Introduction
     
     Did you ever want to understand love?  Did you ever wonder about religion, about the
mystic experiences both east and west?  Did you ever ask yourself who you are, why you're
unhappy, and how you can go about arriving at a  better understanding of  yourself and others?
     If so, then this book is for you.  It's a collection of essays addressing many of the
problems encountered in anybody's life, and how a simple but profound change in world view
can promote understanding and subsequent healing of the wounds inflicted by the slings and
arrows of a typical person's outrageous fortune.
     Life by virtually anyone's measure is tough.  Even the most fortunate among us must
come to grips with great challenges.  It's my hope that this book will provide you with some
useful perspectives to help you get through some of the tougher times.  In addition, I hope to
open your mind to the possibility of the transformation of consciousness.
     For consciousness can be transformed, and yes, you can do it by yourself.
     That said, you might wonder about my background, about whether or not I've got the
right kind of experience, the ability to give you sound advice, to reveal profound knowledge.  
This is a good and important question.  Let me assure you, up front, that I'm an ordinary person
just like you are, and that anything I may have achieved, on my own, you also can achieve.  All I
can do for you is indicate the possibilities, share with you my errors and experience, and point
out the truth as best I can.  With any kind of luck, it will do you some good.
     I'm not a professional psychologist, nor a religious professional of any kind.  I'm a
physicist.  Becoming a physicist requires approximately ten years of study after high school,
leading a rather monastic existence, studying relationships between arcane symbols and ideas. 
This isn't a pursuit that would obviously lead to any true self-knowledge.  On the contrary.  But
as a scientist, I have a lot of respect for the pursuit of truth, and for the precise and exact
description of observed phenomena.
     And, from the age of five, I have consciously sought to understand not just nature, but my
own nature.
     My quest began in 1956, on the kindergarten playground at Shorecrest School in St.
Petersburg, Florida.  The campus was located in the old Bayboro area, a couple blocks from
Tampa Bay and Albert Whitted Airport, and consisted of old barracks, painted a light, dirty
green, with a carpet of white shell everywhere outside en lieu of a lawn.  I was a quiet and shy
child, and during recess, rather than play with the other children, I used to walk around the
playground, looking at the sky and trees, the children playing, at everything.  The month was
October, and the overbearing heat of summer was finally abating.  At the bell, all the children ran
out onto the playground, laughing and noisy, playing games.  I was too shy to join in the games,
so I walked quietly around, observing.  I remember looking up at beautiful white, fluffy clouds in
the blue sky.
     At that precise moment, the following question came to me out of nowhere: "Where am
I?"
     Maybe that doesn't seem very profound, but it bothered me.  Where was I?  How did I
end up here?  For a couple days I thought it over, finally coming to the conclusion that I was
inside my head, looking out the windows of my eyes.
     I found this answer very satisfying.  It seemed obviously true, and it allayed the gnawing
sense of uncertainty that had sprung spontaneously to mind.
     The next day, however, while I was sitting in the bedroom I shared with one of my
brothers, I realized that it was very dark inside my head.  If I was in there, where was I?
       I asked both my parents, and they gave the usual answers: "You're right here".  And
when I asked who I was, they answered, "You're you, of course."  And because the answers
seemed obvious to them and incomprehensible to me, I developed the curious notion that adults
knew these things naturally, and that I would only have to wait until I was grown up in order to
understand.
     I never forgot my questions, and remained, as I do to this day, intensely curious about the
universe, about the nature of things.  This is a process that never ends, but there are milestones. 
When I was seven, for example,  a little girl began luring me into the bushes in order to kiss me
on the cheek.  Her mother also ran a Good News Club, which is a children's club for studying
Christianity.  I didn't realize that: I asked her if there would be any good science news, and she
assured me there would be.  So soon I was attending the club every week, learning about
Christianity, wondering when the science was going to start.
     For several years I prayed to God every night, thanking him for saving me from going to
the bad place, praying for the protection of my family.  Finally, at age eleven, I abandoned the
practice, when  I suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that I was praying to a vacuum.  After
years of faithful prayer, I could see no clear evidence of an answer from God.  There was nothing
special about my experience, no light, no vision, nothing.  Just emptiness.
     That same year I came across a reference to Buddha in my sixth grade history book.  I still
recall the reading, which was a gross simplification, and at the same time, accidentally very
profound.   In this rendition, Buddha sat under the Bo tree, meditating, and when by chance his
eye alighted on the planet Venus, he attained enlightenment and proclaimed: "Lo!  All beings, by
their very nature, are enlightened."  As a sixth grader, I found this intriguing but difficult to
understand.  Ten years later I thought it was wrong.  Twenty years after that I realized it was true.
     But that night and many subsequent nights I stared at Venus in the night sky.  In my
child's mind I felt considerable affinity for the world, partly because I was keenly interested in
astronomy and partly because my last name and the planet's name shared a common first letter. 
But no matter how long I looked, nothing happened, and I gave up.   I resolved, however, that
after graduating from college I would look into understanding what Buddha understood, if only
to complete my education.
     As I grew up, I went through all the struggles that everyone has to face, learning about
relationships the hard way, battling life-threatening disease, feeling very lost and confused much
of the time.   My kidney disease elevated my natural teenage feelings of awkwardness and
nervousness.  Further, I became disillusioned with the school system, and turned almost
completely off to my teachers and their attempts to educate me.  School was a special kind of
hell, the students insensitive to each other,  the classes boring and pointless.  From being
interested in everything, I became interested in nothing, without understanding why.  I'd been
very excited about going to junior high school, and recall being deeply disappointed by the end of
the first few days.
     At nineteen I was first introduced to the possibility of transformation, of understanding.  I
tried religions both traditional and less traditional, but nothing seemed to click.  There was
always too much culture, not enough substance, and too often I just felt I was going through the
motions.  Some systems,  such as certain sects of Buddhism, seemed very deep but hard to
understand.  Others were appealing mainly because they were exotic and different.  I had a hard
time trusting gurus.  It always seemed to me they ought to have a day job.   Nonetheless, I
practiced yoga and meditation for hours every day, and  traveled to Europe and South Asia
seeking enlightenment.  During this time I was busy fumbling through my relationships, while
career-wise I was more or less in neutral, going nowhere fast, dropping in and out of school,
working in the mail room at the St. Petersburg Times, delivering pizza, teaching swimming
lessons.  The long term didn't seem important, partly because I wasn't convinced there was much
chance of a long term.  At twenty, because of the kidney disease, I was thinking in terms of five
years or so.  If somebody had offered me ten, I might have jumped at it.
     During this period of intense, regular meditation, I experienced samadhi or
superconsciousness on two occasions.  This powerful experience will be described in detail in a
later essay.  It is very real, and is about as subtle as roller coaster ride--in short, spectacular.  
During this same period I also experienced numerous relatively weak flashes of insight.
     After a couple of brushes with death, surgery and yoga got me back in good shape, and in
fact, due to the two hours of daily yoga, my health became fairly excellent.   I returned to school,
eventually getting back into science.
     Years of training in physics and mathematics made my head harder.  Though I enjoyed it,
I really didn't know quite what I was getting into.  I spent two decades just struggling to hack out
some kind of a career after a slow start. Sporadically I still sat in formal meditation and did some
yoga three or four times a week.  I got married, completed a Ph.D. in physics, got a job, and then
added  two difficult and wonderful children that I wished I'd had ten years earlier.  I never forgot
my spiritual quest, but it seemed life was passing me by.  Like everybody else, I was too wrapped
up in where I was going.
     Finally, at forty years of age, the cycle fractured.  Paradoxically, it came from behind the
wheel of a car, not sitting in lotus under a Bo tree.  For a single moment during that ride behind
the wheel of my old green Volvo, the world turned inside out.  It was amazingly deep and simple,
stunningly obvious, and totally unexpected.
     And it was beautiful.  As soon as I pulled into the parking lot at work, I knew I had to
write everything down, to leave something for my children in the event I died suddenly.  I felt
like I'd come upon the keys to the universe, keys that I'd been carrying around in my back pocket
all the time.
     This book  came out of  that one moment in time.
     Since then, I've taken up the writing project numerous times and abandoned it just as
many times.  It's too personal, and I'm too concerned about my limitations, unwilling to risk
giving anyone inaccurate information.  But after decades of virtual silence on issues of
spirituality, I've decided it's time to do something positive to help others, despite my natural
reticence and shortcomings.  After all, I might not be around tomorrow.
     Unlike a lot of self-help books, I'm going to do my best to give you the straight story,
practical knowledge that you can apply in your daily life to make yourself happier, healthier, and
more productive.  I'm not going to write an abstract thesis, intellectually projecting what I think is
true, or what I think works.  I'm not going to promote a belief system, nor just a rehash of the
opinions of others.  I'm just going to tell you what I understand, what I have grasped through
direct experience, through direct perception.
     Many self-help books start from a philosophy, a particular slant.  Either they're Freudians,
Jungians, Christians, Hindus, EST, Scientologists, or whatever.  I've studied most of these and
more to various extents, some more than others, especially Christianity and Buddhism.  I admit I
like the classics the best.  But the point is, while many of these philosophies may be quite
helpful, they all start from a framework and try to put everyone else in it.
     That's fine, as far as it goes.  It's reassuring to think that such a framework may exist,
particularly if you happen to be an adherent of what you think is the correct philosophy.
     But here's the catch: what if you're a square peg, and all you can find are round holes?
     These frameworks--philosophies, systems of religious thought--are of little intrinsic
value.  You don't need to study them.  You  don't need to know anything at all about them. 
Sanskrit is not a prerequisite, forget the quantum field theory, nor do you have to do a hundred
thousand prostrations to get the knowledge you require.  I assure you, if truth exists--and it does--
each and every one of you can uncover it, can see it for yourself.  And, as you'll find out in this
book, you don't really need me or anyone else to help you.
     You are the oracle.
     In the final analysis you've got to understand it for yourself.  Isn't that the bottom line? 
The books, the workshops, the retreats, the mantras and prayer beads, the Sunday potlucks, may
or may not help you understand anything--in most cases they just provide a distraction from your
everyday humdrum life, somewhere to spend your hard-earned money and your leisure time. 
These distractions are comforting, because you feel like you're making progress, you get a lot of
positive strokes from the others involved, so you figure you don't really have to put forth much
effort.
     Then one day you wake up and realize you've been kidding yourself.  You're still a mess,
your life is a mess, you're like a puppet on two dozen strings, being pulled this way and that by
ill-understood impulses.  You're hurting.  It's finally time, you realize, to try putting your house in
some semblance of order.
     And you are perfectly capable of doing so.  Yes, by yourself.
     
     At this point you might wonder, after all I've said, just what I have to offer.  If I'm not
going to tell you about other planes of existence, about gurus in the caves of Nepal, about all the
angels I found in an old beer bottle behind the sink and the heavy truths they imparted to me,
what are you going to get out of reading this book?
     You may get nothing out of it.  That's the risk, of course, but it's cheap--a few dollars, a
couple hours of time.
     But, on the other hand, you may get something completely unexpected, something you
never knew you were looking for, something you always had.  A very excellent modern analogy
is the story of Dorothy and the Ruby Slippers in the Wizard of Oz.  At the end of the tale the
good witch Glinda,  speaking of Dorothy's desire to return home, says:  "She's always had the
power, she just had to learn it for herself." 
     The witch is right.
     So that's what we're going to do: go back home, back to what we already are.  Our world
is incredibly rich and diverse, full of light and colors, thoughts and feelings, sounds, textures,
touches, and smells.  Our everyday life is far more vivid and compelling than any imagined state
of consciousness.
     Yet because of our world view, we're cut off from this extra dimension of being,
experiencing only a filtered imitation of conscious living.
     So what's really going on?  What's this extra dimension all about?  An excursion into
theoretical physics?  I think you're tough, so I'll give it to you straight, both barrels.  Are you
ready?
     
     Everyday life is spiritual life.
     
     That was the first barrel, and I admit it blew me away. Here's the second, hang on to your
hat:
     Everything you experience is what you are.

     I believe in you, in your potential, in who you are.  The very fact that you're reading this
book is proof enough: you care about the world, about yourself, about uncovering the
understanding that will make a better life for you and everyone else.  I couldn't care less about
the past, what you have or haven't done, all that imaginary broken wreckage of good intentions,
bad relationships,  and general confusion.  I know all about that, because I've been there, and I
am there, slogging through the morass of everyday problems just as you do, and I know you've
suffered, just as I have.  We can put that all aside, now, because  we're finally going to do
something about it.
     Let's go.

                         1. The Big Picture
     
     This essay is definitely a bad move on my part, since it's the first one and I'm going to risk
turning you off with a fairly heavy dose of reality.  I'm going to give you the Big Picture, the
grand perspective on what for most of us is a fairly typical life.
     Naturally, there are as many life stories as there are lives, but certain major milestones
and events are commonly experienced and can be sketched out, with variations.  And regardless
of our skin color, ethnic background, nationality, or what have you, we're all human beings and
have far more in common with each other than we give ourselves credit for.
     
     We start off  as chemical potentials in the form of separate egg and sperm, which unite to
form an embryo in our mother's womb.  Most of us don't remember very much prior to our birth,
though we are certainly learning and developing at that stage.  As we grow inside our mothers,
listening to the outside world through several layers of moist tissue, we begin to develop our
character.  The "hardware", our physical body, is also developing, of course, and that
development is influenced by our environment during this period.
     Nine months or so later we're born into the world, often with a lot of difficulty, pain, and
blood.  If we're fortunate, we have good parents who are motivated to love and care for us, and
who have sufficient know-how and plain good luck to provide for our needs.  If we're like most
people in the world, however, we're born in poverty, and our outlook is, at best, rather grim. 
Only a century ago the life expectancy was no more than about thirty-five years even in the
developed countries.  Nowadays, that's still a fairly ripe old age in much of the world.
     Some of us will have childhood diseases, and suffer and die before ever growing up. 
Others will have genetic illnesses that impair our ability to function properly.  Life will consist
mainly of struggle, frustration, and pain.
     The rest of us will develop more or less normally, and be more or less well taken care of,
thanks to mother love, an extremely powerful instinct which makes it possible for children to
survive even the most squalid conditions.  Mother's milk and mother's love are the two most
important and essential ingredients early in life, and we need to get as much as we can.  If we're
very fortunate, our fathers shower us with just as much attention.
     As growing babies, we react in a very natural and raw way to the world.  When we're
hungry, we cry.  When we're happy, we coo.  Everything is spontaneous and unexpected,
surprising, delightful and terrifying.  During our first couple years we learn most of the essential
skills for the rest of our lives: language, socializing, and basic roles.  Later a lot of refinement
goes on, but the attitudes are developed early, partly springing from genetic predisposition, partly
from the way our parents react to us.  This is a difficult period, because we are absolutely
powerless except for our ability to trigger instinctive responses in our caretakers, especially our
mothers.  It's also difficult because there's so much to learn, and we have to learn so much of it by
trial and error and by accident.
     As we learn to walk and talk and get around on a limited basis, our parents reduce in size. 
Previously, they filled our world when they were there, and created a terrible vacuum when they
were not.  Now that we have a certain amount of independence they are still very large, yet
reduced from what they were.  We begin exploring the rest of the world, other people, other
things.  Parents provide our anchor in the enormous, frightening world, and we depend on them
for food, sustenance, and guidance.  At the same time, we must frequently test their power over
us, since we have a will of our own and would like to know just how much we can get away
with.  It's a necessary part of growing up and becoming independent, and we both crave and fear
the inevitable separation.
     As we enter school and join mobs of other kids, new pressures result.  Here, we have to
learn to socialize with other children, children that are often impolite and usually highly self-
centered, just like we are.  All of a sudden, spaced-out, crazy kids are telling us what we should
do and how we should behave and feel.  It was easier when there were only two such influences,
and virtually all-powerful ones at that.  It was also easier because our parents were relatively
mature and reasonable individuals.
     But now we're in school, temporarily cut off from our secure caretakers, and we're
desperate for allies.  We begin to modify our world view and self-image to match the parameters
fed us by our peers.  We desperately want to belong, and don't mind doing whatever is necessary
to accommodate our new-found friends.  Imitation is instinctual, as most parents quickly
discover.  Like little monkeys, we do whatever we see anyone else doing.  Before going to
school, we had mainly our parents to imitate.  Now we can imitate a bunch of other mixed-up
kids.     
     In school we have a number of opportunities to get our feelings hurt.  Some of us don't
seem to have much in the way of feelings, while others among us are very sensitive in an
emotional way.  A lot of this is built-in, and some is training.  On the positive side, there's a lot of
fun to be had developing friendships independent of the family circle.  These friendships
reinforce the self-image we've been putting together since before birth.  We like people who
admire us and respond to us in a positive way, and dislike those who make fun of us or hurt us. 
Our self-image is very fragile all throughout childhood, and even beyond; we've hardly learned to
put it together, and haven't yet become fluent in the use of defenses to maintain it properly.  By
the end of elementary school, though, we pretty much think we know who we are, at least
basically.
     Then, just when we thought we had it all together, puberty steps in and slaps us in the
face.  Hormones start to surge.  We're now starting to get a lot of pressure to grow up, be
experienced, be independent.  Few of us actually are, at this point, but somehow we're supposed
to act like we are so as to fit in with what's expected.  During this period, those who are different
are often ostracized, even if the difference is petty or small.  Our instinct is to fit in at all costs, so
we try to imitate our friends so we won't be alone.  We have to be liked by everyone, and the
smallest things may prey on our minds, so that temporary inconveniences like pimples will
magnify into hideous deformities, both in our own minds and in the minds of our peers.  Fun,
struggle, and heartache are mixed in similar proportions.
     This is also the period where we may begin to turn on our parents, seeing them as the
cause of many of our social problems. Imitating them, acting like them, can no longer be
considered cool.  Conflict then results, alienation.  We don't feel that anyone understands us. 
Most of the problem, of course, is that we don't really understand ourselves, because when we
truly understand ourselves, it hardly matters if anyone else understands us or loves us.  Prior to
that understanding, however, when we're most confused, the love and understanding of others is
truly of gargantuan importance.
     Despite this desire for love, we may embrace behavior patterns that make us hard to love. 
To a large extent this rebellion is instinctive, hard-wired, because otherwise we might never
break away and become independent.
     Puberty is also when we usually begin collecting our first sexual experiences.  Most of us
inherit the discomfort and taboos of our parents, which are transmitted semi-consciously to us
during our early years.  This makes it difficult to talk about our sexual feelings.  Even if we don't
have any particular qualms, our peers do, so talking openly about our feelings may subject us to
ridicule, creating a negative feedback that closes us up.  As a result, we often remain
astonishingly ignorant of proper mating behavior, of sexuality and its consequences.  Somehow,
we've got to get the information on our own.  Sex is exciting partly because it's a return to
infancy: once again, another person assumes literally a large portion of our landscape.  No one
has been so physically close since our mothers held us to their bosoms.  And since we're
inexperienced, we don't have much perspective on character, and could end up in a tight squeeze
with someone who later turns out to be something of a jerk.
     Yet the pressure is on to perform, to be grown up about it.  Besides, since we've become
teenagers, we at last know everything, and with our new-found omniscience we've decided our
parents are old-fashioned, out of date, not in touch, perhaps even actively arrayed against us.
     The truth, of course, is that they went through what we're going through, and they're
doing their often inadequate best to protect us from the pain they experienced.  But our emotions,
our hypersensitive feelings, are pulling our strings, and we're not about to take advice from
anyone.  There's no time to even listen to advice, much less take it: our genes and our mixed up
feelings are prodding us to action.
     So it appears to be natural, though perhaps unnecessary, to go through a period of
rebellion against parental love and authority.  This lasts roughly from the ages of about twelve to
twenty-one, during which time we may do our best to really screw ourselves up, all the while
collecting a series of pleasant and unpleasant experiences.  It's a major struggle, during which
time we are attempting to put the finishing touches on defining who we are.  This seems to be
much more important than understanding who we are, and is used routinely by mature adults as a
substitute for understanding.
     Once we begin working a job and completely supporting ourselves, our attitude towards
our parents, and that of our parents towards us, usually changes dramatically.  We start to
appreciate the environment of safety our folks created for us, and can't resent them so much
because, after all, we're on our own and doing what we want--more or less.  Now the problem is
that it didn't pan out quite like we thought it would.  We've got a whole world of people to fight
and try to get along with, rather than just two people who love and care for us.
     Serious relationships begin to intervene.  We fall in love, become completely vulnerable
to our genetic programming, which wants us to get with it and get on it, and is not that picky
about character as long as the prospective mate appears to have the right stuff.  Forget
compatibility, we're talking about survival of the race, here, and for the guys, good legs and a
nice body indicate a healthy specimen, which is basic to the business of surviving.  For the ladies,
a good job and a nice disposition are strong pluses, because pregnancy and child-rearing is a
serious responsibility, and a good, steady provider is a must.  Our genes know the score, and will
pull our strings to fulfill their private and very obvious agenda.
     The romance is fun, dizzy, better than the puppy love of puberty.  The significant other
person takes on gargantuan dimensions, a Rhodes astride the strait of Gibraltar.  We are
positively drunk with emotion, and our DNA keeps the juices pumping, building for the climax
that will signal mission accomplished.  But we're only dimly aware of all this behind-the-scenes
manipulation; we've having the time of our lives, and we'll worry about the consequences later.
     Then one of us gets pregnant, and we realize that--surprise!--we can't be totally self-
centered any more.  We've got to work hard and provide for a wailing, helpless baby that won't
take no for an answer.  Everything we dished out, we realize, we're going to get back, possibly
with considerable interest.  Furthermore, our spouse is either busy working or raising the children
or both, and can't pay as much attention to us anymore.  We shrink, and our spouses shrink.
     Now, if we're like roughly half of all families in many countries, the pressures of life will
split us apart, and divorce will be the result.  The trauma of a divorce will put us through pain we
haven't felt since our best friend told us our socks looked silly in front of the whole class, and
furthermore, wasn't going to invite us to her birthday party.  
     Deflation is not the word: try devastation.  A single parent is a tough way to go, especially
with small children.  We die inside, we feel terrible strains on our hearts, we feel our mortality,
and other than that, there isn't much value to it.
     On the other hand, if we're fortunate, we'll have a reasonably good marriage.  Gradually
the fights will subside, and we will find a steady equilibrium with our spouses, adjusting to their
quirks and caprices, finding some way to moderate our own, our children forming a bond of love
and responsibility between us.
     Then the midlife crises begin to hammer away.  We're approaching forty-something, and
we've managed to put together a career and partly raise our children, when suddenly we realize
that at least half our life is gone and we don't know where it went, it happened so fast.  And the
other half looks like downhill the rest of the way.  Our parents are beginning to fall to pieces, go
into nursing homes, lose their minds to Alzheimer's, and maybe we have a brother with AIDS. 
Maybe it's been years since we had any good sex with our significant other person.  We're bored
out of our minds, and see that we haven't much time left, especially since, due to a kind of special
relativity, time flows more quickly the more years we accumulate.  Our options are beginning to
narrow.
     Desperate, we might begin to lash out, quit our jobs, think about leaving our spouses and
kids.  Maybe we'll buy a motorcycle, a Harley, and roar off into the sunset.  Why be responsible,
when the final reward is rotting in a nursing home, drooling uncontrollably and filling our
diapers?  Escape becomes paramount, and this often results in more pain and suffering for
ourselves and our families.
     If we're fortunate enough to make it through this stage, we enter a more sedate middle
age, where we care for aging parents and send our own children off into the world to fend for
themselves.  About this time, we begin to notice that it's much tougher staying in shape, and that
various aches and pains are becoming commonplace.  Small cuts, which long before healed in an
afternoon or overnight, might take three or four days to close.  We can't eat like normal people
anymore, unless we want to put on the soft stuff.  Every ounce of french fries seems to translate
into a pound of slack.
     Finally our parents die, and we're truly on our own.  We keep in touch with our children,
and relive our youth vicariously through them and their families.  As our bodies decline, we
begin to get more serious about religion, and participate more in rituals.  For some of us, this may
have happened much earlier; the time it kicks in varies widely.  Seeing the suffering around us
and anticipating more hard times ourselves, we hope that through belief of one kind or another
we can ensure our safety and future well-being.
     If we are unfortunate, diseases start to come on line.  We'll be diagnosed as having
prostate cancer or breast cancer and have to undergo operations.  Then we'll have to get used to
living with the dread of reoccurrence, or perhaps to living without a limb.  Even if major disease
doesn't strike, the aches and pains will get greater, more insistent.  We'll start stocking up on pain
relievers and, since it'll be harder to get proper exercise, on stool softeners.  If we're very
fortunate, we'll experience a long, slow slide some twenty or thirty years long, where our physical
capacity will gradually diminish.  Somewhere along the way we might have to care for an ailing
spouse or grown child.
     Finally we'll get old and sick, too sick to care for ourselves.  We'll have to enter a hospital
or nursing home, or lay around at home being cared for by our children.  There won't be much
left but the  memories of our pleasures, of our temporal triumphs, but those will be fading fast.
     Death may be feared, but may also come as a relief.
     End of story.  

     Well, are we depressed yet, or what?  Maybe you think I get off on negativism, that I'm
some kind of natural party-pooper that can't stand for anyone to have a good time.
     Absolutely untrue.  Fair's fair, and I believe the above sketch is a reasonable reflection of
what many of us have to go through.  I mean, I'm talking about the lucky ones.  There are ups,
there are downs, and then there's the long slide.  And in some countries, torn by political and
economic chaos, life is just survival, at best.  Happiness doesn't enter the equation.  
     And what happens afterward?  That is, after checking out?  Is it all over?  Or are there
continuing episodes?
     Well, it looks like we're not quite finished, after all.  There are, after all, reports from the
other side, glimmers of a possibility of something beyond death.  But despite the struggles and
pains of life, few of us want it to end, at least not until it becomes absolutely unbearable.  We've
got too much of a stake in it.  And we've created a self-preserving entity called our self-image.  It
can't imagine a world where it doesn't exist, and therefore must seek out or invent new ones.
     There have been many reports of people who have died, then returned to tell the tale. 
They commonly report tunnels with light at the end, floating above their bodies, in great ease and
bliss.  I personally knew an emergency room physician who witnessed this happening to one of
his patients, a story I recount elsewhere in detail.
     Otherwise, this is the end of the line, at least for the vast majority of people.  What have
we witnessed?  That most people have a mix in life of pleasure and pain, and that sooner or later
they get old and die in their old age.  It appears that there is considerable difficulty in growing up
and adjusting to the world, and daunting barriers to overcome in grasping for a few straws of
happiness, and then still more travail in adjusting to old age and ill-health.
     In a nutshell, life's not a game of ping-pong.

     Yet there's an alternative to this rather alarming scenario, a glimmer of light in an
otherwise drab and difficult existence, a possibility of coming upon something beautiful,
extraordinary,  something beyond the reach of time.  And, as you will find, you are the oracle,
you are the person who will make the decisions that lead to that humdrum slide, or onwards and
upwards, towards profound understanding and light.

                    2. The Nature of Consciousness

     It's always best to start in the beginning, and the beginning for all of us is consciousness. 
It's also the end and everything in between.  It turns out that understanding consciousness is key
to understanding ourselves, our problems, and our world.  So that's where we're going to start. 
This is a profound question, and what follows may not be easy to understand.  It took me the
better part of forty years before I came very suddenly to the understanding I describe here.
     
     What is the nature of consciousness?  Related questions include: Who am I?  Where am
I?  Why?  Scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and religious leaders have all tried to answer
these questions, and now it's our turn.  Where do we start?  Whom do we turn to?
     It's normal not to have the slightest idea.  Maybe you've tried a few things, and now
you're trying me.  Meanwhile, I'm telling you to try someone else.
     Yourself.
     Maybe that's too radical.  Aren't we supposed to find someone more knowledgeable, and
learn from that person?  As an alternative, we could develop an inventory of all prior
speculations and opinions, religious and otherwise, then choose the one that best resonates with
what we already believe to be true.  That's what most people do.  They collect nice-sounding
phrases, some good cocktail party chatter, and then sit back and hope it does them some good.  A
little bit like self-reassurance, which is not an entirely bad thing.
     On the other hand, maybe we've had enough of that.  Maybe we're ready to find out the
real answers for ourselves.
     So let's start by putting all the old ideas aside, all of our preconceived notions of the
nature of the self, universe, of religion, of philosophy.  Let's start with a clean slate.

     As stated earlier, I developed my first theory of consciousness on the kindergarten
playground.    When I asked myself that question, "Where am I?",  I was a given quantity,  I was
somewhere, and I wanted to know where.   What is this place, this world, the trees, the shells, the
grass and sky, the All, and where am I in relation to it?
     The answer I arrived at was: I'm inside my head peering out the windows of my eyes. 
This  is a common perception which most people unconsciously adopt.  "You" are "in there",
inside your head, and "out there" is the rest of the world that sometimes--all too often--
encroaches on your private space.  And your body is kind of in between, a partner that helps
make the connections between you and the rest of the universe.

     Here's the reality: this picture of the world, of an internal you and an external world, is a
convenient fabrication.

     As a concept, this is radical.  As a reality, it's beautiful.  The internal world, where we
cower inside our heads, and the external world, are not separate.  They coexist in the same field,
the field of consciousness.  Not any special consciousness, but in the ordinary, everyday, garden
variety kind of consciousness, the kind we all have.

     The first time I started to consciously suspect that my childhood world view was seriously
out of kilter was in my college physics class, of all places, listening to a lecture on light.  While
the lecturer droned on about the physics of light, I began thinking about how photons, particles of
light, bounce off things, then enter the eye.  There they stimulate the optic nerve, creating
impulses that, arriving at the visual cortex, cause the creation of an image in the brain.  It struck
me that  consciousness was indirect, always occurring through intermediate channels.
     When we see something like a tree, we feel it is happening over there, at some distance
from us.  It never occurs to us what we're seeing is constructed in the backside of our brains.
     This perception was rather intellectual in terms of its affect on me.  The old way of
regarding the world was only slightly impacted, and I didn't think too much of the idea, not yet
realizing its significance.
     Some years later, while in graduate school studying mathematics, I was enjoying a
pleasant Florida evening at my apartment.  My keys were on the kitchen table, and as I  reached
for them something odd happened.  The keys seemed rather intimately close to me.   I had the
curious perception that they were not separate from me.  I felt as if I were reaching for and
grasping something that was inside me already.  Reaching for a fragment of my own
consciousness.
     Understanding this further will take some background discussion, so we return to the
neurophysics of perception.
     What goes into seeing something, such as a tree?  As we've already discussed, light from
the sun, in the form of particles called photons, reflects off the material substance of the tree. 
Most of the photons, of course, are absorbed or scattered at wide angles.  Only some of them,
those of particular colors, are scattered towards us.  These photons then travel through space and
enter the eye, striking the retina.  Stimulated, the optic nerve then transmits signals to the visual
cortex located on the backside of the brain.  The brain cells in the visual cortex process the
signals and construct from them a detailed picture of the objects the photons bounced off, often
with considerable input from memory and other cognitive faculties.
      We then reach out with our hand and point at that image, which is purely a construct of
the brain inside our heads, and say, "There's a tree over there".
     Our perception of our hand and arm, of course, is a similar mental construction, and our
arm, body, and everything else in the picture.
     So in a sense, we never really see anything, at least not directly.  We only see a
representation created by our own brains. 
     A simple scientific proof that our brains are putting the visual world together is the fact
that the image on our retinas is actually upside down.  The brain takes that upside down image
and makes it seem right-side up.  Psychologists have experimented on people, having them wear
special glasses that flip everything upside down.  The image on the retina is now right-side up,
but our brains see it as upside down.   But after a few confusing days of wearing the glasses,
everything seems right-side up again.  The brain makes the adjustment.
     Other senses work in a similar way.  Our brains are creating a virtual reality, which aids
us in interacting with our 'true' environment.

     So when I see my keys on the kitchen table, they are not exactly "out there", on the table,
but rather "in here"--along with all the other perceptions and sensations and bubbling thoughts. 
My brain takes the raw incoming sensations, carried by my nerves, and creates out of them a
perception.  And I become conscious of this created perception, rather than of the original object
itself.
     So our consciousness comes to us through our senses, our nerves, through something like
a virtual reality constructed by our brains.  This means we have no direct contact whatsoever with
the so-called exterior world.  Such direct contact is a physical impossibility.


     But here's a little extra spin to totally confuse the issue: the idea that everything is
happening in our brains is just as erroneous as thinking it happens in some exterior world.  


This is an outrageous statement.  We've just convinced ourselves that everything is happening in
our heads, and now the claim is that's wrong, too.  How could both viewpoints be wrong?

This viewpoint is wrong because saying the reality is happening inside our heads means there is
an outside.  There can't be an inside without an outside.  Saying that consciousness is happening
"in here", in our heads, is just as wrong as saying that the trees, clouds, the sun, and so forth, are
"out there", exterior to us.  Our consciousness of our "interior world" is just as much a created
virtual reality as our "exterior world".
     Just about everyone feels like this intuitive, interior world.  However, it is an artificial
construct.
     The interior and exterior worlds constitute a single field, and are similarly grasped.  This
field is the field of consciousness--our common, everyday consciousness, the very consciousness
that everyone has.

     Is this making any sense?  Maybe you're seeing it intellectually, and if so, you're doing
very well.  When you see it actually, when the fact slaps you in the face and your world view
goes through a sudden transformation, it will literally be like going from blindness to sight.

     Now, there are always people who will take issue with the idea of there being neither
inside nor outside.  After all, everything in our everyday experience seems to refute it.  Back
when I had only my first glimpses of this non-dualistic perception, it was easy to get confused by 
arm-chair philosophers armed with hypothetical situations.  Let's try a few on for size.
     Jack and Jill  devise the following experiment.  Jill goes inside a house, leaving Jack
outside.  Inside, out of sight and sound of Jack, she rearranges the furniture.  She then goes back 
outside and asks Jack what changes have been made.
     Obviously, Jack has no idea.  Apparently, then, this is conclusive proof that there is an
exterior world separate from Jack's interior world, for otherwise Jack would know how the
furniture was rearranged.
     This argument appears irrefutable.  Others are capable of independent action, and if
everything were happening in our minds, then it seems we'd know about it.   But there's a
completely different way of looking at this situation.  What has been proven in this thought
experiment is that the fragment of consciousness called Jack is not omniscient.  Jack doesn't
know everything, and why should he?  Parts of the Totality other than Jack have rearranged the
furniture, that's all.  That he is unaware of the new arrangement is no more surprising than the
fact he isn't aware of all the numerous processes taking place in his own body.  Cells die and get
carted off by the millions.  Other cells grow.  Trillions of rearrangements of the cellular
constituents occur daily.  Jack is ignorant of all this.  Carrying the logic forward, we would have
to conclude that Jack and his body, even his brain, are separate from Jack himself, something
most people would deny.
     In other words, you can be part of something, and something can be part of you, whether
or not you have any personal control.
     So the answer to this thought experiment is simply that we, our personalities, our persons,
are only fragments of the totality of our own everyday consciousness.  Lack of omniscience on
the part of one fragment doesn't mean it's separate from the rest.  The heart doesn't know what
the lungs are doing, but everything still functions as a whole.
     Another favorite thought experiment is the following.  I've been hit with this lots of times,
and only recently did I understand the logical flaws in the argument.
     Jill, taking a gun, fires point blank at Jack and kills him.  She lives, he dies.  If there is
truly no separation between self and universe, why did Jack allow himself to be killed?  And why
didn't the universe die with him?

     This situation baffled me for a long time, and I never figured it out, not intellectually. 
Surely this time the thought experiment is conclusive.  A fragment of the world, Jill, has created
situation that appears to radically contradict the idea of a single field of being.  What could be
more proof than having someone shoot you, followed by your dropping dead?
     On the other hand, how is this different from, say, contracting an auto-immune disease? 
Just as there is no guarantee our bodies will remain healthy and free of disease, there is similarly
no guarantee the other fragments of our life--the other people, for example--are going to always
act in our personal best interests.  Just as we do not completely control our bodies and minds, so
also do we only incompletely control our environment.
     The point here is that our personal selves are only one piece of the Totality.  The Totality
is the totality of our consciousness.  Non-dual perception is not the same thing as omnipotence or
omniscience.  A similar fallacy would be to argue that since  the heart is not separate from the
body, then it must also be able to think, breathe, and perform all the functions of the other body
parts.  And that doesn't make sense.  
     Other preconceptions are also at work in this thought experiment.  People have the notion
that when they're dead the world continues on without them, thus proving the existence of an
exterior and separate world.  The continuance of the rest of the world after we die, of course, is
pure speculation, a function of the intellect.  If we're dead, and presumably unconscious, then we
have no way of verifying whether the world goes on or not.  And, as far as we're concerned--
assuming that, being dead, we stay that way--the world went away with us.
       By the way, does the world go on after we die?
     Of course it does--most likely, anyway.  We see other people die, and the world doesn't
cease to exist for us, so we surmise that when we die, the material world will similarly continue
on.  This knowledge comes to us through memory and intellect, rather than direct perception.  
     So the fact that there is no true separation between inside and outside doesn't mean we
personally have control of everything.  We don't even control our own thoughts, nor our
heartbeats, nor a billion other little details that happen continuously in our bodies.  It all happens
automatically, just as the universe, seamlessly joined to us, functions without our pushing it. 
That's part of the beauty of the whole thing.
     
     When people see the word Totality, they tend to think of the vast extent of the material
universe, stars, planets, and galaxies throughout infinite space.  This is just a projection,
however, a function of our imagination.  The true meaning of that word, as I am using it here, is
more basic.  The Totality is the sum of your immediate perception, including whatever is
happening in your mind.  Anything beyond that like the Andromeda Galaxy-- is also there, but is
happening in your imagination.
     Try the following experiment.  Close your eyes and listen to the sounds around you. 
Then listen to the inner sounds, the thoughts, fragments of music that may be pumping randomly
through your brain.  The outer sounds and the inner sounds are very similar.  The main difference
is that the outer ones are usually more intense, and a certain physical sensation in the general
location of the ear, and sometimes in other places, is experienced.
     So when we hear a sound, or experience a touch, or look at a tree, we are not observing
something separate from us.  We are observing a fragment of our consciousness, one piece of the
grand representation, the virtual reality our brain is creating with the assistance of the senses and
the so-called external world.  

     If you've found all this confusing, don't be alarmed.  It is confusing, and you are that
confusion.  It's natural.  You may also suspect that this is all a lot of nonsense.  That's normal and
healthy skepticism at work.  Most people, myself and many others, have found this unified view
of the world to be perplexing and frustrating as long as it remained solely on the intellectual
level.
     After you get a good look at it, and really see it, it will seem completely natural.  Your
world will be healed, whole.  You'll see the beauty in ugliness, the energy in being, when  by
accident or grace the barriers you have erected fall away.

     So we have established, at least intellectually and provisionally, that there is effectively
no separate inner world, there is no separate outer world.  Intellectually, of course, we believe
there is, and function accordingly, but actually, as far as what we experience, there's only that
virtual reality--the only reality--where everything's happening together.  What, then, is
consciousness?  What is its nature?
     We've already answered the question, and it's very simple.  Consciousness is what you are
conscious of.
     That is, everything you sense, feel, think about, the car passing down the road, the bird
singing on the branch, the wind against your body, the sun and moon and stars--all these things
constitute your consciousness.
     This realization was personally very surprising to me because throughout my life,
whenever I regarded, say, a tree, I always had an impression of it being "over there", spatially
separated from me.  I always thought I was physically seeing the tree, a concrete object separate
from me, and it never occurred to me that in fact a very creative process was going on to make
that perception possible.  The whole view of separateness was so thoroughly ingrained in my
perceptual pathways that I never noticed any other option.  The tree was over there, and I was
over here.  I couldn't see it any other way.
     Consciousness is not separate from the things we are conscious of.  It can't be, because
we create that consciousness.  Everything we are conscious of constitutes the totality of
consciousness.  Which is THE Totality.
     This is good news.  It means that if we're interested in a better understanding of
consciousness, then we can't miss.  It's everywhere.  
     Most people have a vague feeling that consciousness is somehow associated with the
head, hanging out close by.  We look across a lake and see a sailboat, and we automatically
consider it to be external, far away, separate--which it is, intellectually speaking.  Actually, we
are helping to create that perception of the sailboat, it's happening "in our brains", so it really isn't
far away at all.  
     Let me share with you a funny thing that I encountered early in my self-training in
meditation.  When you sit and relax deeply for some time, there is a tendency for the mind to
become more sensitive to pressures and tensions in the scalp, among other places.  When I arose
from a session of cross-legged sitting, I would be acutely aware of my scalp.  It felt almost like I
was wearing a football helmet.  Naively, I thought this was my "consciousness" expanding
beyond the confines of my body!  In fact, my conscious perception was conducting business as
usual.  The trees were still "out there" along with the clouds and everything else, and I was still
"in here" with my "expanded consciousness", which was in fact just a little scalp tension!
     Recently I asked my wife about all this inside-outside business, just to get her point of
view.  We were lying in bed on Sunday morning.  I told her about the chapter I was writing on
consciousness, and how shocking and difficult it was going to be for me to explain it, and for
people to grasp it.
     "Don't shock them," she told me.  "Tell them something they can believe.  Don't you want
to sell any books?"
     My wife, the pragmatist.  Well, I told her exactly what I'd written here, and asked her to
describe her own conscious experience.  She did so, and it sounded just like the world view I'd
first formulated as a five year old.
     She went on to argue that touch was somehow different.  I tried to convince her it wasn't,
telling her the physical object first impinges on the skin, stimulating nerves, before going to the
brain for processing and cross-processing, so we can locate the spot in space.  She accused me of
reverting to unreasonable intuition in my efforts to prove my point, and maybe she was right.
     The moral of the story is: if my own wife doesn't believe me, why should you?
     You shouldn't, of course.  We've been over this before.  You have to learn it for yourself. 
You are the oracle.
     Some may say that the non-dual world view is a form of idealism.  Idealists believe
everything happens in the mind, that there is no separate reality.  I. B. Horner, the great translator
of Buddhist texts from the original Pali, once expressed this opinion to me, and at the time I
couldn't offer any alternative, though I thought she wasn't quite right, and in any case didn't
want to argue with a very elegant and kindly old lady.  It's a common and powerful idea, and
there is a great deal of truth to it.  Materialists believe the opposite: everything is put together in
some objective way, and is material in its origins.  The mind and mental objects are separate
from the material world, but are governed by material properties.
     I hope by now it's clear that neither of these philosophies is correct.  Consciousness is 
what it is,  inseparable from existence and all the so-called material objects in it.  Intellectually,
sure, split everything up in two.  That's convenient and necessary for carrying out our business.
But being chained to a fragmented view of the world is at the root of virtually all of human
misery.
     This is a rather sticky point, so let's take another tack to nail it down.
     We could argue that without the actual material objects that create the sensations with
which we construct our virtual reality, it would be impossible to experience the sensations.  From
this point of view, therefore, objective reality is absolutely essential.  If there is no physical
reality, there is no consciousness.  The contrapositive of this statement, which logically conveys
the same meaning, is: If there is consciousness, then there is a physical reality.
     On the other hand, without the brain and nervous system and sense organs, it would
similarly be impossible for the sensations to be experienced and the virtual reality constructed. 
Without consciousness, the external physical world, for all intents and purposes, would not exist. 
Logically, this is the same as saying: If the external physical world exists, then consciousness
exists.
     In other words, consciousness implies the existence of an independent material world,
which in turn implies the existence of consciousness.   In logic, when one statement implies a
second, and the second statement implies the first, then the two statements are equivalent.   The
physical world that creates consciousness, then, is equivalent to the consciousness it creates.

     No separation.

      The interdependency is so perfect and complete that the inner and outer worlds can't be
separated.  They're logically, and actually, equivalent, a single, inseparable entity.
     A good example of the confusion caused by a typical separatist world view is the old
puzzle about trees falling in forests.  If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it,
is there a sound?
     A physics professor asked me this question when I was an undergraduate, and I fell silent,
puzzled, mulling it over.  When I didn't answer immediately, he went on, saying, "Don't be
ridiculous, of course there's a sound."
     I couldn't disagree, then, but the correct answer is: 'yes', and 'no'.
     When a  tree falls in the forest, there is a sound; but unless we're there, this sound occurs
only intellectually, in our imagination, our memory.  Practically speaking, if we didn't physically
hear it then there was no sound.  Is that clear?  Abstractly, based on our memory of prior
experience, we know that if someone had been there they would have heard a sound.  In that
restricted sense,  there was a sound.  However in this case the sound is reaching us by way of our
memory and intellect, by way of our imagination.  The bottom line is, we didn't really hear
anything.
     The tree fell in the forest, and there was a sound in our imagination.

     The proposition being offered in this essay is that the so-called exterior and interior
worlds are not separate.  Conscious, fundamentally, is nondual.   On the other hand, there are
some who, rather than speak of non-duality, advocate "oneness".  I don't really want to get into a
semantic argument over this, but I do have the following comments.
     Advocates of oneness sometimes have an idea that everything in the universe is
connected together by a grand cosmic weave.  Somehow, while everything appears separate,
down deep it's all made out of the same stuff, seething with some kind of prana, and when we're
tuned in we can really see and feel these physical connections.  "Cosmic Consciousness" puts you
in touch with the entire universe: not only your own body, but also the body of your next-door
neighbor, the rocks, the grass, the trees, the sun, the moon, and the beings populating distant
galaxies.  You're plugged in, tuned in, and riding the great cosmic wave.
     The problem with this is that it's just an idea, and a rather materialistic one at that.  It's
true that certain states of consciousness, such as samadhi, may resonate with the unity
interpretation, but practically speaking I have seen no particular evidence for oneness in the sense
of sharing some kind of etheric circulatory system with everything there is.  A nice idea, but I
don't think it's necessary to buy into it, so I don't.
     On the other hand, maybe somebody else knows better.  It doesn't really matter, since
truth is truth regardless of how you explain it.
     To summarize, let me recap once again the "fragmented" and "unified" or nondual  world
views.

Fragmented World View:  We live inside our bodies, especially our heads, and consciousness is
basically close by.  Doors, keys, cars, birds, and all that other stuff is external, and has an
independent, separate existence.

Nondual World View:  Everything we experience, both outside and inside, constitutes our
consciousness.  Doors, keys, cars, birds, and all that other stuff may have an independent
existence--indeed, intellectually, that seems very likely--but our perceptions of our so-called
exterior world are fundamentally no different from our perceptions of our so-called interior
world.  They're made of the same stuff.

     Naturally, acquiring a nondual world view isn't just a matter of choosing to believe the
second of these two alternatives.  Belief is the past, a function of memory.  When you consider
that nearly forty years passed before this view of the world hit me with force, you realize such
transformation in perception is likely to be a rare event, not just a matter of faith.
     The primary reason for wanting a new world view is simple--a happier, more vital life. 
Imagine looking at someone you previously considered an adversary and seeing them not as
separate, but as part of the Totality, part of what you are, a fragment of consciousness.  You're
not so inclined to harbor negative feelings about that person, though that person may torment
you.  Instead, you work to improve the situation.  Emotion doesn't play such an overwhelming
part anymore. 
     When you observe directly that there is no separation between what you previously
considered yourself and the so-called external, something amazing happens.  Stress levels drop
drastically.  You find yourself being generally friendly with all those around you, even the thorns
in your side.  It gets harder to carry grudges.  Simple activities such as washing the dishes can
take on a new significance--a giddy kind of energy lights you up as you take another spoon out of
the tub and see it for what it is part of what you are.  
     And you stop taking yourself so seriously.  Why should your right hand worry about
trying to make a good impression on your left?  There's not much point in it anymore.  It's much
easier, more natural, to relax and be yourself.  Life is less complicated.  Salesmen and politicians
have a harder time manipulating you.
     When you see that all you experience, inside and outside, is in a single field, and that
there is nothing beyond that field, no edge of the world with monsters lying in wait below, then
you truly understand nonduality, and have in a real sense "cosmic consciousness"--just the
ordinary consciousness that you carry around with you, but with a transformed world view. 
Prejudices fall away, as does anger, acquisitiveness.  Everything is easier.
     Having discussed all this, the natural question is the following: how do we acquire this
fantastic view of the world?  What does it feel like?  This will be discussed in more detail in a
later essay.  Briefly, we arrive at this world view spontaneously, as a result of simple observation
of our day-to-day stream of conscious experience.  It turns out that memory, which is the past,
puts a filter over our immediate perceptions, creating the division, which in turn saps our energy
and drains the life out of our moment by moment experience.
     When the past falls away, the present opens up like a flower to the rising sun.  The world
is fresh, vibrant, alive, and we're filled with love that is empowering and beautiful.  We are a
fantastic vista, a world full of mystery, beauty, light, and passion.  

      That's our natural state.  That's who we are.



                    3.  Habit Versus Insight

     In the previous chapter, we discussed nondual perception, and made an intellectual case
for there being no separation between what we call our inner experience and our outer
experience.  This nondual perception, when it is real and not just intellectual, has the power to
transform everyday experience into something considerably more positive.
       Having been clued in concerning the possibility of such a transformation, we obviously
want to get it if we can.  This chapter is about two contrasting methods for effecting this change. 
In one method, we change slowly through practice.  In the other method, we change suddenly
through insight.  Various traditions favor one or the other, and we'd like to understand which
approach would work best for us.
     This is one of the interesting questions that arises in connection with any kind of self-help
or improvement.   Either we can develop good habits of thought, word, and deed, thereby
simulating the behavior of those possessing great understanding, or we can develop insight,
which as a side effect will significantly change our behavior for the better.
     Generally speaking, religious traditions embrace the cultivation of habit, mainly because
it's easiest.  Everyone is used to this approach, in which changes are effected by a gradual
modification of behavior.  While some are of the opinion that blind habit is a hindrance and
should be avoided at all cost, healthy habits can simplify life, improve the sensitivity of the
nervous system, and predispose the mind to insight.  An extreme view on habit, either for or
against, is probably unnecessary and maybe somewhat hazardous.  In this essay, we'll explore the
merits of each approach.

     Most people are raised in a religious environment to some degree.  Even children of
atheist households are taught, either implicitly or explicitly, certain modes of conduct and
morality.  This is well and good, and even necessary for raising a decent member of society who
will function more or less properly.
     This type of training is basically cultivation of habit, which is born of imitation.  Like our
cousins the monkeys, we tend to imitate our parents and our peers, conforming to their codes of
behavior and appearance, suppressing and channeling our more fundamental impulses.  After a
while, such imitation becomes so ingrained that it seems to be a law of nature.  Anyone acting
outside of a certain range of behavior patterns is promptly labeled strange or weird, and
effectively ostracized until such behavior is corrected.  The appropriate behavior, often confused
with virtue, is lauded and encouraged.
     This brings up a related question, which is whether or not habitual behavior is truly
virtuous.  Positive habits, surely, are better than negative habits, but it seems that underlying
sincerity should count for something. 
     There are many examples of habitual activity.  Brushing our teeth, taking a certain route
to work, eating certain foods at certain times are all habitual activities.  Reading the newspaper
and watching television can become habitual, or going to religious services.  In every case, the
activity feels natural, and we don't think about it too much, but it feels right.   Society conditions
us to respond in certain ways, we condition ourselves to respond in certain ways, and we feel
vaguely uneasy if we don't follow through properly.  This feeling of vague uneasiness is fear--the
fear of being different, fear of change.  When we follow through with the habitual activity, the
fear goes away, and we feel relieved, which acts as a positive reinforcement for the behavior.
     So the good feeling is simply the temporary assuaging of the insecurity, of the fear. 

     I've portrayed habit as something automatic, robot-like, and I think most people would
agree that habit is exactly that, something we do without a whole lot of thought, and with only
minimal awareness.  How many of us have had the experience of driving all the way from home
to work, then suddenly realizing we were lost in thought and unaware of what we were doing for
the entire half-hour of the trip?  Our habitual reactions are extremely powerful, and are often
capable of carrying out complex tasks without our conscious control.
     So habitual activities, to some extent, appear to be useful and even necessary.  Naturally,
without some training of the motor system, we couldn't drive cars or fly airplanes nearly as well.
     The problem with habit, though, is its potential for abuse.
     How is habit abused?  Well, we often use habit to escape responsibility.  With sufficiently
trained habit, for example, we can carry out our duties mindlessly, while daydreaming of
something else.  We're too lazy, too bored to pay attention to what we're doing, and why should
we?  We can do it while effectively asleep.
     I once heard tell of a Catholic priest who was so well-trained in saying mass that he
claimed he could deliver the entire ritual while thinking of something else entirely, just like the
zombie cab driver who whizzes along the crowded streets of New York without any conscious
awareness of the conditions around him.  The priest was proud of his talent, and other priests
greatly admired him.  It's also possible to do dishes this way, wash cars, or change diapers.
     Now, we might ask, what's the problem?  What's wrong with knowing an activity so well
that we can let our bodies take over while we take a mental vacation from the drudgery?
     The problem is not so much the habitual activity in itself.  As we've seen, a certain
amount of automatic pilot is useful and necessary.  The problem is why we've created the habit,
and continue to nurture it.
     The answer, partly, is our desire for pleasant sensations.  We wash the dishes
automatically so that we can think about something else, something that will create a drone of
pleasant sensation in our nervous system, the drone we identify as our selves.
     Try watching your feelings the next time you're doing the dishes while reflecting on, say,
your tennis game or golf game, or what you're going to buy at the store.  That train of thought
which runs seemingly unbidden is creating a subtle background of sensation.
     Down deep, we want these sensations, we identify with them--at least, most of the time. 
The dark side of this kind of desire is when we are thinking about unpleasant things.  The
mechanism is the same, but now we are unwillingly absorbed in negative thoughts, which we
wish to disown, eliminate, change.  This, rather than pleasurable, is painful, distressing.  And,
just as we can't break our habitual washing of dishes and habitual thinking of pleasant topics, we
have similar problems dissociating ourselves from the unpleasant realities.  They're two sides of
the same coin.  You can't have one without the other.
     Rituals are habits falsely elevated to the level of the divine.  Cloaking various facts of life
in ritual is society's way of tip-toeing around embarrassing or difficult-to-handle everyday
problems, or of maintaining control.  Sex, for example, has been tremendously ritualized, simply
because of the terrible power it holds over us.  The marriage rituals help us feel "okay" about
having sex, after having fear drummed into us, either tacitly or deliberately, throughout our
childhood and young adulthood.  In addition, there are legal consequences that the rituals
reinforce.
     Let's pause a moment and summarize what we've covered thus far.

1.  Habits are useful in the refining of a skill.
2.  Habits can be used to avoid awareness of events or activities considered boring, onerous, or
otherwise distressing.
3.  We associate ourselves with the sensations created by our habitual thinking.

     Let's get back to the question of whether or not a habit can ever be considered to be truly
a virtue.  By now, the answer should be obvious: a thousand times no!  A virtue is a strength,
something that springs from within.  If we send flowers to communicate our love of a person we
don't really care about, it isn't a virtue, it's a lie.  If we act automatically, habitually, in the giving
of our tithe every week to the church, it isn't a virtue, it's fear.  How can it be a virtue to pretend
to love our neighbor, when there is no real love in our heart?
     Rituals have sprung up throughout society, throughout our daily activity, all for the
express purpose of having some material, physical action fill the void within us.  We need these
rituals because without them, there seems to be nothing there, no religion, no substance, no
revelation.  And these rituals, which are canonized habits, strike chords within us, all because the
traditions were laid down inside us when we were young, by our parents, by society, by our
culture.
     Let's strip away all our habits, our habitual thinking, the things we like to regularly do, the
way we like to be.  What's left?  A void of aloneness that is truly terrifying, the terror of an
infant, ignorant and wailing in an alien world.
     Obviously, given the alternative, habits are very hard to break.
     On the other hand, why do we want to break our habits?  What's wrong with them?  Now
this is very interesting, because here we enter another kind of evasion.  We're driven by our
habits, we're slaves of the past, and we don't like the way we are, so we contrive to change
ourselves in some way that will result in our becoming something we do like and admire.  And
what do we replace our old habits with?  New habits!  It's a vicious circle.
     At this point, you're probably ready to pull your hair out.  What's going on?  Are we
hamstrung and hogtied, straight-jacketed?  If we don't try to change our old habits, how can we
improve ourselves?
     There's another way.
     When you understand, directly, why you are the way you are, when you have insight, then
change comes quickly and dramatically.  It's like when you first realize that cherry red stove coils
can burn you.  The way I found out, at about age five, was to touch one when it was red. I got
burned, and never did it again.
     The trouble is, many of our habits, like watching TV or reading the newspaper, are a lot
more subtle than a hot stove.  Even something like smoking, when you're used to it, won't seem
to be affecting you all that much.  So you keep lighting up while you're destroying your health.
     It's a question of sensitivity.  By sensitivity I don't mean emotion or feelings, but physical
sensitivity.  The nerves.  Habits of any kind reduce our sensitivity to our minute-by-minute
experience.
     Catch twenty-two: how can we be sensitive when we're slaves to habits that make us
insensitive?  How can we get the process rolling?
     Here's the paradoxical answer: start cultivating healthy habits!
     Wait a minute!  Just a moment ago we decided our habits are an escape from what we are,
and since we're busy escaping from what we are, there is no chance that we'll understand
ourselves just as we are, which is what we need to do to break those habits naturally.  Now, we're
going to start cultivating habits in order to change, to transcend the habit-ridden lives we're
leading.  Isn't that a paradox?
     What's going on?  It's really pretty simple.  The nervous system is a two-way street.  We
have various feelings in our bodies, which create thoughts and impulses, sometimes positive,
sometimes negative.  But at the same time, thoughts and impulses, created in us by the actions
and words of others or by our own actions, thoughts, or words, have the power to create various
feelings in our bodies.
     This is commonly known as a kind of self-hypnosis, the power of positive thinking.  We
can gently convince ourselves to change our ways simply by planting the seed in our conscious
thought.  Our unconscious brain, the one that controls our autonomous bodily processes, is not
that smart when it comes to words and thoughts, and will tend to go along with whatever the
conscious brain says.  It just takes a little gentle persuasion.
     Now, as we cultivate healthier habits--better hygiene, better diet, calmer thoughts, safer
sex, and so forth--we begin to get more physically sensitive.  And as we become more physically
sensitive, we gain the potential for deeper insight, which in turn helps those bad habits drop away
like deadwood.
     Naturally, a good shot of insight right at the outset would save us a lot of trouble, but
most of us aren't going to be that lucky.  We're too used to looking analytically at things, and
don't have the patience to simply observe, and keep observing, without trying to draw some
conclusion or create some illusory state of consciousness.  Instead, we'd like to take one peek and
then get something for it, a trophy experience, or a permanent high.  Something to write home
about.
     Now, how do you create a healthy habit?  As stated above, it's basically a matter of
persuasion.
     For example, if you want to quit smoking, you could sit quietly for a few minutes every
day, imagining yourself free of the habit, turning away from cigarettes with disgust, embracing
healthy alternatives.  Imagine your most probable future; lying in a hospital bed suffering from
emphysema or lung cancer.  Imagine your normally pink lungs looking dark, blackened from
years of abuse.  Do this every day.  A good time is right before you go to sleep.
     And, of course, it doesn't hurt to observe yourself in the act of reaching for a cigarette,
lighting up and smoking.  There's a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, first, then an onset of
pleasure as your reach for your pack and withdraw one of the slender tubes.  Taking out a pack of
matches or a Bic butane, you light up with a flare, feeling like one of the tough guys on TV that
lasso cattle and drive fast cars.
     Image, and imagination, create subtle sensations that stand out from the background and
direct our behavior.  Any Madison Avenue advertising executive knows that.  So why not choose
the behavior you want and then make it happen?  You have far more power over your feelings
and everyday experience than you may think.
     WARNING:  while you may wish to develop a healthier and happier lifestyle through
proper imagination and self-suggestion, you should avoid abuse of self control.
     We've all met people who are enormously self-disciplined, virtual tyrants over
themselves.  This is something to be avoided.  Bullying yourself may get a few quick results, but
unfortunately can often create tremendous inner conflicts, negating any good that may otherwise
have resulted from the disciplined behavior.  Furthermore, if you bully yourself often enough,
there's often a tendency to start bullying others, as well.  After all, why should you cut them any
slack when you don't cut it for yourself?
     Moderation is the key.  You don't have to be perfect, and if you were, nobody could stand
you.
     Now, how do you go about using imagination to help establish healthier habits?  This will
be taken up in greater detail in the chapter on meditation.  Basically, though, (and this is as hard
as it gets) you sit quietly and reflect on positive images.  You might have a problem, for example,
with fear or hate.  These are very similar emotions.  Maybe you're always very negative, seeing
the dark side of every situation.  To combat this, sit quietly and repeat, over and over, 'may I be
happy'.  Imagine yourself feeling happy, taking care of yourself.   A lot of angry people have, at
their core, a fundamental dislike for themselves.  You can't love anybody else before you love
yourself, so that's the purpose of wishing yourself happiness.  
     To overcome excessive lust, either for sex or other material things, it's not a bad idea to
reflect on the parts of the body, in an analytical way, and on the impermanence of the body. 
Think about how it gets older.  Think about how the body you lust after will harangue you and
control you if you should be unlucky enough to get into a permanent relationship with the owner
of the body!  It's natural to have sexual feelings, but if, for whatever reason, they come to
dominate our lives, complications can result.  Gently defusing the feelings can make us a lot
more comfortable.
     If you lack energy or motivation, reflect on disease and death, the way it can come at any
time, or simply repeat to yourself 'may I be filled with energy' over and over, while relaxing. 
Positive thinking, performed in a systematic way, can work miracles.

     We've mainly discussed habit in this chapter.  What about insight?  How do we get it, and
how do we know when we've got it?  Sure, we've already gone over how we can develop healthy
habits, and that in this new, healthier environment, we will become more sensitive, which in turn
opens the possibility of understanding.  Isn't there something more specific we can do?  Might
not there be some kind of secret mantra, some Sanskrit formula or lost book of the Bible that
gives the low down on getting high on life?
     This is a very difficult question, and fortunately it doesn't require an answer.  If we work
to change ourselves through developing healthier lifestyles, and if at the same time we put our
heart and mind into observing just what's going on in and around us, insight is going to happen. 
Sometimes it will happen and we won't even know it.  We'll understand something fundamental,
but we won't realize its significance for years, when it finally clicks intellectually and we realize
that we've gone through a fundamental change in the way we perceive things.
     If you want a barometer, change is probably the best measure of whether or not you've
truly understood, or whether you've just fooled yourself.  Naturally, since insight is deemed
desirable, the mind will begin working to simulate it in order to satisfy its craving for greater
self-esteem.  If you have a sudden flash of understanding, though, and subsequently find that
certain negative behavior patterns have dropped away with little effort or conflict, then it is likely
you have experienced true insight, and that your mind has subsequently undergone a certain
reorganization as a result.
     Here's an example.  Suppose Mary has a bad temper, throwing her racket and getting
angry every time she loses a point while playing tennis.  One day she glimpses a new world view,
seeing that her anger is a result of her conflict between the reality of her flubbed shots and her
image of herself as a champion tennis player.
     If the insight has been genuine, and sufficiently deep, she may find that she suddenly no
longer gets angry when she loses at tennis.  It's not that she suppresses her anger, or redirects it,
or manages to control or cope with it. She has seen that there's nothing to be angry about.  She's
touched the hot stove, and isn't going to do it again.
     On the other hand, perhaps the insight wasn't so deep, or perhaps she hasn't truly had any
insight at all.  But she's read some books, and an intellectual appreciation for anger and its origins
has kicked in.  Taking pride in her new 'insight', she decides it isn't cool to scream every time she
goes down in straight sets, and so controls her behavior.
     While so-called self control, when all else fails, is certainly not a bad idea (in fact, I
recommend it), the need for control of negative behavior indicates a shortfall of insight.  Mary
will outwardly appear to have become a good sport, but maybe inwardly she will be seething.  No
one would say she'd overcome her problem, though of course her recognition of the problem
constitutes the first step.
     So the rule of thumb is, strong, true insight results in positive life changes that seem to
require little effort.  When insight is absent, life changes might be made, but usually it's more
difficult, with a lot of inner conflict.  After all, why  stop doing what you like if you don't see the
danger?
     On the other hand, if you truly do see danger--a cobra coiling to strike, or a wave of
bombers heading your direction--there is a tendency to take immediate action without inner
conflict.
     The difference between rampaging cannibals, the danger of which we can clearly see, and
our everyday habits and feelings, is simply that cannibals are a clear and present danger, while
lighting up, or compulsively eating heavy ice cream, is rather subtle.  We don't  notice the danger
until it's too late.
     That's why sensitivity is important.  Here, we're not talking about the kind of sensitivity
where, if you happen to accidently slight someone, they tend to react defensively, or if you point
out that they have a small pimple on their arm they become hopelessly embarrassed.  This is not
really sensitivity at all, but rather a too-precarious self-image.
     The kind of sensitivity needed is plain, straight-forward sensitivity of the body, the
nerves, the sense organs.  Listen with your eyes, see with your skin.  What are you looking for? 
Nothing special.  You're just looking at what's there.  Observing what is, consciousness, which is
hard to miss.  It's everywhere.
     And, if you need a kick-start, try developing some healthy habits.


                         Chapter Summary

1. Habits can reduce sensitivity, and ordinarily are essentially rather neutral, even when they are
positive. (However, see 2.)
2. Creating healthy habits can result in greater health and happiness.
3. Healthy habits may be cultivated by the use of imagination and self-suggestion.
4. Healthy habits will result in greater physical sensitivity and sharper perceptions and intellect.
5. Heightened physical sensitivity may result in deeper insight.
6. Deeper insight makes it easier to maintain and extend healthy habits, and creates a happier,
more cheerful world view.
7. A new world view changes the way you interact with others, helping them to better themselves
and their lives.
8. As other people better themselves and their personal environments, your world becomes a
better place to live in.



                    
                    4. Ego, Pride, and Prejudice

     One of the most familiar entities in anyone's world is the ego.  In fact, for most of us, this
seems to be something so fundamental, so basic to our existence, that it's taken completely for
granted.  As a consequence, we tend not to think much about it, and when we do, it's abstract
speculation, rather than any attempt to observe and find out for ourselves.
     What's interesting about ego is that we often talk about it as if it were a concrete object,
even when we don't really have any idea of what it is.  Usually, ego is identified as a general
feeling of me-ness that we carry around with us as we go about our daily business.  Early on, we
learn that we must defend and protect this me-ness, and we do so with a vengeance, often causing
lots of complications for ourselves and everyone around us.
     Children learn early on to identify themselves with their bodies and feelings.  As they
grow older, they begin to identify with their parents, siblings, toys, their possessions, their
environment.  They create an identity around the things and people they like.
     As we move through childhood to young adulthood, the intellect comes more into play,
and we identify ourselves with various abstract notions.  "I'm an American".  Or "I'm a
Protestant".  Many of these ideas and ideologies were planted in us when we were children, and
later in life they can return to us some of the feelings of our youth, stimulated by memory, like
Proust's little Madelaines and remembrances of things past.
     A very typical case in point is religion.  Most people believe strongly in giving their
children a religious education.  As children, we don't have much say in the matter, so we
dutifully attend Sunday School and went through the motions.  Later, as teens, the years of
rebellion may lead us to reject the religion of our parents.
     Yet, suddenly, the mind may at some point give up its rebelliousness and embrace its
conditioning.  This will naturally result in a tremendously good feeling, since at last a buried
conflict is resolved once and for all.  Though the tenets of the religion may not be completely
reasonable, it is nonetheless very reassuring just to believe.  The pure, uncomplicated sensations
of youth return, to a great extent the conflict between reason and programming is arrested, and all
around it appears to be a win-win situation.
     So on we go, spending our lives trying to define what it is we are, and it's always in terms
of one thing or another.  Many of us probably remember, as teenagers, having innumerable
conversations centering around identity.  Identifying with someone or something was very
important, and when successful identification was achieved, there was the satisfying feeling of
being one step closer to having an identity, to knowing ourselves.  And when that thing or idea or
person we identified ourselves with is attacked, we feel uncomfortable and threatened, so we
strike back.
     Suppose, for example, you're of French extraction, and quite proud of the fact.  Someone
says something disparaging about the French, and you might feel you have to disagree, to defend
the French against this insult, especially since you consider yourself to be one of them.
     That's how pride steps in.  We identify ourselves with certain people, objects, or ideas,
and then we're inordinately pleased with the fact that these people, objects, or ideas, which we
worship unquestioningly, are on our side, somehow extensions of ourselves, somehow defining
what and who we are.  They seem larger than we are, and it makes us feel larger to believe in
them.  The ideas even trigger subtle pleasurable responses in us.  Eventually we have an image of
who we are, based on all this identifying and imitating.  The reality is usually considerably
different.
     Sometimes these images result in amusing or even tragic consequences.  Cigarette
commercials, for example, often try to create the image that a smoker is somehow sexier, more
manly or womanly.  Smokers are portrayed as tough cowboys or business women. 
Subconsciously (and sometimes consciously), we admire the images and want to imitate them, be
like them.  Since all these images are smoking cigarettes, we're more likely to adopt the same
habit and feel good about it.
     Creating and becoming attached to self-images, in general, is hazardous to our mental
health and well-being.  Let me give you a personal example.  I teach physics and math for a
living.  There was a time when, if I made a mistake in class, it would really affect me.  I'd get
depressed about it for the rest of the day, sometimes even brooding about the incident days later.
     Why was I so affected?  Pride.  I had an image of myself as an excellent teacher, one who
made no mistakes.  When I failed to live up to the image, even for a moment, I became unhappy,
unable to accept the fact that I was occasionally fallible.  This led to inner conflict and
depression.  While there is nothing so terrible about occasional depression or conflict, it's a waste
of energy, and under such circumstances indicates a general misunderstanding, a confusion of an
artificial construct with reality.
     The image was unnecessary, superfluous, and actually interfered on occasion with the
conducting of my work.
     So why are we always encouraged to "take pride in our work"?  Wouldn't society fall
apart if we didn't?  Wouldn't everybody start doing slip-shod jobs, bringing modern life as we
know it to a grinding halt?
     This is an important question.  We have, on the opposite end of the spectrum from the
perfectionist, people who shrug their shoulders and say "What the devil, we're all going to die.  It
doesn't matter how hard we try or what we do."  These people also have an image, a very
negative one.  They consider themselves and their actions of negligible importance, which is a
clear indication of confusion.  Just because there are billions of people in the world doesn't mean
a single individual is unimportant.  The individual, the personality, from that person's practical
point of view, is in reality fairly large.  After all, as we look around and observe as we go about
our business, there always seems to be this hunk of flesh hanging on to us.  From the personal
point of view, which is the only point of view we have, this hunk of flesh and collection of
thoughts and memories actually occupies a fairly big piece of the total picture, as seen from
inside the skin.
     So discounting our personal importance is a mistake, and can lead to lower quality in our
work.  And in any case, if we're going to go around making images, the images might as well be
positive.  We and the people around us will be a lot happier, and we'll get a lot more done.  And
if we're ahead in our work, we'll have the leisure time to maximize our physical and mental
conditioning, and perhaps arrive at some deeper understanding.  And as a result, everybody will
be happier.
     So instead of sitting around wasting time and energy being wounded by our failures, we
can work on constructively trying to improve ourselves.
     In what way should we improve ourselves?  How do we go about it?
     That's easy.  Read a good book.  Solve a math problem.  Volunteer to help somebody out. 
Do a crossword puzzle.  Go for a walk.  Just about anything is better than sitting around moping
all day.
     When you're sensitive to what's going on, in and around you, then you tend to work
harder and better.  Those dirty dishes in the sink aren't just sitting over there, they're part of what
you are, and you'd rather that part of you sparkled a bit.
     So we all create images, and these images, constructed in memory, cause us to do all
kinds of silly things.  There isn't any 'me', or 'ego', apart from these images, these identifications,
the feelings we've identified with and carry around in our memory.
     Most of us spend a fair amount of time working on our images.  Some people even hire
expensive consultants to do it for them!  We add a membership here, an affiliation there, maybe a
few good deeds to round things out.  Then we step back and admire ourselves and tell ourselves
just how cool we are.  And, if our bodies aren't quite what we think they ought to be, we go to a
plastic surgeon to get something reshaped or simply enlarged.  The next time we look at
ourselves in the mirror, we're pleased, even though we're not quite who we used to be, physically. 
All because of an obsession with our self-image.
     Well, by now it's beginning to sound kind of juvenile to be all hung up on these fake
concepts of what we are.  So the next question is, how do we free ourselves from making these
images?  How can we get rid ourselves of them?  Is there some special mantra or chant or prayer
that will vaporize them?
     These are natural questions, and, amazingly enough, they illustrate the nature of the trap! 
Look at the conflict.  Somebody just tipped us off that we're hung up on images, and we've
decided that's bad.  So to make it better, we've decided to modify ourselves, get rid of those big
bad images, and be free and cool again.
     Trying to get rid of the images, of course, is just going to perpetuate the problem.  Isn't
that what we're already doing?  There's something about ourselves we don't like, so we try to
change or eliminate it.
     Now you protest.  What if we're on drugs?  Shouldn't we be trying to change ourselves? 
What's wrong with trying to go straight?
     Nothing.  In extreme situations, it's important to take charge and do something strongly
positive.  It's like you're a doctor patching up your patient enough so that you can find the real
problem.
     To free ourselves of our tendency to make and cling to images, we've got to observe them
in situ.  Forget about trying to suppress them; they're still there, and we've just succeeded in
putting on blinders, of sweeping the objectionable parts of ourselves under the rug.
     Those images, and our defensive, hypersensitive feelings regarding them, are part of what
we are.  They're us.  We don't want to get rid of them, we want to understand them.  And we can't
understand ourselves if we refuse to look.
     One more time: we don't want to get rid of the images.  We want to understand why we
create and cling to them.
     Attitude is everything.  If you're trying to get rid of something, usually you're not trying to
understand it.  And only through understanding can freedom be won.

     Next, we come to the issue of prejudice.  For the more liberal-minded, there's a knee-jerk
reaction that says "prejudice is bad".  What does prejudice mean, and in what sense is it bad?
     Prejudice means, literally, pre-judging.  In regards prejudice against a certain person, that
means assigning attributes to that person before you've allowed the person a chance to prove
himself.  The assigned attributes may be positive, or negative.  And any reasonable person will
tell you that such an attitude is grossly unfair.
     As a matter of fact, though, a certain amount of prejudice is necessary to function
effectively in daily life.
     For example, suppose every time you go to a certain restaurant you come home and are
violently ill.  After one or two incidents of that nature, you're not likely to go back to that
restaurant.  Yet this is prejudice: simply because it was bad before doesn't mean it's going to be
bad the next time.  Besides, how do you know your illnesses weren't just coincidental?  A couple
of bad experiences, which may not be the restaurant's fault at all, can lead to a kind of prejudice.
     Here's another example of smart prejudice.  Suppose statistically it's known that ninety-
five percent of all green-skinned people commit violent crimes.  Scenario: you're walking along a
dark street at night and you see one of the greenies walking toward you brandishing a machete. 
Anybody in their right mind, including me, would cross to the other side of the street, maybe
break into a run.  Yet, that's prejudice.  You've seen somebody with green skin and assumed that
he's dangerous, when in fact he may be the one good out of twenty, and is brandishing that
bloody machete just for exercise.  So this is prejudice, too, but statistics are important and only a
foolish person ignores them.  Freeing yourself of prejudice doesn't mean you have to start
ignoring reality.
     How do we know when prejudice is justified, and when it's just pure backwardness on our
part?
     Most of the time you can tell just by how you feel.  Generally, backward prejudice is
something that you feel righteous about, something that makes you feel powerful and strong in a 
hateful or angry way.  Something that makes you feel more pleasurably alive.  When prejudice
kicks in, you will usually notice the defenses kicking in at the same time.  It's automatic. 

     So prejudice is easy to come by.  A lot of it comes from people who just have to be right. 
Religious prejudice is often the strongest, since it's drummed in since infancy.
      And why do we always have to be right?  We always want to be on the right side of
every question.  What does it matter if we're wrong once in a while?
     Obviously, there's a factor of fear involved.  We identify so much with our ideas and
opinions, we feel personally attacked when someone says those opinions are not correct. 
Therefore we must defend them.  Images again, getting tangled up with reality,
     Now, we might ask, how can we get rid of prejudice?  Is there any way we can get
certifiably prejudice-free?
     There we go again!  Putting the cart before the horse!  This is like trying to solve a math
problem by looking up the answer in the back of the book.  Understanding is the key word.  We
can mentally stomp on it, bury it, reprogram ourselves, but in the end we've got to understand the
root of prejudice in order to be free of it.
     Prejudice has a number of roots: lack of information, misinformation, fear.  We identify
with certain ideas, practices, places, languages, and people who are different from us are
automatically assumed to pose a threat.
     Sometimes they are a threat, of course.  But most of the time the differences between
people aren't worth a handful of beans.
     Understanding prejudice takes great sensitivity.  You've also got to be courageous, willing
to take a chance on being wrong once in a while. 
     And, of course, the key is world view.  Once the world is seen as whole, complete, in its
totality, it's more difficult for prejudices to remain rooted.  And when our personality assumes its
true proportion, we stop having to be right all the time.  Truth becomes more important than
opinion.  What does it matter who's right?   We are part of the Totality, and so is that other
person, and in the best of all possible worlds we're both seeking truth, what is best for everyone.

                         5.  Love

     One of the most misunderstood words in any language is the word for love.  What is
love?  How do we know when it's real?  Are there different kinds of love? 
     Humankind is endowed with a fabulous information system that goes by the code letters
DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid.  Starting from a single fertilized cell that would fit easily
on the head of a pin, DNA controls and develops that miraculous creature called a human being. 
Without our conscious effort, billions of cells in our body go about their daily activities, partly
directed by neural and hormonal impulses.  We breathe automatically, even when asleep.  Our
hearts keeps beating.  Our stomachs break food down and our intestines gather the nutrients into
the blood stream, where they are distributed and utilized.  And all of these processes and more,
the special organs and tissues, function together with a competence and precision that is nothing
short of miraculous.  The amazing complexity of this control makes even the most untalented
person among us something special.
     Given the incredible natural talent of our DNA, it should come as no surprise that there is
built into our very natures--hard-wired--mechanisms responsible for ensuring our survival and
continuance as a species.  And a great deal of this hard-wiring, which is actually instinct, goes by
the name love.
     When my daughter was only a year and a half old, it was already clear that she had a
special attraction to objects smaller than herself, particularly if the object looked like a miniature
person.  By the time she was two and a half, she already had a very strongly developed sense of
what mothering was all about, and was very interested in acting out the care and feeding of a
baby.  This was a great revelation to me: it dawned on me over a period of some months that
there is a natural tendency to consider miniature objects, both human and otherwise, to be cute! 
This is partly why people like model trains and planes, and why children love to play with dolls. 
Nature has endowed us with a special, instinctual perception that causes us to view miniatures as
pleasing.
     The reason for this tendency is obvious.  Babies and young children are miniature adults. 
The built-in pleasure when viewing miniature persons helps us develop caring families where
children are protected and nurtured.  "Mother love" is especially strong, as it must and should be.
     This sort of love is instinctual, and it's very advantageous, in every way, to have strong
protective instincts.  Sometimes this type of love translates to others of adult size, especially
grown children.
     Interestingly, I have noticed that when regarding another in this instinctive mode, they
often appear physically smaller to me, even if that person is, say, the center for the basketball
team.  The brain resizes the perception to match the instinct.  And the opposite can be true: a
smaller authority figure can appear larger.
     Now, while mother love and protective impulses in general are highly desirable traits,
there is some question whether or not we can truly call it "love".  Love is supposed to be
unconditional, isn't it?  Furthermore, isn't it cheating if our hard-wiring makes us that way? 
Could we feel that same kind of love if someone had done grievous injury to our family or other
loved ones? 
     There is another kind of "love"  which is emotional in nature, and is basically a kind of
programming of the mind and nervous system.  This happens when someone hangs out with you
a lot, and you do a lot of things together.  It's a kind of bonding based on culture: people gesture
similarly, eat similar foods, help each other, talk the same way, share experiences, like the same
games and holidays, and so forth.  To a certain extent, this may be hard-wired: a tendency to
band together with others of like disposition and characteristics, to encourage bonding by
imitating others.  This also happens in families.  It's something like a comfortable habit.  You're
used to having someone around, so when that person isn't around you feel insecure, you feel
something's wrong.  You get lonely.  And since you are lonely and incomplete without this
person, you decide you must love that person.
     This isn't love, it's attachment, which again is a valuable survival trait.  We get attached to
all kinds of people and things, even when those people sometimes abuse us.  There are two roots
to this: habit, and fear.  Habits are easy, and when things are going well enough, we're afraid to
change.  Deep inside we're terribly lonely, and the constant companionship of certain people or
things is reassuring.  In addition, such attachments are valuable in establishing a community
network, which is highly advantageous in terms of survival. 
     This struck me very strongly once when I went for a several-week meditation retreat at
Live Oak Island, a small Florida community on Appalachicola Bay.  I stayed in a big empty
house owned by my aunt and uncle while they were on vacation.  Virtually no one else lived on
the island, at least not on a full time basis.  After a few days of seeing no one at all I began to feel 
lonely and a little scared.  It was uncomfortable being all by myself, silent and isolated, especially
at night.
     Then, all of a sudden, I realized I wasn't alone.  I had the grass, the spiders and other
insects in the grass, the trees.  I had the marsh, the gulf, the sun and the moon.
     I wasn't lonely or afraid anymore, and since that time I've experienced the sensation of
loneliness only for short periods of time, for an hour here or there, such as when I moved from
Florida to Arizona, leaving my family behind while I set up a home for them there.  Loneliness is
a transient sensation based on a particular world view.  Getting all worried about it just magnifies
and prolongs the discomfort.
     As far as my brother-sun, sister-moon perception goes, I'm not sure I can take it too
seriously.  I believe I saw that attachments to the environment can supplant attachments to human
beings.  I wouldn't call it a terribly deep insight on the nature of consciousness.  My perception at
that time was dualistic, since I viewed the sun, moon, and so forth as separate and distinct from
my inner world.  At best there was a glimmer of a new world view,  no more.
     Attachment, by the way, has been unfairly criticized in certain religions.  We're advised to
be "detached" from worldly things, our spouses, our cars, our possessions.  When we try to be
detached, all that happens is that we become less sensitive, which leads to complications in our
relationships.  So it's really not a good idea to get too caught up in trying to create or avoid some
particular mental state.
     So far, we've discussed "instinctual love", which causes us to want to protect miniature
versions of ourselves especially when they look like us, and "habitual love", which has fear at its
roots.  What's next?  Everybody's favorite topic.
     Sexual obsession.
     We're back to hard-wiring.  Taking care of our children is extremely important, but it's
rather futile unless we've got some to take care of in the first place.  To this end, nature equipped
us with sex organs, and arranged the hormones and sensations in such a way that we sometimes
get obsessed by them.  This obsession is the phenomenon of "falling in love".
     Falling in love is conditional, because it has as its object a particular person who is, of
course, someone very special.  And it's based on the person's sexual attractiveness.  It's no
coincidence that the object of desire often has some of the same characteristics of one or both of
the parents of the sexually-obsessed person.
     Sexual obsession is characterized by a compulsion to think about a particular person
constantly.  Sleep and work are interrupted, and it's hard to get that person out of the mind. 
When the feeling isn't mutual, then life becomes very difficult for the obsessed individual.  That
single other person seems to be enormously important, and this frame of mind can lead to all the
crazy things that people do when they're in love.  To a large extent they can't help themselves:
they're programmed to procreate with those having certain fairly obvious characteristics, with
similar culture and personality, and running into someone having those attributes sets off
hormonal and neural activity that are virtually irresistible.  And these feelings are considerably
magnified when the object responds in a positive way.
     Ordinary, everyday lust is the garden variety of sexual obsession.  It's based on reactions
to superficial stimuli, and can arise frequently throughout the day.  I recall a study where it was
found that the average male thinks of sex  once every few minutes.  The difference between this
and sexual obsession is that simple lust doesn't stick.  The eye roves on, and the stimulus is
forgotten.  In sexual obsession, the mind keeps reviewing the chosen stimuli, over and over
again, fanning the flames of desire.  A drunken condition of mind is created which is highly
pleasurable, and which is induced by various hormones and neurotransmitters, particularly for the
purpose of inducing a powerful bond with a person of the opposite (usually) sex.
     While it's fun to be in love and have that love returned, it certainly can be hazardous to
long-term welfare and happiness.  Many people enter into marriage or other sexual relationships
too readily, eager to consummate the relationship, and convinced by their hormones, their hard-
wiring, and their conditioning, that they've found the one and only person who can remove their
feelings of separateness once and forevermore.
     Naturally this is not the case, as the high divorce rate testifies.  The big problem is that
after the honeymoon is over and sexual appetites have been satiated, the lovers only then start to
really get to know each other.  Prior to that, they've been courting and on their best behavior. 
With the demands of hormones reduced and the excitement of novelty worn off,  the two spouses
are confronted with the reality of the person they've elected to spend the rest of their lives with. 
Sometimes they are disappointed.
     Many people manage to cope with the disparities that become apparent only after the
marriage knot is tied.  However a lot of pain and suffering must be born by those less successful,
especially when children are involved.
     So how do we handle sexual obsession when it occurs?  How do we know if it's "for
real"?
     Well, in one sense, it's always for real--fueled by delusion, perhaps, but delusion is real,
too.  And emotional difficulties are great training grounds.  Without hurdles, why jump?
     This isn't to say that embroiling ourselves in difficult relationships is a good idea.  On the
contrary, we have enough of that without deliberately generating more.  But it's also true that in
order to learn, certain risks must be taken.  Hiding from complications will prevent us from
realizing our full potential as human beings, and that potential is considerable.
     Whether you are male or female, you're going to be facing strong sexual feelings sooner
or later.  Cold showers might help a little.  You also would probably not want sexual tensions to
build to enormous peaks without some healthy release.   In most cultures, too much is made of
the transient, albeit intense pleasures of sex, and given the repercussions of irresponsible sexual
behavior, that isn't surprising.  But sex is a natural part of our makeup, like breathing or any
other function, and in itself isn't inconsistent with spirituality.  Understanding can be deepened
during such activity, just as during any other activity.
     Something else that might be valuable in combating sexual obsession is reflecting on the
factual attributes of the physical body.  Sit quietly in your room at night, imagining the various
parts of your body in turn, as if reviewing for an anatomy exam.  Think about the blood coursing
through the body, the bones, the teeth, the underlying connective tissue, the excretory system. 
Think also about how the body is subject to decay.  The person you're obsessed with today will
be haggard in a few years, just as you will be.  Do you really want to base your relationship
mainly on physical appearance?  It won't last forever.
     The physical side, of course, is only part of the picture.  There are all the other
resonances, springing from the images you stored of your parents and their relationship when you
were very young.  And there is the image you have of the other person, built up from the
common experiences, the way they think, dress, talk, and generally behave.  Personally, for
example, I find highly intelligent, aggressive women to be extremely attractive.  This is partly
because my own mother is that way, and partly because I'm that way, at least some of the time. 
Women who do yoga, or are spiritually inclined, can also strongly arouse my interest.  So while
much of the above material on sexual obsession focuses on the physical, there are also powerful
emotional and psychological forces.  Not satisfied with a unidimensional attack, DNA, in
conjunction with evolution, has created a whole collection of different routes to its goal, which is
reproduction.
     Yoga is also very good for reducing obsession.  The full lotus pose and head stand are
especially effective, if you can manage them safely and comfortably.
     So it's important to keep things in perspective even when your head is spinning around
like crazy.  This holds especially true after marriage: obsession can strike again, and cause
serious marital disruption.
     A "more mature love", as it is sometimes called, often develops after the sex wears off. 
This is based on growing friendship, mutual cooperation, shared memories, and habit.  Marriage
after the development of friendship is usually more solid and reliable.
     As valuable as is "mature love" in a long-lasting relationship, this love is again generally
conditional.  Many marriages end because of infidelity: obviously, in these cases, fidelity is a
precondition of such relationships.  We expect our partners to behave in certain ways, and when
they deviate too much or too often, we find it difficult to love them.  Some will argue that they
still love their spouse, it's just the spouse's behavior that they don't like.  Our behavior, however,
is part of what we are, and a love conditioned on behavior is a social contract that is mutually
beneficial and laudable, but not the kind of love we're talking about when we speak of, for
example, Jesus and his love for us.
     We've discussed instinctual love, habitual love, obsessions, and social contracts, and I
think we're probably agreed that while these are powerful and often highly meritorious or useful,
they are not really absolute in any sense.  What is absolute love?  A perfect kind of love, one that
is not conditional?  Is it possible?  Let's go into it.
     First of all, you can't make this kind of love.  If you could, it would depend on the
process.  You also can't preserve it in any way.  You can't practice it.
     On the face of it, this sounds impossible.  Everything else in life we gained through
training, practice of some kind or another, trial and error.  But there is, in fact, a tremendous
potential for love in each and every person.
     The trouble is, this potential is chained up, blocked.  It's in each of us, it's perfectly
natural, and no act of force or compulsion, regardless of how subtle, can cause it to express itself. 
The barrier we've erected is too tall and strong.  What is this formidable barrier to love?
     You, yourself.
     That's right.  The world view that you are separate from everything and everybody.  The
biasing of your perception by this world view.
     When you see that this separation is arbitrary, a transformation takes place.  When there
is no dividing of the world into inside and outside, you understand what love is.  It's something
that's powerful and deep, steady and strong.  When there is no separation between you and
universe, all adversaries vanish.
     The old world view is based on a fundamental delusion; unconditional love is impossible
while this point of view holds sway.  Only when the delusion is set aside can love come into
being.  Absolute love is unconditional because it isn't based on something, but on the absence of
something.
     Now, there are various things you can do to gently persuade yourself to feel less bitterness
and come to greater feelings of love.  This is a simulation, but it's still useful, and is better than
giving in to bitterness and self-loathing.  You can develop reflections, first wishing yourself
happiness repeatedly as if drilling a mantra, then spreading out gradually to include the entire
world.   Think "May I be free from anger and disease, may no harm come to me, may I be
happy", or some such, imagining this state as you do so.  Starting with yourself is essential:
hatred often is the result of inner conflicts and frustrations, and it's important to first like
yourself, as you are.  After your positive feelings towards yourself are firmly established, it then
makes sense to spread out to include others.
     The interesting thing is, while absolute love is unconditional, you can create a simulation
of it by exercises of this sort.  What's happening here is simple: your old habits of thought are
being displaced by new habits of thought, and these particular habits are conducive to a kinder,
gentler view of the world.  And as your simulation is also conducive to greater composure and
calm, you're even more likely to develop true insight, which in turn opens you up to love.
     Many people confuse absolute love with an imitation of a door mat.  "Turn the other
cheek" has received such wonderful press that many are confused in situations demanding action. 
Turning cheek is a good practice most of the time, and can lead to a calming of the mind, an
opening of the heart.  Sometimes, however, compassion also requires action.  Sometimes, when
someone injures you, the correct action  is to turn the other cheek.  Other times it may be better,
in the grand scheme of things, to hit them back.  After all, you've got to help them learn that such
aggressive behavior patterns will sooner or later lead them into trouble. 
     So if you see a poisonous snake, and it represents a threat to you or your family, you take
action.  I once killed a coral snake that was entering my garage.  I didn't like having to do it, and
it occurred to me that I could try capturing it and releasing it safely in the forest, but there was
deadly risk involved.  So I whacked it a few times with a rake.
     I felt no malice towards the snake, but  I don't think that made the snake feel much better.
     In daily life there usually isn't much call for physical violence, but there are numerous
analogous situations, such as when someone insults or slights you, or makes disparaging
comments of a friend or of some group of people.  Sometimes it's best to remain silent, and this
isn't a bad default mode, when in doubt.  Other times, it is absolutely necessary to speak, though
you risk an argument and a lot of hassle.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do with a difficult
person except stay out of their way.  Right action takes good judgement, and good judgement
requires a clear mind, unfettered by prejudice of any kind.
     It's also useful, by the way, to remember that those who challenge or otherwise annoy us
are very useful, because by our spontaneous reactions we might uncover ourselves, our true
feelings, our true nature.
     
     We're still working on the idea of absolute, unconditional love.  This is something I had
not the slightest understanding of before December of 1991, shortly after my fortieth birthday,
when, in the span of a few seconds, the foundation of the greater part of this book became clear
to me.  And it took insight, powerful insight, to see, to understand, to experience love for the first
time in my life.  The insight was non-verbal, it was perceptual, and it was instantaneous.
     Imagine looking at someone and seeing no separation between that person and you, not in
terms of the imagination, but in reality, simply, directly.  Imagine going about your daily
business, utterly convinced, because you observe it directly, that "you", your personality, is
nothing more than a fragment of the whole, and that whole is not something abstract or removed
but in fact is everything you experience, everything you are.
     Once you see this, actually with your mind, heart, your nerves, your entire being, then
obsession's hold over you is dramatically weakened.  You may still experience such obsessions,
but since your personality is at the proper magnification, neither too big nor too small in your
world view but just the right size, you won't suffer from your obsession.  Enduring it is easy, and
eventually it goes away.  The chemicals of lust and obsession are still manufactured by your
body, but your  reaction to them is considerably different.
     Intellectually, I can imagine that with sufficiently deep insight, such lusts and obsessions
may actually cease altogether. Currently, that is not the case, so I can't so state with complete
confidence.  And, of course, the elimination of obsessive behavior is not our goal.  After all, we
can't understand obsession if we suppress it.  On the other hand, we don't want to completely give
in to it, either.
     That, in a nutshell, is the middle path.  Work with yourself.  Be kind, but don't always
give in.  The world has enough in the way of religious fanaticism already.
     There are lots of traps we can fall into, and a little skepticism of our methods and ideas is
essential.  We can sing hymns, whipping ourselves into a frenzy of joy and simulated religious
love, or we can intellectually make it a policy to "love everyone".  Have you ever talked to people
who "loved you"  but "hated your sin"?  This is a dualism, and is simply not possible.  After all,
you are your "sin", if you'll pardon the expression, since sin is a rather imprecise word.  And, of
course, you're considerably more than just your sin.
     It's counterproductive to hate sin,  because then you can't possibly understand it.
     By now you're probably reeling with the back and forth nature of my arguments.  That's
okay, because it really isn't terribly important whether or not you understand intellectually what
I'm trying to put across.  Words are inadequate to certain tasks.  What I'm doing here is  pointing
out what I see and how I see it, describing my view of the world to the best of my current ability. 
The description is only a crude indicator of something that is as subtle as a knife thrust to the
belly when you first see it.  The first good look makes a powerful and lasting impression.
     I assert that it is possible to love in the absolute sense and that anyone is fundamentally
capable of it.  That said, a common question is to ask whether it's possible to love like that all the
time.  The question is meaningless.  It happens when it happens.  It happens when the habit of
dividing the world into self and other takes a rest.  It's spontaneous, natural, and will arise when
the shackles of the past, for whatever reason, momentarily fall away.
     The past is memory, and it has been proven scientifically that memory can significantly
influence perception.  In familiar surroundings, our memory will put a filter over everything,
muting the intensity and immediateness of our experience.  When, by vigilant observation, we
see that happening, something miraculous happens: the interference caused by memory falls
away.  Our perceptions become fresh, as when we were children, and we feel an immediate and
powerful contact with all the phenomena in our experience.  
     In that freedom from the past there is love--a total, unconditional love that is powerful
and strong.  In the light of that love there is no division.  A noisy muffler is like beautiful music,
miraculous and rich, while the waves on the river ripple through your extended body and the
birds fly through a sky without boundaries and no beyond.  This is the unconditional love, the
love that arises when, by grace or chance or powerful insight, the past falls away.

                   6. Dealing with Unhappiness

     Why are we unhappy?  Why can't we be happy all the time?  Why do other people always
seem to be happier than we are?
     Some of you may feel like you're already happy.  Very happy.  Why?  Well, for one thing,
it's very likely everything is going your way.  You're not sick, you've got a nice car, some money
in the bank, and maybe a spouse you get along with and some great kids.  You've got everything.
     On the other hand, it doesn't take much to make a person perfectly miserable.  Everything
else can be going right, but one little thing can spoil it all, the proverbial fly in the ointment.  A
pimple, a rejection letter, a low grade in a course, a negative performance review, a tactless
comment by someone you thought was a friend--these are a few of the things that can send us
unexpectedly into a depression.
     A root cause of a lot of unhappiness is comparison.  For example, most people in the
world occupy what are essentially dead end jobs.  That's just a fact of life, not something to be
unhappy about.  But we compare ourselves to someone who is more successful, and we start to
get obsessed, depressed, thinking about what a hopeless dead end we're in, and bingo, we feel
unhappy.
     What's even more interesting is that the better off we are, the less it takes to make us
unhappy.  I've known people who had lots of money, good health, talent, good looks, the works,
and yet the smallest things could really send them spiraling into depression, or make them angry
or annoyed.  This is because of our tendency to take for granted what we've already got, and to
focus on whatever isn't right.  When too much is going right, then the little glitches that
ordinarily wouldn't merit much attention get magnified out of proportion.   We compare what we
have to what we would like to have, and of course, that's always better. 
     So comparison, in general, is a good way to create a state of unhappiness.  For example,
we might see someone who is extremely attractive physically.  We then reflect upon our own out-
of-shape, flabby body, and start to feel worthless, inadequate.  We focus on what isn't right about
ourselves, forgetting all the amazing talents we have.
     And we are amazing: just the fact we can think and function and move around is a
miracle in itself.  Imagine billions of individual cells acting in concert!
     Another common reaction having its roots in comparison is competitiveness.  Sure, all
those other guys are better off now.  Just wait!  We're going to beat them!  They'll be eating our
dust!  And while this is a good step or two up from being depressed and down on ourselves, it
still isn't very healthy for the mind, at least in the broad view of things.
     A certain amount of competitiveness can be fun, and is not necessarily bad as long as
everyone realizes it's just a game.  When the wrong kind of competitiveness gets locked in,
however, the victim can get overworked, testy, easily angered, and generally unpleasant to be
around.  A ruthlessness develops that feeds on itself, enlarging the ego with each and every
victory, no matter how inconsequential.  Pretty soon they're beating their kids at games and
taking inordinate pleasure in it.
     There are various cures for the kind of unhappiness caused by comparison.  Some of the
cures are reasonably positive and healthy, while others are marginal or negative.  Most people
escape their unhappiness by resorting to distracting sensations of various kinds, like food, or sex,
or TV.  Others escape into competition, which, while it has some positive merit, can carry a
considerable negative impact as well.
     Other things can cause depression and general unhappiness, like diet and physical
condition, but for the most part the problem is rooted in comparison and a desire to suppress,
repress, or otherwise escape reality.  Failing exams, getting fired from a job, being treated
unjustly, dealing with serious health problems, being abused by someone--all the normal,
everyday problems that people have to put up with, can cause unhappiness.
     The reasons for the onset of unhappiness are usually 'valid', which means other people
sympathetic towards us will agree we are justified in being depressed.  Whether our unhappiness
is valid or not is really unimportant, and just provides an excuse for not addressing the problem
seriously.  Obviously, the way we deal with our difficulties can make our situation either better
or worse.  And making the situation better is what we'd prefer.
     Given the frequency of the common, garden variety of depression due to life's slings and
arrows, it's a good idea to develop positive strategies for minimizing the impact.  Then we'll be
better prepared for more serious kinds of problems.  These strategies fall into three main
categories, which we'll discuss in turn: the Pollyanna Principle, Positive Thinking, and Insight.

                    The Pollyanna Principle

     This is a very common method of dealing with unhappiness of various kinds, and can be a
valuable tool.  It's also a part of our culture, and has been passed down through the ages.  The
main advantage is the simplicity: "count your blessings".  Most of us have been so admonished
numerous times, especially by our mothers.
     And it's very sound advice.  Think of all the things you've got going for you, and of all the
people less fortunate.  Get your life into perspective, and you'll start to feel better.  This is a time-
honored tool of feelings management.  It can be compared to a kind of mental judo, since often
comparison got you down in the first place, and to get back up, you compare yourself to those
worse off than you, rather than with those more fortunate.  And you realize that the hand you
were dealt might not be so bad after all.
     Say you just got dumped by your lover, lost your job, and furthermore, your mother told
you she had you by accident, which happened because your father reused a condom for the third
time.  Then, the doctor botched the abortion.  Not only that, you just got a call from the shop and
they tell you your car, which you thought needed a new alternator, actually needs a new engine,
which they've already installed, and since you can't pay the bill they're going to impound the
vehicle.  Then your ex-girl friend's lawyer calls to inform you she's suing for palimony, not to
mention pain, suffering, and child support, since she's pregnant.  Finally, you've got a phantom
pain in your leg and you're convinced it must be bone cancer.
     All of us have had days like that at one time or another.  When the reverses pile up,
they're bound to get us down.
     But on the bright side, you don't have cancer of the gonads, at least not yet, and mom
didn't throw out your old baseball cards after all.  You have a nice collection of bottle caps, a
college degree, and your old teddy bear.
     If we're really hard up, we can always read the newspaper.  They're usually full of the
worst kind of hard luck stories.  All kinds of people are bound to be a lot worse off than we are,
and comparing ourselves to them is going to make us feel a lot better.
     My wife says she often reads the obituaries, because they always cheer her up.  They help
her get perspective on her everyday personal trials.  That's the Pollyanna Principle in action.
     What if it's really bad?  Say a major failure, at the end of several years of hard work, or
major illness in the family, or even death of a family member.  Obviously, such traumatic
reversals require stronger medicine, which, fortunately, is available.
     Aside from employing the Pollyana Principle, which has its limitations, there is also the
power of positive thinking, which can be considerably more effective if properly practiced.

                    Positive Thinking

     At first glance this may appear to be the same as the Pollyanna Principle, to which it's
related, but in fact it is far more powerful.  The idea is to create a positive mental state by
reflecting on certain positive images.  The fact of the matter is, negative habits of thought can
lead to a pretty gloomy outlook. Certain patterns of thinking, of negativity, lend themselves to the
creation of unpleasant, negative mental states, which in turn means you're not going to be a very
happy person.
     So one answer is to deliberately supplant the negative thoughts with positive thoughts. 
You'll be amazed at how much better you feel.  Fast relief!
     Here's something I've done which is pretty effective.  Sit quietly in a room or under a tree,
relax, and think, over and over, "may I be happy".  Just keep it going in your mind, over and
over, while you relax.  Sounds easy, doesn't it?  It is.  Another favorite of mine, a bit longer, is
"May I be free of anger and disease, may no harm come to me, may I take care of myself
happily".  Envision yourself taking good care of yourself, being healthy and safe.  Believe it or
not, negative thinking can spoil your mood.  This little exercise displaces the negative thoughts
with positive ones.
     Note that you're not saying "I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy!"  This would not work well
at all, because the phrase itself indicates a desire to avoid reality: that is, the reality that you are
unhappy.  You'll start to feel a certain strain, since what you're thinking is contrary to the reality,
and you will therefore be in a state of conflict.  Wishing happiness on yourself, on the other hand,
does not entail denying reality.  And the root cause of depression is the desire to avoid reality.  So
instead you say "may I" be happy.  Just wish yourself well.  This is important, because major and
minor reversals in our lives can make us dislike or even hate ourselves.  These reversals can also
make us hate others, which, as it turns out, is virtually the same thing. 
     Now, you're probably thinking it's kind of self-centered to sit around wishing yourself
happiness.  Weren't we taught that such self-preoccupation is egotistical, narrow, and selfish? 
On the contrary: nothing could be further from the truth.  Self-love has been given a bad rap
since ancient times.  The simple fact of the matter is that while other people are indeed
important, so indeed are you.  You're a person just like they are, aren't you?  And people who
abuse themselves and others often do so simply because they hate themselves, so anything that
makes you feel better about yourself will make you feel better about other people.  You'll find
yourself helping others because you really want to, not just because someone told you it's the
right thing to do.
     To get back to the technique, just keep reflecting as outlined above.  After a while, you'll
usually start to feel much better.  Somebody cares about you after all, and it's you!  As you warm
up to yourself, you stop taking your shortcomings so seriously.  After all, if your best friend had
messed up like you did, you'd just shrug it off, wouldn't you?
     Now, after you feel pretty good about yourself, you can extend the same thoughts toward
a close friend, then relatives, then everyone else, gradually expanding to include everything and
everybody, in all directions and all ways.  Just use the same basic formula, wishing happiness on
others.

     Okay, I know what you're thinking.  You think that when you mess up big time or flunk
out or get fired, divorced, and so forth, and get depressed, you don't really hate yourself, you're
just naturally down because you didn't make the grade.  But the fact of the matter is, you had an
image of yourself as making the grade, and when you flunked, you were stuck with the reality,
which was at odds with your image. 
     So, mentally, you tried to push the unwanted reality out of the universe.
     Similar activity surrounds nearly any unwanted experience, whether your own or that of
someone close to you.  On the one hand there is the image of what the world 'ought to be', and on
the other the painful reality.  Creating this schism takes a lot of energy.  So much so, that you
don't have too much energy left over for getting around.  That's why you feel, well, physically
depressed.  Weak.  Run down.  Like you could sink into the ground and save everybody the cost
of a burial.  And this brings us to the next method for coping with depression and general
unhappiness, the most powerful by far.

                                   Insight

     The reason this technique of dealing with unhappiness is so powerful is because it goes to
the root of the problem and eliminates it.
     Unfortunately, it is also the most difficult technique to apply, because we're used to
dealing with the universe dualistically, us and them, inside and outside, with us on the inside and
them on the outside.  The first two methods essentially involve the use of the dualistic point of
view in a clever way, to trick and program the mind into a more positive state.  Call it mental
judo.  With insight, by contrast, the root problem is perceived directly, and the result is liberation. 
     The root of the problem is the rejection of reality, clinging to an image of how we think
our life ought to be and an obsession with whatever is imperfect, along with an overwhelming
desire that it not be so.  Seeing this, truly and not just intellectually, will result in instant, long-
lasting relief.  And while it's difficult in practice, it's easy in principle.  Here's the long and short
of it: sit quietly and observe the sensations, bad and good, as they arise.
     Then what?  Then nothing.  Just keep watching them.  Don't watch TV, don't raid the
refrigerator, don't bother your spouse.  Besides, you're probably depressed because of some major
problem in your relationship anyway, and your spouse wouldn't touch you with a rubber-sheathed
ten foot pole.
     Just hang out with that very interesting feeling of depression.  Make friends with it.  Get
to know it.
     Now I'm going to relate to you a personal story.  Once, some years ago, I was depressed
about a relationship, the major one I still happen to be involved in.   I was so depressed I didn't
feel like moving around too much.  It was miserable.
     So I sat there and watched the feeling.
     I didn't turn on a radio, I didn't try to somehow distract myself from the feeling.  I
watched the feeling. 
     After watching a while, I realized that the feeling of depression, which seemed enormous,
was in fact at a certain spatial location.  At least, that's how I was perceiving it.  The room was
only dimly lit, and if I had to put a number on it I'd say there was this big hairy ball of depression
approximately five or six inches away from "me".
     What do I mean by "me"?
     Well, you know, that feeling of me-ness.  Do you ever feel like you're in your head, three
or four inches behind your eyes, just looking out at the world?  That's what I'm talking about
when I say the big hairy ball of feeling, of depression, was about six inches from "me".
     What was going on?  Mentally, I had taken the feelings and rejected them, pushed them
away.  My mind began calling that complex of sensations constituting the depression "not-me",
and therefore began to perceive it as separate and distinct from "me". 
     Strictly an attempt at wishing the problem away.
     So, while I watched this hairy ball of dark, unpleasant feelings, I gradually began to
realize that it was not "not-me", but part of me.  I kept watching, and after a while, it didn't seem
so threatening anymore.
     I started to warm up to it!
     As I began to lose my fear and loathing of these sensations, an interesting thing began to
happen.  The hairy ball of unpleasant sensations began getting closer!  It eased down to about
four inches, then three, then two.  I was staring at it, eyeball to eyeball.
     Suddenly it closed through the final gap and touched me.  Made contact.
     An instant before I had been physically weak from depression.  The feelings seemed
enormous and overpowering, very unpleasant.  But when that hairy ball touched center, when I
made contact, something incredible happened.
     The negative feelings burst like a water balloon.  And I was filled with energy and
happiness.

     What happened?  It's simple.  I was using an enormous amount of energy just maintaining
that illusion of distance between "me" and the hairy ball of unpleasant sensations.  When I
relaxed and simply observed, without trying to change anything, I was able to see that there
wasn't really a threat.  The tension, the fear, began to ease, and when contact was made, all that
pent up energy was released.
     That story was probably a little unbelievable, but in fact I have dealt with depression
several times in this fashion.  The key is to relax and try not to do anything except watch,
observe. Sitting up is best, because lying down you might fall asleep and accidentally miss out on
clearing up the problem.

     So now we have three techniques.  I frankly don't know how easy it would be for you to
implement that last technique, so probably you should stick to the first two for the meantime. 
The Pollyanna Principle is always pretty good, and if that doesn't work, you can try Positive
Thinking.  Using the insight method takes some courage, and a certain clarity of mind that many
of us have forgotten.  Most of us will sit there and look at the unpleasant feelings, all the while
wondering when they're going to go away.  That kind of attitude, itself, prevents the healing
process.
     So, in general, the creation of images, the expectations, the anticipations, are all setting us
up for a fall.  Understanding this with the nerves, the whole being, will bring fast relief to
virtually any depression, and restore a sense of happiness and well-being.

     It's important to remember that depression and unhappiness are sometimes caused by
physical conditions outside of our control.  The cause could be dietary, or from poor physical
conditioning, or from some subtle disease.  So for very strong or persistent bouts of unhappiness
it is advisable to consult a physician.
     On the other hand, what if you're perfectly healthy, and simply can't make any progress at
all on your depression?  What if you think the situation is getting out of hand?  By all means,
seek temporary relief.  While escaping into food, drink, sex, or other stimuli is not going to solve
your problems, it's not necessarily a bad idea to let yourself go once in a while, as long as you
don't overdo it.  Dull the sensations a little, make them more manageable.  There's no need to be
fanatical about insight, after all.  Just remember, the way life works, there will be plenty of other
opportunities.  So if this time around you just can't hack sitting there and watching those icky
feelings, turn on the TV and don't feel bad about it.  Or call a friend and talk it over.  Talking
your problems over with someone opens you up, and when you start to open, you're that much
closer to making contact with what's bothering you, with breaking the pattern of rejection.  Or
take a jog, get your blood moving so your mind can function clearly.  Do something!  It's not just
your problem, it's you, and you might as well get to work on it, using any tool at your disposal.
                         7. Varieties of Religious Experience

     Religious experience is central to the lives of most people.  Even those who reject
religion often value religious tenets.  When discussing religious experience, problems in
communication arise due to cultural contexts and differences.  Ideally, then, we would like to
distill and purify the essential religious experiences.
       None of what you will read here is theoretical or speculative: I will report as accurately
as I can everything I understand from first-hand observation.  Some of it you may find
controversial or disturbing, particularly if you already have a strong opinion as to what
constitutes religious experience.  Please feel free to believe anything you want.  Here, I can only
report the truth as I see it.  Believing or disbelieving me won't make much difference.   Blind
belief has nothing to do with truth, and everything to do with self-deception. 

     The most common vehicle in the world for promoting the healing and general welfare of
the mind is the cultivation of religious experience.  As the natural reverses of life bear down on
us, beating us down, we start looking around for something, anything, that can help us cope.  And
religious experience is a powerful influence because it purports to answer all the most
fundamental questions.  At the same time it gives us some anchor of hope in what seems
otherwise to be a chaotic and incomprehensible world.
     Virtually everyone in the world has been thoroughly exposed to religious thought of one
kind or another.  Religion, in turn, promotes certain modifications to each person's world view. 
Our parents, in the vast majority of cases, subscribe to the traditional world view which cuts the
universe up into a million separate pieces.  They superimpose upon this world view a collection
of beliefs which extends that world view to a so-called unseen or spiritual world.  The world
view and the religious beliefs then are supposed to cover all known and all unknown experiences,
which makes for a nice, neat package.
     People profess undergoing religious experiences for a lot of different of reasons.  In some
cases, these experiences give us personal validity within our society, and thus are sought after.  In
other words, by having a certain experience and communicating it to others, we become accepted
by our fellow men and women, and enjoy psychological security as a result.
     This is symptomatic of a very interesting pattern of behavior.  First, we feel we are
somehow separate from others, left out of the group.  They are all professing their experiences,
and we aren't, and we'd like to get on with it.  Our comparison of them with us, with special
attention to the differences, makes us feel we're lacking something.  We feel alone, left out.  To
remove this feeling of being left out, we undergo and profess certain religious beliefs or
experiences, thus joining the crowd.
     The irony of this is that, all the while we are trying to remedy this feeling of separateness,
we are actually making the problem worse, reaffirming our separateness, getting our egos stroked
by the other members of the club that has finally admitted us.  Before, when we felt alone and left
out, isolated, we were actually seeing things fairly clearly.  But the pleasure of acceptance, of
social advancement, covers up and hides the feelings of separateness, fooling us into thinking
we've solved our problem.  The problem is still there; we are just pleasured out of feeling it any
longer.
     This is something like taking morphine to cure cancer.  You'll feel much better, but it
won't cure you.
     In the midst of our chosen groups and affiliations, we still guard a divided view of the
world, of inside as opposed to outside, self and other.  Our sense of separation is stronger than
ever, because we've identified with a new belief system, and our qualms and fears are allayed by
our new friends who are eager to recognize us, and receive recognition in return.
     This kind of reasoning may seem somewhat cynical and paranoid.  After all, aren't there
bonafide religious experiences?  Can't we directly perceive religious truth?  And, when and if we
do, aren't there ways we can be sure our experience is valid?
     The good news is that the answer to each of these difficult questions is yes.  The bad
news is that it isn't easy.   Let's take a closer look at the various kinds of religious experiences.

                     The Honeymoon Effect

     The first and perhaps most common religious experience derives from finding a religious
group that we can identify with and subsequently joining it.  Note the word 'identify'.  We find
our identity in these organizations, in their beliefs, and in the people in them.  Often, after joining
up, there is a feeling of euphoria that might last for some weeks or months, even years.  This
euphoria is virtually the same euphoria that we may experience when we fall in love.  We're
accepted, we've got a network, we're enthusiastic about our group, but like love-struck puppies,
we're not very critical.  We tend not to think too much about what we're doing, or try to
understand what we're getting into.  We accept a lot of things on faith, get socially involved with
other members, learn the buzz words, and that's the beginning and end of it.
     Like falling in love, this feels so good we don't ever want it to stop, and we're often overly
eager to share our good fortune with others.  They, too, must feel the euphoria, particularly since
we've suspended our powers of critical thinking, so convincing others becomes very important to
keeping ourselves convinced.  We feel threatened by those who don't think as we do, and often
pray to convert them, save their souls, or otherwise get them to conform to our way of thinking. 
The fact of the matter is, we're only trying to save our own souls.  We're desperate to have others
agree with us.
     The conversion-euphoria comes from being socially accepted and from the considerable
relief of putting aside the annoying burden of trying to understand anything for ourselves.  Our
life becomes significantly simplified, and that's a very positive benefit, because it can seem
awfully complicated sometimes.  Someone else is making the decisions, others far greater than
we have gone before and blazed the path, and so forth and so on, and all we've got to do is follow
like good little sheep.
     Which is simple, seductive, and counter-productive.
     It feels good but, like marriages based on the dizzy, drunken state of uncritical 'love',
there is considerable danger of becoming as complacent as cows chewing our collective cuds
together.
     This is not to say this suspension of disbelief and critical regard is not without benefits,
but it's something like taking a tranquilizer to keep our cool.  Belief gives us something to hang
on to, something that helps suspend the terrifying sense of being alone and out of control in a
huge and menacing universe.
     But the truth is we're still trapped in the raging rapids, slowly dying of exposure.
     Conversion experiences can vary in intensity.  Some may be very emotional and moving,
dramatic.  This is particularly true if we've been well-conditioned when young.  When we
suspend the operation of our critical minds, the conditioning bursts forth, flooding us with the
memory of the pure sensations of childhood, like Proust and his petite madelaines.
     Once we've had a conversion experience, our next problem is finding out whether our
experience is valid.  How do we know it's real?  How do we know we're not just fooling
ourselves, or that some unprincipled influence with horns and pitchfork isn't taking us for a ride?
     The answer is, we don't.  And, fortunately, we don't really need to know, as long as we
continue to question our moment-to-moment experience, especially in regards so-called religious
experience or attainment.
     The experiences themselves are not so important.  We crave them so badly because of a
need to validate our egos, our sense of separateness.  What's important is understanding.
     That's sounds dry, doesn't it?  True religious experience is anything but dry, and is
certainly not merely intellectual.
     So when we undergo a conversion experience, or any kind of religious experience, we
shouldn't think we're all done, finished.  Either we've fooled ourselves, or there is greater depth
we haven't yet explored.  Once we stop looking, exploring, questioning, we're finished, done,
literally and figuratively.  We're not going to grow anymore.
     Emotions can create strong impressions on us, and with singing, music, dance, chanting,
rhythmic breathing, and so forth, it is often possible to drive ourselves into a frenzy or hypnotize
ourselves into a blissful state of ego-absorption.  Our minds become more concentrated, focused,
that is to say, distracted, from our fundamental nature, our basic problems.  Sufficiently strong
confusion can result in some amazing things, such as speaking in tongues.  Escaping the
humdrum of everyday life is a big motivator, and keeps the revival tents filled and the TV
preachers in the chips.  And the preachers, who depend on us for their livings, will do their best,
each in his or her own way, to keep the honeymoon fever alive.  Otherwise people might not
keep coming back.
     So while we can achieve mental stability through adopting a group and their belief
system, it may occur to us at some point that our beliefs are not doing much for us, that our lives
are still vague and empty of meaning.  We may look inside, long and honestly, and realize that
we're just biding time, fooling ourselves so we won't bolt in mindless, jabbering fear.
     And life is scary.
     Fortunately, there are far greater depths to religious experience.


                    Cosmic Consciousness


     The next kind of religious experience I'm going to take up is in an entirely different
category.  It's not just head-and-shoulders above the emotion-driven experiences of the
Honeymoon Effect.  When you have the next variety of religious experience, you may feel very
strongly that you've seen God, been touched by Her, and it's about as subtle as brass knuckles to
the jaw or hot lead in the chest.  Regardless of the strength of our emotional religious
experiences, the experience referred to here is far more powerful, far stronger.  If the honeymoon
effect is a ripple, this next experience is like a tidal wave.  What is this religious experience?
     It has various names, and I can't say for sure whether or not they all represent the same
experience, though I suspect many of them are.  It has been called samadhi in ancient Sanskrit,
jhana by the Buddhists, as well as kensho, or enlightenment, or seeing God, or seeing the True
Self.   It has also been called cosmic consciousness, or superconsciousness.
     These are all words, and they are all misleading.  What is this state, and how can we get
into it?  While this question may be motivated by the common desire for experience and personal
validation, there's no sense in not satisfying your curiosity, especially since over the centuries
religious leaders have been reticent about being up front about it.  Partly this is because no one
who has not experienced this first hand can possibly comprehend it.  It is literally like trying to
describe sight and sound to those blind and deaf from birth.  Also, our religious leaders are often
simply politicians with little or no understanding of the depths of religious experience, and might
even deny such experiences out of hand, though they are clearly related in the Bible and many
other religious texts.
     There are many methods for inducing this state, and they all  require some dedication. 
Concentration is key, and of course insight can make it easier, as there are two different modes of
entering into so-called cosmic consciousness.  I'll describe a generic method, followed by a
description of the state itself.
     Sit quietly in a dimly-lit room, legs crossed, back erect.  Watch the air as it is passes in
and out of your nostrils, and keep relaxing tensions in your body.  Also relax your respiration,
letting it become gentler, fainter, steadier.  Do this every day, preferably twice a day, for twenty
or thirty minutes each session.
     Then, sometime in the next thirty or forty years, it might happen.  On the other hand, it
might happen tomorrow, many times, or it may never happen.  It's fairly rare, and requires a kind
of persistence and natural self-discipline that few are able to muster.  Diet plays a part, as does
proper exercise and attitude, and keen insight certainly doesn't hurt the effort, either.
     But let's go on.
     As you develop deep repose and calm, it becomes natural to fall upon in-and-out
breathing, so excessive force of concentration isn't really necessary.  The air passing in and out of
your nostrils gradually assumes gigantic proportions, since you're so relaxed and calm there is
virtually no other stimuli except an occasional thought.  And even thoughts start to feel terribly
heavy and burdensome, and eventually tend to naturally fall away.
     You may become aware of sheets of light, great, tranquil sheets rippling across the
darkness of your being.  Beginners often see lots of spurious, rather superficial lights caused by
sensory deprivation; these rippling sheets of light are different, deeper.  An oval of light may
form in your forehead, about where the so-called third eye is depicted.  It will waver at first, then
become steady, brighten, solidify and strengthen.
     There are some subtle and peculiar perceptions: your eyes fuse on the oval of light, and
there is something of a feeling of having only one eye, of coming into contact with the oval,
becoming absorbed there.  For a very brief period, there's a feeling like toothpaste going through
the hole of an ethereal toothpaste tube, except that you're the paste.
     Then suddenly, as in a bursting of bonds, the old world falls away.  Everything in the
universe, your body, your mind, your world, everything, is flooded with the most amazingly
brilliant and beautiful light.
     Far from some illusion or self-deception, it will strike like an iron fist, more real than
anything you've ever experienced.  Joy will ring through your being like a great bell as you sail
without gravity or pain in an infinite ocean of pure light and bliss.

     Now, some of you will probably think the above description pertains to some sort of
leftover flashback or dream sequence.  On the contrary: the description doesn't do it justice. 
Bear in mind that Jesus spoke of just such an experience:  "When the eye is single, the body is
filled with light."  Look it up.  The single eye refers to the perception that the two eyes have
fused into one as they focus and become absorbed on the fuzzy patch of light that develops just
prior to entrance into samadhi.
      This is the experience of Paul on the way to Damascus.  In the  Buddhist and Hindu
traditions there is considerable training aimed at reaching this experience. .
     Similar reports are often recorded in near-death experiences, or by persons who are
simply very tired and relaxed, and undergo an accidental transition into the ecstatic state.  The
"toothpaste tube" is probably the same as the tunnel traveled through by persons undergoing
near-death experiences.  Recall that there are usually reports of light at the end of the tunnel.
     I have read numerous such accounts throughout my life, the most recent being that of an
author in the Daytona Beach area who reported such an experience in the newspaper.  He was in
Vietnam, and was just lying down on his cot, dead tired, when he was flooded with light.
     There is nothing subtle about this experience.  After it's over, though, you can't quite
believe it happened.  The effect on the nervous system is similarly spectacular: you'll feel
wonderful for days afterward.
     It's not hard to understand why, upon having such an experience, people tend to believe
they've been touched by some supreme being, or seen heaven.  It's so powerful that there isn't any
way to forget it, or think of it as being insignificant.  It makes a lasting impression.
     A very natural question is to ask what the experience is, what it means.  Some  say it's
God touching you.  That's fairly reasonable, except for the fact that you then have to try to define
God, and if you really think about it you'll find that's virtually impossible.  God is truth?  Sure,
but where does that get us?
     Another point of view is that this manifestation of energy, light, and bliss, is the "true
self".  There is some validity to this point of view, though it again doesn't do much for us.  And
there are complicated philosophies which claim that this true self is hot-wired to God, and that
we're all drops in the massive ocean of bliss, which is God's body.
     That's not bad, but practically speaking, it still doesn't do that much for us.  That is, it
doesn't matter whether we believe these philosophies or not.  It is possible to enter into this
ecstatic state of consciousness even if you are an atheist.  Maybe it's just our incurable habit of
naming everything, intellectualizing, which compels our seeking of such inadequate and
unnecessary answers.
     Well, I haven't really answered the question, have I?  That's because I don't know the
answer.  From the reports of near-death experiences and my own observations, I suspect it's
connected with death, with the dropping of the body, total dissociation of the mind from the
physical processes.  Pure consciousness, without any physical or mental hindrances of any kind.
     I distrust these phrases, since in fact, in another sense, pure consciousness is unavoidable,
and is encountered in our everyday life.
     Physically, superconsciousness is almost certainly associated with the pineal gland, a
small body inside the brain behind the forehead.  This gland is mysterious in that it is filled with
photoreceptors, even though light can't penetrate all the intervening tissue and stimulate them. 
It's considered vestigial.  It would be interesting to find whether this region of the brain is active
during samadhi.
     In any event,  superconsciousness is completely astonishing.  No drug, no other
experience can top it.  There's nothing like total, complete, clean, healthy, wonderful happiness
and joy, with that amazing light filling your being, filling the universe.
     Yet, in and of itself, samadhi, for all its magnificence, turns out to be small potatoes
compared to insight, which brings us to our last category of religious experience.


                         INSIGHT


     Over three decades passed, from my initial questioning as a five-year old on the
kindergarten playground, before I fully appreciated the nature of insight.
     The great calm and concentration of superconsciousness, and the mental strength it gives,
is impressive and no doubt reasonably conducive to the development of insight, unless it
becomes a distraction.  But ultimately, no amount of concentration can ever compare to the least
flash of true understanding.
     Cosmic consciousness, or samadhi, may be thought of as spiritual muscle.  Insight, on the
other hand, is spiritual intelligence.
     You can't force something like insight.  Paradoxically,  the pursuit of insight can become
an impediment.  People will tell you to do this or that to get the insights, or they'll be extremely
deluded and tell you that it's just a matter of reading the right books and agreeing with the correct
philosophy.  Political correctness is often mistaken for the awakening of the mind.
     Let me assert here and now that there is another world. 
     It's a world that is indistinguishable from the world we live in.  It's a world that changes
when we change, that refuses to change when we want it to change, that is what it is just as we
are what we are.  It's the spiritual world that all seek and few find, the world a few religious
people may or may not have pointed out, a world which was promptly forgotten by their
followers who, unable to break free of their conditioning, became the politicians of faith.
     Where is this spiritual world?
     It's the world before our eyes.
     Now you're going to think that just can't be so.  All our lives we've heard about the next
world, one better than this one, and now I'm telling you that the spiritual life is the all-too-
ordinary life you already have, waiting to be uncovered.  But that's simply unbelievable.
     Now ask yourself why it's so hard to believe.
     Is it because the world you live in is so burdensome that you want to escape to never-
never land?  Is it because you are so bent on avoiding the humdrum, pain, and tedium of
everyday life that all you can think about is where the exit is, the way out, the ticket to Disney
World?  Is it because you really wanted exotic experiences, something that would make you feel
special, different, blessed?
     We've heard all kinds of stories about heaven, hell, purgatory, and other places, astral
planes, what have you, and we would like to visit them, know more about them.  Our lives are
unsatisfactory, and we want something different, something more.
     I'm not going to tell you to be satisfied with what you've got.  There's no reason to be, and
that's a dead end, anyway.  It's just that when we look for exotic experiences it is generally for
one of several reasons.  (1) We want to escape from reality; (2) We want to increase the strength
of our sense of self, ego, which means we must be unhappy with what we are, and therefore we
are trying to escape from reality (see 1); (3) We lust for new and different experiences, especially
pleasant ones, because the ones we've got are getting worn out (see 1).
     Note that all three reasons are really different shades of the desire to escape the world, to
escape what we are.  This attitude, this activity of escape makes it impossible for us to
understand our nature.  And this understanding is essential for insight, for freedom.
     It's like playing tennis.  The coach is always telling us to watch the ball.  Instead, most of
us are thinking about how we're going to whack that little fuzzy piece of rubber and knock our
opponent's socks off.  This distracts us so much that too often we miss-hit the ball, sending it
long or into the net.
     The point of the game isn't winning.  The point is hitting the ball.
     In our daily life it's easy to lose sight of that.  Everything is winning and losing. 
Television, newspapers, our friends and relatives, even our kids lay that trip on us, and we bite it
off, believe in it without question.
     Meanwhile, what is really important is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the
game.

     Now, getting back to our thesis, we're still wrestling with that unlikely notion that our
miserable everyday life is somehow the spiritual world we were seeking all along.  How is that
possible?  And if this is truly the case, haven't we arrived?  Aren't we already there?  Why should
we try to meditate, or do yoga, or do anything at all?  Shouldn't we be perfectly happy?
     The answer is no, we shouldn't be perfectly happy.  Why should we be?  First of all, while
the spiritual world is indistinguishable from the one we're living in, for most of us reading this
essay this is only an idea planted by me, the author, in our collective head.  We don't really see it. 
We have only an intellectual appreciation, at best, like the one people have when they know that
smoking is bad for their health and then smoke anyway.   Didn't they read the label on the
package?  The surgeon general has determined smoking is bad for your health.  They haven't seen
the danger with their nerves, their heart, so it doesn't make an impression on them.  Intellectually,
sure, they 'understand', but on the gut level it hasn't hit them yet.
     Recently it was shown that vision is a function of not just the eye and visual cortex, but
also of the higher brain functions in the cerebral cortex.  There's a feedback loop that helps fill in
the gaps in perception.  Many of us have had the experience of glancing at the headlines and
seeing something like 'CLUB RAISES MONKEY".  We do a double take, and only then realize
that 'monkey' was actually 'money'.  But for that instant, we clearly saw the wrong word.  This is
a function of the higher brain centers, filling in when information is incomplete.
     In the same way, we tend to allow the higher brain to fill in a lot of details for us.  We get
used to seeing the same old things and tune them out, our higher brain simply checking briefly,
recognizing that similar events are happening, and then returning to automatic pilot, ignoring the
influx of new perceptions.  We remember the way to work, for example, and don't really see the
road.  Later, we are surprised to have arrived safely, since we remember nothing of what
happened along the way.
     This automatic mode of operation is absolutely essential for efficient functioning in the
world, but like any bad habit, it's not necessarily healthy.  The past, as stored in our memory,
takes command, and we lose our flexibility, our sensitivity, our ability to heal and grow.  Nothing
is fresh.  We look at a stand of trees, and instead of seeing their intrinsic beauty and grandeur, we
might say something like "so what, how many trees do you need?"  We aren't seeing the tree; we
look at it only long enough for the higher brain to cut in and take command, putting a filter of
memory over the scene.
     Breaking this grip of the past allows an immediate and direct perception of the spiritual
world.  And breaking this grip occurs when we become sensitive to our thoughts and feelings, to
the grip itself.
     For the past, and its grip on us, is also part of the spiritual world, part of what we are.
     Every day, when we awaken in the morning, we come into consciousness.  We are
conscious of the feelings in our bodies, our thoughts, our discomforts and needs.  We're
conscious of the bed covers on our bed, of a warm body beside us softly breathing, of the sound
of birds outside the window, perhaps of the antics of the mind that create the geometry of our
world, continually estimating the distances between the different fragments of experience.
     Getting up, we go to the bathroom, then to our study for quiet meditation.
     All throughout this, consciousness has been happening.  When we sit and meditate
formally, relaxing our respiration, relaxing any tensions we may see in the body, consciousness is
still happening.  And regardless of what occurs during our quiet sitting, whether we daydream, or
sit in restless discomfort, or perhaps are engulfed in blinding light, consciousness is still
happening.
     We give special meaning to the blinding light, because it seems so much more wonderful
than our mundane everyday activities.  It seems logical that this must be so, and there we will be
trapped to our dying breath.
     Yet our everyday experience is not happening out there, separate from us, nor is it
happening in here, in our brains, separate from the outside.  It is happening in consciousness, our
consciousness, so it's our world, but just as we control our bodies only very superficially, there is
a big wide world, inseparable, which we control only very superficially.  Without consciousness,
for all practical purposes, it isn't there, and to say otherwise is an exercise of the intellect, not the
simple fact of the matter.
     Dividing up the world into the mundane, secular world and the transcendent, spiritual
world is an exercise of the intellect, the trade-goods of the professional religious people. They've
got to have something to sell, and they can't sell you what you've already got.
     At this point, though, we're not interested in buying an illusion.  We want the real thing.
     We have divided the world up into two pieces; self and other, spiritual and mundane. 
That's our world view, the one thrust upon us, and everything we do only reinforces that view.  It
seems like a fact of life, a law of nature.
     Elsewhere, I have described the alternate view, the new world view.  Again, this can be
understood intellectually, which is only of slight value, since it will not really change your life. 
And, the depth to which this insight is grasped determines the depth to which your life is
changed.
     That may seem rather dry compared to the possibility of samadhi.  But when you see,
with your heart and nerves, with your whole being, that there is no division between self and
other, that the world can be directly viewed as a single organism, together with all its beauty and
ugliness, perfections and imperfections, when by some amazing grace that happens, ordinary
perception is transformed.
     You will see the light on the water of the river, the shimmering ripples and patterns,
infinite in subtle complexity, you'll see the clouds and birds and trees and power lines and
telephone poles and you will perceive them with such intensity and clarity that you will feel no
separation, they will seem close, extraordinarily close, part of what you are.  As you drive down
the road, the roar of the car, the engine, the air conditioning, the clamor of traffic, will be the
most engrossing and interesting music.  When you get out of your car and walk, other beings will
be  mobile, independently acting parts of your body, just as your heart and stomach and bowels
and lungs all act independently.  You will feel an intensity of love which is strong and powerful
and calm and firm, but which paradoxically is not mushy or soft or sentimental or emotional or
instinctive.
     You will see that there is nothing beyond the horizon but your imagination, that the past
and future are two sides of the same coin, that everything you experience is what you are, that
your person, your personality, is only one piece of a vast being, and this vast being was before
your eyes, and behind your eyes, inside and outside your skin, forever and always.
     That's the real you.  That's the real world.



                    8.  Meditation and Transcendence

     A great deal has been written on meditation, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it,
and so forth.  Probably most of you feel rather awkward and incompetent when it comes to
crossing your legs and making something happen.
     Let me put you at ease: you don't need to make anything happen.  And most of the time,
very little is going to happen anyway,  unless you're into sensory deprivation.
     Most of us want to be happy, and that's the fundamental motivation for practicing
meditation.  Others may have more complex goals, such as achieving some particular mental
state so they can say they've been there.  But as a matter of fact, it is unlikely much will happen
that's very dramatic.  For most people, transcendent states of consciousness are rare experiences.
     On the other hand, just maybe you're the kind of person who sees that life, as we're led to
live it, can be pretty miserable, even for well-off westerners.  Maybe you see that even though
you feel pretty good right now, that your happiness is temporal, built on sand.  Maybe you're
willing to invest about an hour of your time every day, sitting uncomfortably on the floor or in a
chair.                                       
     If you are such a person, then there is a possibility, one day, that you will come upon
something that is timeless.
     Getting in touch with our feelings is very important.  If you observe carefully, you may
often find that unpleasant feelings, such as depression, seem to be hanging like a cloud over you. 
You feel, innately, that the depression and you are separate, and that if you could simply shrug it
off, everything would be fine.
     The fact is, that depression is part of what you are, and you can alleviate it by watching it,
making contact with it.  Just as we discussed in a previous chapter.
     True meditation is similar to that.  You sit, you relax, you watch.  What do you watch?  It
doesn't make a whole lot of difference.  Just watch whatever is happening.  The sensation of the
breath going in and out of your nose tip is not bad: it's happening all the time.  It's also calming,
and deep calm clarifies the mind, predisposing it to insight.
     Now, as you observe, what happens?  If you're like most people, your mind wanders away
into compulsive thinking almost immediately.  That creates a background sense of me-ness
which is basically pleasurable.  Thirty minutes later you fall out of your revery because you have
to go to the bathroom, or your leg has gone to sleep, or the phone rings, or because you forgot to
feed the dog.
     On the other hand, maybe you're watching your breath go in and out, watching the
sensation in your nostrils.  Or you might be watching an attractive man or woman pass by your
window.  You notice that you, as the observer, are over here, sitting cross-legged in your room,
and the thing you're observing--the beautiful lady, your random thoughts,  your depression--
whatever--is over there, exterior to "you".
     Just keep on watching, observing phenomena as they arise, observing the gap, the
division you have created.  Because, just as your feelings of depression are not truly separate,
neither is anything else.

     Intellectually, we know we're not really the moon or sky or clouds, not in the sense of
having some kind of control over them, or being able to feel sensations in them, as we do in our
fingers or hands.  We've gone over this before, and it's difficult and deep, hard to even talk about. 
Our actual experience, our consciousness, is such that the division between inside and outside
must be assigned intellectually on the basis of our world view.  I am one thing, a fragment of the
totality.  The total 'being' includes everything experienced, in every way, the 'virtual reality' our
brain creates, which is the only reality.  And, incidentally, this reality is not limited to the inside
of the head!

     The world view concept is tough to grasp but is very important.  If you're still not getting
it, that's all right, because you can still proceed.  Let me give you some technique. 
     Sit in a quiet room, or beneath a tree.  Keep your back straight.  Take a few slow, deep
breaths, and relax.
     That's all.  Just relax.  Relax any tension you happen to see inside your body, mind,
whatever.  Relax your respiration.  Make the air go in and out more gently.  Keep on looking for
those tensions, relaxing them consciously as much as possible. They keep coming back, of
course, and then you just relax them again.  After you get good at this, you will find that falling
onto your breathing is fairly natural.
     Some may think they need a guru to keep them on the straight and narrow path.  In fact,
this technique is so simple and innocuous that you don't need anyone.  Furthermore, many of the
gurus are just as confused as you are, so you might not be any better off than before. Yes, you can
do it by yourself.
      Another concern many people have is whether or not meditation in this fashion violates
any personal religious beliefs.  I think that all religions have advocated some form of meditation,
and most of them recognize the value of calming and purifying the mind.  So there's not much
point in worrying about that.  Whoever the controlling deity of the universe may be, he will be
happy you're doing something to clean up your act.
     Now, what's happening when you sit and relax like this?  Why should it be so helpful? 
Again, the answer is amazingly straightforward.  Daily life can take on a very complicated
appearance.  Our minds, through their conditioning, have become similarly complex.  The stimuli
and our reactions to them are coming so fast and furiously, and our minds are so wild and out of
control that it's difficult to see what's going on.
     Natural, deep relaxation simplifies perception enormously.  You're awake, but you're just
sitting there and there isn't much happening.  It becomes possible to begin noticing some of the
basic facts of life, facts about your mental processes, gaining important elemental insights.
     What kind of insights?  For example, many people don't realize just how dependent they
are on stimulation.  They find it very difficult to sit still even for a few minutes.  Their minds
work in furious overdrive, trying to keep up the level of distraction, something they've never
noticed.  It's also possible to work out feelings during meditation, since the active passivity
allows them to play themselves out and lose some of their power over us.
     Prayer has many similar benefits.  Prayers generally last only a few minutes, but have a
calming effect on the mind.  Positive reflections such as previously developed will have similar
effect, but are more powerful than prayer, which often is poorly focused.
     Most people will go through their entire lives and never experience more than a peaceful
sensation from meditation.  Of course, that's quite a bit, and well worth the small investment. 
Others will gain insights, and perhaps get very composed.  At this point, meditation can be fun
and exciting, because you never know what might happen when you sit down and start relaxing. 
How calm can you get?  Well, you can get so calm that your breath is just barely going in and
out, and the whole universe seems to be contained in just that sensation of your breath going into
and out of your nostrils, which, practically speaking, it is.  That depth of composure is very fine. 
Pleasure is not the word.  Descriptions that come to mind are strength, fearlessness, purity, and
powerful calm.
     But there's more, as discussed previously.  Jesus said, "If your eye is single, your body
will be filled with light".
     I've seen modern Bibles that edit this very important revelation to the point where the
original meaning is totally lost.  They'll say that "light" means "understanding", like when your
teacher tells you what two plus two equals.  Sure.  We all get it.  Four, last time we checked.
     That's intellectual knowledge, and true enough, it can be thrilling.  But I assert that Jesus
was speaking of something altogether different.
     He was talking about an actual perception of light.  Light like a supernova, exploding
throughout your body, encompassing everything.
     Believe it or not.  It doesn't matter, because it's unlikely, in your meditative practice,
you're going to ever go into this, anyway.  I suspect that most people go through their entire lives
without so much as a glimmer, until they finally die--and most likely see it on their way out of
this life.
     The light reported in near-death experiences has been well-documented.  A friend of
mine, an emergency room physician at a well-known Florida teaching hospital, recently had a
patient die on the table.  The patient, in his early fifties, had been having chest pains.  He called
his doctor, who got him a prescription of nitroglycerin, but a few hours later the pain was still
increasing, so the man called an ambulance, which took him to the hospital.
     Enter my friend, the ER physician.  The victim is on the table, and his heart goes into
ventricular fibrillation.  My friend grabs the paddles and gives him a jolt of voltage.  The man's
body leaps and arches, but his heart stops.  Another slap with the paddles. The ticker starts back
up, and the man comes around.  His first words: "Wow!  That was something else!"
     He goes on to describe that he saw himself lying on the table, as if he were floating above
his own body.  Then he passed into a tunnel.  There was beautiful music, and a brilliant light at
the end of the tunnel.
     I don't know for a fact whether the light seen in near-death experiences is the same light
seen during the transcendent experience known as Samadhi, or Jhana to the Old Buddhists, or
maybe Satori to the zen priests of Japan.  It seems likely, however, that there is a connection.
     Now I'm going to describe to you what you need to do to experience this for yourself. 
You have to understand, in advance, that most people go through life without any such
attainment.
     Sit on the floor in a quiet room.  Personally, I prefer early in the morning, about four or
five o'clock when it's nice and quiet.  If you have trouble getting up that early, I've found a
multiple vitamin taken the night before will usually help get you awake.  If it's cold where you
live, it's a good idea to lay out warm clothes the night before.
     Cross your legs, and watch your breath go in and out of your nose tip.  Just observe the
sensation, and relax any tensions you might see in your body, while keeping your back erect.
     You'll notice a lot of distracting thoughts.  That's okay.  Just observe them, and go back to
the work.  Maybe you can get in five minutes of observing before wandering off, but if you can,
you're very exceptional.
     Gradually your body calms down.  At some point, I always experience a curious flip-
flopping of the heart.  It seems to stretch and relax, and downshift to virtually zero operation,
probably the state experienced during deep sleep, except that I'm wide awake.
     As you get more calm, the sensation in your nostrils seems to get larger and larger, until
your nasal passages seem to be an enormous cave, and the faint motion of air through them is
like a great wind, going in, going out.  The sensation begins to form a fuzzy spot of light,
approximately between your eyes, which subsequently becomes more focused, then solid, almost
tangible.  You may see undulations of light around this same time, great, waving sheets of light.
     All right.  At this point, you're highly focused, absorbed.  Exterior distractions are
superfluous.  You're immobile, impassive, yet alert.
     You experience a curious sensation, as if you're toothpaste squeezing through a tube.
     The universe falls away in a blazing supernova of light.
     This is the experience of "enlightenment", the central teaching of Jesus, probably also of
Moses and the burning bush, Paul on the way to Damascus, and others.  
     While in this state, time comes to a halt.  I would like to emphasize that this is not a mere
light show: there is no gravity, there is no universe, there is a new universe, and every part of it is
suffused with light and incredible bliss.
     There is some variation on this experience; you may feel suspended in the midst of an
endless blue space, bright with light, or with brilliant gushers of light, like a fountain.
     Now a caveat: I have met people who experienced rather ordinary neural flashes, born of
sensory deprivation and the like, and mistook them for some kind of enlightenment.  Most of the
time you can tell if this is the case by looking at the person when they describe it.  Usually the
description is rather vague.  They might even say it was subtle.
     The true experience, however, is about as subtle as a hot sword through the gut, or an iron
gauntlet exploding under your chin.
     Most books you read will say nothing of this experience, or couch it in mystical terms. 
There's nothing very mystical about it.  The light, I imagine, may have origins in the
photoreceptors in the pineal gland in the middle of the brain.  In some lizards, this third eye is
functional.  No doubt in humans that function, far from being vestigial, has advanced.
     Many people are reluctant to reveal details of this experience.  It's a risk, because then
you might have other people "faking it", fooling themselves, and then trying to fool still others
that they've had some great experience.  Also, expectations tend to rise, so it's easier to get
frustrated, especially when you can count on years to a lifetime before you break through. 
     Another good reason to keep it under wraps is that most people are not going to believe
you.  Even if they believe you, they haven't experienced it themselves, and so they can't grasp
what it is you're talking about anyway.  And you could experience a general loss of credibility
that could be damaging to your career.
     As I've mentioned a number of times, it really doesn't matter what anybody thinks.  They
will, or they will not, find out the truth for themselves.  Belief doesn't enter into the equation.  
     At this point you may have developed some idea that meditation is something you must
do cross-legged.  There is nothing further from the truth than that.  The fact of the matter is, you
can meditate while eating, drinking, walking, making love, driving, or playing cards.  Most of the
time, however, we're too busy daydreaming, and thinking, semi-consciously spinning yarns to
ourselves, to ever meditate, and when we do something it's a matter of coercion, where we force
our minds onto a particular object, like breath.  The very activity of coercion means we are still
operating as if there is a division between the internal and external worlds.
     Try as you might, getting rid of this "me-ness" is virtually impossible.  Fortunately, that
isn't a problem.  After all, it's a valid part of your experience--it's part of what you are.  A lot of
the time I just hang out watching myself cut things in two.  Just keep your eye on it, or on
whatever else comes up into your focus.  Watch those pleasure-producing daydreams.
     Do we need to think about what we're observing, like a scientist?  No.  Insight, as
discussed here, is through direct perception.  In fact, it's even possible to develop some very
strong insight and not be aware of it, as such.
     The experience of samadhi, the great light, is impressive, but as far as religious
experiences go, it's not in the same league of true insight.  Practicing simple relaxation as I've
outlined in this essay will predispose the mind toward insight and true enlightenment, which
involves understanding, with how we immediately grasp the world.  Sure, that sounds dry
compared to Seeing God, so you'll have to take it on faith that it isn't.
     Other practical matters that must be addressed, in regards meditation, are things like diet,
exercise, livelihood, and family life.  Naturally, eating well and not too much is important to the
meditative life, as is exercise, which keeps the circulation in good shape.  If you eat too much,
blood gets shunted from the brain to the stomach, reducing mental acuity.  Having a job that
doesn't totally exhaust and beat you down is important, too, if you can manage it.  Finally, a
stable family life is a big plus.  It's hard to get these various technical, mundane details in order,
to reduce confusion and maximize your mental sharpness.  But this is all part of your training,
and training is important.

     Let me summarize my personal recommendations.  (1) Get your life in order, as much as
possible. Diet, relationships, the works.  (2) Set a certain realistic daily minimum target for the
formal practice of yoga exercises and meditation.  I suggest half an hour a day, to start with,
seven days a week.  (3) As you move about your daily activities, watch what's going on--
anything, it doesn't matter what.  Just observe with your nerves.  (4) Make your meditation
simple.  Sit with a straight back and relax any tensions you may see.  When you get extremely
calm, the mind falls naturally onto in and out breathing, anyway, since it's the biggest thing
around.  (5) Your confusion is what you're interested in, not the getting rid of it!  (6) Go on your
own.  Spiritual leaders can be either helpful or not.  The point is, you couldn't possibly know if
they are being helpful, coming from the confused state you're in.  Remember that these so-called
advanced beings wear pants or skirts just like you do.  Looking to someone else for guidance can
too often be used as an excuse for putting off doing something yourself.  You are the oracle.

                    9.  Practical Spiritual Living 

     Through most of this book I have discussed the nature of consciousness, love, and
religious experience without much reference to any particular practices.  Practice may even seem
superfluous, since we have often discussed how goal-oriented thinking and perception can be a
significant barrier to seeing the Totality.
     However, our mental environment can be significantly enhanced by certain practices.  If
insight comes from mental clarity, it's evidently advantageous to maximize the probability that
we think clearly.  So in this chapter I will make various recommendations for those readers
interested to getting such advice.  There are several categories of activities to get in order.  The
aim is optimizing mental clarity, and all the common sense advice, and then some, must be
applied in order to achieve this.
     Much of this has already been taken up in previous chapters, to some degree, but the ideas
will be filled out, here.

                         Diet

     
     The body is a machine.  It requires fuel, and oxidizer to burn the fuel to make energy. 
The first and foremost requirement, therefore, is to put the right kind of fuel inside the tank.
     Most of us eat what we like, or whatever we can afford.  In more affluent countries,
where food is abundant and people can afford to buy it, people generally eat too much.  It's
important to eat quality food in the right amount.
     What kind of food should be eaten?  Food should be relatively light, easy on the digestive
system, and nutritious.  A diet rich in vegetables and fruit is best, with some grains.  Rice and
vegetables, for example, digest fairly quickly.  Within an hour or so of a meal, the body feels
light again.  Heavy meats should be avoided, though fish is fine.  A strict vegetarian diet will
usually result in some slight amino acid deficiency, so it's convenient to have some source of
animal protein as an occasional supplement.  Many people are sensitive to the fact that animals
are aware, capable of suffering, and wish to avoid meat of all kinds.  Milk and cheese products,
which are produced without any slaughter, might be substituted for meat in these cases.  There
are also certain beans, such as soy beans, that are loaded with useful protein.
     Quantity of food is also an important parameter.  Those who eat mainly fruit and
vegetables don't have to worry: they can eat as much as they want.  Everyone else has to be a
little careful.  While it isn't illegal or immoral to be overweight, it is definitely a detriment to
mental clarity.  The extra pounds must be carried around, and in addition it sometimes makes it
harder to exercise.  When food goes into the stomach, blood is shunted away from the other parts
of the body and directed to the stomach.  This is why we feel drowsy sometimes after a big meal. 
With lower blood flow to the brain, there is a natural loss of mental acuity.  So the quantity of
food ingested must be limited.  Food is best taken in the morning or midday.  There is a saying
which addresses this: "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper".  
Most of us have to get up and go to work in the morning, so we need a good meal at the start of
the day.  At the end of the day we're just winding down and going to sleep, so it isn't necessary
to have a large meal.  Plus, at the end of the day, we may find a little free time to ourselves for
meditative practice, and a light stomach will help in terms of mental clarity.

                    Physical Conditioning

     A lot of what has been discussed here may sound abstract and intellectual, but in fact it
isn't.  It has to do with clarity of perception, relaxation, calm.  Keeping the body healthy and fit is
therefore very important.  What kinds of exercise are best?
     Most exercise is beneficial.  Weightlifting is one of the few exceptions, unless the
weights are fairly light.  The best exercise increases stamina, respiratory capacity, flexibility, and
circulation.
     The very best form of exercise to accomplish all this is yoga.  There are lots of different
kinds of yoga, but the kind referred to here is Hatha Yoga, which is the yoga of physical exercise. 
This involves systematic stretching of all the muscles in the body, a strengthening of the spine,
and various respiratory exercises.  Any bookstore or library will carry books on yoga, and the
best books have plenty of large, easy to follow photographs.  It's not generally necessary to read a
lot of directions, just assume the positions shown in the photographs.  It's not really critical to do
the exercises exactly right, since there are numerous variations on any given pose, and it's likely
you're doing one of those variations by accident.
      It's important to remember that the model will likely be extremely limber, and hard to
imitate.  Never try to force a stretch.  A good rule of thumb is that the stretch should be
comparable to the good-morning stretch everyone takes when first getting up in the morning.  It
is very possible to injure muscles or tendons by overzealous stretching, and by holding the
postures too long.  In the beginning, do the exercises two or three times each, but hold them only
ten seconds or so each time.  Later, at the end of some months of experience, the poses can be
held for a minute or two or longer, slowly relaxing into the posture, never applying excessive
force.  The body weight alone can be used to good effect.
     The hardest aspect of yoga is the necessity of daily practice.  In general, yoga should be
practiced six times a week for about an hour each time.  After some experience, up to three hours
can be safely practiced, though this is rather extreme, and I've practiced this much only a few
times in my life.  Most days I don't have that much free time: I'm fortunate to get in thirty or
forty minutes.  Whatever your personal situation, it's important to do something, however little,
each and every day.  When you practice regularly, you can really tell the difference.  It's easier to
relax into the stretches and get a thorough workout. 
     Yoga gently stretches the muscles, relieving tension, liberating energy.  Many people
have hidden tensions, especially in the back, often caused by stress.  Yoga relaxes these tensions
through stretching, leading to a reduction in stress.
     Other forms of exercise that are particularly valuable include walking and swimming. 
Running is highly aerobic, but hard on the joints, and middle aged and older people can easily
injure themselves.  A good, brisk walk is better.  Disciplined swimming, distances of around five
hundred meters and more, can relax and rejuvenate the body.  The combination of swimming and
yoga is especially excellent.

     For those who are extremely out of shape, it's advisable to proceed slowly after
consultation with a physician.  It can be very difficult getting the energy and discipline for daily
exercise, but it's important to remember that even a very small amount will help.  Decide on
some minimal amount, say five minutes, that you will do every day without fail.  You'll find
yourself exceeding that time frequently.  The hardest part is simply developing the daily habit.
     

                         Relationships

     The way we relate to people profoundly affects our spiritual well-being, and our ability to
carry on with our quest for understanding.  There are a few guidelines that may help us steer a
course through the many complications of everyday relationships.
     Keep your relationships simple.  Try not to load too many expectations on those you
relate to, and expect the same in return.  Very often those around you will indulge in complex
mind games, because of their insecurities or because they want to squeeze something more out of
you.  There is no reason to take this personally: most people are so self-interested that they aren't
even aware when they're treating you unfairly, or using or abusing you.  
     Similar advice can be of value in sexual relationships.   Even under the best of
circumstances, sex can really complicate our lives, which is why parents always worry about the
sex lives of  their maturing children.  If you're dating and the person seems difficult, don't spend
too much time trying to figure it out.  They're being difficult because they have lots of
unresolved issues.  If you have made a good effort to compromise with them and it seems they
are still being unreasonable, then don't worry about it any more.  Some people can't be pleased:
it's in their genes, or it's their training.  Do your thing, and let the significant other go do his or
her thing.  There are plenty of fish in the sea.
     I realize this is easier said than done.  Our emotional chemicals are taking us for a ride. 
One consolation: if you don't make the right decisions and end up with a difficult, demanding,
and unreasonable mate, you will at least have the benefit of considerable spiritual training, just in
tolerating the situation.
     And remember: both you and your partner are imperfect.  It's normal not to agree on
everything, and to see things in your partner that you don't like.  You don't need to take every
little problem to heart. 
     Similar advice applies to the workplace.  If you are in a good work environment, then you
have nothing to worry about.  Bosses, however, often become bosses because they want to push
other people around.  They will often have a complicated view on how things should be done,
and how you should conduct yourself.  It's important to not take them personally when they
criticize you unjustly, which in the case of a bad boss will happen quite often.  
     As far as our own conduct, we should strive to be independent, self-supporting, and
industrious.  Never ask someone else to do something for you if you can reasonably do it
yourself.
     Finally, relating to your children, if by chance or grace you have any, will give you some
of your very best training.  A child is a miracle.  We can learn everything from them.

                         Daily Meditation

     Understanding meditation and how to use it is fairly important, since it is one of the
primary tools for calming the mind and opening the door to the possibility of insight.  We have
discussed some technique and some insights concerning meditation in previous chapters, and
here we'll take it up again, but from a more pragmatic point of view.
     True meditation is rare, hard to come by.  What most of us are doing, most of the time, is
a simulation.  In true meditation, we let go of the past and experience an immediacy and intensity
of perception that is nothing short of miraculous.  Most of us, however, are confused or unhappy
because we haven't ever been able to let go.  Letting go, here, doesn't mean just giving up on
life.  It means arresting the use of the past, of memory, to adjust or color our immediate, everyday
perceptions.  When we do this, powerful meditation is taking place.
     As previously stated, however, it's hard to let this happen.  So in the beginning,
especially, it's a good idea to develop some formal meditation practice.
     The most basic method of meditation is mindfulness of breath.  This involves sitting
quietly in a room and watching the breath go in and out of the body.  The nose tip is best, the
most tranquilizing, and in today's go-go world, we need the strongest medicine. This type of
meditation is conducive to insight, because most people, after getting in practice, will very
clearly perceive a distance between what they call themselves and the sensation of the air going
in and out of the nosetip.  This is the fundamental division that we have created in our world. 
Evidently, the sensations in our nose tip, of the air rushing in and out, are part of what we are, but
we observe them and have the feeling the sensations are separate from us.  It isn't necessary or
desirable to react to this realization, or try to suppress the perception.  That's simply the problem
trying to imitate a solution.  Continue to watch the sensation of the breath going in and out.
     It's normal to wander away in some fantasy or habitual thought while doing this kind of
exercise.  This is  not a big deal.  You'll find that you're always wanting to think of
something anything, and it's mostly to escape the reality of what you're experiencing, which is
not very thrilling.  When you notice your mind wandering, take a deep breath and gently settle
back on the nose tip.  Alternatively, simply relax more deeply.  When deeply enough relaxed and
calm, thoughts begin to seem very heavy, and it may happen that you'll drop them effortlessly at
some point.
     As previously stated, there are a number of reflections that can gently persuade the mind
to give up some of its self-defeating reactive behavior.  Hatred, lust, and foggy, deluded habitual
thinking are all impediments to deeper insight.  These can be softened by the right kind of
reflections.
     In a previous chapter, we looked at how quietly wishing happiness to yourself and also to
others, over and over, can calm the turbulence of anger and lead to an opening of the heart. 
Again, the technique is simple.  Sit quietly and repeat 'may I be happy' over and over.  Imagine
taking care of yourself, being kind to yourself.  As you get adept at this practice, you will find
that even a few minutes of this reflection can significantly improve your mood.  My son, as a boy
of ten, will actually start to laugh with even a moment's practice of this reflection.  After you feel
happy, extend the wish to others, gradually widening the sphere of influence to include everyone
and everything.  Similar reflections can focus on developing compassion, and the ability to
experience joy at the accomplishments and happiness of others.  Finally, this same sort of
reflection can create states of deep equanimity.  Powerful equanimity may not seem to be a
desirable state, but it isn't passive, it's powerful.  As negative events assail you, the ability to
remain unperturbed can maximize all outcomes.
     Lust is a normal everyday occurrence for most people.  This includes lust for material
possessions as well as sexual lust.  It even includes lust for states of superconsciousness or
insight.   A good reflection to reduce lust is to make an inventory of your body parts.  Again
while sitting quietly, review all your parts, imagining them one by one, over and over.  This has
the effect of creating an objective view of something which is taken very personally.
     Reflections of various other kinds can be helpful.  Reflecting on the impermanence of
phenomena, and the transitoriness of life, can increase the motivation for spiritual practice. 
Impermanence is a fundamental quality of life, and while most people think of this in terms of
old age and death, it's better understood as a moment-to-moment phenomenon.  Sensations arise
and fade, experience is in continual flux, continuous change. Nothing is the same the second
time.
     In developing your formal meditation practice, it's important not to try for too much, nor
expect too much.  As previously stated, not much happens, most of the time, nor is it supposed to
happen.  Relaxation is what you're primarily going to get on a daily basis, a peaceful feeling. 
You'll feel better grounded.  A litte bit every day is more important than a lot of meditation on
rare occasions.  It is also a good idea to have more than one session every day: one or two short
sessions of a few minutes, then a longer session of half an hour or so.
     Relaxation is a discipline.  As you sit, look for tensions in your body, and whenever you
find them, relax them.  You'll find that it's hard to relax when you've eaten too much, or eaten
the wrong kind of food, or slept too much, or not exercised properly.  The mind can't see clearly,
nor the body relax, if basic health has been neglected.
     Meditation has been called a quest, but it's more of an adventure. In a quest, we seek an
answer, but an adventure is its own answer.  We are a world, and discovering what we are is the
greatest adventure.



               10.  On Driving Down Clyde Morris

     
     In this essay I'll be taking a more personal point of view.  In it, I am going to describe in
detail the event that resulted in my writing this book.  Most of what I have expressed in this book
came to me during a few seconds of time while I sat behind the wheel of my old Volvo, driving
down Clyde Morris Boulevard.
     For those of you into motorcycles or car racing, you might know that Clyde Morris is a
major artery connecting Ormond with Daytona Beach.  Daytona, of course, is Mecca for the auto-
racing set.  At any rate, the event I'm about to describe had a tremendous  impact on me.  In an
instant, I understood more than I ever got out of a thousand books like this one.
     Here we go. 

     One of the biggest problems facing spiritually-minded people is how to integrate their
spiritual practice with everyday life.  Most of us have to spend a lot of time making a living and
dealing with our primary relationships, and the older we get, the more things seem to encroach on
our free time.  There is a tendency to put off our practice in favor of what appear to be more
pressing needs.  The kids are clamoring, our mate is nagging, our bosses are bossing.  There's
always someone or something standing in the way, and there's a tendency to think that, someday,
these distractions will magically disappear, and we can get on with the business of understanding
what the devil is going on.
     Here's the reality: it is very unlikely the so-called distractions will just get up and go
away.  And if they do, others will rush in to fill the gap.
     Sure, there's always retirement.  We can do our thing while collecting our social
insecurity.  The problem with that idea is our failing health and faculties, brought on by age, and
especially by letting ourselves go while riding life's big merry-go-round.  Procrastination isn't
going to cut it.  We've got to do something, and do it now.
     But to put it all in a personal perspective, I'm going to scroll back in time to the seventies.
     
     About twenty years ago, when I lived in a garage apartment and took the bus, walked, or
rode my bike everywhere, a few odd jobs were sufficient to keep me living like a king.  There
was plenty of time for reflection and a daily exercise regimen, which included about an hour of
yoga.  When it became clear to me that being a lifeguard and swimming instructor simply wasn't
going to cut it as a career, I embarked on a course which ultimately resulted in my becoming a
scientist and educator.
     The demands of science, particularly physics, are considerable.  As a student, I regularly
put in sixty to eighty hour weeks, combining classes, study, and research with supporting myself
as a teaching assistant.  Looking back, I'm amazed I could ever have made myself do it.  It
changed me.  I started out as a Florida Cornflake, and voluntarily jumped head first into Physics
Nerd.  It got to the point where I thought a tough fifty-page calculation was a good time.  I
regularly passed up nights out on the town with family and friends in favor of a few hours perusal
of mathematical hieroglyphics.
     In any event, I found myself skimping on my daily practice of yoga and formal
meditation.  While I never gave it up completely, I frequently missed days, fell out of shape
often, then got only halfway back into shape, over and over again.  The weekly demands in my
chosen career took precedence; necessarily, it seemed at the time.  I figured that when I got out of
school it would get easier, and when it got easier, I'd get back into my regimen.
     Well, I was half right.  After graduate school life got a little easier, and I had more time
on my hands.  But then came the birth of my daughter, an amazing, high-maintenance kid whose
mission in life from day one was to help me experience the boot camp I missed out on.  My
former life was shattered, utterly destroyed by a few pounds of upchucking, demanding, wailing
wonderfulness.  Time seemed to be in shorter supply than ever.  It finally began to dawn on me
that I needed to make some changes. 
     The first plan I implemented was to keep track of the number of hours I put into my
practice on a daily basis, requiring of myself a certain daily minimum investment of time.  I had
done a similar kind of thing in school when taking certain demanding courses, which in physics
is all of them.   For my spiritual practice, I budgeted a minimum of one hour a day.  This hour
comprised both yoga and meditation.  If I did only half an hour, then I would drop to "one half
hour down".  If I did three hours in a day, then there would be a surplus of two hours, which I
could use to eliminate part of my deficit.  Whenever I got back to zero, I'd be caught up.
     Later I started jotting down a record of my daily activity, which seemed to work better. 
It's important to realize that rigid maintenance of the schedule isn't important.  Just keeping track
helps increase the awareness of the activity, and make it more likely something will happen every
day.
     In this way, I got back into a fairly regular routine, though it was still a little choppy.  The
problem, I realized only later, was that my commitment was built on an intellectual foundation. 
That brings us to the next and most important part of the story.

     The success of the organizational tool I'd developed was encouraging.  However, certain
questions still remained.  It had been years since I'd had the leisure to go on meditation retreats,
and as I approached forty years of age it began to look like I never would again.  Twenty years
had gone by in a flash, and, due to a special kind of relativity, the next twenty were going to go
faster still.  Not only that, but I was getting a little middle age spread!  Pretty soon, I'd face less
than optimal health, old age and disease.  I had to do something, not just for my own sake, but for
others.  I felt strongly that I needed to set a better example.  Except in the very beginning, I'd
always been a loner in my practice; I was beginning to feel that I was shirking my responsibility.
     Getting away from a spouse and kids for a few weeks of meditation is very difficult,
especially when they don't share your enthusiasm for monotony.  Like many people, I'd always
thought that real progress in meditation was out of reach without retreating from the distractions
of everyday life, that somehow insight was a function of hours spent cross-legged beneath trees. 
With a few exceptions, the books you read, the people you talk to, encourage that point of view.
     In reality, however, nothing could be further from the truth.  The truth is that daily life
provides far greater spiritual challenges than the life of a monk or nun, cloistered in retreat.
     The secret, which took me over twenty years to discover, is the understanding of
mindfulness.
     Meditation, for many, is a process in which sensory input is minimized.  The meditators
go to quiet places, sit down and close their eyes, and begin doing whatever they think is going to
open the door--repeat mantras, watch the breath, reflect on God, recite holy scriptures, or gaze at
internal images.  This is a process of concentration, and has the advantage of calming the mind
down.  It is even possible, through such practice, to have ecstatic experiences, such as the
Buddhist jhanas, Hindu samadhi, or possibly the Zen satori.  
     The problem with such practices, however, is that they require time and special
circumstances.  Both of these are in short supply to a person with work and family
responsibilities.
     Mindfulness, on the other hand, is of a different nature.  Mindfulness can be practiced all
day long, during any activity.  Rather than having a particular object, it takes any object
whatsoever.
     Many activities, such as doing the dishes or playing with a two-year old, are very
repetitive and sometimes tedious--perfect opportunities for the practice of mindfulness!  Think
about it.  You can either watch your breath go in and out for an hour, or make a doll do the same
dance over and over again to delight your daughter.  What's the difference?  Both are repetitive,
both can be tedious!
     Okay, so maybe I don't appreciate playing dolls like some of you.  With Kira and I, it was
a daily activity, and except on those occasions when I fell into mindfulness, it was incredibly
tedious.
     So, given the difficulty of finding time for intensive practice, I decided some years ago
that I would have to develop mindfulness, which is meditation in action, since I realized that
otherwise I might never have an opportunity to deeply explore the nature of consciousness.
     Yet there were tremendous barriers in implementing this plan.
     First of all, anybody who can keep their mind on anything for five minutes is, in my view,
a very amazing person.  Some people think they're doing it, but they're just not noticing the
spurious activity.  Others brutally force their minds to cooperate, and get good at cracking the
whip, which strikes me as a kind of spiritual nazism.  As simple as the idea of mindfulness is, it's
still the very devil to put into practice.
     Let me give you an example.  I might be driving, and practicing the awareness of my
breath while doing so, or watching the movement of my hands on the wheel, or sometimes even
watching the road.  Within seconds after commencing this practice, I may start to notice some
unpleasant sensations.  These sensations, like gas roiling through my gut or simply a poignant
memory, are sufficiently unpleasant that I tend to kick off into random thinking.
     Now, when I talk about unpleasant, I don't mean the feelings are like hair shirts or beds of
nails.  Believe it or not, there are a lot of things that happen moment to moment in our bodies and
minds that simply aren't optimal, things that we've learned to tune out.  Boredom, for example, is
a common affliction, and most people don't care for it.  Sometimes, after an hour of dolls, I
started to long for that hair shirt or bed of nails!  At any rate, there are subtle and not-so-subtle
unpleasant things happening quite frequently in our daily lives.
     And to escape these tiny, moment-to-moment unpleasantries, we often turn to thought.
     The reason for this is simple.  Thinking creates sensations, and just as music can drown
out unwanted background noise, thinking can drown out momentary discomforts by laying down
a covering of rather bland sensation.  It's preferable to think about something, and feel this
marginally pleasurable sensation, rather than observe what we really are.
     When thought alone can't do it, we sometimes look for stronger medicine.  Like TV.  Or
beer and pizza.
     Thoughts are associated with subtle muscular tensions, and to a large extent give a person
a sense of separate individuality.  There is nothing wrong with thinking, in itself, and it's
certainly a necessity, but like alcohol or other drugs, or sex, or jogging, it can be used as an
escape.
     As a theoretical physicist, I've spent a lot of time engrossed in deep thought.  It's great
fun, a great escape, for me to sit down at my desk and spend a few hours putting mathematical
hieroglyphics to paper.
     Well, at least it used to be.  I'm not quite as caught up in it anymore, thank goodness.
     Getting back to our story, the bottom line is that while mindfulness, meditation in action,
was a great idea in theory, I spent years trying to put it into practice with at best limited success. 
Whenever I tried to focus on the minute-by-minute events going on around me, I soon found
myself overwhelmed by the tedious details.  Spinning away into random thinking seemed
unavoidable.
     What was I doing wrong?  I couldn't figure it.  I even began to think that maybe retreating
periodically from society was the only answer after all.  Or that my stubborn do-it-yourself
attitude was getting in the way.
     Then one day I was driving to work one day down Clyde Morris, that great boulevard
connecting Ormond Beach with Daytona, on my way to work.  My boss had been giving me
some mixed signals, telling me he was going to lay me off due to shortfalls in enrollment, then
raising the hope of continued employment whenever there was a particularly challenging job he
needed someone to do.  I was thinking some about that, wondering if I was going to be laid off,
contemplating new career moves.
     As usual, though, almost as an afterthought, I was observing events, the thoughts, the
unrolling of the road before me, the trees and the telephone poles.  And, in my peripheral vision,
I saw my body sitting in the seat, arms up, hands on the wheel.  Thoughts and various other
sensations were bubbling away.  Business as usual.
     My first realization that something different was going on was my perception of clouds. 
They seemed supernaturally close, intimately close and clear, as if they were floating through my
body, along with the roiling gut and the occasional bubbles of thought.
     Suddenly I saw that all these sensations and perceptions, both the ones I considered
external, such as the trees and clouds, and the ones I considered internal, such as my body and its
sensations, were happening in the same field.
     The clouds were not floating somewhere far away, but as if inside my body, just as the
cars racing by were simply fragments of a whole.  All the sensations, both internal and external,
were parts of a single thing: consciousness--- "my" consciousness, though when there's only one
of them that "my" starts to seem pretty ridiculous.
     I felt positively giddy with energy, and I laughed, because all of a sudden a lot of
problems weren't really problems anymore.  Not in the same way.
     In this same moment a lot else became clear, particularly with regard to the practice of
mindfulness and meditation.  First of all, I always had the idea that being mindful meant I had to
direct my mind to pay attention to certain exterior or interior phenomena.  Essentially, I was
dividing the world up into two pieces, me and everything else.  Amazingly, this simple process
takes a lot of energy.  Furthermore, I was picking and choosing my objects of attention.  It hit me
like a brick that mindfulness is far easier when you realize that what you focus your attention on
has no intrinsic importance whatsoever!
     You can watch your breath go in or out, or observe a woman walking down the street. 
The object is unimportant.  In every case you are observing consciousness, which is what you
want to understand.  This results again in a terrific savings in energy, since there is no need to use
self-coercion to make yourself focus on a particular thing.
     Consciousness is nothing other than what it contains.  Everything you experience is part
of your consciousness.  Your keys, your car, your reflection in the mirror, the thoughts you think,
they're all happening in the same field, one and indivisible. 
     It's possible, as we've seen in previous essays, to intellectually appreciate the reality of
this kind of world view.  After all, our experience is put together in our brains; when we see a
tree, we are not seeing the tree itself, but rather a representation of the tree assembled in the
visual cortex.  Some have used this intellectual explanation to argue that only the "internal"
world exists--they say that everything is happening "in your mind".  Sure it is.  But where's your
mind?  In your head?  And it obviously isn't "your" mind, anyway, since only small fragments are
under your control!
     There was a time I liked to imagine there was some sort of amazing unity of everything in
time and space, all the galaxies and supernovas, the atoms and molecules, all wrapped up
together in some kind of grand design.  Maybe there is--states such as samadhi encourage that
idea.  My view now, however, is that the real cosmic consciousness is the immediate
consequence of the perception that the division of the world into self and other is a convenient
fabrication.
     Seeing this separation between observer and observed is in fact very easy.  Seeing that it
is unnecessary is also easy, at least intellectually.  Seeing it actually is difficult, because we're
always trying to see it intellectually!
     Here, let's do it.  Sit down and watch the flow of air going in and out of your nostrils.  As
you settle down and focus, you may begin to become aware of that dual column of air currents as
being, say, just a couple centimeters away from you.  Your eyes are closed, and the air is going in
and out, and you can see-feel the flow just a centimeter or two away, in front of you.
     Of course, it's not in front of you.  It is you.  Everything you experience, good, bad,
beautiful, or ugly, is what you are.  But those air columns in your nose tip still feel separate from
'you'.  That's the separation of the observer and observed I was talking about.  Easy, isn't it?  You
don't want to get rid of it, you just want to keep an eye on it.  That's what you are: you're creating
the division, and you are the division.
     So after twenty years I discovered an entirely different world view, completely at odds
with my previous view.  I discovered that there was no need to give up the slings and arrows of
daily life and retreat for twelve years in a cave.  We're already in that cave!  Through
mindfulness, meditation is possible anywhere, by anyone, at any time.  And through it, there is an
enrichment of understanding that turns ordinary everyday life into something altogether
extraordinary, just the way it is.
     Seeking a spiritual life?  Seek no further.  You're already in the midst of it, along with all
the problems you thought you were going to leave behind.                       11. Symphony

     In the previous chapters, we've seen that there's a possibility of an alternative to the
traditional world view, wherein the personality is central, occupying one side of the fence,
considered interior to self, while most of the rest of experience is on the other side of the fence,
considered exterior to self.  In this new world view there is only a single field, not two fields
separated by a fence.
     We've learned that all of our books, our learning, our beliefs, are of little intrinsic value. 
They're band-aids, temporary relief, and we keep applying them until we look like mummies,
patching ourselves up but never healing because we're afraid to look at the wounds.
     We've also learned that our central problem involves the old world view, the self, the ego,
that curious collection of labeled sensations and memories that dominates our lives, considered
so important that even questioning it can raise eyebrows and start talk of insanity.  Yet we have
also learned that this self makes up a fair part of the whole, and hence must be taken care of,
and given its due.
     There are other parts of the totality, of course, such as other people, trees, oceans,
automobiles, the sun and the moon, microbes and stars.  These fragments enter into
consciousness on a regular basis.  And, very frequently, the self-fragment has a number of duties
to perform in regards the other pieces.  That's called working for a living.
     Yet we're cut off from this unified vision of the world because of our conditioning. 
We've been trained to operate on the basis of thought, which is a function of memory and the
past.  And because of this, because of our separatist world view, repeated negative experiences
can accumulate in the mind until we're boxed in, trapped in a prison of our own making.
     Yet this tyranny of the past can be broken when we begin to glimpse the essential non-
duality of everyday life.  Since others are not separate, we experience less anxiety in talking to
them about difficult subjects, which means we don't suffer so much from being awkward or
tongue-tied.  The increased fluidity is catching: other people start to get along better with us, so
we become more successful without having to resort to crass manipulation.
     We become more generous, because giving to others is like giving to ourselves.  Their
happiness becomes our happiness.  We leave bigger tips and are more inclined to trust people,
and in turn they instinctively trust and respect us.  We are also less likely to shy away from
disciplining others when the occasion asks for it. 
     Impressing other people becomes less important.  Balance is the word: machismo falls by
the wayside, and we find ourselves listening to people more, even to those who are obviously
wrong or off their rockers.  Often these people have hidden messages for us, some of them deep
or important.
     Our minds become open to the immense beauty of everyday life; the shifting patterns, the
sounds, the shimmering light on the water, the pelicans diving, plunging into the sea as the foam
catches the sun and a thousand reflections play across the restless water.  The intensity of
everyday perception becomes amazingly strong; it's as if we've never been alive before.
     All of this, a universe, can be ours.  Smells, tastes, sounds, light, touches that are new and
intense and fresh and clean.  The past can be seen for what it is: not some heavy baggage of
vague memories and emotions and guilt, weighing us down, but merely one part of the whole.
     When we start to get acquainted with what we are, there's no ending to it.  Every day is
new and different, each day is the beginning and the end.

     A student recently asked me if I believed in a spiritual life.  I could see from her
expression, from the words she used, that she was talking about souls, heaven and hell, and so-
called religious experiences.  I answered in the affirmative, for there is a spiritual life.
     The spiritual life is our daily life.  There isn't any other, at least not at the moment, and
the future is a reflection of the past, of our conditioning, just an expectation, a collection of ideas
in the mind.  The spiritual life is today, here and now, whether we are helping a child or paying a
bill, driving our car or digging a ditch.
     It's all in our point of view.  We're hurting, our past experiences are weighing on us, and
they're piling up to such a degree that we don't think we can go on.  The future seems like more
of the same, more illness, more burdens, more this, more that, always more!  And what we have
is inadequate, not enough.  We want more, and more, and we get more and more but not what we
wanted.
     The world is covered by a gauze of our own creation.  We have created a veil and placed
it over everything, a layer of memory and expectation.  Nothing seems compelling anymore,
nothing is beautiful; everything is drab and humdrum.  We're marking time, paying our dues at
the local spiritual clubs, waiting for our spiritual life to start after we check out of here and into
some big mansion in the sky.
     The spiritual life is now or not at all.  It's indistinguishable from our everyday life.  Yes,
the pain, the suffering, the sorrow, the ugliness, the disappointments!  They're all part of the
whole, the world, the world that is inseparable from us, seamlessly joined.  We are one part of
the totality, but that totality is not separate from us except when we make it that way.  We are the
totality, of which our self is a fragment.  The future and past exist only in memory, and are far
smaller parts of the All than we'd every dreamed.
     We have only to watch the flow of experience like stalking tigers watch their prey,
watching without censoring, watching without condemning, keenly observing what's in and all
around us, just as it is.  Then, only, can the stranglehold of the past be broken, and true healing
begin.  And with the healing of the mind comes the possibility of awakening, of seeing the
totality, of entering light.