Chapter 9: The Western Way
The Restoration of Laughter
All the objects of experience and all the kinds of knowledge imply and exploit the psycho-physical self (the composite ego or total “I”), and each moment of experience or knowledge defines or limits the ego (the functional experiencer or manifest knower) and turns or fastens it upon itself. Therefore, experience or knowledge of any kind inherently involves finite or separated egoic existence and functional or manifest self-confinement. And the continuous process of experiencing or knowing tends to produce or reinforce the defensive habit or reactive reflex of self-contraction, self-meditation, and self-possession.
There is no form of experience nor any kind or degree of knowledge that can produce release from the three-phase (or three part) cycle of experience, knowledge, and self-confinement. As a result, the conventional core or essence or effect of all experience or knowledge is the mysterious sense of limitation, the mysterious feeling of separation, and the gnawing presumption of the lack of perfect knowledge. And the usual man, unaware of the fruitlessness of his own ultimate motivation, is inherently bound to a chronic sense of dilemma and to a life of seeking for release, completion, or “reunion” via consummate experience and ultimate or complete knowledge.
No amount of experience finally releases or dissolves the experiencer (the troubled ego), since all experience involves and reinforces the psycho-physical or manifest and composite self. And no amount of knowledge acquired through experience or through contemplation of experience dissolves the ego-sense, the sense of inherent limitation (selfness or self-contraction), the sense of unbridgeable separation (from all that is not oneself), and the growing presumption of the lack of perfect or complete knowledge (or the attainment of what is yet to be experienced and known). The reactive ego-contraction tends to remain at the root of all experience and all knowledge, and the total psycho-physical self is, therefore, constantly bound by the sense of craving for what is not yet attained.
That craving sense is only the mood or self-perception of the ego itself. That craving is the self. That eternal dissatisfaction is the “I” within “me,” and that is “me” altogether. Fear, sorrow, desire (or “lust”), and anger are “myself,” since “I” am separate, alone, unfinished, incomplete, and threatened “forever.” This fruitless adventure in search for ultimate satisfaction, union, and release is the necessary destiny of the relentless ego. “I” is Narcissus, the self-centered body-mind. “I” is inherently committed to the failure of its own search, to separation from all relations, beings, things, and events. The commitment or will to release via experience and knowledge is a sham. It is idol worship. It is nothing more than self-embrace. Its results are never more than frustration, tension, and bewilderment.
Therefore, experience or knowledge cannot satisfy or release the self from itself. Only self-transcendence is release from self. And, because the self is created, defined, and limited by the composite of psycho-physical experience and knowledge, the secret of self-transcendence is the native or inherent transcendence of all experience, all knowledge, all psycho-physical phenomena of every kind, high or low.
The Way to self-transcendence, or – since the self is simply the craving sense, mood, or center defined by experience and knowledge – the Way to transcendence of experience and knowledge, is not to be found in any manipulation of the psycho-physical being. It is not a matter of seeking to abandon experience, knowledge, thought, action, pleasure, pain, sex, food, breath, and so forth. Nor is self-transcendence itself identical to any absence of activity, or thought, and so forth. Quietude, or any suppression of the experiential or knowing body-mind is, in itself, a merely self-negating state, not a matter of self-transcendence.
The Way to self-transcendence is not to become the enemy of Life, or of human existence, or even of ones own manifest existence. To suppress the composite self or “I” is only to intensify the mood of the self, which is the primary sense of separation, limitation, and vulnerability.
Nor is the Way to self-transcendence a matter of the strategic embrace of ones own functional existence, to exploit, until death, the psycho-physical potential for experience and knowledge. The Way to self-transcendence is not a matter of embracing the world for ones own sake, or for the sake of experience and knowledge themselves, or for the sake of any conceived ideal, result, or ultimate end. All of that is an abusive passion, an unliberated craving, in which the primary effect of self-possession, anger, and despair is the only certain attainment.
There is no Way to self-transcendence, since all progress or change is only a modification of the self, or the continuation of confinement to separation, limitation, and the unsolvable dilemma of craving for union or release. The Way can only be a matter of self-transcendence. The Way must, in every moment, be actual and perfect self-transcendence, or else self-transcendence is never Realized.
Then what is the Way? Just as interest in the Way is founded upon insight into the necessary egoic-confinement that is the inherent result of psycho-physical experiencing and knowing, the actual process of the Way is also a matter of insight, or direct and immediate intuitive understanding, in every moment. Insight reveals the factuality of reactive self-confinement and the fruitlessness of the search for salvation, release, or perfect fulfillment. And radical insight is itself the very moment of self-transcendence.
And what is that radical insight that is itself self-transcendence, or release of the mood and motivated effort of self-confinement? It is the native Realization or Intuition that no matter what “I” may experience, or reflect, or know about the apparent realm or process of subjective and objective phenomena, “I” do not know what even a single thing is . “I” am inherently and eternally Ignorant. What is “I”? What is the world? What is energy or Life? Neither limited nor complete experience or knowledge could ever modify or dissolve the inherent Ignorance that is the fundamental Condition of the experiential and knowing psycho-physical self. By maintaining stressful or motivated interest in more and more experience and knowledge (or subjective reflection of the world of phenomena), “I” may postpone confrontation with the ultimate Fact and Consequence of inherent Ignorance. But this confrontation is both necessary and ultimate, and the Consequence of that confrontation is immediate and wholly Liberating.
Ignorance, or inherent non-confinement to any limitation, is always already the very and ultimate Condition of the body-mind, the manifest self, the composite “I.” In any moment that this insight prevails, there is no self-confinement, no limitation created by the intrusion of any experience or form of knowledge. To abide in this insight or intuition of ones native Condition is to transcend all the forms of self-confinement, self-awareness, object-awareness, awareness of limitation, separation-awareness, and craving or seeking for release via more perfect or complete experience or knowledge. Even as all kinds of experience and knowledge arise, and even as the conventions of mindfulness of “I” (or the sense of limited experiential self-existence and the sense of separation from various levels of phenomena or knowledge) arise, if the intuition of Ignorance is Awakened in that moment, no limit is established, and the drama of the threatened self is inherently transcended.
Therefore, the Way that I Teach is the Way of Radical Understanding, or this Radical Intuition of Ignorance, which is the same as Divine Ecstasy (or self-transcending Love-Communion with the Radiant Transcendental All-Pervading and Only God). For those who Understand, there is only God. No experience, no knowledge, no object, no other, and no internal or subjective state ever binds the Divine Self, the Transcendental Heart, if there is “Remembrance” of God (or the Transcendental Condition prior to self-confinement) through radical Intuition of inherent Ignorance.
The Way is this: “Hear” (or understand) the criticism of the usual life of self-confinement and the torment of self-generated seeking. “See” (or surrender to the Living God) in the Company of the perfect or complete Adept, who abides always in Ecstasy, whatever arises. Awaken to the stable Intuition of self-transcending (or experience-transcending and knowledge-transcending) Ignorance through the Grace or Divine Presence that Radiates in the Good Company of the Adept (who is a Spiritual Master in the seventh stage of life). And, through that Intuition, Abide always in Ecstasy, constant Love-Communion, or inherent Identification with the Radiant Transcendental Being that is the Truth or Real Condition of “I” and “God” and “the World.” In this manner, you will exist only in the Divine Condition or Transcendental Domain, but you will also inevitably fulfill whatever functional role is your temporary destiny as Man and beyond Man in the Realm of Nature.
This is the Wisdom that transcends all events, all the science, attainment, and failure of mind, all of culture and household consolation, all the dread or “News” of cosmic and downtown stress, all the terminal pleasures that penetrate silence, circumference, measure, probability, and death. This is the Restoration of Laughter, the Revelation of the secret Cause, the beginning and the end of matter, light, and every kind of universe.
Scientific Proof – Table of Contents