The Veil Of Thoughts

It's curious how, past the middle of the 20th century, there's a very strong evidence of a revival in Western philosophy

of what used to be called idealism, not in the moral sense but in the metaphysical sense.

That is to say, of the feeling that the external world is in some way a creation of the mind.

Only we come to this point of view with very different assumptions than were held by people like Hegel or Berkeley or Bradley,

great idealists of the European metaphysical tradition, and probably rather more akin to similar trends in Buddhist philosophy

emerging from India about 400 A.D. The difference of approach, the difference of the way in which today this thing arises

and the way in which it arose in the thought of a man like Bishop Berkeley, is that the new idealism has a kind of curiously physical basis.

When, one would argue, everything you know is in your mind, and the distance, the feeling of externality between you and other objects and people

is also a content of consciousness, and therefore it's all your consciousness, this of course created all sorts of weird feelings.

Are things there when I'm not witnessing them, or is there anybody else there, or are you all my personal dream?

And one has only to imagine a conference of such people, of solipsists, those who believe that they alone exist,

arguing as to which one of them is really there, to make the whole idea rather laughable.

And furthermore, there seemed to be no clarity in such philosophical thinking as to what the term mind or consciousness meant.

And it had long associations with the miasmic and the gaseous, by way of images.

Mind and soul and spirit were always vague and formless, and matter, by contrast, was very rugged, craggly.

And how these two ever influenced each other, nobody ever could decide.

Because all properly behaved ghosts walk straight through brick walls without disturbing either the bricks or the ghost.

And so how can a mind incarnate in a material body move that body in any way?

This was always a puzzle.

So people began to think that the differentiation between mind and matter was of no use.

Because actually what happens in making such a differentiation is that you impoverish both sides of it.

When you try to think of matter as mindless, or mind as immaterial, you get a kind of a mess on both sides.

It's the same way when you get a mystic who's not a bit of a sensualist.

And a sensualist is no wit of a mystic.

Such a sensualist is boring.

Such a mystic is a fanatic.

It's too spiritual.

It's the same when we divide the medical profession from the priesthood.

Both are losers.

Not just because they lose their so-called opposite half.

But the problem is when you separate a doctor from a priest, you do more than create a specialization out of what was originally one field.

You create two specializations.

Because a priest-physician is more than a priest plus a physician.

By having, as it were, the binocular vision from medicine and from religion.

He just doesn't see two added areas.

He sees the area in three dimensions.

By, as a result of this combination.

Well, in a similar way, when we have the concepts of mind and matter working separately, both are impoverished.

Mind becomes vague kind of gas, psychic gas.

And matter becomes mere stuff.

But, you see, what has enabled us to make a transition is, first of all, above all, I would say, two sciences.

Biology and neurology.

Because through biology and, to some extent, physics, the method of physics has shown us.

That the idea that man can be an objective observer of an external world, that is not himself, so that, as it were, he can stand back from it and look at it and say, what is out there?

We see that this cannot be done.

We can approximately do it.

But we cannot really and fully do it.

For the simple, for two reasons.

One, the most important reason, is that the biologist will show us very clearly.

Secondly, there is no way of definitively separating a human organism from its external environment.

The two are a single field of behavior.

And then, furthermore, to observe something, either simply by looking at it, or, more so, by making experiments, by doing science on it.

You alter what you're looking at.

You cannot carry out an observation without, in some way, interfering with what you observe.

It is this that we try, when we're watching, say, the habits of birds, to be sure that the birds don't notice us that we're watching.

To watch something, it must not know you're looking.

And, of course, what you ultimately want to do is to be able to watch yourself without knowing that you're looking.

Then you can really catch yourself, not on your best behavior, and see yourself as you really are.

But this can never be done.

And, likewise, the physicist cannot simultaneously establish the position and the velocity of very minute particles or wavicles.

And it's in part because the experiment of observing nuclear behavior alters and affects what you're looking at.

This is one side of it, the inseparability of man and his world, which deflates the myth of the objective observer, standing aside and observing a world that is merely mechanical, a thing that operates like a machine out there.

The second is from the science of neurology, where we understand so clearly now, that the kind of world we see is relative to the structure of the sense organ.

That, in other words, what used to be called the qualities of the external world.

Its qualities of weight or color, texture and so on, are possessed by it only in relation to a perceiving organism.

The very structure of our optical system confers light and color upon outside energy.

And in this sense then, especially if you want to read a very easily digestible account of this thing, you get the book by J. Z. Young called Doubt and Certainty in Science.

But you see here, from a new basis altogether, we have a new answer to the old riddle.

If a tree falls in the forest when nobody is listening, does it make a noise?

The answer, in terms of modern science, is perfectly clear.

That the falling tree creates vibrations in the air, and these become noise if and only if they relate to an eardrum and to an auditory nervous system.

Just as in ordinary drums, however hard you hit, the drum will make no sound if it has no skin.

Because sound is not something that exists in the external world.

Sound is a relationship between vibrating air and certain kinds of biological organisms.

And therefore it is these organisms which confer what we call sound upon a vibration which in an earless world would make no noise.

Now you see, that is perfectly clear and straightforward.

But now we can, dare we take certain steps from that.

Could we say for example, that before any organisms existed, there was no world.

And what we are talking about when we talk about a world prior to the existence of organisms, is what is called an extrapolation.

Let me explain extrapolation for a moment.

Supposing you have a map of Kansas, and you want from the evidence contained in the map, to guess at what kind of territory lies beyond its edges.

Well naturally, you will extend those straight line roads, off and off and off, that is the only basis you have got to go on.

Nothing in the map of Kansas would warn you that a little way west you will encounter the rocky mountains, and that the roads will have to wiggle.

And still less will warn you that you are going to encounter the Pacific Ocean way out beyond, where you can't build any roads.

So naturally, you see, extrapolation, we extrapolate from what we know to the unknown.

And so, one might say then, is the existence of a universe, before there were any living organisms, an extrapolation?

All we are saying is, this is how things would have been, if we had been around.

But we weren't, so it wasn't.

That is a possible argument.

Although in the climate of opinion today, it is one that is not fashionable.

You must watch out, above all, for fashion in philosophy, fashion in science.

There are completely irrational functions that govern what is or what is not a respectable scientific opinion.

And although there is very careful work done, very valuable and thoughtful experimentation,

always in the background of this work, there are these irrational fashions of what is believable and what is not.

Many things that we accept today were completely unbelievable.

We are always coming across this.

Authoritative pronouncements that no one will ever reach the moon because of uncontrovertible evidence about this, that and the other.

But nowadays, we have swung over, perhaps, to be a little bit too uncritical.

And as Norbert Weiner warned in his book, The Human Use of Human Beings,

we must not take science as a sort of fairy godmother and say,

well, we have all these problems of overpopulation and lack of water and so on, but science will solve it, don't worry.

See, that's the other extreme.

But there are these fashions.

If I can possibly realize that the way the world is, is evoked by the structure of my organism.

It is that way.

All mountains and suns and moons and stars are the inhabitants of a strictly human world.

Perhaps insects, with their different sense organs, have a very different universe, and that is an insect universe.

This is, again, it seems to be a recrudescence of what used to be called the pathetic fallacy,

which was the attribution of human qualities and emotions to natural phenomena.

The wind sighs in the trees.

And my heart is sad.

And somebody comes along and says, it isn't the wind that's sighing, it's you.

True and not true.

Because you wouldn't be able to sigh if there were no wind.

And you, sighing and wind blowing, go with each other.

I've invented this new word, go with, G-O-W-I-T-H, or goes with.

It is to replace the idea of causality.

Certain things go with each other.

And sighing wind goes with a same world in which there are human hearts and human emotions.

And if there were not a world with human hearts and emotions, there would be no wind.

And if there were no wind, air, there would be no human hearts and emotions.

It's a transaction.

It's reciprocity.

Every event, then, in the external world, is as dependent on the observer for its happening, as, for example, is a rainbow.

The sun is shining, and there's moisture in the atmosphere.

And the sun, being at the right angle to the moisture, makes a rainbow.

And if somebody is there, they see the rainbow.

That is a mythology, a way of putting things that is acceptable to us in the current climate of philosophical and scientific fashion.

But I want to put it in another way.

The sun is shining, and that as a person standing, if there were moisture in the atmosphere,

there would be a rainbow.

But there isn't.

So there is no rainbow.

If you want to be fair, there is no rainbow if nobody is watching it.

You see?

And what applies to the tenuous, filmy, luminescent rainbow applies equally well to the hardest rocks, the solidest mountains, and the hottest fires.

Because all existence is a relationship.

It's like the skin of the drum.

If it's not there, no amount of hitting a non-existent skin will produce any noise.

So, you see, energy is...

We can see this.

Energy is relationship.

We can see the falling fist and the skin of the drum.

Boing!

Like that.

And if there isn't both the falling fist and the skin, no noise.

No existence.

But existence is not only the impact of rocks upon each other.

Existence requires.

Always, as its third, you can get the rocks knocking.

The sun and the moisture.

The tree crashing to the ground.

The sun pouring out electrical energy.

But none of these things constitute existence until related with the neurological complex.

But then you have to look backwards and say at the same time, the neurological complex belongs to the same world as the sun.

It's a physical pattern, physical behavior, physical energy.

But it takes this complexity of pattern, the world.

You see, this idea is unfamiliar.

And that's the difficulty of understanding.

That's all.

It's a very simple idea.

But it's an unfamiliar one and it's an unfashionable one.

Although, as I say, this sort of thinking is coming back to us at this time.

One gets the perfectly uncanny feeling of the world and oneself as simply two phases of a single process.

Well, as the rainbow metaphor illustrated, we arbitrarily favor an explanation of the triangle.

The impact of energies in the external world and that an observer of this impact, which, as it were, energizes or realizes them, makes them real.

So, the difficulty that we have in our prejudice, that it's the two forces out there that are real, and the observer is irrelevant to the reality of the situation.

That's what we're really saying.

It goes back to the whole notion that man himself is irrelevant.

Man is conceived as something, therefore, that is irrelevant in various ways.

He could be said to be irrelevant because he is a spiritual visitor from another world altogether.

He could be said to be irrelevant because he is unimportant.

He makes very little difference to the total universe.

He is very small.

But, when you get this kind of thinking, you want to go back and ask,

why do people want to believe that man is irrelevant?

When you hear today people's comments on that old myth of man as the head of nature,

they come back in a very funny way.

They say, oh, that's the most conceited point of view.

Man is part of nature.

Yes, but why is it that the naturalists who think that man is part of nature are always fighting nature?

Because they don't understand what it means to be the head of nature.

Every creature is the head of nature in its turn.

And we all take turns because it's taking turns that makes the world go round.

Every creature in its turn is the head of nature.

Because each creature creates the world in its own image.

And so, each creature as a creator of the world is man.

Man simply means the middle position.

This is the whole idea of man.

The middle.

The middle way.

The mean.

And so, wherever is the central point, that is the point called man.

Just as you are the center of your universe.

And, as the astrologers explained, that when you wanted to draw the map of the soul, you took the center point occupied by the individual organism.

In other words, a date and a time.

And that gave you a latitude and a longitude.

And so, in relation to that date and time, how was the universe arranged as shows the map of the individual soul?

Because the individual is the whole universe considered from this point of view.

Or focused at this point of view.

So, in like way, the cosmic situation of a bee, or a mouse, puts that mouse in the position of man when the mouse is considered the center of the universe.

Now, every point in a curved space-time continuum is the center of the universe.

You can see it, although this is only a metaphor and is not quite the right mathematical and physical description.

But when you consider the surface of a ball, of a sphere, any point on that surface can be the center.

Just rotate it to what appears to be the front as you look at it, and it's the center of the surface of the sphere.

Any point.

So, in that kind of, if our space is curved like the surface of a sphere, then any point on it may legitimately be considered the center.

And so, considered as the center, that is the point called man.

Although, as I say, it may be mouse, it may be ant, it may be insect, anything.

But this becomes inconceivable and unimaginable to individuals who have no experience of themselves as center.

And people who insist on the idea of being an objective observer, of standing outside and watching the individual, the world, as a kind of television screen or movie screen,

upon which there is a distant panorama of passing events.

That person, by adopting that position, has excluded himself from the feeling of centrality.

In fact, he rather looks down on the feeling of centrality.

He says, that is the egotistic situation.

You think you're the center of everything.

But you know, you may call it all sorts of bad names.

You may call it the egocentric predicament.

But that's the way it is.

When we see that the degree to which individual behavior is a factor of the whole environmental scene,

we tend to try and understand that in terms of determinism.

That the individual organism is helplessly pushed around by and responding to environmental forces.

But, on the other hand, if the relationship between the organism and its environment is transactional,

it won't be that one-sided.

If the relationship is transactional, it will be true simultaneously.

That the individual organism behaves in accordance with the environment,

and the environment behaves in accordance with the individual organism.

So, if we put that in startling practical terms.

If you got into a mess, that was what you wanted.

Will you say, I didn't know I wanted it.

I certainly didn't think I wanted it.

No, because that will be true.

You didn't want it.

So long as you refer to yourself only in terms of the conscious spotlight,

which scans experience bit by bit, and which thinks about it.

To the degree you identify your own functioning with that alone,

then you will say of what happens to you.

Well, I didn't ask for this.

It has nothing to do with me.

I wasn't responsible.

Children don't think that they are responsible for being born.

They blame their parents.

Not realizing that they can't really separate themselves from their parents.

That in the measure that, for example, I have sexual desires,

I can really understand my father's predicament.

And I couldn't possibly blame him,

because actually I was the evil gleam in his eye when he approached my mother.

You know, I asked for it.

Well, now we've been discussing in two sessions the ways in which

thought can conceal truth.

And so now we have to come to the other aspect of the problem,

which is how to get un-bamboozled.

And I often say that in a way this is the wrong question,

because it reminds me of the famous tale about the American tourist in England,

who wanted to find a way to obscure a little village called Upper Tuddenham.

And he asked a local yokel the way,

and the man scratched his head and said,

Well, sir, I do know the why,

but if I were you I wouldn't start from here.

And the problem, therefore, of what to do is in a way the wrong question.

Because as I pointed out yesterday,

you have to begin with the assumption that you can't do anything.

You can't change yourself.

Because the whole idea involves a sort of skitsy situation,

where there's I, is going to change me.

And this is where the genius of Krishnamurti comes up,

where he won't give anyone a method.

And actually he gets you into the meditation process,

by pretending not to.

He's a real tricky character.

Very, very great guru.

Except that nobody really knows what to do with him.

Because whenever you suggest that there might be something that you could do

to bring your mind to tranquility or your heart to the knowledge of the ultimate reality,

he says simply,

Well, why do you want to?

Find out why you want to.

And then he gives you a koan.

And in a way, this gets you meditating naturally.

Instead of it being a kind of artificial process,

you get so bugged by this questioning,

that you are involved in the koan process right away.

And he's very insistent about this.

But my own view is very generous.

I think that all ways of meditation can be followed.

And because even if some of them are folly,

to quote Blake again,

the fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

All is required that you keep at it.

So, I want to talk this morning about the various central methods of meditation.

And we'll begin, why not, with the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali.

Where the first, he says, now yoga is explained.

This is the first verse.

And the commentators point out that the word now means that this is a discourse following other discourses. Something has gone before. Certain things you have to have mastered before you try yoga.

And this is in line with the Hindu view of life, that life is divided into ashramas or stages. That you start out with a stage called brahmacharya, which is the studentship, and then you become grihasta, which is householder, and only after you fulfill the life of the householder do you take up yoga.

And this is of course also in line with Jung's views, that spiritual awakening belongs properly to the second half of life. But you mustn't take that literally. The stages of life can be lived simultaneously.

And they don't necessarily follow each other in chronological order. And today the predominance of interest in yoga in the West is among young people.

And these are the people who are now the new sannyasins, the wandering monks, the dropouts. After all a sannyasin is a dropout. Only a high class dropout.

But he has, in India of course, fulfilled his social debts. He has raised a family, established his work, and put his oldest son in charge of the business.

But we are in an entirely different situation. Because many of our oldest sons despise the business that we, as adults, were involved in.

Because they see through the hollowness of a way of life that has so hopelessly confused symbol with reality.

So I guess in our circumstances, yoga is important for everyone.

Now the next verse of the Yoga Sutra says,

Yogas citta vritti nirodha.

And this is a complicated thing to translate.

It says, Yoga is the cessation of turnings of the mind.

Vritti means to turn, to be turbulent.

When you talk about a chakravatin, as a great ruler, a great king, means one who turns the wheel.

Vritti is the same as vritti. And vritti is a turning, a wave. Like a wave rolls over and splashes.

Citta means approximately consciousness. It refers to the basic awareness that we have.

Whether it is strictly conscious or subconscious.

Citta means something like, let's suppose we make the mind analogous to a mirror.

A reflecting mirror.

The mirror itself would correspond to what is meant in Sanskrit by citta.

You see, we are not aware of the color of the lens of our eye.

And so we just name that color transparent.

If it had a color, we wouldn't know it. And so we don't.

But you can't really altogether ignore the background of vision.

Because it's very important, even though you never see it.

It's basic to all that you see.

Just as the diaphragm in the speaker of the radio is basic to all that you hear on the radio.

But so in the same way, there is something basic to all our sensations.

And that is citta.

So now there are two schools of thought.

One who say that yoga, that citta vritti nirota, the cessation of the turnings in the citta,

is the elimination of all sense experience and all thought and all feeling whatsoever from consciousness.

And when one speaks then of the goal of yoga as being samadhi,

and particularly what is called asampragñata samadhi, which means samadhi without a seed in it.

Or nirvikalpa samadhi, nirvikalpa is a moot word.

Some people think that that means this total elimination of all contents from consciousness.

It's like when you get into a sensory deprivation chamber,

and you learn to relax the muscles of your tongue and the muscles of your eyes,

and you really go blank.

But I think that is a false interpretation.

It's a very interesting experience to go through, and I recommend it if you want to make a little adventure.

I was just in a sensory deprivation chamber a day or two ago. It was fascinating.

But, you know, it's real quiet. It's just nice as nice can be,

and I recommend that everyone install one in the New York apartment.

But nirvikalpa means strictly without concept.

Vikalpa means a concept.

Having an idea, and that's a symbolic thing.

It doesn't mean having no sensation.

And they make a great point of this in the instruction about practicing meditation in Zen.

They say quite definitely, don't shut your eyes.

Don't close your ears.

But simply eliminate thought.

If you cut out your sensation input entirely, and have a blank mind, then you are no better than a log.

In that case, logs and rocks would be Buddhas.

The point then is, in other words, they have various poetic phrases in Zen to indicate the nature of Samadhi.

One is the moon in the water.

You see, there's a verse which says, all waters contain the moon.

Not a mountain, but the clouds encircle it.

So, all waters contain the moon means that whenever the moon rises, instantly it is in all waters.

They didn't know, of course, in those days anything about the speed of light.

But they felt that the moon comes into the water when the moon is in the sky in exactly the same way as when the hands are clapped, the sound issues without a moment's hesitation.

And so another verse says,

The geese do not intend to cast their reflection.

The water has no mind to receive their image.

It's like that.

And so the ideal of Samadhi is for you to have a mind like that.

What they call a mind of no hesitation.

A mind which doesn't, as it were, stop to say whether this should or should not be reflected.

And so they would go on to explain, the basic nature of your mind is like that from the beginning.

That's what it is to have a mind.

That's what the Zen master Banke would call the unborn mind or the Buddha mind in every one of us.

That we all have as a natural gift.

And so he says, when you hear a crow, you know immediately it's a crow.

I am a crow.

And so in the same way, when Banke was once giving a talk, there was a Nichiren priest.

And you know, those Nichiren's are kind of Buddhist Jehovah's Witnesses.

And this priest was heckling him in the back.

And he said, I don't understand anything you're saying.

And Banke said, come closer and I'll explain it to you.

And this man began to weave his way through the crowd.

Banke said, come closer still.

Still closer.

Come right here.

And he came right up.

Banke said, you see, you understand me perfectly.

So, the feeling then is that the Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the state of just perfectly clear consciousness,

which responds to everything going on without labeling it, without categorizing it.

And even to say respond isn't quite right.

Because that means as if consciousness was something that is pushed by life and then reacts to it.

Action and reaction.

Like cause and effect.

The crow cause and the ears vibrate.

Cause and effect.

That's not the Buddhist theory.

The Buddhist theory is not cause and effect.

It is called Pratitya Samudpada.

And that means interdependent origination.

In other words, when the wind blows, the trees move.

This is not two events, but one.

Wind blowing and trees waving are all the same process.

And so the verse says, the tree displays the bodily power of the wind.

It manifests it.

Because nobody would know there was any wind blowing unless the trees were waving.

Nobody would know there was any light shining unless there was something reflecting it.

They really go together, you see.

So the tree displays the bodily power of the wind.

The water exhibits the spiritual nature of the moon.

Because you see, when the water flows and ripples, it breaks the moon into thousands of pieces.

So that is the spiritual power.

The one becomes many.

So then what we are looking at then is a state of consciousness which is like that.

Which is one with the whole thing going on.

And this is saying the same thing as Krishnamurti says.

When he tries to explain that there really is no feeler separate from our feelings.

And no thinker separate from our thoughts.

There is simply a process going on.

And so in the same way, Huynang, the sixth patriarch.

Prefers not to use the image of the mirror for the mind.

But he prefers the image of space.

That's why when his rival for the patriarchate.

Made up the poem which explained that the mind is a mirror.

And we must wipe it to keep off the dust.

Huynang countered this by saying there isn't any mirror.

And so where on can the dust fall?

See.

So this is saying that you will never, never be able to discover a thinker other than thoughts.

A feeler other than feelings.

A sensor other than sensations.

That's the meaning of the dialogue between Bodhidharma and Eka.

When Eka said I haven't any peace of mind.

Please pacify my mind.

And Bodhidharma said bring out your mind in front of me and I will pacify it.

Eka said when I look for it I can't find it.

Bodhidharma said there it is pacified.

So Eka you know was looking for his mind.

It's like who are you?

The question that the Maharshi Ramana always asked to anybody who said.

Maharshi where who was I in my last incarnation?

And he would always reply who's asking the question?

Which is the same as Krishnamurti's why do you want to know?

Because this throws the question back at the questioner.

Who are you?

Who has the problem?

And you look and you look and you look.

And you can't find it.

When you look for Hume.

The British philosopher really went through the same experience.

Because when he tried to find out what was his consciousness.

He couldn't find anything but sensations.

Or images in his head.

And so in the same way.

When you want to find out what's behind your eyes.

Most people think that they have a blank space behind their eyes.

Kind of a non-dark, non-light blind spot.

Which you can't ever see.

But that's not the case.

You know how the inside of your head is?

Why it's what you're looking at.

That's how it feels inside your head.

It's all this.

That you see in front of you.

That's inside your head.

It's all in these nerves back here.

But the optical nerves are centered.

And so this is saying that our conscious relationship to the world is a transactional relationship.

In which you can speak about the subjective standpoint.

And the objective standpoint.

But that really you've got one continuum.

In which these two standpoints are simply opposite ends of a diameter.

You go with it.

It goes with you.

And vice versa.

So this is the whole meaning of the Taoist idea.

That is called mutual arising.

When Lao Tzu says that to be and not to be arise mutually.

That difficult and easy suggest each other.

High and low subtend each other.

And so on.

He's saying.

He's describing this polar relationship.

So you don't get an encounter.

In other words.

You don't get a confrontation.

You don't get a kind of a meeting.

From things that impinge on each other.

From entirely separate situations.

You get the opposite sort of thing.

Where when a flower buds.

And the bud breaks.

The petals expand.

And it's true.

You have the petals on the far left.

And you have the petals on the far right.

But they arise together.

Like that.

See.

That's how all life is happening.

When you come into being.

The universe comes into being.

When you go out of being.

The universe goes out of being.

And that's true for everyone.

As well.

Not only people.

But all sentient beings whatsoever.

So without.

The being.

The sentient being.

There is no cosmos.

All we are saying.

In talking about a cosmos.

That existed before.

Any sentient beings existed.

Is we are simply describing.

What would have happened.

If there had been.

Any sentient beings around.

It's a kind of extrapolation.

So that relativity.

Of the sentient being.

And the universe.

Is basic.

To buddhistic philosophy.

And the saying then.

That the.

The one implies the other.

Because this is the philosophy.

Called Jiji Muge.

Uh.

That between thing event.

And thing event.

There is no.

Barrier.

Uh.

This is the philosophy.

Of the mutual interdependence.

Of all things and events.

That.

Uh.

The moment.

There is anything at all.

It implies everything else.

So in the same way.

You know.

With laser beam photography.

You can take a tiny fragment.

Of a photographic negative.

And by laser beam photography.

You can restore.

The whole negative.

From which it was cut.

Because the crystalline structure.

Of any part of the negative.

Is in an inseparable relationship.

With its whole area.

So you can.

Imply it.

You will.

You'll get a picture.

Which is.

Around the area.

That you have taken out.

Very clearly definite.

And as it moves away from it.

The outlines will become.

A little vaguer.

But you'll be able to see.

Everything that was there.

Fantastic.

So in the same way.

Every hair on your head.

This is the real meaning.

Of the saying.

That the hairs of your head.

Are all numbered.

That every hair on your head.

Implies.

All galaxies.

Because it wouldn't exist.

Without all galaxies.

Nor would all galaxies exist.

Without the hair.

Or without the hair.

Having existed.

It doesn't make any difference.

So then.

Uh.

This.

State.

Of.

Complete unity.

Of mind.

And.

Nature.

What's going on.

Without the intervention.

First of all.

Without the intervention.

Of thought.

Is.

Uh.

The state of meditation.

It may be called jhana.

It may be called samadhi.

And you may make sort of subtle differences.

Between these two states.

But forget it.

For the moment.

Now.

The way.

Of arriving at this.

Is.

Of course.

There is no way.

Because that's the way your mind is working anyway.

But you have to find that out.

You have to find out.

That.

You have to find out.

That.

You don't need to accept yourself.

By trying to accept yourself.

It.

It doesn't mean anything to accept yourself.

Because.

Who accepts what.

But you don't know that at first.

You think there is a who.

Who has to accept what.

And you can only do this.

By trying to do the impossible.

This is the method of reductio ad absurdum.

So.

Thought itself tells you.

That.

Zen master, always told his students, do not practice Zazen to attain Satori, sit just

to sit. This already practicing Zazen is being a Buddha. This is sitting like a Buddha.

And if you do it with an ulterior motive, you're not doing it. There is nowhere to go.

So likewise, if you practice centering on the present, you can't do it with an objective

because you're off it. And so in action, and you try to do what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering,

and you always got your mind on the present, and you're fully aware of what you're doing

all the time, see, then eventually you will discover that there is nothing else you can

do. Because if you think about the past, that's happening now. Think about the future, that's

happening now. There is nothing else but now. So then, when you discover that, meditation

becomes automatic. You're always in it. Only you have to be stupid and exercise a little

folly in order to find it out. That is to try to be there. You see, that's putting legs

on a snake, or a beard on a eunuch, or we could say gilding the lily. And, but somehow,

to wake up, that has to happen. So it's a most marvelous discovery, you see, when you've

been working to try and center, to be present, to be alert and awake, and be just here, and

you work at it, and work at it, and one day you go doing. There is nowhere else to be. And

then you get a very strange sensation. It seems that the, the now and you are all the same.

And that it's like a stream, which is moving along and carrying you, but not going anywhere.

It moves and doesn't move. It's like a, looking at a blot, like a Rorschach blot, and seeing

the blot running, but into the place where it is. Everything is moving into where it is.

And this is the state called eternal now. This is the meaning of eternity. Eternity isn't

static. So this is the meaning of the Zen poem, which says, I walk over the bridge, and it's

the bridge flow, not the water. I'm walking on foot, and yet riding on the back of an ox.

I'm empty-handed, and yet a spade is in my hand.