Part Three:  Unity Through Understanding

 Chapter Ten: Alien Apparent

It is time to stop believing, and start understanding.

Preamble

We have been bamboozled into thinking of ourselves as something separate, an isolated ego within a biological "shell".  Both science and religion has contributed to this perception.  In fact the beginning of our split from the natural world probably started with the invention of language.  Our language is the decisive difference between man and beast.  It lifted us out of a primitive way of life to journeying out into space.  Yet we have paid a terrible price for it.  We lost our ability to perceive our inherent "connectedness" to all that is.  

This is not an idea that can be heard and make a serious impact upon our psyche, many will say "Yeah, so what? I know that."  But the FEELING of that connectedness is something that takes a lifetime of practice.  The Zen monks, the Catholic monks, the Shaman, and so on.  These are men who has spent a lifetime of stripping away the foundations of perception built by language and actually experience that connectedness.  Something that so many of us know is possible and yet never have the time to devote to it.  So we feel isolated and inwardly alone.  We turn to many things to try to feel it: making lots of money, having power over others, achieving success, (or not achieving success and going "back to the forest") hard work, joining a religious group or other organization, through sex, and so on.   Or we to not feel it (that nagging feeling in the back of our minds that tells us there must be more to life...) by using substances or through emotional desensitizing.

We have far too often come to feel like a Stranger In A Strange Land.  We feel like an alien on our own world.  The things we see others doing in the name of religious beliefs, or in the name of progress.  Although I would not personally condemn progress.  When September 11th came, I felt like I was watching a science fiction movie about another planet somewhere.  That my own kind could even conceive of civilized behavior as including mass executions was something surreal.  Yet history has shown a bloody trail behind us.  Are they just evil?  Are we the evil ones (Americans)?  How can we have gotten so sophisticated and yet so barberic at the same time?  Are We Not Men? (We are devo!)

Two Great Men

When I was in my mid twenties, I had the good fortune to attend a lecture by Leo Buscaglia (http://www.buscaglia.com/), a self-help guru and love devotee.  He was a wonderfully inspiring and charismatic man.  He recounted for us the story of meeting a homeless man who was sitting on a park bench wearing a huge smile and a twinkle in his eyes. Intrigued, he went up to the man and talked with him for awhile. A contented and intelligent hobo, Leo eventually asked him what his secret to such a happy life was. The hobo replied, “Its simple:  Always keep your mind full and your bowels empty.” And Leo was stunned at the simple wisdom of this -because he realized most people do just the opposite!

As we study the relationships between religion and science, it is helpful to remind ourselves that not all of religion is boring ritual and endless dogma. Not all of science is cold and unfeeling calculation. They share, as I hope to make redundantly, repeatedly, incessantly clear, (gasp for breath) many common traits, problems, and misadventures. Assuming that both sides are willing to fill their minds and empty their bowels. With a little more devotion to life than seems to be ubiquitous apathy ones sees in the loom of our social fabric (read: the media).  What then would we do with this newfound camaraderie that might then ensue? Could it lead to a sane blending of old and new to the mutual benefit of all parties? If this were the pentagon perhaps I might have a plan of action to throw up on the overhead projector. It would be cool if someone could come up with such an illusive plan. A kind of "prime directive".  Perhaps just the acknowledgement that such a plan needs devising will lead better men to come up with just such a social "directive" which all parties could agree upon.

In the time and space here, I offer up some of the ways that I have found of learning to allow little bits here and there from both sides to work together within a greater context. To be the two sides of the one coin that the Universe is. From the dual to the infinite variation on a theme, One - still the loneliest number - reigns supreme. Indivisible but with The Word (read: the linguistic construct of humanity), God is all that was promised and more when Understood as the entire process, known and unknown, of which nothing is separate or existing independently of this One Universal Process. (That is not a set up for an acronym, I just love capitalizing for emphasis sake. Call it writer’s license.)

How do we begin to Understand this Universal Process? Here I can offer some of the surprising findings of a life spent in search of Understanding and share some of the ideas that have assisted in my living a life in trusting acceptance. 

Above all others, I wish to dedicate this Part to the memory of Allan Watts. ( http://www.alanwatts.com )  JY

10.1 Good and Evil?

“And God said: ‘Let there be Satan, so people don’t blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don’t blame everything on Satan.” - George Burns

Good and Evil. The axiom for a Universe founded in Duality. For all the shades and colors of deeds and thoughts and experiences that range in between, Good and Evil represent the quintessence of Light and Dark. Wright and Wrong. Pleasure and Pain. The absolute ends of the spectrum. There is no color here. No in-betweens. When we examine good and evil we are peering into the very face of God. The two sides of His face. The two sides of His Mind (Satan was a much later invention as you recall from Part One). Duality in its purest form.

Good and Evil. The trickiest conundrum facing theologians past and present. If God created all things, did he in fact create evil? The Big Three have personified or anthropomorphized the most atrocious of evil into the fallen angel of God know variously as Satan, Lucifer, The Prince of Darkness, etc. God created the angels. How can evil come from pure Goodness? Is God Evil? It defies logic. We can go round and around with it and yet no one has yet been able to solve this riddle the liking of which could be agreed upon by all. Yes. No. Maybe. It becomes, conveniently enough, an Article of Faith (their caps not mine). It is similar to the problem of omnipotence. God can do anything because He is the creator of all that is and has absolute power over everything - omnipotent.

A simple problem in logic familiar to any student of the philosophical sciences creates a complex arena of discussion: If God can do anything, can he create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it? The first time I heard this I nearly keeled over. This theological paradox is not dissimilar to the kinds of paradoxes that we find in the sciences. It makes no sense in a way that we are accustomed to. From a self improvement (or the spiritual) perspective it can be a very enlightening dilemma because it has the potential to tease the mind out of its egocentric position of being the center of its universe and into one in which, good God!, it doesn’t know everything.! Can’t do everything! Can’t solve every riddle. And the ego is forced into taking a back seat to trust. Now, by that I mean trust as a measure of Understanding, and not one of believing because some guru or The Majority has said so.

Suspending, even temporarily, the ego becomes a way of coming to trust in ourselves. To be comfortable in a world, an existence, in which we simply will not be able to Control, and yes, even Understand, as much as our ego might require. Being thus forced into trust, as the foundation to go on living, without ego and and it’s sidekick greed - even the greed to Understand - frees the mind in ways that the gurus, priests, shaman, and all of the other so called Enlightened Ones have described and tried to teach for thousands of years. Here in the west Be Here Now - by Baba Ram Das, portrayed this beautifully to the hippie set of the sixties, but few people really ‘get’ as simply as reading a book. Even this one.

Arriving at the place where Good and Evil no longer exists is simply not achieved without HUGE sacrifice. Unless years and years of ones life are spent in monasteries, retreats, or contemplation, the ego will never free the mind to see beyond this essential duality. Excuse me? In this day and age? I don’t think so. Perhaps we, as we become increasingly sophisticated through our technology, no longer require such drastic measures to make a point. Perhaps. Discoveries like the flotation tanks popularized in the movie Altered States may make a comeback as fast food for Inner Insight. It may snow in hell. It is for this reason then that I make such efforts as you see here and I, the so called ‘common man’, attempt to inspire you here and now as you reading this into a personal quest.  We depend upon ourselves to try to help explain it to each other as best we can because we no longer have the time for mountains or monasteries. Otherwise, I believe, we will loose our reasons for sustaining Faith, and suffer the kind of mental meltdown that is Evil in the extreme: apathy. The duality of evil in this view is revealed through its flip side:  enlightenment¹. So this simple paradox where God can do everything, but can’t lift the rock. Or He can lift the rock because He can do anything which now means that He was unable to make a rock so heavy that even He couldn’t lift it, which means He can’t do everything! Argh!

Good and Evil, as separate as separate can be, is seen by the enlightened individual as two sides of a single coin, two sides of the same face of God. They exist together, would not be the same if they were not together, and have never in the past or ever will be in the future separate. There will always be both, yes with various shades in between, because white is only white in relation to black, in relation to up or down, in or out, good or evil, whatever opposing duality one wishes to consider. The Chinese refer to this as ‘arising mutually’. They go together like bees and flowers. We could also compare it to a form of symbiosis. Or synchronistic dependency. Whichever words one chooses to use they just do. Go together inseparably.

So now we have established something that as we learn this lesson over and over, we can snowball into our feeling, nay sir, our very comprehension (I’m not going to say Understanding, n’k?) of confident trust in the process knowing that the process does not require our trust. By that I don’t mean that there may not be beings or gods or even aspects of God that are not concerned with our trust in He or them. The point is that the process will continue either way so we might as well relax and enjoy the ride, eh? We just have to trust that they used the expensive steel in the roller coaster rivets! Duality is here to stay. Heaven and hell. Not either/or but both.  In physics its understood in terms of thermodynamics.  Its the tension between the two, or the flow from one state to another, that powers all of life as we know it.

We have all probably heard the truism “life is what you make it” enough times that it begins to sound smug. Yeah. Whatever. It is only when life is good and we enjoy relative success that we hold this truism in higher esteem. When things go wrong and times seem hard, its not so easy to accept this little pearl of wisdom. As wisdom it may be somewhat lofty, but as another clue on our journey towards Understanding it is a priceless observation.

My mentor (but not acquaintance unfortunately. Had I been born a little earlier I would have been honored to meet him.) Allan Watts made an excellent point about “naturalness” and through metaphor called into question the notion of Good and Evil as absolute truths because they are always dependent on upon the point of view of the observer. We must always ask “truth for whom”? Like the perspectives of the two persons moving at different speeds through space would experience the effects of Einstein’s relativity and both be entirely correct in their description of a shared experience and yet differing in their accounts, as we saw in Part Two [link to billiard ball/relativistic narrative].

Consider, he suggested, the beavers in the forest. They do not want for naturalness. They are the epitome of nature and things natural. They live as beavers live, in the forest, building there little beaver dams for shelter and raising their families and everything is Good. Then, however, we consider man, who has been called ‘unnatural’ by other men, who runs around doing what men do. He lives in giant cities. Cities that were never meant to exist according to those same men, and he builds huge dams to meet his electrical needs and raise his family and everything is Evil. What is this drive towards self abasement that assures us that man’s dams, built by men for men’s purposes, are somehow less natural or - more to my point here - Evil in its apparent opposition to the natural way of things, than is a dam built by beavers for beavers purposes? [See also Suffrage]

What really is the difference between a beaver and his dam, (which we consider natural) and a human dam, (which we consider unnatural)? Concrete instead of wood? How can anything “unnatural” come out of nature? If it arises out of nature why would we even want to consider it unnatural? Except to condemn as being outside of some “tribal” belief system. Or to remind us that we are somehow separate from all the rest of nature because of a few extra neurons? Or maybe because we were marked as evil for following Satan and his self-centered hedonistic ego and therefore everything we do is cursed, damned, and unnatural in the eyes of God? There are still religious groups today who consider technology of any kind to be the work of the devil and will have nothing to do with it. The Quakers have held to this tradition for generations in common with many other groups, such as the Puritans, who did not survive the test of time. If there are any ‘new’ Puritan Movements out there I have not come across them yet and pray to God I never do. (No more Christmas? Never!)

I had a friend once (yes you Walter) who loved to argue the position of mankind as being “a cancer on the face of the planet”. In some ways this may be very true (although I would never concede that to Walter at the time). But that is not to imply that cancer is not a natural phenomenon that serves a purpose in nature. Ok. So we are a cancer. Does that imply that the earth, as a living organism [see also Gaia] is akin to a poor ignorant savage in need of a cure? And who is going to cure it anyway? Man? Hmm.

This is where that aspect of Faith, or trust, comes into play. The above scenario (man as cancer) reveals a very human bias on our part. Because as a human cancer is very bad indeed! But to a cancer cell, it’s life in abundance! Yippie! Par-tay! Let’s Rock! Damn the silly human! Let’s be fruitful and multiply! Same as with a virus. Or a bacteria. Or any of thousands of cohabitants of our little island we call I. Because if we trust nature - all of it - not just that which is good for us, then there is room for cancer, viruses, disease, non-breeding males and females, etc. AS WELL as man‘s intervention as a holistic aspect of nature as well, as all part of a single process. This was the ultimate point that Allan Watts repeated on many occasions. That the apparent division, or separation of man from the rest of nature was an illusion resulting from a lack of understanding fully the interdependence of things.

If we say, then, man is a cancer on the face of the earth, could it be that it is God, or natures, plan that the earth should have this cancer? Are we so arrogant to presume to know what’s best for the earth? Maybe nature or God WANTS earth to have cancer! Maybe He loves the viruses that kill us in equal measure! Just because we can’t understand why God would give deadly things to man doesn’t mean there is not a reason or purpose to it. HIV is bad for humans but great for HIV!

Interestingly, there are religious groups who don’t believe in medicine to this day as well. There was a case recently in the news where the parents were tried for murder for not getting their sick child to receive medical care that would have easily saved his life. To use that do not understand their belief system, it was pure unadulterated evil. To them it was following God’s will. Sticky. Tricky. But that too is part of it.

So for now, let us assume that God, or Nature, or Higher Power knows what they are doing even if we don’t. That requires a bit of humility and trust. Can we say Faith?

That is not to say, Mr. Watts would be quick to point out, that there are not things that are artificial. I think the word unnatural should be struck from human language - it means nothing. Replace it with artificial and we are on our way to actually saying something meaningful. But a human dam is still not artificial in the same way that we would refer to it as unnatural. No more than a beaver’s damn is artificial. Again, semantics is all important in trying to understand the difference between the two. Plastic is artificial. Man using neurons and muscles to create plastic is not. You see the difference? Plastic, at least the chemically complex stuff we use today, would never spontaneously form in nature. I don’t believe there is any combination of temperatures, forces, pressures, what have you, that would ever produce plastic in the way that it has been intelligently created by man. It can be said to be artificial. Man does spontaneously arise out of nature with hands and a brain with which to create plastic, (uh, Hello, were here aren’t we?) and that can be said to be natural. Unless we create an artificial distinction that declares it un-natural as some silly persons still love to do!

In a very real way then we do, not only make life what it is, but we also make it evil or good only by our own individual perspectives, the choices we make on how to react to those perspectives, and the agreements we make with others validating or negating our perspectives on Good and Evil thereby bringing one or the other into greater or lesser reality. And its fascinating to see in the Great Drama of life that some people would much rather have an abundance of evil in the world than good. It gives them something to rally against. Bring them together and wage war and all that high drama stuff. Religion, historically, has thrived on the abundance of evil or evil forces. But other cultures and other religious have seen and lived a very different reality. It really is relative and we have to get that if we are going to have any hope of Understanding.

Now, this is not to say that good and evil is arbitrary and they are not useful concepts for living an interesting life. Providing God with a good show. We don’t just become a Jeffery Dahlmer because Good and Evil don’t really exist and so we flipped a coin to see which we were going to be! That is about as silly as the “that’s un-natural” guys. If one is an inherently good person, I don’t think they could just go bad by the toss of a coin even if they wanted to. Or visa versa. And I am certainly not going to present arguments wherein the deeds of Mr. Dahlmer could be construed as anything good. I’m not going to go quite that far. As I delved into earlier, some things are Black and White and will always be. But I will say that within the world of Color, one must always be aware that good and evil are in the eye of the beholder, and that forgiveness and gentleness are like the oil that can keep the machinery of one’s life running smoothly (if that is what one is driven to feel - but my guess is that you are or you would not be here reading this trying to get a better sense of yourself and your relationship to your immediate and extended environment).

Far too often we can get caught in the trap of right and wrong as absolutes. This, many Eastern philosophies tell us, is an illusion.  That right and wrong are all one and the same - just perceived subjectively as two, depending upon it's impact upon our seeming isolated ego.  We can avoid this trap they say if we can make sure that our feelings are true to ourselves and those feelings will then be true in the collective experience which god is having through us, throughout all of space and time. 

Another duality "trap" is love and hate.

Love and Hate

Perhaps the reason Jesus chose love as a focus for his ministry was that he understood the remaining animal nature within mankind.  Love is almost always revocable.  We can change our mind at any time.  Hate is almost always irrevocable.  We almost never change our minds once we have set to hate someone.  This is how hate holds a distinct advantage over love.  Love it would seem, given it's proclivities is certainly doomed.  Without the traditional social constraints, such as marrage and extended families, and ever increasing personal liberties, love has even less of a chance of making a meaningful change in the world of the future.  Love is fleeting.  Hate endures a lifetime.

If someone is going to hate and want to destroy, they will regardless of any attempts at reform! If someone feels compelled to add to the balance of gentleness and loving kindness where everyone can win and have a great time, far out! Lets do it! Kick some hard-ass butt (figuratively speaking of course) and win a round for Jesus’ view of a world where we can all live with a little less hurt and pain! But one doesn’t, for sure, have to ’go Jesus Freak’ to up the volume of perceived relative goodness in the world. Just be yourself. Be prepared for the consequences that our societies has set for you if yourself is a soul bent on greed. And be equally prepared for the wondrous emotional (and sometime physical) rewards for living the life of selflessness and generosity that we, perhaps arbitrarily, assign the value of “Good”. (Its nice to others too, by the way, that you don’t overdo your goodness. A goody-two-shoes type of personality can be just as annoying as the hard ass)

It is very important also not to wail and moan about the supposed Evils of the world or show off and boast of all the Goodness that befalls us. In so doing we give strength to their reality - to their literal existence in all our lives. Just let them be and they won’t be either. Road rage is a perfect example of how our experience of negative reactions to bad things happening to us spreads like a virus. We think the reality we create in our mind stays there? No - no. We make life what it is. For all of us collectively. 

Something ‘evil’ happens to us. We feel we don’t have a choice but to react badly and then ‘share’ that reality with others.  As if to somehow gain support for our reality by assuring ourselves that the person we just pissed off is an asshole too.  And isn't the point?  To assure ourselves that all those people out on the highway just assholes! RRRRR. This is one case where having people on our side is not a good thing. Its hard not to experience road rage at some time or another, but lets put this as your first practical lesson or step in developing conciousness of Good and Evil in your own immediate environment. Put up your shield and let that evil or bad feelings bounce right off and you keep on smiling. Its Hard!! But hey, maybe they didn’t see you when they cut you off. Maybe they just broke up from a long term relationship and their life is nothing but pain and hate and they don’t care about you (another asshole) and they don’t even care if they die right now! Ok. So are you going to take on their pain and anger? Are you going to let them infect you with it? You have a choice in this situation. Make one based on Understanding. Not one ‘given’ to you like a plague. Just say no to taking on their hurt. It isn’t yours and you don’t need it. Hey, who knows. Maybe your not honking your horn at them, as they would be expecting, you simply smile and give them the benefit of the doubt and then maybe they will be so surprised by your creation of a non-hateful response to their apparent hatefulness that you might infect them with just a little bit of your peacefulness and improve the quality of their life so that they will be a little less hateful to the next person they come into contact with and so on and so on. One act of goodness can go a long way! Or Evil. That’s how wars get started. I personally would enjoy seeing goodness prevail for at least as long as I am alive and even to see it grow. But shame on me for being so greedy for goodness! Sticky. Its tricky.

So Good and Evil seen as a dual process within the context of a Unified Universe becomes completely a subjective assessment.  Good and Evil, as the Hindu might point out, is what we, personally, make it. Understanding this we can choose to reject or accept Good and Evil "as written"  and take on the burden of true self-determination with pride. We don’t have to be one or the other, good or bad, but we can’t not be one or the other either. Good and Evil by its very nature is not scaleable - unlike like many things that are and we don't realize it.  We also can’t not participate in choosing to be one or the other, because its like by deciding not to make a decision we have already decided. We can’t escape from interacting with the reality of this duality - but we can try to get some pleasure out of it by playing this game with skill and trusting your innate inner nature. We are taught by many eastern religious philosophies to create Good for ourselves as much a possible because in a dual universe good equates on an animal sensory level as pleasure (which we augment somewhat with artificial constructs) and Evil equates on that level as pain (which we augment a great deal with artificial constructs - like shame, guilt, punishments, etc.)

And “That’s the truthhhhhhhhhh.” - Edith Ann (as performed by Lilly Tomlin)

^{#1 en·light·en·ment 2. Enlightenment A philosophical movement of the 18th century that emphasized the use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and that brought about many humanitarian reforms. Used with the.  [Back to Text]}