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This month's contents:

Zen and Common Sense (part 3) by Richard Rose | The Sculptor by Gary Harmon | Progress by Shawn Nevins | Poems by Shawn Nevins | On Personality, Analysis & Going Within by Bob Cergol | Back of Beyond by Bob Fergeson | Reader Commentary | Humor | Index of Issues to Date

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Zen and Common Sense (continued), by Richard Rose

Now is this anterior observer the soul? We might say well, this is the inner self then. Or - is there another awareness? Not necessarily thought, but the awareness of this observer, and the awareness of the whole pattern of an anterior ego or self watching other egos. Is this final awareness, which is not vocalizing what it sees, is that the true soul?

We get a better view of ourself as a viewer, by watching the view, the scene or the creation, until that leads us back into ourself. Now this is a little trick that happens in an esoteric digging such as Zen. As we watch that which is outside of us, it will eventually lead us to ourself; when you watch yourself long enough, it then becomes possible to understand the viewer.

The reason I'm harping on this point is because what we're doing all the time instead of looking for the soul of man is looking for outside effects. We're looking for a button to press, like in an automat. One button says "soda pop" and another one says "immortality." So it's that one; put a nickel in, press the button, and out comes immortality. It becomes an objective thing.

How do you do it? You do it by eating certain macrobiotic foods, and you'll live forever. Or you do it by chanting a certain mantra, and you will become transformed or translated. Or you say certain prayers, and you get the deities on your side, and they pick up this cruddy little animal and make an immortal being out of him.

So, we're going to try to look at the thing. We're going to try to look at ourselves. And what makes a dependable looker, a dependable viewer?

And we define this: We say there are people who are smart, and there are people who are not so smart. The people who aren't so smart don't get the answer. And we equate this of course with answers such as how smart the guy is who can get four rabbits, as compared with the guy who comes home with a rat. One is smart and the other is stupid. So the person who can come home with a million bucks is much more intelligent than the person who is sitting in some shanty on the other side of the tracks.

But regardless, we realize that there is a mentality of accomplishment and a mentality of non-accomplishment. And we call it sanity. Now we're in the province of psychology again. There are different ways, as I said before, of finding out who we are. (The second question or step.) One of them is the religious way. That is, taking someone's word for it that either knows or pretends to know. It's generally a subjective path, in which you are largely required to believe.

Then we have another method of finding out who we are, and this is the psychological path, which tries to analyze the brain processes or the mind processes, doing it scientifically and methodically. This is a true self-knowledge process, and this is very similar to Zen.

And then there is a third method. And that is going directly into the head. And this is one of the four precepts or directions given by Bodhidharma. The fourth one is: "Direct pointing at the soul of man." That is, you can't do too much speculation or argumentation - just go. Just look inside. And don't even go to too much bother to read books on how to look inside. It's there - the inside is there - just look.

So this is the third system. (Now, it may be pretty hard to understand in just a few words.) And of course, we're concerned when we look inside, with what we look into - the mind. What is the mind?

Is it possible for the viewer to know himself by knowing the view - by knowing the actions of the body of the viewer - and then of going directly to the viewer, looking inside of the viewer himself? This is a meditational technique. And this is the whole trip.

*

We like to place a tremendous lot of attention on the senses. We like to play, "Let's experiment, let's get this down in a formula, let's try to chalk a blueprint for going inside, in the most efficient way." Of course - I say again that one person can help another - there are some formulas. But I don't think it's a good idea to write them down in a book, because they're not universally applicable.

After we look inside we start to see that things aren't what we previously thought they were. And we begin to get strongly the impression that a tremendous lot of that which we experience in life is illusory. What you discover is not what other people estimate life to be.

And this is what I was referring to when I first started talking. That when people get this far into Zen, or into the approach to nirvikalpa samadhi, they become frightened - because they realize that this world is going to change. Reality is not that which we hope we see now.

It's like you're looking at a hologram. I saw one in a university someplace. This is a tubular thing, and you get the impression that there is a real thing in the middle - but all it is is a picture. So if this is possible - that we can look right at something two feet away from us and be subject to an illusion - how much of the universe is a hologram? How much of it is, as Einstein says, that which curves in space? That it isn't really infinitely out there, it's just curved into space.

And this thing about space: What is space, and what is time? These are questions that everyone takes for granted. They take it for granted, yet they believe. Everyone has moments when the idea gets into their head, "How can I know of heaven and how can I know of everything that is to come?" or, "How can I know the nature of everything that is?"

We get the idea of this tremendous unending universe, in which we are microscopic, even our planet is microscopic, and we are much more microscopic and much more insignificant. And how insignificant are we? We're able to think about the insignificance - or think about the relation. Now inside of this tremendous gigantic cosmos - now this is a seeming tendency of people, to say, "Now this is too vast for me to encompass, so I'm not going to pursue this study any longer."

But still - if you do not give up - you say, "Well, I realize I can't get into geology and analyze the substance of the earth and I can't become an astronomer and spend thirty years studying stars just to find out what my relation is to the cosmos." Because of the simple fact that it's even greater than that. It's manifest that there are dimensions that we don't see, interpenetrating this dimension. So that even if we were able to understand this dimension, to pick up these others would require work, time, a century perhaps, of individual effort.

So what is behind this? Should we surrender and say, "Well, it's too big a job"? Or can we stubbornly pursue our curiosity and come up with a result?

*

I used to say: "What is time? Is it the number of thoughts in a step?" How can you measure thought? How can you measure the duration of a thought? And, if you can measure a thought, if you can relate back to the mind - it's very difficult if not impossible to measure a thought and then give a clock figure of that thought. Because very much of our thoughts are split-second states of awareness - some psychologists claim that a long dream will occur in just a few seconds, which we may think lasts two or three days in the dream.

*

Another thought I want to leave with you: "Can we be saved, or has everything already happened?" Is it too late? Is the world a big block of solid ice in which we're running around here in a trance - or is there hope of change? If there is no hope of change - then why worry? Why do anything?

Can we afford that answer? To pretend that everything's already happened? I mean - it might be a nice thought, or it might be a painful thought, at the same time you might be able to permit yourself to live with it. But can you live with it? Nobody does. The existentialist, the fatalist - he goes out and works for a living. He doesn't stay home because he's fated to be fed. He doesn't really believe.

Nobody totally believes in fatalism or existentialism. They ultimately get out, when their energy runs down, and they do something to build it up.

*

Now, is there a method of finding the real self - using this inadequate vehicle that we've been describing, or this lower self? This is the big question.

Now - again I say manifestly there are ways. We have evidence down through the ages - strangely enough even in what we like to consider today barbaric times. There is evidence of men who have reached an understanding of what it was all about. And I quote Plato's Republic, the story of the man in the cave, and sacred writings - if you want to call them that, they're just old books - from India. Some of them are reflected in Ramana Maharshi's works: the descriptions of sahaja samadhi. The descriptions of the final enlightenment in some Zen writings. (And, some Zen writings are confusing on what the real enlightenment is.)

The logical mind and the scientific processes will not take you there. I majored in chemistry when I went to college - I thought I was going to use this chemical education to analyze matter, analyze the the brain tissue if necessary and find out about thought, for instance. And after awhile I realized that chemistry was something that was becoming infinitely complex - the more I studied the more there was to know. The more that was discovered the more fields there were to study in. And I realized that I would never approach the answer with the logical computing mind. Regardless of having computers to help.

I sensed that there had to be a direct method. This is all I knew at first - you had to have some direct short-cut. Whether that was to press a button, or some profound drug experience that would do it - whatever it would take, I decided I was going to try. If somebody proposed one - I tried to find a guru or a wise man, somebody that had a few hints even. I looked for people with little bits of knowledge.

And I came to the conclusion that man has to become. He cannot learn. He can learn a tremendous lot - but after he becomes, he finds out his learning was useless.

The whole process then is one of becoming. And this is a change of being, because the present being is incompetent. The present senses are inadequate. So we look for a system in which the being or the vehicle changes, the radio set is adjusted so that a new wavelength can be picked up, if you want to call it that.

*

And then of course there's the next one: "How do we find this? How do we find this system?"

Now, how you find it - you have to go through the existing systems. The Hindu system as founded by Ramana Maharshi - you look it over, and if it's found good and if there's a method there, you may try it. Or you may get into Zen, and you may get into Christian mysticism.

But you have to have some intuition, or you'll be led blindly by emotion. You may have a charismatic guru, or books that are filled with sciences about how you're going to get there, and you may take that instead of the more direct or difficult way.

So consequently, you've got another step immediately: How do we find the intuition? How do we develop it?

Everybody has it as a child. Everyone has it at the peak in their childhood. And you have to develop or regain the basic intuition of your childhood. Children have good computers, they've got clear heads, they haven't been burnt or loused up too badly, and they have a good appraisal.

Now of course, they are emotionally led, out of their childhood. This is one of the things that destroys children - the love of the parents. I maintain that children have very clear heads, and they have a very clear perspective, possibly even of both sides of their existence, that is, their eternal existence and their knowledge existence.

But they are called out of this. Completely called out. Forced to learn a language, forced to go through certain things in order to function in this stageplay. And as they're called out, they get away from their innocence and their clearheadedness, and they lose their intuition. They become specialized, and they become verbal, and that sort of thing. So consequently they learn confusion. They accept the language.

Incidentally, I think the Tower of Babel is symbolic of the deterioration of man into specialized knowledge and consequently confusion. He loses his way to heaven - heaven being that which is within. The true state is within.

Now you don't find what I'm talking about in Zen; Zen doesn't talk about finding your intuition. Although it does enjoin you to continually keep your attention on the problem until it's solved.

Now if you keep your attention on any phase of searching, you'll eventually find a way of searching. If you keep your attention on ways of searching, you'll eventually find one you can put to use, and you'll find some results in it.

I maintain that it's possible for every human of average intelligence to find the answer.

To be continued....