Chapter 4
The Fluid Universe: Beyond Words and Definitions
Religion attempts to make sense of change by relating it to an unchanging God and eternal laws. We've confused intelligibility with fixity, setting ourselves the impossible task of making permanence from flux. This confusion stems from developing conscious thinking so rapidly that we've forgotten the proper relationship between thoughts and events, words and things.
Thoughts and words are conventions-like money to real wealth. They represent things but don't correspond completely. Words remain fixed while real things change. The power of words has gone to our heads; to define has become almost synonymous with understanding. By naming ourselves, we feel separate from nature's fluid reality, creating conflict between man and nature.
Words and thoughts cannot truly capture life's movement and fluidity. Describing motion is like showing a running man through a series of stills-the essential vitality is lost. All linguistic explanations of the universe are circular, defining words with other words. We become frustrated expecting language to offer explanations it cannot give, wanting life to be "intelligible" in ways that would make it something other than life.
We're bewitched by words, confusing them with the real world. The universe described in dogmatic religion is merely a symbol of reality, constructed from verbal distinctions. Science hasn't proven religion false-it's shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, none actually "grasping" reality. In pursuing future security through religion or science, we've lost the actual joy of present reality-the mysterious, moving, vital now that eludes all definitions. Living for the future, we're out of touch with life's center, causing technological madness and isolation of the "I" from the universe. The spiritual traditions recognize we must surrender this separate "I" and face that we cannot define the ultimate. Beyond this lies a "vision of God"-not a radiant gentleman on a throne, but unclouded awareness of present reality without separation from it.
Chapter 5
The Intelligence of the Body: Reconnecting with Natural Wisdom
Experience, life, motion, reality-these are things we know but cannot define. When we try to fix them in rigid forms, we're like people trying to tie up water in parcels. Yet our bodies possess a wisdom that far exceeds our conscious understanding-breathing, digestion, circulation-complex processes no amount of book-learning can reproduce. While "primitive" people maintain this bodily wisdom, civilized humans increasingly rely on external gadgets and conscious thinking rather than instinctual know-how.
Modern humans suffer from a schism between brain and body, corresponding to the split between "I" and "me," man and nature. We've allowed brain thinking to dominate while instinctual wisdom atrophies. The result is internal war-the brain wanting things the body doesn't, the body giving impulses the brain can't understand. The source of evil lies not in the physical organism but in the dissociated brain or "will."
Unlike animals who eat with their stomachs and stop when full, humans eat with their brains, never sure when to stop. Human desire is insatiable-we stimulate our senses until they become insensitive, requiring ever-stronger stimulants. The brain pursues happiness as a guarantee of future pleasures, yet knowing its future is limited, tries to crowd eternity's pleasures into a few years, creating perpetual frustration.
Modern civilization forms a vicious circle of perpetual frustration. We create impressive fronts rather than spaces for living-"baronial mansions" with tiny kitchens providing only "gaseous" fare and cocktails rather than honest meals. We pursue sex with cerebral anxiety rather than bodily desire, attracted to surface gloss rather than real bodies, leading to confusion and impotence. We've become enslaved to clocks, forcing biological rhythms to conform to mechanical rotation. The brain's capacity to foresee creates fear of death, though the body naturally welcomes it when worn out. Our culture, treating mind as "sensible" and body as "dumb animal," worships the machine's rationality while becoming its appendage.
Matter is not the ultimate reality but merely a word referring to patterns taken by an indefinable process. "Matter is spirit named." The spiritual is simply "the indefinable"-that which, being alive, must escape any fixed form.
The brain, natural as heart and stomach, must be put in its proper place-serving the present and real, not chasing future phantoms. Our habitual mental tension indicates disorder; the brain should work with unconscious ease like other organs. Yet the brain, working properly as "the highest form of instinctual wisdom," can solve complex problems effortlessly, as demonstrated by lightning calculators and musical prodigies. The self-conscious brain manifests as separation between "I" and experience, functioning properly only when consciousness is "effortlessly aware" of present experience.
Chapter 6
The Power of Pure Awareness: Seeing Beyond the Self
The question "What shall we do about it?" comes only from those who don't understand the problem. Understanding and knowing what to do are identical-like bringing light that instantly vanishes darkness. Our questions about healing the split between "I" and "me," finding security in an insecure world, all demand action when what we need is more light-specifically awareness. This means experiencing life as it is in this moment, without judgments or ideas, seeing what is rather than what it is named.
Since awareness reveals truth that cannot be positively described, we must focus on removing false impressions rather than describing the truth. Security itself is a contradiction-the very desire for it creates separation from life, causing the insecurity we seek to escape. The more we pursue security, the more painful it becomes. We create vicious circles: worrying about worry, trying to forget ourselves while remembering what we want to forget.
Understanding insecurity means not facing it but being it-realizing there is no permanent "I" separate from experience. Through awareness, we discover that experience is always momentary, always present. When examining our thoughts, we find no thinker separate from thoughts-just new thoughts arising. The "I" we imagine as separate from experience cannot be found. This realization brings sanity and wholeness-that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one.
Have you ever tried to find the thinker behind your thoughts? It's like trying to bite your own teeth or touch the tip of your finger with that same fingertip-impossible by definition. When we look closely at our experience, we find only a stream of sensations, thoughts, and feelings-but no separate "self" experiencing them. This insight isn't merely philosophical-it's the key to psychological freedom.
Chapter 7
Embracing the Present: Finding Freedom in What Is
When asked "who are you?" in the present moment, without time to think, your true answer would be whatever you're experiencing-like humming a song you're listening to. If you stop to think, you'll retreat to the past, offering your name, address, and personal history. But that's who you were, not who you are. To be aware of reality is to discover that at each moment, the experience is all. There is nothing else beside it-no experience of "you" experiencing the experience. Even in self-conscious moments, what we're conscious of is always some particular feeling or sensation-muscle tensions, warmth, pain-never a sensation of what senses sensations.
When we realize "I" cannot escape the present reality since "I" is nothing other than what I know now, inner turmoil must stop. The only possibility is to be aware of pain, fear or grief as completely as pleasure. Our organism has wonderful powers to adapt to both physical and psychological pain, but these only work when we stop trying to separate the "I" from the feeling. This effort creates tension where pain thrives. As the Chinese sage advised when asked how to escape suffering's heat: "Go right into the middle of the fire."
In moments of joy, we don't stop to think "I am happy" until the joy is past its peak. We don't name the experience because naming requires comparison. Memory never captures the essence of an experience-it's merely the corpse from which life has vanished. There are two ways of understanding: comparing with memories to name and define, or being aware of experience as it is. Both have uses, but they differ like knowing a thing by words versus knowing it immediately. A menu is useful but no substitute for dinner; a guidebook admirable but incomparable to the country it describes.
The art of living is neither careless drifting nor fearful clinging to the past, but being completely sensitive to each moment as utterly new and unique. This isn't philosophy but experiment-bringing new powers of adaptation, literally absorbing pain and insecurity. Like judo, the gentle way of mastering opposition by yielding to it. Water overcomes obstacles through gentleness; the willow survives snow that breaks rigid pine branches. When swimming in a strong current, resistance is fatal-you must swim with it while gradually edging to safety.
This awareness isn't a technique or method with steps and rules-that would miss the point entirely. We're concerned with understanding what IS-the present moment. It's not a discipline for self-improvement but simply being aware of present experience and realizing you can neither define it nor divide yourself from it. With the mind thus opened, we look into a new world, as new as on creation's first day. We've had our noses in the guidebook of memory and words most of our lives, never looking at the view. As Whitehead noted, "In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them."
Chapter 8
The Whole Mind: Discovering Our Unity with All Existence
The Western mind fancies itself practical, impatient with theory, yet without true vision-understanding life as it is-all action becomes "Much Ado About Nothing." Without knowing what we actually want, practical action merely leads us in circles. Our desires are often contradictory: peace yet isolation, brotherhood yet security for "I," happiness yet permanence. Before discussing practical solutions, our minds must be healed of this fundamental split between "I" and "experience." The transformation comes in knowing and feeling that the world is an organic unity.
Though we intellectually know the world is unified, we don't feel it to be true. We feel separate from everything around us-independent, alone, cut off. Yet physically, I exist only in relation to the universe, as attached to it as a leaf to a tree. I feel cut off only because I'm split within myself. When this division dissolves, I recognize that I am what I know-the sensation of a house or star is no less "I" than an itch on my foot or an idea in my brain. My brain, your thoughts, the house across the street-all are forms of an interwoven process called the real world. The sun is my sun, the air my air, society my society-all essential to my existence as my own organs.
This unity isn't the poet's sentimental oneness with nature's pleasant aspects while rejecting its harsher elements. True unity requires recognizing that everything beheld in nature-the clammy ocean depths, reptiles, spiders, deserts-has its counterpart within ourselves. The qualities we admire or loathe in the world are reflections from within. The sense of unity with "All" isn't a nebulous trance abolishing form and distinction-it's recognizing that one and many, unity and multiplicity, are not opposites but complementary aspects of the same reality.
The undivided mind liberates us from the perpetual conflict, tension, and frustration of trying to stand outside ourselves. Each moment becomes complete, lived fully without the anxious rushing to be elsewhere. When you realize you are this moment now-that apart from this there is no past or future-you relax into the fullness of experience, whether pleasure or pain. The universe exists for this moment; it's a dance, not a pursuit. Like music fulfilled in each note, life isn't played to reach the final chord. Death, to the undivided mind, is simply another complete moment, the unknown in which we all lived before birth. Nothing is more creative than death-it means the past must be abandoned, the unknown embraced, and nothing can be ultimately fixed. By holding his breath, man loses it; by letting go, he finds it.
Chapter 9
Spontaneous Virtue: The Freedom of Acting Without Self-Consciousness
Is it paradoxical to speak of creative morality when morality implies rules and convention? Yet morality also means the working of love in human relations. While technical problems of community require rules, moralists have become scolds who harangue humanity with praise and blame-mostly blame. They assume man is basically selfish, serving community interests only under threat of punishment. But among man's greatest pleasures are human relationships and being absorbed in the world beyond self-consciousness. The moral problem exists precisely because man is concerned with motives. There can be no creative morality unless man has freedom-not the illusory freedom of choosing pleasure over pain, but freedom from contradiction.
Morality serves as the art of living together, requiring techniques for distributing resources, organizing family life, and harmonizing individual differences. The moralist should be a technical consultant but has become a scold who harangues humanity when his advice goes unheeded. Communities enforce morality through punishment, assuming people are inherently selfish and will only cooperate under threat. Yet humans naturally find pleasure in relationships-conversation, eating together, singing, working cooperatively-and pain in feeling cut off from others.
Freedom can't be grasped by the divided mind, which sees it as pushing the world around versus being pushed. To the whole mind, there's just one process acting-no one fating and no one being fated. What we call choice isn't freedom but decisions motivated by pleasure and pain. We fall into contradiction when trying to act for future happiness, since all pleasure exists in the present moment. The undivided mind experiences genuine freedom, bringing to morality a spontaneous, creative way of living.
Most conventional evils spring from the divided mind. Exaggerated desires arise not from bodily needs but from the "I" seeking security. Depression leads to drinking for elation, which deepens depression, creating a vicious cycle. Similarly, financial worries drive gambling as escape. Conventional morality offers no solution-only frightening the "I" or encouraging it, making one either run from oneself or chase oneself. Even virtuous imitation brings no freedom, as fear motivates bravery and pride drives humility. So long as there's motive to become something other than what one is, freedom remains impossible.
When we stop trying to escape our feelings, they transform naturally. The undivided mind experiences love-not mere emotion but the organizing principle making the world a universe. The mind must be absorbed in something, just as a mirror must reflect. Released from self-love's circle, the mind contains the universe like a dewdrop contains the sky. This is the power of free action and creative morality. Human relations based on morals are inhuman. True warmth cannot be generated by formula, dedication, or self-condemnation-it emerges only when we realize we have no self to love.
Chapter 10
Beyond Belief: Religion as Direct Experience, Not Doctrine
Science and religion describe the same universe in different languages. Science deals with past and future events, making predictions based on what has happened. Religion, properly understood, concerns the present and eternal, using symbols rather than predictions. These symbols come in two forms: concrete religious images and abstract metaphysical language. The true difference is simpler: nature is the world as named and classified by thought, while the supernatural is the mysterious reality underlying our classifications-that which we sense but cannot define.
Ancient scriptures like the Dhammapada and John's Gospel express the same fundamental insight: our thoughts create the world of named things, while undefined reality exists beyond them. Poetically, this reality can be likened to the Father, with thought as the Son "by whom all things were made." Metaphysical language uses negative terms because it attempts to convey that words cannot explain reality. The Absolute isn't some transparent jelly but this very world we experience-boundless, formless, and unchanging-not having meaning but being meaning itself.
Religious concepts are easily misunderstood when the divided mind seeks escape from present experience. The "I" resists change by clinging to an unchanging Absolute, forgetting it's also "unfixed." Eternal life isn't endless time but realization that the present is the only reality. As Eckhart said, the person living in God's light is "conscious neither of time past nor of time to come but only of one eternity." Heaven isn't everlasting continuity but complete presence; hell is the frustration of self-consciousness, "trying to see one's own eyes."
The universal religious principle that man must surrender himself to know God is often misunderstood. This isn't a problem of how a selfish self can give itself up, but realizing there is no separate self to surrender. Christianity contains this answer in the idea that man surrenders "in Christ"-the realization that "I and the Father are one." Our freedom lies in seeing that we have no "I" to surrender, not in trying to improve ourselves, which merely postpones freedom. This loss of "I" doesn't obliterate personality; rather, the most interesting people are those who've forgotten about "I" entirely.
Religious principles can be understood either as symbols of the undivided mind or as attempts to stand outside oneself to grasp and rule the universe. The latter approach is circular and part of our civilization's disease. Science's true splendor lies not in classification but in its openness to facts. The greater the scientist, the more impressed with their ignorance of reality. As knowledge increases, so does awareness of what remains unknown, until what's unknown becomes not ignorance but wonder. This wonder is fulfillment, not hunger-a point where Eastern and Western wisdom converge. When thought completes its circle, the mind becomes whole, ending the split between self and world. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking, life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished.
