The TAT Forum

What is the basis of everything I've just said, now in the past? The present is a split second, if there is such, that is here somewhere in between what I'm going to say and what I have said. Because as soon as I've spoken, it is past. So time becomes a portion of experience that is hardly estimable, in the fact that it can't be changed. It is.

We can only view the past as something that is unchangeable, and as a permanent type of experience. And in view of something that is unchangeable, without variation or motion, and that which is viewed the same by all -- it is something that cannot be re-experienced or changed in experience form. It can be re-experienced in memory, but it cannot be changed. Whereas in looking forward, to that which we cannot see, we have an idea that we can change it. This is the eternal hope -- of changing that which is rapidly becoming the past.

But regardless, we have no real knowledge of this relation in the past, relative to our space-time concept.

If we have an element called space-time, the past and the future must be pretty much be the same, being not necessarily a mobile experience, but just a viewing or an experiencing of something which already exists.

So -- this is just a proposition. I'm not expounding or trying to convince you of a logical interpretation of space and time, but I'm just saying we don't know. We don't know actually, except for impressions we get. We get the idea for instance, that time, the past, has duration, and it has duration similar to the calendar and the clock.

This business of experiencing -- when you look back upon the experience lots of time the thing that happened two weeks ago may be very dim in your mind, whereas something that happened ten years ago may be very clear. So as far as our experience of past events, perhaps the long-ness of time passing is determined by our interest in an incident, our attention to an incident, not necessarily the clock or the calendar.

What do you identify as now? If you'll look at the second that is now, we seem to hang continually in a thin thread of desperate realization, of what is rapidly being cemented into our eternal past, an immobile past -- hoping in that one second of momentary consciousness to change the future. And the past moves up on it so rapidly, the future becomes the past so rapidly, that we really don't have much chance of changing our lives.

A lot of people think about the ability to have a will. That every human being has a will. That's a delightful thought, but with the rapidity with which one thought pushes us into another thought, one incident creates a condition that we have to live in.

We go back then to the next question and say, "What are we?" You know, "Who is here?" And of course, people very seldom stop to think about this. People are aware of the question, and you generally get a bit of sophistry in the answer: They'll say, "I'm the person that is sitting in front of you," or something of the sort.

But we know that there's a different meaning to this question. There's a book by J.J. van der Leeuw (Conquest of Illusion). Van der Leeuw says that very possibly we are or we could be, a point in space, the end of a ray, or something of that sort, but because of collective agreement we assume that things have a certain form. An agreed upon belief and form.

For instance, we know that our senses are limited, and that very much is agreed upon. We know that our retina receives things upside down in the eyeball and we adjust the picture. The chairs in this room that appear to us as blue, in the chemical analysis of the composition of color may really not be blue. Black is not black and white is not white, as we see it. It appears to us that way, but white is the accumulation of all the colors, and black is the absence of color. So white is every thing but what it looks like, supposedly. This is caused by the reflection of the different components of the light that strikes the prism.

So consequently -- what I'm trying to get at is not to prove that white isn't white, but to say again that we have limited senses. Our eyeball has a limited retina; there are only so many rods in there. Hearing has a limited range. Some animals have a better range and pick up different things. And faculties, perhaps. Some animals seem to have faculties that we don't have. They talk of dogs or certain animals that pick up spirits in a haunted house. They pick up vibrations that we don't pick up.

So in other words -- our world, as we know it, can only come to us through our senses. And if our senses are limited or twisted or inadequate, then this world may be entirely different from what it appears to us. And if we can by agreement agree upon a form -- all of us agree together that a certain form exists -- then it's possible that the whole picture can somehow be projected or agreed upon.

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Are we just a bag of protoplasm? (I'm getting down to the body as we know it and put it in a test tube.) Are we more than a being with a bunch of conditioned reflexes? This is one of the psychological definitions of what we are.

Are we more than that? A sentient, as we like to think, self-directing entity that moves freely, willfully, and does things? And may we prepare ourselves, artfully, willfully, in this dimension -- and even prepare for another dimension which we've postulated and believe in?

Are we anything more than a warm body? In other words, modern psychology is somewhat somatic -- it tells us that we're basically what you see -- a more or less protoplasmic reacting body.

We'd like to present ourselves, I think a good many would like to, saying, "Well, we're just here," this is our rationalization against action, "so let's take care of the body; let's have fun. Let's get along while we're having fun. Let's make a bit of money, or reproduce, or something of that sort. Because that's what we're going to be anyway in the final analysis, a record of experience. So let's have some experience."

Another thing is -- if we get a particular slant on theology -- we get the idea that this creature, this little warm body, is placed here by a very warm-hearted creature which we call God. And he loves us, and if we love each other -- that's the rule we have to obey more than anything else -- and if we love each other and create a tremendous atmosphere of love, then this God will come down some day, and tell us how much he loves us, and take us off to an eternal happy hunting ground.

But, we never stop to think that love is something we want. We're trying to impose a condition by preaching it. Very few people stop to analyze this thing we're talking about when we're talking about love. Mostly they want people to love them. This is the complaint; it isn't the idea of love of love, it's, "Love me."

To be continued....

Poems by Shawn Nevins:

My steps are not taken by me, Yet I walk. I will fall like any man, Yet I am untouched. On the night of your death I will shed tears meant for that night alone. My pain is that of a man who is no more, Whose steps are like breezes -- Purposeful and empty. * All around us dances life. Yes! Life really is a dance, Whose sadness at the last note Is frozen in an eternal now Resting within oblivion. * Do that which comes natural: Be silent when alone. Walk out into evening, Be deconstructed by darkness. This life is so thin, The breath of silence Slips in and parts our very thoughts. * In quiet moments, The world begins to unravel. Where there is fear, there is Truth. You have nothing to fear. There is no other waiting in the shadows -- Only You. * In Memory of Memories Lost -- 9/11/01 How is salvation found In heaps of twisted, blasted steel? Does grace abound in burning flesh and pain of death? Is the voice of God in the agony of pain? Does beauty peak from the mask of death? Will flights of angels rise from the dust of destruction? Within pain, longing, terror, and despair, Emerges the freedom of dying -- Becoming living grace. For those who are left, a prayer: Oh God within me, Take me from this self Bent on destruction Of all I believe is not me. * Where is within? Where is this place of answers? All I thought was within is without. All I held dear, I did not hold at all. The sun shines on my memories tinted with the reflection of love. Reflections deflecting my question. Looking, asking, wanting, this haunting twilight, not my sunlight, unveils within -- emptiness, vastness, space.

On the Value of Headlessness, by Shawn Nevins:

Recently, a friend asked my opinion on the value of Douglas Harding's work. Specifically, how could a method relying on perception be an "experience" of the Absolute? In other words, what is the ultimate validity of an experience that occurs through the body? Is such an experience an artifact of the body, and therefore destined to vanish with the death of the body?

This is a valid question and one I asked when first exposed to a Harding workshop. If it takes my eyes to see I have no head (that I am the space in which all occurs), then what will I be when I have no eyes? How will I know of my spaciousness? Of course, Harding has developed experiments for the blind, but still the experiments rely on the senses.

This line of thought leads to the question, "What technique does not utilize the body?" Everything we do is accomplished through the medium of the body. Every experience requires a body, a mind, an "I" in order to be known.

Therefore, I do not equate the experience of Harding's Seeing of Headlessness with the Absolute/Final Realization/God/Truth. However, the Seeing is a doorway to an experience that is not an experience. All doors are formed of the body and mind. All doors are of the human dimension. Yet where does a door lead? A door leads to another place; in this case, a place that is not a place at all. A door leads out, away, and beyond. The body may recognize that which is beyond itself. The body may stand at the edge of the void, and come to accept that it is not the All, that the body is but a tiny thing and that home is through the door.

For some, the body may not accept so easily. Harding's experiments may instill the Great Doubt that haunts the body. With the Great Doubt comes the great search, and with great honesty may come the undeniable presence of truth. The body is carried kicking and screaming, by the mechanism of one's lifestyle and an uncontrived acceptance, into Headlessness.

I now recognize that I have no head and that where I had a head is now infinite depth -- a depth that leads to utter silence and dark waters upon which no thing moves. Painted upon this is the world of experience and of all things -- which are but a part of me. Do not take my word. As Harding says, "Look for yourself."