reality.
Let us not pretend to be seekers while we remain addicted to vanity or enslaved to conventions. Likewise we are living a lie when we dedicate years or decades to the pursuit of pleasure or ambition, when in the honest analysis, we can find no valid gain for our search. And when we are guided by fear or emotion to accept a creed, we have neither a chance for truth nor an honest self-identification.
Many people have found reality for the first time in the depths of alcoholism, or drug addiction, or rather, have found reality after passing through the depths. They managed to become alcoholics because alcohol alone, or drugs alone, made it possible for them to live with massive rationalizations in the form of religion or social mores, from which their inner intuition rebelled.
We live in a cloud of illusions. We cling to them, legislate them in our councils, create and deify them in our religious dogma, breed them into our children, and rarely realize that we are spinning this web of fiction for all the hours and days of our lives unless we are fortunate or unfortunate enough to die slowly. I was shocked the first time I heard a priest at a funeral pray that all of those present might be granted a slow death. For a moment I thought him a barbarian carrying to the extreme his cult of masochism. But perhaps that slow death may be the only moments of reality for the total life of many earthlings. Because a dying man is forced to face the fact that he is about to become zero, and the pseudo-comforts that promised glorious lights, trumpets and escorting angels, now have no meaning. All that the dying man knows is that he is about to begin to rot. Nothingness has more meaning to him, and embodies his world of reality more than all of the religions and cliches of a human-animal philosophy eternally cursed and confounded by language and its deceptions.
This dying man knows too late the value of the doubt, and the foolishness of faith unless that faith be in his own power to solve the problem or cut the Gordian knot. Blind faith is only rationalization. It is the little pig that does not wish to grow up, and procrastinates weaning. It is the weakling-child that replaces sturdy effort with boasting and lies of pretended achievement. The most fanatical and dangerous (that is recriminatory) type of religious zealot is the one that would make a political cause out of his favorite religion, rather than go through the effort to make his life a true religion of Search.
There is but one Truth. To equivocate for the sake of social compatibility is to sell our spiritual nature for cowardly bargaining with the herd, when the bargaining is not necessary. For ages the wise men have served notice that we must remain inconspicuous, and this silence will help avert the teeth of the herd. But unless someone occasionally speaks up, the sincere will have no encouragement.
We might ask here, "How shall we know the Truth? What is Reality?" We can only know the Truth by teaching ourselves to face the truth in all things. If we encourage our computer to come up with erroneous answers, because they are more desirable, then we are developing a computer that we may never be able to trust.
Let us take examples in social experience. Many of us, and many people we know employ incomplete formulae to govern their lives. After decades of misery they realize that they were lying to themselves. The decades would usually be prolonged but the person's friends become alienated, or they continue until some disastrous climax brings the truth into focus. This distress is usually caused by inadequate or incomplete assessment of the general picture of life.
We have the young bully who thinks that he is invincible. Repeated conquests have led him to believe that kindness is a sign of weakness. He may even believe that he is a gigantic avatar sent by the gods to boot the peasants of the earth into line. He does not bother to find out what line the gods want him to follow, for in reality it is his line.
The bully will eventually be rebuffed. Someone will change his philosophy with the same convincing force he meted out to others. His sadism will become inverted and he will see that he did not even have half of the picture of his destiny. But he may have rationalized half or three-fourths of his life away trying to be a bully before he relents and admits that he has little sure destiny except the all-conquering grave. And by the time he relents and realizes, it is too late for his brutalized brain to ponder anything beyond the grave.
Everyday we meet people who admit that they have been fooling themselves for years. They are generally up in years, and will be found more frequently in ale-houses than in churches. Instead of group-therapy, the churches specialize in mass-make-believe.
It is difficult to prescribe a conduct of Seekers of Truth. But Truth is that which is. A person who dyes his hair or wears a wig is not truthful. A person who wears clothes other than to cover himself is not truthful. A person who uses cosmetics except for comedy, is not truthful. The naked body with its tell-tale wrinkles, its sagging folds of fat, bowed legs, and collapsing organs, may be much more conducive to Truth than years of church-attendance, if we just observe in it our unglamorous destiny.
I am not advocating nudity since nudity may well be a rationalization or excuse to emphasize the urges of the body. Yet it is hard to tell which would do the worse for our salvation (enlightenment),--a parade of undyed nudes or a parade of vain clothes-horses on Easter Sunday.
Much of our religion is vanity. We clothe ourselves in it and strut about as if to mock the feathers of our neighbors. Too many of us think that we have chosen the true religion by virtue of our better intellect. We even manage to glorify ourselves by manifesting compassion for those who are less concerned with such toys as missionary work and conversion. We will carry a badge to show our superior position. The badge will be a quotation from the Bible, a talisman, a secret word, water on the head, or a missing foreskin.
What do we know for sure? We know very little. We find ourselves to be a rotting body, with thoughts and hope for something more permanent. Yet like children, we deck the body with importance, even as we vainly embalm the corpse to delay the truth. I am reminded of the case of the Narcissist, a woman who always wished to be a nun. She maintained that she was living for God, and that she was remaining pure for Him. In reality she was remaining pure because she abhorred change and aging. But her grand rationalization carried right through until her death. She refused a doctor out of modesty, and the result was a slow death. This woman never seemed to contemplate that God might have intended for her to reproduce. We evince the most blatant egotism when we announce that we are doing something for God. We who are not able to identify ourselves are about to oil the eternal mechanisms.
Let us look at this woman with candor. Let us just see that which she is. We will not presuppose that God created her, or that God is even around or concerned. This we do not know. But we know that she has been born with female organs, and feminine instincts to promote her female functioning. The prompting of those instincts, and the uncontrollable cycles imposed upon her by nature have become evil things or sins. She feels responsible for the hormones that might find their way into her blood, or the consequent thoughts that might find their way into her thinking. She lives a life of self-recrimination and confession in never-ending apology for having a body that she did not ask for, and which may have been created by agencies who are more responsible for it than the sufferer.
Again we do not denounce this unfortunate lady. Her tactic was her only means available to seek a better existence. She saw only a facet of the picture, and thought she had found the only door in the universe. She was a seeker in her own way, and her death-ordeal testifies to her intensity. But we cannot help but feel that her dynamic energy was wasted somewhat, and that the waste lies at the feet of the priest-union that preferred to let her make a life of sincere effort and tangential uselessness, out of what may have been a more articulate and understanding seeker. The priest-union preferred this to making an admission concerning the relative importance of moral teachings.
The purpose of this example is to show that it is possible for persons to follow a diligent tack all through life, which tack is absurd to minds of most other observers. It is possible that similar zealots find themselves on these life-long tangential paths because somewhere early in their lives they formed a fabric of rationalization rather than face reality.
That which is believed by the majority of humanity is not necessarily the truth. This is a common error, man makes. Man thinks that if everyone or the majority of people believe a thing, that popularity makes it the truth. At one time the universal concept was that the sun revolved about the earth. At one time the thinking or scientific world had a "phlogiston" theory which was later dissipated.
Faith can change material things to a limited degree only. It did not render the earth flat nor did it arrest the cycles of the sun. If the sun danced at Fatima it would have involved motions for that star which would not only have been noticeable elsewhere, but would have required that the sun travel at fantastic speeds out of its regular position. So that while millions of people may believe that the sun danced at Fatima, it is equally valid to offer or to believe that the minds of the viewers were simultaneously hallucinated, or hypnotized. I do not mean to imply that the hypnosis was caused by human agency, necessarily. Religious leaders when weary of their theological diggings, resort to edict and dogma. The scientific world, while more laborious, is prone to lean heavily upon its "concepts" and "theories," and much of the engineering in new fields treats these theories as fact by virtue of habit.
Again let us return to the observation of the two apparent types of truth. There is actually only one real Truth, but too soon we must admit that real Truth is absolute and ideal in nature. We are apt to coin another word, "relative truth," for want of a better word to express our attempts to calibrate validity with a relative and restricted mind. It is better to understand that while searching for the Truth we will believe things that we will later no longer believe to be the truth, and this previous state of appreciation I would prefer to call incomplete truth, leading perhaps eventually to absolute Truth.
The human family is constantly finding things to be more true or less true. It is finding more perfect material formulae, and is discarding inetticient or erroneous formulae. If it can apply this weeding-out process to the vast tangle of metaphysical and religious formulae, it will begin to make progress.
The human family has been in the past in the habit of accepting ideas or spiritual concepts without even a half-hearted attempt to set up a formula. We know nothing of life after death, of the nature of our own essence, or of the motivating agencies of the visible or invisible worlds. The human family for centuries has just accepted that which sounded good or quieted their fears and made the children more tractable.
Our civilization has come to a point where we know about quality and demand that our food contain certain qualities, and that those who handle it do so with clean hands. But that admittedly most valuable tbod which is spiritual, too often comes from mountebanks, misfits, and often degenerates who know that their pretense may never be challenged, or their venality exposed. Modern society accepts religions that render compatibility, that keep down crime, and that work in harmony with the state.
We are allowing ourselves to be tortured by our clergy, even as the witch-doctor applied the needle of fear to keep his sinecure, in primitive cultures. The clergy maintained darkness for centuries with their "Anti-modernistic Oaths," or equivalents of such. They were not concerned with the laity, who over those centuries were reacting with.more mature common-sense. While unable to deny that their function was that of a hammer, they maintained that God was the hand that swung the hammer. Generally if the peasant questioned the identity of the swinger of the hammer, he received a blow from the hammer.
A new trend now is growing. The men of science and the beatniks who proclaim their own common sense, have united to admit that God is dead. The new trend has no more validity than the old one. Yet, we may take a note. If the existence of God in the minds of men may be maintained by faith or belief, then denial or belief of non-existence may bring an end to God ,--if God has no more existence than in the minds of men. We must seek for that which is, and we will find that such facts are indestructible and not dependent on belief or human acceptance.
There is but one way to begin and promote such a search. It is the sorting of the most likely answer from the oceanic froth of data. It requires courage, diligence, perseverance and an open mind.