The World is My Mirror (14 page)

True, we can’t seem to dodge bullet after bullet and never get a bruise from a scuffle with a scoundrel, but notice the effortlessness of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Who the hell’s doing all that? Where is it coming from? The same place the cinema picture I suggest‌—‌from a projector. In our case the mind performs this function, but unlike the cinema it never runs out of film: it gets threaded sideways, upside down and back to front on a continuous loop. The picture always looks different but the same pixels just change location from time to time.

There’s another unfathomable aspect of this. Why should a message that points to the same thing as a hundred other books and teachings strike a chord, and yet others do not? Is there a ripeness to hear? Have you crossed over the threshold and now walk where masters have walked? The simple answer is, I don’t know. All I will say is that words both written and spoken, when put into certain combinations, seem to transmit something above and beyond the raw data. There is something that rings a bell. It might be the same book or the same dreary old meeting listening to question after question of the seeking mind that this time appears to uproot ignorance and everyday normality. You can hear yourself saying: ‘Why didn’t I see this before? How could I have missed something so obvious and simple?’ That, I’m afraid, is not up for grabs. Wholeness sees when it sees and that’s that. It pulls that veil so tight it’s a wonder any light can get in at all.

For myself, I was so engrossed in my inadequate life and the attempts through therapy and psychology to fix the damn thing that considering This was not on the menu. When I met Lynn at the gym, even though she never overtly tried to change me in any way at all, something had started to shift and stir. Our conversations were normal and everyday generally, but a non-verbal, invisible to the naked eye resonance seemed to be operating. That’s the best I can do, because to be honest, I don’t know and I don’t care. Forty odd years of timeless time had to occur before the spell lifted. It is a shame Rich was not able to see it. I guess it comes with the territory. Never mind, he was getting on my nerves anyway.

I have heard stories of people being drunk and disorderly spending another night slumped in a doorway somewhere with a guy pissing on their head for fun, with the vomit getting washed away with the stream of urine, and something is seen. They sober up, join a group and come back to life.

There is no book or satsang for this guy‌—‌that is far too tame and sensible. You wake when you wake and not before. That is why it is so frustrating at times I guess. But nothing needs to happen to be what you are. It is just that you only see that after awakening or at liberation. I told you this stuff sucks.

But maybe gobbledygook is better than perfect prose. Maybe the ordering and grammar of our sentences keeps us from ‘the secret’. It makes me wonder if this is why poetry can touch us so deeply: it does not try and spell it out for us; we have to do some work with it and make it our own. We have so many chances to listen to others, whether live or from recordings. We create celebrities from our favourite speakers and get hooked on what they say. But like a weaning young animal, the mother gradually retreats to let the creature fend for himself, to explore for himself and to kill and destroy for himself. She may teach a few survival skills but the execution is all ours.

This message is not new; it doesn’t belong just in the twenty-first century. Of course there is no twenty-first century, but if we enter into fantasy for a while, we can see that there have been many that have tried to transmit this message, some overtly and some covertly. Either way, you can see non-duality and Wholeness in texts stretching back for millennia. They are there for you to read when you’ve ‘grown-up’ somewhat and relinquished those ideas that were passed on in good faith and with little malice. When you see the trick and deception, there is no anger and resentment for what you have been through, though. There is just being, being, being.

Fantasy is what films are good at. Giant gorillas hanging from skyscrapers and Japanese plastic models stomping around screeching and wreaking havoc in our cities are great examples. We can enjoy this kind of thing and know where one world ends and another begins.

We tend to treat the ideas, beliefs and hypotheses the mind manufactures as faithful representations of what is actually happening out there in the real world of jobs, families and all human relationships. We certainly do not give the cinema screen activity the same credence as our own analyses and opinions. We base our judgments on a rationality and logic that are the hallmark of sanity and credibility in the world that is presented to us from the teachings we grew up with. We are certain we see what we see, and if someone else cannot see this obviousness, we can become silent, get angry, attack, and even kill to get our point across. We are so close to the thought that we believe it and create an identity out of a system that has worked once or twice in the past when the wind was blowing in the right direction and the crows were nesting high.

Thought and belief do enable us to function in this world of appearances and dramatic nuance and, to be fair, we manage quite well. Deals are struck and people do relax in each other’s company. People marry and arguments do not last forever. Fantasy is amusing at times and allows some freezing over of consensus reality. It is fun to imagine an obnoxious and grumpy old boss sitting on the toilet with his trousers around his ankles to regain the certitude that human beings are all born equal, in some respects at least. In fact fantasy can be creative and illuminating; Albert Einstein said that the gift of fantasy meant more to him than his talent for absorbing knowledge.

But if we want to place fantasy above reality or reality above fantasy, it becomes troublesome and complex. Where is the benchmark and who decides? If I say I am walking into town to buy a loaf of bread, I am actually creating row after row of imaginary objects that I have labelled as real and out there. Yes, there seems to be a loaf of bread in my hand and not a shotgun, but this labelling is very restrictive and uncomfortable. A loaf of bread has many ingredients and has appeared through process and activity. Language can imprison the user and the appearance, close off channels of mystery and awe, and package the world for consumption in the future. Everything that appears to happen is simply arising out of nothing and nowhere. There is only this, only Wholeness, which can appear as anything, even loaves of bread. You cannot grasp or capture time and place because they are not here. Fantasy creates a sense of permanence the same way the model maker or make-up artist creates a monster to terrorise a neighbourhood or rampage through a school.

Fantasy in the guise of permanence allows you to leave your house in the morning and talk to your work colleagues about how dreadfully the builders are converting your attic. Language enables words to stand for apparent existing entities. Words and phrases like ‘shoddy workmanship’ or ‘flooded kitchen’ stand in for what you believe to be real tangible things or entities in the world. But if you are at your desk drinking your coffee and chatting to Betty in accounts, then that is reality. Your builders, your house and flooded kitchen are non-existent. You could pop home, I suppose, in your lunch break to confirm you are not imagining things, but you would still only see the contents of your own mind projected out to replicate the calamity this morning.

This is so difficult to write and to convey because it brings crashing down the cornerstone you call reality. Few of us question the legitimacy of objects and events; it’s just the way it is. We will still pay for the work when it’s finished or throw our builders off site when we get home and look for another to finish the job. What is being suggested is that the process of abstraction, storytelling and hypnotism creates this magical, wonderful life of appearances that entertain and allow no-thing to appear as all this incredible array of things and dramas. All events, whether it’s watching a birth, mending your bike or cooking the dinner, are all the same‌—‌Wholeness, being and inseparability.

You have always been here, you were not born at some time and some place. You will not die because you were not born. You have always been the timeless, dressed in purpose, meaning and journey. What a load is shrugged off when the dream is rumbled and seen for what it is. Fifty foot gorillas are reduced to children’s action figures. Children’s action figures are up there with angels and miracles.

Fantasy and reality, like everything else, define each other and do not exist apart. There is only this‌—‌forever and ever and ever. Nothing is moving and nothing is changing. Permanence, stability and reality can never be seen or experienced. They don’t need to be. Thinking that you are experiencing something familiar and everyday is the stuff of dreams. Wholeness likes to dream; it is good drama, good entertainment. Deep sleep must get boring after a while‌—‌not much going on. A good old dream wakes us up when we sleep and when we think we are separate and alone. Appearance is dream, every last bit of it. It appears as awareness and in awareness. Consciousness never comes and never goes. It is infinite, timeless and unfathomable.

Thank the lord!

I have mentioned ‘space’ a few times in the course of these words you are reading and assume you know what it is I am talking about. Generally speaking, it is considered to be that in which our villages, towns and cities exist. It is reaching through something in order to grasp an object and bring it closer to examine or consume in some way. Objects seem to take up space and so there is a limit to how many tiny objects you could fit in a match box or how much refuse and rubble a skip or dumpster will hold when improving the house or garden.

Space is what we travel through to get somewhere. A trip to the United States or Africa appears to take time and follow a course that can be verified by a map that someone else has drawn based on similar journeys taken in the past. This is fine as far as it goes. I mean, a trip to the States for me will take many hours from Heathrow or Gatwick in the UK, and so I will be packing my iPod to entertain me and not be content with the safety instructions in the pouch in front of me on the plane.

But spend a bit of time and examine a little closer. Space is experience. There is a knowing and feeling associated with it. The office I am in at the moment is about 3 metres by 3 metres, in everyday language, and feels pretty compact and bijou. Las Vegas, on the other hand, was a mighty big place when I visited, with structures that dwarfed just about everything in my little corner of the globe. My office is small; Las Vegas is big.

This distinction is bogus. Let me explain. I am looking at my cream-painted wall in front of me as I am typing and, to be honest, it could do with a spot of touching up or redecoration here and there. I can see bits of paint missing from sticky tape and the odd Blu-Tack mark. There seems to be a pattern if I use my imagination: the missing paint patches are little towns in the distance and the ripple textures from the paint roller are rolling fields punctuated by a few sheep and cows grazing on the grass before me. There is a pattern of light and it’s seducing my imagination to make up stories of ‘out there’ and separate.

Whether I am being amazed at the bright lights of Vegas or the splodges and imperfections of my office wall, fantasy is weaving its magic to make something out of nothing. I cannot have space separate from ‘me’ because when ‘Vegas’ or my office appears, so do I. I am labelling experience to be something in particular. So I am convincing myself that one pattern of light is called Las Vegas and another pattern my scruffy office wall, or, ‘country scene’. They are both experience and I am not separate from that. Las Vegas is abstraction both when I am talking about my trip to a place in Nevada and also when I think I am actually located somewhere very bright and in your face on Planet Earth. Thought is constantly editing to create the illusion that we are in our bag of skin and something permanent and separate is outside of us, with an independent existence. We only need enough so-called people to play along with us and we have got a real good game going on.

If you are puzzled by this, think of a dream. Whilst dreaming, common-sense tells us we are lying down somewhere, usually in a bed, and a world is appearing full of people, places and objects. There appears to be space full of most things you would find on Earth. There seems to be depth in the dream, so the dream body seems to be able to traverse the world in much the same way you do on waking up. No matter what goes on in a dream, on waking it does not take long to realise it was all imagined. Thought was up to its old tricks again and you appeared lost for a while in ideas and memory. Forget, for a moment, the interpretation of dreams as trying to tell you something profound about the inner workings of your psyche. A dream is much more than that. A dream is screaming at you to wake up and see it for what it is. It seems we can do this fine in the cool light of day when the ‘normal’ returns, such as not being able to fly or realising that monsters belong in story books and film. We seem to be able to accept space and time as illusory in our dreams, but do not allow this formulation in the waking state.