July 2004 Archives

This past weekend I went on a camping trip with my brother, my sister-in-law, and several of their friends. While there I was able to take some pictures, which reveal some of the beauty of that area. It’s a bit like a different place, so empty, so much nature. I spent much of my time lazing around, reading from “Walden”, and of course, taking walks with my camera.

The physical world is composed of energy, which began as an undifferentiated quantity of energy, but later varied to produce specific configurations. Along came the faculty of awareness, possessed of sensory organs to discriminate patterns in these configurations. We refer to them as color, brightness, sound, solidity… Enough to build a complete picture of the “world” we live in.

This picture rests on a foundation of space and time. Without space and time (spacetime), electrons could not whirl, producing the electromagnetic fields to keep atoms apart; nor would quarks combine to create nucleons, etc. Matter would not be. There would still be energy, but no configuration. Thus, configuration depends on spacetime, like the circle created while spinning a ball on a string. Spacetime makes the circle possible – which is as real to our senses as “real” can be.

But what is time? Does the whirling of electrons “happen” within a stable framework of space and time? To examine that question, let’s journey on a light beam.

As we move faster and faster, the value of spacetime changes: The nearer we get to the speed of light, the shorter and slower we appear to those who aren’t moving. If I started in a long spaceship, with a clock spinning on the wall, near lightspeed I would seem very flat, and my clock hardly to move. But from my point of view on the ship, it would be the universe that flattens, not me! The distance between myself and my goal would shorten, and the speed of clocks outside would slow.

As I approached lightspeed, my destination would appear closer and closer. It might be billions of miles away, but exactly at the speed of light, it would seem to occupy the same space as my ship; the beginning and end would become one. In fact, everything along my direction of travel would suddenly be the same place. The universe would look like a giant donut, with in its point-sized hole. There would be no “here” or “there” in the direction of travel. “Space” and “time” would cease to be. Physics says I cannot reach this speed, for it has no meaning for something to be of null length, or zero time.

I wonder about photons, though, which do travel at lightspeed. For them, there is no universe. When bits of light leave their parent star, there is no big world out there; there is no space between them and their end-point – which in a hyperspherical universe is the other side of the same star! They see all of this as null, a single point: all the energy of the universe compacted, without configuration, into a timeless, spaceless ball.

So time and space are most real if one is traveling slowly in relation to something else. As one’s velocity approaches the speed of light, the length of a meter and the duration of a second are seen to approach 0. The universe outside the traveler starts contracting and slowing, until it nears the impossible. If it did reach that speed, there would be no “distance” or “duration” anymore. But what about things already traveling at lightspeed? To us, they would have no space or time. There is no “length” to a photon. It’s a point energy, whose only measurement is the quantity of energy it contains. If the universe had no spacetime, that’s all we could say about it, too. Which is how we describe things before the Big Bang “occurred”.

It puzzles me that it requires spacetime to travel, yet travel nullifies spacetime. Because the reality of spacetime is directly linked to how slowly two things move in relation to each other. If two objects are said to be “separate”, we imply they exist in different frames of reference, where the variables of motion differ. It is not that spacetime has a certain value in either frame, but that they have offset values with respect to one another. If the speed between them differs greatly, the value of spacetime differs greatly; if it becomes a difference of lightspeed, spacetime is no longer perceived by one reference frame within the other. Conversely, as the two approach a relative rest velocity, the value of spacetime equalizes.

The greater the difference in velocity between two frames of reference, the less value spacetime has. A meter in one is perceived as less than a meter in the other; a second, less than a second. Near lightspeed, they become simply energy to each other. That is, if a ten square meter box starting moving at light speed from me, it would become a box with no length – or no a box at all. I could reckon it then only in terms of its energy.

So the perception of spacetime depends on a rest state between two frames of reference. Things nearby us are more real than what is far away, since distant objects move very quickly relative to us. The Andromeda galaxy, for example, moves at a relative speed of 300,000 miles per hour. A meter in that galaxy is slightly shorter to us than a meter in our own galaxy. If a galaxy is far, far away, the difference is much greater; until at a certain distance – in an expanding universe – things cease to have meaning at all in terms of spacetime.

We do not view our world as pure energy, however, since we perceive configurations within that energy, owing to spacetime. Perception depends on spacetime, which is real only insofar as we remain at rest relative to some object. Being truly at rest is impossible: there is no standard object to be “at rest” in relation to. There are simply faster and slower relative reference, some seeming to vanish toward null spacetime, and others that have a similar spacetime to ourselves.

However, motion requires spacetime in order to happen! Without spacetime, there would be no concept of “rest”, and no resting reference frames to give rise to spacetime. How does spacetime create the possibility of spacetime? If relative rest is necessary for the perception of relative rest, how does it begin? From the point energy that begin our universe, a huge number of reference frames seem to have appeared, giving rise to the very spacetime which made possible those separate reference frames. Somewhere, out of nowhere, a chicken laid an egg.

Now, it is possible for energy to appear at rest relative to multiple frames of reference, while continuing to move at lightspeed: when it moves in a circle. This circle would not appear as a circle to the point energy itself; rather, to external frames of references it would seem to convert some of its energy into angular momentum, causing it to appear as a stable “bit” of energy to other stable bits. But even this “spinning” would require an initial spacetime matrix.

How did relative rest first appear, without a framework of spacetime to describe “rest”?

It has been a while since I studied physics, so if anyone can direct me toward better lines of thought, please e-mail me.

In an elegantly ironic move by our friend, the Universe, even as I wrote about liberation from sorrow, my car was apparently being liberated from me!absconded to places I will probably never know. Which comes at a strange time, since my air mattress recently liberated itself from air (through a leak), and now I wonder how to catch a bus to buy a new one. It might be a few flat nights, until I find a ride to a car dealer.

Recent thoughts have certainly changed my perspective on all this, of course. As the policeman makes his way to my apartment, I count myself lucky for living near places to eat. There is something magical here. I was wanting a new car, anyway; my Honda had problems I’d been putting off fixing. Perhaps a problem was nearing critical, and fate chose to steer me onto a different path. I will never know. But I do feel that, somehow, in the place of my disappearing car, something better this way comes.

After less than a day, thanks to the efforts of my local police, my car has been returned. It was found somewhere in the next city over (Daly City, which is between me and San Francisco). So now, with a new air mattress, it seems things are restored. An odd day of bus riding and visiting police departments to fill out forms. But still that sense of life being a bit amusing. I wonder if it’s all just a test.

Today’s essay, written over several pieces of the most delectable California roll sushi, is something of a landmark for me. After writing it, it felt like a key: The key to a door I’ve been searching for all my adult life (which I’d even thought of as a door, for many years). But will it turn the lock?

I think something fundamental is missing from the way we look at life. I hear my fellow religionists talk of heaven as though it were a place unattainable, awaiting physical death to grant us access to spiritual heaven. Isn’t there a contradiction in that?

Or my fellow scientists, who reject the burden of a God Who would limit their thinking according to what thought itself understands of spirituality. Yet they, too, leave something unexamined. Something no one is looking for, perhaps because it violates every belief we have.

What if heaven, a place purportedly free of space and time, were not some place else than here, or some when away, as at the time of our death. What if the Kingdom of God were truly “within you”, and we had no further to look than our own doorstep? “He who hath known himself hath known God.” What if everything we understand God, life, and heaven to be, are but abstractions begging us to seek their reality, and which could be known truly if not for the search?

What if heaven is where we are, but one cannot enter unless he chooses to do so? A heaven, so perfectly hidden, it hides itself in plain sight. A heaven that disguises its beauty by allowing us to see “ugliness”, and that withholds its joy because we are firm believers in “sorrow”. A heaven that is all around us, that we are born into, but we cannot know until we’ve died to the “life” we call home.

I extrapolate my essay from the central idea that God is both good and perfect. Everything else follows from this; whatever tangents I follow, they relate to this. From just that one thought, I am forced to reconsider everything else. I must then say that “God” is meaningless as a symbol, “good” is the joy I experience in my life, and “perfect” means it is real and does not submit to unreality. What “real” and “life” mean: these are what lie behind the door…

If God is all that is good, and a perfect Creator, how could He make something bad? How can things like sorrow and misery be real, if all was created from good?

If all is good, perhaps we fail to see it because time and space put blinders on our perception. We see only a limited part, a sliver of a moving whole – all of which is good, even if one part seems disjoint from that theme. The “whole picture” cannot be stopped or divided, and still be seen. It includes all the movements of reality, so cannot be frozen; it comprises every element, so cannot be separated without appearing as other than what it is, which is perfect – if indeed it was created by a good and perfect Creator.

What limits and divides our perception are ideas. They abstract from the All certain parts, to allow us to interact with those parts individually. But as long as our consciousness founds itself in ideas, we fail to perceive what lies outside them. Like the eye’s ability to focus, which must pick out certain parts from a whole field, in order to “know” things we contrast them with other “things”. Contrast and distinction make up our awareness, but they also blind us to the All.

There is an exit to this paradox: The knowledge of things through contrast itself contrasts with the nature of the All. Our method of awareness can lead to an awareness of what lies outside it! Through this leap, we may be able to see things without knowing them as “things”. Our awareness is able to transcend the requirements of awareness. Thus contrast, which makes observation of the All impossible, can permit us to become aware of the All. It is like a hidden doorway into a different world.

For the remainder of this essay, I refer to operations outside the scheme of ideas as knowing and seeing, with the idea that knowing follows from realizing the incapacity of knowledge – and what it is incapable in regards to – and seeing comes from abandoning the futility of sight for the same reason.

Since ideas divide reality, it is they that distinguish “good” from “bad”. They make the All appear to contain these two attributes, which appear when we look at one part in exclusion from the rest. Since the All was created by a good and perfect Creator, the nature of the All must be only good – and perfect good – so that ideas allow us to see only “somewhat good” and “somewhat bad” on a sliding scale. In fact, since the underlying reality is only perfect good, what ideas see are merely differentiated values of good from lesser to greater extent. There is no “bad” per se: what we call “bad” is an arbitrary line drawn on the gradient between the least perceived good and the most perceived good. Then each definition of good and bad relates to the perceiver, because each draws that line differently.

This gradient exists only for ideas. If we did not see with ideas, not only would our sight be undifferentiated, but we would see only the underlying, perfect good. Thus if “joy” is what attends our experience of the good, and sadness of the bad, then once we see there can be no more sadness, as “bad” no longer has meaning. Sorrow was never real – since the underlying reality is perfect good – it was simply the perceived form of our deficiency of understanding. Once there is knowledge, sorrow can no longer be. This accords with a statement found in the Bahá’í writings:

This is a station which, wert thou to attain unto it, thou wouldst arrive at a happiness which would not be followed by sadness, a joy which is not succeeded by grief, an ease and comfort that does not end in distress and hardship, a prosperity that does not turn to destitution and misfortune, for the might of thy Lord has grasped firmly the reins of affairs.13

And also here:

The wayfarer in this Valley [of Knowledge] seeth in the fashionings of the True One nothing save clear providence, and at every moment saith: “No defect canst thou see in the creation of the God of Mercy: Repeat the gaze: Seest thou a single flaw?” He beholdeth justice in injustice, and in justice, grace. In ignorance he findeth many a knowledge hidden, and in knowledge a myriad wisdoms manifest.14

If seeing leads to an experience of life which is only good, perhaps the purpose of sight through ideas is to lead us to sight. In other words, the nature of the world we first experience, through ignorance, exists in order for us to become truly aware. Without that first, deficient awareness, we could not become aware of what such awareness cannot approach. The fundamental paradox of contrast must resolve itself for the circle to close in a conscious way.

To say it again: The purpose of the world of seeming, with its mixture of “good” and “bad”, “joy” and “sorrow”, is to offer a hidden door, on the other side of which is a true awareness of the Good – an awareness fundamentally different from what we started with. It’s like teaching a baby how to use a muscle, which can only be learned from the exercise of it. In this way I understand the tradition:

“O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?” And the answer came, “Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.”15

That is, in order to exit the world of ideas we must learn to leave them behind, foremost among which is “self”.

How to find this door and achieve sight? Well, an element exists to religion which is all about learning to see what doesn’t appear to be there, such as seeing good in the bad that happens to us: Faith. Faith believes that the reality it fails to see is more real than what it does see. It suggests that what we think exists perhaps doesn’t exist at all. And faith develops, not by adding to an ever-growing store of ideas, but by weakening their hold on us through various exercises, such as: detachment, meditation, regarding our strength as weakness and our wealth as poverty, lessening our love of “self”, etc. All of these aspects of religion aim at making the door to the All visible. I even think now that all of religion aims at this on the personal and social scale, that from this goal are born all its laws and institutions. Only when they depart from this objective, of truly awakening man to the perfect joy of knowing God, do they go astray.

Concerning the world beyond the door, because division cannot comprehend it, concepts must regard it as a single reality. Although that world exists within this world – beyond the veil of ideas – it cannot be perceived except by seeing it. As Lao Tzu put it, “Looked at, it cannot be seen.” A man in this realm might use concepts, but he no longer sees in terms of them. In order to know, he gives up knowledge. When hungry he might look for food, but he no longer knows what “hunger” and “food” are. “Thus is it said, `Absolute unity excludeth all attributes.’”

The world beyond the door is not just a cause for undimmed joy, it is the very meaning of joy: to know the good. To such a degree that what we call “joy” is but a shadow of the truth. Everything in this “world” is a shadow cast from that world, along a gradient from light to dark. The perfect good is reflected as “good” and “bad”, perfect joy is reflected as “joy” and “sorrow”, and every other kind of perfection is seen here as more or less imperfect.

The real world is kept from us, not by the barrier of physical death, but the death of our “selves” who hold so dearly to the illusory world of concepts. The true reality, unlimited by time or space, is the world. All failure, impermanence, and insecurity arise from the way we see it, or how our “first awareness” divides and separates it. What we call “flawed” is in fact perfect, and what we call “impermanent” is essentially eternal. It only seems otherwise. And thus, by transcending the limits of our vision, our souls may enter the heaven intended for them, which has been here with us all along.

Strive then, O My brother, to apprehend this matter, that the veils may be lifted from the face of thy heart and that thou mayest be reckoned among them whom God hath graced with such penetrating vision as to behold the most subtle realities of His dominion, to fathom the mysteries of His kingdom, to perceive the signs of His transcendent Essence in this mortal world, and to attain a station wherein one seeth no distinction amongst His creatures and findeth no flaw in the creation of the heavens and the earth.16

Why is following certain standards so hard? Why can we not “whip ourselves into shape”? Why do some behaviors feel impossibly hard to stop, with self-deception always making think we’ve succeeded, only to prove later than we still fail?

I think having standards can be an excellent thing, especially if chosen by wiser people who traveled more of the roads of life than we have. This is purportedly the reason for the Messengers of God sending us moral guidelines to live by: Every pupil needs a teacher.

I think self-conflict comes from not wanting to follow those standards – which is only natural until we understand them – but instead of asking ourselves what we do want, we ignore what we want. We carry on as if we wanted something else that we don’t. This doesn’t eliminate the desire, it only hides it. And once that hiding takes place, we become a being at cross-purposes with itself. Hence, self-deception – a way for other wishes to pursue their ends, despite what we professedly desire.

For the pupil to respect the teacher, he must want to learn what’s being taught. Imagine you had two brothers, and one of them wanted to play while the other wanted to study. Would there ever be effective cooperation between them? Not unless they desire the same thing can they really soar. For this to happen, they must respect each other, talk openly, and come to understand what the other wants most. There must be love, openness, and frank consultation.

Between ourselves and our bodies, our past, our ideals, we can become divided like those two brothers, where one wants what “should be” and the other wants something else. Will it ever work if the one simply tries to dominate the other? Can pure love arise from a being whose behavior is forged by such little hatreds?

The inward battle is the first that must be healed, using the same methods needed for larger battles: openness, listening, understanding, mutual respect, love, acceptance. If we treat ourselves unreservedly with these qualities, we’ll find it natural to treat others that way as well.

Many of our desires are not good for us at all. Society has fed us false messages for so long – and they caught our attention. We want to know if some of these promises are true, even if we’ve “know” they aren’t. We want to know the truth, not just hear about it. This is exactly how children are (which is really what we are), where suppression of such knowledge often leads to just wanting it all the more.

In an atmosphere of real learning, there is no need for deception. After all, what does deception hope to gain? After all, doesn’t every part of us simply want what is recognizes as its personal “best”? And if every part held a certain best in common, wouldn’t all of us, in harmony, seek it? The tongue may want harmful foods, but were a delicious and health food found, wouldn’t all of us rejoice in the experience of it? Why force things that taste terrible upon ourselves, in the name of a health our tastes reject? Why does this happen?

My own take is that, fundamentally, there is self-hatred. We don’t want complete harmony – which means respecting our lower nature – but we take pleasure in feeling dominant over all our wayward parts. It’s not an “I want to kill you” hatred, but an “I wish you were someone else” hatred. The kind of hatred that ruins any friendship. Can we pursue Teachings of love in such an atmosphere? If we want to love, this hatred must be the first to go. Let’s throw a homecoming party for ourselves, and welcome back every part we had rejected, so that all can sit down and discover a commonly wished-for goal. We have to make every part happy for sadness to stop creeping up behind our backs. Within God’s infinite creation, I have faith that such solutions exist. There must other reasons why we do not seek them, or find them.

A house divided pursues each a separate goal, and sabotages constantly the efforts of the rest. Constantly at war, we are always exhausted. Even after a single day, rather than being uplifted by radiant joy – and thus wishing some activity to engage us – we are utterly spent. Television, mindlessness and sleep are our comforts. To a being united in its purpose, however, even if that purpose are not yet “perfect” (we are always learning), such a being will always have energy, time, and the willingness to listen to every part of himself, in order to find the common solution. Isn’t this what is needed for the peace of mankind? So perhaps, too, for the peace of each man.

Hating our slowness, our pettiness, our lack of fulfilling the moral ideals, we start a campaign of self-destruction. We think of it as self-perfection – in terms of the self we hope to become – but truly it is self-destruction, the ruination of the self that we are. We deny our wayward desires, our stray thoughts, our stupidity and naivete. We chastise ourselves for our mistakes; we wreak emotional torment if things go wrong. In this climate of utter unacceptance, we do not really change who we are, we just force a part of ourselves into hiding.

By hiding away our “bad” parts, we create the illusion of success in terms of our moral goals. It is quite satisfying to believe we’re making progress toward perfection. So satisfying, in fact, that to imagine it’s all illusion is too much to contemplate. Since actual change can be so terribly slow – years, decades – it is far more effective, emotionally speaking, to just sweep a few things under the carpet and hope no one is the wiser. Not even ourselves!

But the self, though liable to fracture, is not so easily destroyed. What is hidden is less visible, but no less powerful. In fact, it associates itself with all the other childish energies we’ve reigned in and deny, leading to a kind of shadow. Because this darker side receives so little positive attention, it is less developed than other parts of our nature. When denied what it wants, it reacts in ways that are not very effective, and often childish. Like rebelling, or simply refusing to cooperate until its needs are met – without being told how to accomplish it.

In this situation of a house divided, the self longs to be whole, simple, complete. The soul’s natural wish is for an elegant purity that derives from a single conception. When our better half seeks this, it can do so by two means: Integrate; or attempt to cast off the broken parts. When we reject parts of our selves, we destroy inner simplicity, by creating divisions along the lines of our ideas. Knowing this discord exists, we try to resolve it by further empowering our “better” side against the part we wish to reject. Hence all the self-help literature, arming us for this inward battle, always promises bigger and better techniques to force ourselves into line.

I think this is a battle which cannot be won, since to win it finally is to destroy the very one who pursues it. It is like fighting in a marriage, or a family, where victory is no more than a Pyrrhic loss. Consider that we are married to our own lower nature for life; how, then, to resolve the agitation and the cross-purposes? How would we do it in marriage?

Love in the only answer I’ve found, a love that wants the happiness of all sides, that seeks the joy of the parties involved. This is partly why I advocate seeking joy over seeking progress: Because the goal of progress condemns us, whereas the goal of joy offers salvation to our longing parts. We might even find, at the end of it all, that we have no “parts” anymore, that the fissures can be healed. Isn’t that the road to peace? Isn’t a radiant joy from all parties the true sign of victory? If this is a marriage, can anything be called a success unless both are happy?

If all the world is perfect  
within a grander scheme,  
tomorrow's bitter cup  
is sweeter than it seems.

If eyes be taught this Way  
of seeing past the veil,  
they'd find an end to pain;  
so would happiness prevail!

For darkness hasn't essence  
to bear against the Light;  
whose first arrows of dawn  
are fatal to the night.

Until they ask:  
Mustn't night, too, succeed day?  
To which I answer:  
The Sun never sets;  
  it's the Earth that turns away.

I have heard a sentiment from many people over the years which I would like to respond to in a clear, concise way. It boils down to people’s feelings about the purpose of life. In many ways, I hear it said that our goal in life lies in preparation for the future. This might mean a life after death, the future of society, or a future state when our higher self is perfected. Whatever the form, the essential statement is: “The purpose of living in the present is to prepare for the future.”

I think the path of joy contributes most to the well-being of mankind. I never want a person to feel that I overlooked their present being because I was too busy working for their future benefit. Only if people are happy now do I consider myself successful. I want a world, not of perfection, but where people are happy. It is their souls that matter to me, and what will uplift those souls. Can the pursuit of unattainable perfections do this? It hasn’t for me. But joy… Joy is the one thing which, if I had naught else for all eternity, I could ask for nothing more.

These thoughts are examined in an essay written earlier today.

I have heard a sentiment from many people over the years which I would like to respond to in a clear, concise way. It boils down to people’s feelings about the purpose of life. In many ways, I hear it said that our goal in life lies in preparation for the future. This might mean a life after death, the future of society, or a future state when our higher self is perfected. Whatever the form, the essential statement is: “The purpose of living in the present is to prepare for the future.”

Now, if this kind of purpose leads to joy, happiness, and a better world, I am nothing if not for it a hundred percent. But after all seeing all the burnt-out, tired, weary people, and hearing them tell me that joy is not a valid goal, but rather working for the future is where it’s at… to this, I respond. I have nothing against progress whatsoever; I even feel it is the natural outcome of joy. Does a musician, in love with music, just sit before his guitar and do nothing? Joy makes our potential real. So I do not mean to confuse these ideas with noble goals of progress. It is only when progress is made primary, and joy secondary, and preparation for the future the dominant view, that I have seen problems come about. “Preparing” has been expressed as: building structures, developing programs, extending the reach and depth of knowledge, improving ourselves, making ready for changes in society, etc. It can be very much a “hurry up and get there” state of mind, because none of the preparations can happen too quickly.

Being so involved with a “better future”, one can begin to view the present less favorably, because it doesn’t contain these improvements. Hope for the future even interferes with our relation to the present. If, for example, one spends all their time working toward a better society (a fine thing, if built on the right foundation), every kind of present failing becomes irksome, because it proves the hoped-for future to be unreal. Everything in the present is seen as “not yet” that future. It so is always disappointing. How can we learn to love what is, if we spends all our time dreaming about what isn’t? But the future never arrives, because there’s always further to go down the path of perfection. The more ardently we hope for perfection, the more imperfect the present must seem. Until the present is rather hated for its stubbornness in frustrating the ideal.

And what if the imagined perfection were achieved? What then? If all the structures were built and flaws removed, what would the resulting life be? The path of “perfecting” cannot answer this, because imagination can never have the same quality as what is real. It is not alive, in the same way as the present. And if the present relates to what it means to be alive, then perhaps the purpose of life must be looked for in relation to the present.

When the mind dwells longingly on the future, it departs the present, leaving behind only a body – and that often unwillingly. People with such ambitions might have no time for the now, since their imagined future never ceases to demand more and more of their time and energy. Ultimately, because they have eyes only for what will be, they give everything to that unreal future. They sacrifice the present that a different present might be. Because they have no time for the present, they have no time for what is in the present: namely me. Relationships can suffer, families, society – all in the name of creating a better social order! People who work strenuously for mankind, but who haven’t time left to spare for the actual man.

I used to espouse this philosophy, always wondering why happiness remained elusive. I built and built, perfected and perfected – but nothing changed. Nothing fundamentally changed. Because there was always more to build, and just as far to go on the path of perfection. I lived the life of one who hunts the Will o’ the Wisp, with the constant promise that it was worth the cost, which was the very essence of my life.

It took a long while to find a different goal, one that is actually achievable because it can be found in the present: happiness. This past year, all my writing has been on this theme: that the goal of our lives is to know happiness, to worship it, to communion with its essence. It is that which cannot be named, forced, or planned. One can only head in the direction of joy, and by that very fact, there it will be found.

I often use the word “joy” to explain this philosophy. By “joy”, I do not mean pleasure, or just what puts a smile on your face. I do mean “joy” in that, where there is no smile, there is no joy. Joy is the proof of happiness. Even if there is sorrow, on the other side there is joy again. Where there is perpetually little joy, there is little happiness. Joy is the standard. Joy is the tangible, irrepressible response of a happy life. It is what to aim for, because what brings joy – true joy – will lead to happiness.

With joy as a personal goal, it also becomes a universal goal. What we want for ourselves, we wish for everyone. It is a goal which concerns people and their lives. Abstract goals concern abstractions. If the goal of life were progress, the sight of decay would prompt me to action. The goal of progress is a negative life, because it lives for fixing what should not be. And it is never finished. The goal of progress cannot find its fulfillment in this world.

The goal of joy, however, is self-realizing and self-serving. If it encounters sadness, it wants to replace it with itself. It strives to make more of itself in the world. The life of joy is a positive life, because instead of undoing wrong, it creates right. It even fuels its own undertaking: an increase of joy leads to more joy. It spreads naturally, easily, willingly. It is the easiest thing in the world, since it provides the very energy needed to sustain it. Ask any mountain climber if they force themselves up the mountain; rather, joy gives them wings.

The goal of progress always lies in the future; joy is only and always in the present. Joy is something I can succeed at, right now, under any circumstances. It depends only on me, my attitude and my understanding, not on what other people choose to do. Quantity is not even a factor. A little joy is as much a triumph over sadness as a lot of joy. Every bit is cherished, and “enjoyed”.

What happens in the plan of seeking joy in the world? As I become joyful, I want others to know joy. It creates a natural surplus of energy, and the desire to share it. Isn’t that our mission: to see the people around us smile, to improve their lives whatever way we can. Isn’t this the truly religious life? Where there is joy, aren’t people more willing to cooperate, to overlook faults, to be more patient, to act lovingly toward each other? Doesn’t joy aid progress more than the fight against decay? Joy is creative. It shines light into the dark places. It is warm against the cold, and energy against torpor. It provides fuel for our spirits to soar; and thus soaring, better able to see and understand our problems.

What else is as creative as this, that fills the present with a palpable radiance, undeniable in its effect on the heart? Progress as a purpose feels very cold to me; joy is warm and immediate. Joy is universal, and universally available. It depends on nothing – though everything may serve it. It is the life of the world of man; it is what makes us love being alive.

I see joy as very much connected to love. If joy is the adjective and happiness the noun, I would call love the verb. We love what brings us joy, and to be happy is to love. All that is good in the world – beauty, brotherhood, unity, quality – are what bring us joy, and are what we love. If you see something in life and begin to feel happiness spreading over your soul, you are loving something in the present which is causing you joy.

The more we adventure in life, the more deeply we plumb the well of joy. Deeper and deeper, until we approach certain realities that can only be felt, not explained. Deeper and deeper – until we start to sense a common Source to these things, Whose very nature might be the reality of all happiness, love, and joy… of all that is Good and Most Glorious.

There are higher and deeper forms of joy, but all of them are real and alive, and all of them are good in the present, if not always in the future. The purpose of education becomes to seek out these fuller causes of joy, to make them more easily accessible. And every new height that we achieve is always the current best we’ve ever known. In this scheme, the movement of life is always from best to best! There is no “not enough” or “too much”. Compare this to the life where imagined perfections are forever sought, but not a one of them lastingly achieved.

I think the path of joy contributes most to the well-being of mankind. I never want a person to feel that I overlooked their present being because I was too busy working for their future benefit. Only if people are happy now do I consider myself successful. I want a world, not of perfection, but where people are happy. It is their souls that matter to me, and what will uplift those souls. Can the pursuit of unattainable perfections do this? It hasn’t for me. But joy… Joy is the one thing which, if I had naught else for all eternity, I could ask for nothing more.

Look for joy in your life by listening deeply to your heart, and to what makes it sing. The soul knows the response of joy intimately. Prayer can help to make this voice more audible. Find joy where it is natural, spontaneously, self-increasing. Joyful friendships are those that endure for their own sake, and not for any imagined ideal. Ideas are what make the waters seem so cloudy, and our lives so complicated and difficult. Stillness, meditation, awareness: The cause of joy is so simple and direct – even childlike – that it is more a matter of discarding false ideas, than of learning anything new.

After all these entries on seeing and perception, something different: My first ever attempt at recording a song! with the inestimable help of my friend Chris Campbell of Subimage – a wizard at the sound machine. We recorded this in his house tonight (download is an MP3). It’s a Persian chant of my favorite mystical text: The Seven Valleys, by Bahá’u’lláh. The style is a mixture of Eastern (melodic) and Western (harmonic) modes. Below is an English translation of what is chanted.

The stages that mark the wayfarer’s journey from the abode of dust to the heavenly homeland are said to be seven. Some have called these Seven Valleys, and others, Seven Cities. And they say that until the wayfarer taketh leave of self, and traverseth these stages, he shall never reach to the ocean of nearness and union, nor drink of the peerless wine. The first is the Valley of Search The steed of this Valley is patience; without patience the wayfarer on this journey will reach nowhere and attain no goal. Nor should he ever be downhearted; if he strive for a hundred thousand years and yet fail to behold the beauty of the Friend, he should not falter. For those who seek the Ka`bih of “for Us” rejoice in the tidings: “In Our ways will We guide them.” In their search, they have stoutly girded up the loins of service, and seek at every moment to journey from the plane of heedlessness into the realm of being. No bond shall hold them back, and no counsel shall deter them.

It is incumbent on these servants that they cleanse the heart – which is the wellspring of divine treasures – from every marking, and that they turn away from imitation, which is following the traces of their forefathers and sires, and shut the door of friendliness and enmity upon all the people of the earth.

In this journey the seeker reacheth a stage wherein he seeth all created things wandering distracted in search of the Friend. How many a Jacob will he see, hunting after his Joseph; he will behold many a lover, hasting to seek the Beloved, he will witness a world of desiring ones searching after the One Desired. At every moment he findeth a weighty matter, in every hour he becometh aware of a mystery; for he hath taken his heart away from both worlds, and set out for the Ka`bih of the Beloved. At every step, aid from the Invisible Realm will attend him and the heat of his search will grow.

One must judge of search by the standard of the Majnún of Love. It is related that one day they came upon Majnún sifting the dust, and his tears flowing down. They said, “What doest thou?” He said, “I seek for Laylí.” They cried, “Alas for thee! Laylí is of pure spirit, and thou seekest her in the dust!” He said, “I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her.”

Yea, although to the wise it be shameful to seek the Lord of Lords in the dust, yet this betokeneth intense ardor in searching. “Whoso seeketh out a thing with zeal shall find it.”

The first task of Adam, in the book of Genesis, was to name everything he saw in the world; to fit each thing into a unit; to create a new world of symbols and references, which might be called the Kingdom of Names. What rules these names is the spirit animating their lifeless bodies, the sine qua non of nomenclature. Yet, Adam did not name the world itself; he named what he saw in the world.

The names we use give form to our perceptions, and are like a castle erected on a marvellous foundation. To discover this foundation, consider the dictionary. It is filled with every name of the Kingdom of Names, each with its own definition. However, every definition is given in terms of other words within the same book. The dictionary is completely circular. What breaks the circle? How can something entirely self-referential refer to things outside itself? How can it mean anything? It would be like petting a cat, and thinking there’s really a “cat” under our hand.

Our sense of meaning is built on a foundation that is all meaning and no definition; until somehow, we are able to marry our experience of that world with a book that is all definition and no meaning. That we do this is something “wondrous strange”, though later we come to justify these connections by the benefits they yield. We apply the dictionary in the ways that improve our lives. It’s really something of a spell book.

So we see something outside, and link it to “tree”. Tree links to “wood”, wood links to “fire”, and fire links to “warmth”. We try the relations out, and they work. We mark the success for later use. If another person comes along talking about “trees”, we can listen to them and hear “warmth”. That’s really what “tree” does for us in this case; otherwise, the dictionary has added nothing to what was there before “tree” was defined.

Building further, we establish a huge range of concepts and notions all interconnected, matching various words with the products that benefit our lives. “Tree” goes to “paper”, “river” goes to “fish”, “wind” goes to “power”, etc. Countless formulae appear, which allow us to turn perceptions into results. We can even use better and more accurate ways to describe these relationship, until we get really concise and powerful, with definitions like “e=mc2”. Now we know that “matter” goes to “energy”.

All these words build upon our foundation of experience until we make it a very beautiful, very comfortable castle indeed. It may have a draft in the winter, or be awful to clean, but it serves our purposes extremely well, keeping us safe and secure inside. So safe and secure, in fact, there’s hardly a need to step outside.

But what if, some day, a stranger knocks on the door, talking about things we’ve never seen. To talk at all, he has to use words from our dictionary. Though since he’s not from around here, there’s no telling what foundation he means. He says “tree”, which goes to “wood” and “warmth”, but what does his “tree” mean, since “wood” and “warmth” only tell us what trees can do, not what they are. In fact, beacuse the stranger’s experience of life is very different from our own, it means nothing to talk of “trees”, since the only “tree” we know is part of our castle’s definition. The stranger isn’t saying anything to us, really; just reminding us of our own past.

How can we ever know what a stranger is saying? The words makes sense, and we can see the pictures they form in our minds, but what does it mean? Is there any way to know?

A particular case of this are the words of God. A messenger appears begins using common words to describe an uncommon reality (if it were indeed common, why send a messenger?). We read these words and see what the words means in terms of our own perceptions of our own reality – not in terms of the messenger’s perceptions of God’s reality. How can we bridge so wide a gap? Without experiencing his reality directly, does it do any good to read the words at all?

Interestingly enough, most religious texts do not really set out to describe a different reality, except insofar as to motivate us. On the whole, they seem more interesting at getting us to recognize the Kingdom of Names we’ve locked ourselves into, that we might learn to step outside. And this, to resume our journey of the mind, onward to the next step. They are more teachings of freedom, than a manual for building more ornate castles. At least this is how I read them. It is not how they are always read.

So tonight I look around, and suddenly see walls where I thought there was clear sky. Because now I see that I see “sky”, thinking the “sky” is really there. My dictionary is telling me what exists, rather than me telling my dictionary. The two of us would go hand-and-hand through the real world of the bizarre, if only we’d straighten out this relationship…

I say my prayers now, and have no inkling of the reality they refer to. In fact, thinking I did know was keeping me from understanding them at all. So I tried saying my payer without knowing, and yet knowing, and it was like a two-dimensional picture given depth. There is so much strange “in heaven and earth” – without leaving my bedroom! This has been quite a head trip so far.

“O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”

“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

After thinking, here is another analogy to explain the functional, relative nature of concepts: If I look at a tree in a meadow, I can point to it and say, “That is a tree, while the rest is not.” The concept of “tree” isolates one part of what I’m seeing from the rest. But if I say, “There are just atoms over there,” or, “There is only energy in front of me,” I no longer have any reason to distinguish “tree” from the whole. “Tree” does not exist in terms of pure energy, but only in the macro scale of plants and vegetation.

Which is more accurate, to say there is a tree composed of “energy”, like everything else; or there is energy, part of which I label “tree”? Is tree the reality, and “energy” a supporting identity? Or is energy the reality and “tree” merely supplemental? There are many ways to classify what I see – infinitely many – in some of which “tree” has meaning, but in most of which it does not. “Tree”, then, is applicable as a term only when it is understood that I am using a particular framework of description: a context of perception: a paradigm.

In other contexts, “tree” disappears, though we might overlay contexts so that “tree” is perceived while talking about atoms and energy. Unless one context can be said to have priority over others in terms of what is really there, we have no more reason to believe that “tree” exists than we do to believe it does not. In everyday life we rank our perceptual contexts, or paradigms, according to a hierarchy of values which are directly related to the goals we want to achieve; but these priorities are not inherent in the contexts themselves.

To ask the famous question of a tree falling in the forest, there is no objective reason to differentiate between the “tree”, “forest” and “sound” it makes after hitting the ground, unless we have a purpose for doing so. Without a perceiver these terms do not exist. It would be equally valid to say that “energy was” before the tree fell, and “energy was” after the event. In terms of energy, nothing happened. Even to say it was reconfigured depends upon context, since infinite ways exist to visualize the original and subsequent configurations. Since energy was neither added nor removed by the event, in terms of energy its state did not change. Thus change itself is found only within our paradigms; it cannot be said to apply to the underlying reality, or what all the paradigms refer to in common.

This implies that no reason exists to think that what we see is “there”, in the sense of saying, “There is a tree over there in the meadow.” The sentence remains useful for many purposes, but to say that a tree is really there, independent of the paradigms in which we perceive “tree”, is no more valid than to say it is not there at all. The words do not describe what we are seeing, they only identify the context used to convey the scene. We could describe the scene in other ways, even experience it in other ways – such as in memory, dreams, or under the influence of chemicals – in which neither “tree” nor “meadow” are seen. This abandonment of terminology yields a loss of words, as with any novel experience with no determined context. The later invention of context might offer a common frame of reference for describing the event, but it will never accurately portray its content.

The use of concepts to achieve purpose is inestimably valuable, and deserves all the refinements we constantly make. It is only when we confuse description (ideas, concepts, contexts, paradigms) with the inexpressible reality, as with mistaking a map for the territory it describes, that we find it difficult to see things in terms of other paradigms, or to appreciate the mystery that we have never really known what we see: a fact that should always engender a deep sense of wonder and curiosity.

After all I’d written and thought, an ironic moment: Yesterday, after a very good friend did practically nothing, I reacted as though it were very much something, getting quite upset in the process. Which today makes me wonder at how habituated I can be at building castles from thought, to trap my soul within their fragile dimensions. It is so easy to turn aside from the moment, to gaze down the halls of fantasy. Why? To what end? For what attraction? The irony of my own life is perhaps the best place to look for wisdom…

The vast wilderness of the real opens to view, and I am struck mute. A feeling of awe, strangeness – a disturbing discordance with all I’d imagined. And yet, it feels right. Like breathing deeply after holding one’s breath. It is belief in our ideas and knowledge that impoverishes us, cuts us off, divides us according to countless, meaningless distinctions. The values we ascribe to life are borne of our own understandings, but are not attributes of true reality. There can be no differentiation in reality – only between the concepts of our minds. Just as the eye sees shape, the mind sees distinction: close the eye, and all is visually uniform; close the mind, and reality returns to singleness.

Yet the mind is part of reality, and what the eye sees is more beautiful than darkness. The key is: what we see is not the same as what is there. For example, shape is determined by lines, and lines are perceived through contrast of color. The lines are not there, but merely observed where colors differ; when colors are similar, we see uniformity. Both distinct and uniform are merely fields of color. So it is not the presence or absence of objects that I see, but degrees of color variation. The notion of separate objects is something I perceive in the uniformity of light striking my eye. Within the varied frequencies of that light, I form impressions of the world. And just as my eye’s perception crafts shapes from light, my mind’s eye generates experience from reality. I call one thing good, another bad, and with respect to my organism, these distinctions have value. But the experiences are no more real than my perception of them. If you were to deprive my body of all sense, I would no longer experience the world.

To continue with the analogy of vision: When I look at a scene – as I am now, at a restaurant – I am both seeing and not seeing what is real. All the shapes and colors exist in my mind alone, as perceptions. The light forming them, however, exists the same for all viewers. But no amount of staring will allow me to see the actual photons comprising the image. Without them, I could not see, so obviously they are always being seen; however, since my perception is of the information they carry – and not them, themselves – I cannot ever see them. I might say I know what I’m seeing, but in fact I’ve never beheld the essence of sight, despite its being around me at all times.

Back to reality, it is similar: Something utterly mysterious underlies my perceptions, being itself always experienced and yet imperceptible. Nor do I need to know what it is to experience it. Nor can I know! Always in view, it cannot be seen; ask me, and I do not know what it is. To see is to look upon it, and to live is to know it intimately.

The upshot of all this concerns how we interact with reality. If I regard my perceptions as “real”, and disregard the significance of the unapproachable, unavoidable “real real”, I am liable to think that a memory of my perceptions is a memory of reality. But how could it be? Memory of a thing perceived – as with projections of the future – is lacking exactly that component which made it real. Memory is like a body from which the spirit of life has passed. It seems remarkable, then, that we should be standing some place and choose to dwell on memories unrelated to that place, like turning from a living person to a man made of straw for conversation. Perception may have a certain value, but it is not endowed with life. “Life” is the inexpressible underpinning of the present moment, without which perception could not be.

The value in these thoughts? To know the poverty of the mind, in conjunction with its powers; to see that some thing is making life possible, and to heed its value beyond the perceptions we derive from it; to see our perceptions as forming our awareness, but unreal otherwise, and thus not deserving of too much gravity except to a recognized measure; and to put tremendous stock in the magic represented by all that we presently experience. There is a real Spirit there; and to approach it is to be.

There was Something undefined and yet complete in itself,  
Born before Heaven-and-Earth.

Silent and boundless,  
Standing alone without change,  
Yet pervading all without fail,  
It may be regarded as the Mother of the world.  
I do not know its name;  
I style it "Tao";  
And, in the absence of a better word, call it  
  "The Great." -- Lao Tzu, *Tao Teh Ching*

To realize that our knowledge is ignorance,  
This is a noble insight.  
To regard our ignorance as knowledge,  
This is mental sickness.

Only when we are sick of our sickness  
Shall we cease to be sick.  
The Sage is not sick, being sick of sickness;  
This is the secret of health. -- Lao Tzu, *Tao Teh Ching*

Because concepts can never embrace reality, I find myself faced with the strange mystery that I will never know who or what I am. “I” is a place-holder of utility, like a doctor distinguishing liver from kidney. What “I” refers to, however…. I can’t say where it begins or ends. Why should a border of flesh contain it? If I don’t divide between the cells of my body, then why individuals? It would seem scale and purpose alone determine the differentiation of elements: As I move inward, “me” fragments into the countless parts of body and mind; as I move outward, it diffuses until the whole planet is only a speck among billions. Where on the ladder of scale does “I” rest? When I don’t need to separate “you” from “me”, what meaning does it have?

If none, it is a temporary convenience only, a phantom within the echelons of description, a humble ghost haunting the spaces between “large” and “small”. As a word, it assumes everything while telling nothing – a formless void kept whole through lack of examination. For whenever I look closer, to find the true face who bears my name, I’m at loss even how to begin.

This is excerpted from a recent chat with a friend. Many of the ideas are taken from The Wisdom of Insecurity, an amazing book by Alan Watts. The discussion followed from this Zen quote:

A student once asked his teacher, “Master, what is enlightenment?” The master replied, “When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.”

I don’t believe happiness lies in simply following the instincts of the body. Abstract thinking has its place too. It only goes wrong when it promises something more real than what is real. Take money for example: We look at money, and think of all the things we could do with it, all of which are ideas – projections into unknown futures, concepts of a life with that money – none of which are what would really happen if we had it. Thought is saying our life is imperfect, and that it offers the way to perfection. This is what ideas/belief systems/schools of thoughts are always doing: “Life is dirty, plain, coarse, while X is the ultimate nirvana of bliss and joy”, where X might be: wealth, a beautiful woman, heaven, holiness, etc. All of them, concepts. Our soul cannot live on concepts. It becomes anemic, starving. In response to which, we are offered ever better systems of thought to accomplish our needs. See how the cycle goes?

Without ideas, one cannot indicate where happiness lies. The only truth is that in the midst of all this, life is. Or rather, what we symbolize by the word “life”. So the first task is to abandon concepts as a substitute for life, while accepting all that life is. I’m beginning to think this is what Zen calls “enlightenment” – and that it’s just the beginning.

For it’s as though we dwell within an amazingly accurate reproduction of life inside our minds – a kind of mental, virtual reality – except the reproduction is so lifeless as to be ridiculous! It’s like making paper dolls of all our friends, out of our concepts of them, and then hiding away in a house to play with them so as to be free from the inscrutability of real people. We can try so hard to protect ourselves from the insecurity of life that we cease to live it. Therein lies the first and greatest cause of unhappiness.

It’s even worse when it’s not our own system of thought, but those of family, church, society, because we may not even like the thought castles we’ve locked our soul into. Yet still we do it, for the security it claims to offer in the form of others’ approbation.

In order to give up the world of concepts – this kingdom of names – we must love what life is, including all death, pain, sorrow, agony, since these are no less “life” than pleasure, joy, and bliss. But owing to the agony of these differences, consciousness shrinks away from the fullness of life, running away into worlds of the mind where a false hope offers only joy. This must end in a quality-less stasis, however, since sorrow is what makes possible the perception of joy.

I think, once we taste of the real bittersweetness of life, we will find that nothing else is needed to appreciate being alive. How is life ever lacking? If there is sorrow or pain, it means joy and pleasure are all the more piquant when next we find them. So perhaps happiness is a question of the depth of our awareness – our vision – and not the constant changes that ideas favor.