[transcription of a recording called voice002, 3897216 bytes. date unknown]
I want to talk about the nature of reality and our place in it.
Its a difficult question because its ultimately unresolvable.
Its very difficult for a thing to contemplate itself.
We are part of reality.
We can’t get outside of it.
We can’t operate on it.
We are in it.
And in a way its both the most important question, and an unimportant question.
That’s the real essence of what I want to talk about:
things can both be and not be
things are beyond pairs of opposites
ultimate reality lies beyond even concepts.
And there’s an ineffable quality
That we all experience
About which its impossible to talk
And its this that’s at the root of all religions and philosophies —
This parsing out of the experience,
That the immediate experience of the world…
People have struggled through the ages to try to resolve their perception of the world around them with their inner sense of a different experience of the world, … of some other world.
And this conflict is the essential human condition.
How we come to survive whatever level of
Resolution we come to between these different experiences
Defines who we are — who we think we are and who we actually are.
Now if you break things into pairs of opposites,
You naturally try to talk about the inner and the outer as being separate and distinct.
Right?
But the truth is always that pairs of opposites are aspects of some other thing that we might not have direct experience with.
I’ll show you what I mean:
We have day and night, right?
But the sun is always shining as far as we know, at least for the next couple of billion years.
So the day and night are our perceptions of the sun’s continuous shining limited by our position on the surface of the planet with respect to the constancy of the sun.
In the same way, our interior experience and our exterior experience are different manifestations of a more universal reality.
This is a very important concept.
Again, any time I give it a name, I part it, I take something and put it apart from other things that have different names or no names.
And that’s what makes it impossible to talk about.
Lao Tzu says, “the Tao which can be spoken of is not the universal Tao.”
This is because speech breaks things down into first of all a linear pattern of thought, and individual concepts forming the words of the sentence.
And as soon as you do that you move away from the universality of the Tao.
So in a way its futile to even try to talk about this thing that I’m trying to talk about or at least refer to.
And this dilemma has preoccupied Buddhist monks and Eastern philosophers for millennia.
The way they try to teach it is usually experientially.
They can’t actually teach you, but they can set up an environment appropriate to your state of being, that will help induce the realization within you.
Its very inefficient and time consuming.
Its also indefinite.
You can’t really tell whether someone’s got it or not.
They say you can tell, but you can’t really.
Its like that Steven Wright joke, “everything in my apartment has been replaced by an exact replica.”
Its a question if something is an exact replica of something else can you tell them apart?
Well, if its a perfect enough replica…
Its not like enlightened people have little radar that they can find each other out.
Sometimes you can kind of tell based on a person’s comfortableness within the world I guess,
Or you know, constant comfort and discomfort, feeling everything at the same time.
Its very confusing.
Because on the one hand, you have this realization of universality.
The everything,
The everything, the everywhere, the every-when.
And beyond.
Beyond even our concept of dimension.
Not higher dimensions, no dimension, all dimensions, beyond dimensionality.
and I ..or you know its really just a perception of it.
In the sense of like a cave man looking at the sun: “Ugh. Sun.”
It’s there. There’s something up there…out there..
without understanding what it is.
We don’t understand what it is. Its a — we really have no idea what’s going on — kind of thing.
We pretend that we do, [because] you know “smart” people have convinced us they know what’s going on.
That doesn’t mean we do.
That doesn’t even mean they do.
You know, in some sense they might know more than us.
You know, one individual knows more than another individual.
[its just that they claim they do and we trust them.]
[maybe they do and maybe they don’t]
But you know, were all just worms crawling around on this apple.
Human beings are so arrogant!
Of course, you know, look around yourself.
And as far as we can tell, we’re the smartest thing in the universe, … really.
I mean, this planet, any other planet, any other time — to the extent that we know.
Which is exactly my point — the extent that we know is not very much.
We think we know more than we do.
[I guess its a question of in the absence of evidence to the contrary, do you just assume nothing, or do you keep an open mind, or do you populate the inky blackness with creatures of your imaginings?]
And on this planet?
Well maybe, I don’t know.
Yeah, probably.
But there’s other species, I mean elephants and whales,
I mean, that appear to be smarter than we ever thought they were
[especially when we were busy harvesting them]
[not to mention chimpanzees and apes and so on]
Who the hell knows?
Maybe its staring us right in the face
Maybe rocks are intelligent in a way we’re so dumb we cant even comprehend.
Who the hell knows?
[or some kind of energy being yet to be discovered living on the surface of the sun, or whatever…]
So there’s another aspect of religion, or mysticism, or whatever you want to call it — is its a way to protect ourselves.
Its a… the world is a terrifying place, filled with vast sorts of dangers
In ancient times, you could imagine a primitive man in the wilderness,
Wild beasts ready to tear him limb from limb at the slightest opportunity.
Everything’s hungry.
Everything’s eating on you —
Bugs,
Diseases,
Microscopic things, you don’t even have a concept of,
That will make you sick,
Affect you in different ways,
And kill you.
[…]
And so we put up these structures of thought,
I wont call them “myths” necessarily, or fables,
Because many of the things we think of as myths today
Were conceived of differently in their time and their cultural context.
And my observation any way is that there is some form of truth at the bottom of practically every one.
Everything, all the time.
Both true and false.
And neither.
That’s what I’m talking about.
And so similarly to the primitive wilderness, the perception of infinite universality is terrifying.
It gives you vertigo,
If it doesn’t drive you mad.
And like the sun you can’t stare at it for too long.
We’re not built for it.
And this is something that you find in the ancient writings, like for example in the old testament that we lack today.
If God showed himself to Moses or Elija
Remember these were the leaders of their time, very important men.
They fell to their knees, quaking in terror.
Our modern conception is that if God came,
We’d have some serious questions for Him.
..you know the arrogance of modern man..
We’d want to understand and analyze.
But part of that is the whole concept of Judeo-Christianity or Islam is monarchical, right?
Its the social organization that they knew at the time.
You had a king.
He had total power.
And a person came with the appropriate reverence, or else.
And God is the king of the world, so there you have it.
And there’s a truth to that.
There’s an appropriate reverence for the infinite,
That we should have,
And very often we lack.
Its this kind of arrogance that I despise in atheists or even let’s say the “secular agnostic,”
Who has some concept of spirituality and at least is you know, give him credit at least he’s honest enough to say “I don’t know.”
Our modern conception is the world just doesn’t care. If you want answers, don’t ask to be told, just seek them out yourself. In a way its harder and even more lonely and frightening.
But the flip side of that is that very often we see a lack of fear and reverent respect.
And when you think about pollution and global warming, or the nuclear bomb or biological weapons, its not hard to imagine that we will someday pay a terrible price for that arrogance.
…
that’s enough for now.
…