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Have you ever thought that it is us, the thinkers, who tend to insist that things have to be ‘this way’ or ‘that way’?

It is undeniable that everything is part of the one. But it is equally undeniable that the one manifests as the many.

Our tendency to make things ‘this way’ or ‘that way’ draws us into feeling we have to choose. It is uncomfortable that it should be both at once.

The relevance of ‘the many’ is, perhaps, that we could not be having the conversation if only the unity was manifest.

Because our awareness of the one-ness generally comes long after our ‘impossible to avoid immersion’ in the many, we then tend to think that the later realization is the better or more profound one.

People have discovered (via drugs, meditation or just serendipity) that there is a state of thoughtlessness that can merge them into the one-ness.

Some of these folks think that the one-ness is far superior. And they spend the rest of their lives seeking to end any and all engagements with thought.

I don’t think so. They both exist. Two sides of the same coin. When I need my mind, I turn it on. When nothing is pressing me to figure it out, I shut it off. Both states are mine at will. I assign neither the superior roll.

So, all that you said about Dream States leaves me feeling that you’ve decided that only the one-ness is real and the many is simply illusion.

I liked what you said about “…the mind gets identified as the dreamt character….”. So true. Here in the world of the many, we do tend to believe we are a unique and special “I”. We believe in a personal self. And this personal self defends itself with the ego.

All that can be dropped as clarity comes. And what remains, in the many, is a biological thing, a bit of the existence, that is aware and looking out.

If I had any small criticism about all that you wrote here, it would be to avoid the Either-Or trap. It is all true – both sides, both views. Don’t get too lost in the idea that it is all a meaningless dream. Avoid trying to see it as one way or the other. Flow into and out of all points of view.

You have a beautiful mind and POV. The way forward is always to embrace more and more – even as we understand less and less. As soon as someone drives a stake into the ground and says, “This is it”, step away. The road is endless and ever deepens.

My objection to the mystical is not an absolute thing. Not a black or white thing. Given my increasing perception that all of existence is a mystery, it would be quite disingenuous of me to say what is within and without the fold.

And, in truth, there’s a lot in my life and subjective perceptions that I would call mystical.

My objection isn’t that the mystical doesn’t exist. My objection is that once a person integrates mystical elements into the fabric of their explanations and understandings of their life and existence, their feet quickly lift off from the ground.

Try to see my POV by looking through this lens:

I avoid all beliefs, biases, hopes, fears, and wishes. I do this on the theory that all of these are, in essence, simply ways of me trying to negotiate, shape, negate or pretend that the qualities of naked reality are anything other than just what they are. Imagine now that I am quite successful at avoiding all of that. Does this mean nothing mystical happens in my life?

No, far from it.Many things continue to happen in my life that seem quite mysterious and mystical to me. But I do not build my understandings and explanations upon them. I do not build dependencies upon them. I do not engage in ‘quid-pro-quo’ reasoning about them.They just are part of the mystery of existence I experience without judgement.

Imagine two men: One man is good because he believes that if he is good, he will get rewards in this life or in heaven. The other is good simply because he believes that doing good is right in-and-of-itself and needs no other reason or justification for doing it.

Perhaps my point is beginning to come clear?

I eschew the beliefs, biases, hopes, fears, and wishes because they all seem like negotiations with an implacable reality that has no notion of negotiation. And I avoid incorporating any of my mystical experiences into the fabric of my explanations and understandings of my life because I do not want to engage in quid-pro-quo reasoning about them. I just want to see existence as clearly as I can and to do what I do because I think it is right in-and-of-itself.

I trust, or I bet my life (very much the same thing, I think), that everything else will take care of itself. And I trust, that if I eschew any sort of negotiations via beliefs, biases, hopes, fears, and wishes, then I am optimizing my ability to see ‘what is’ with greater and greater clarity. And I harbor no preconceptions about where this deeper and deeper seeing will take me. Because holding any preconception takes me back into the loop of confusion that arises when we engage in beliefs, biases, hopes, fears, and wishes.

Having said all of that, I will repeat what you’ve often heard me say. “I am one of the luckiest people I have ever known in my life and I have no idea why this is so.” Nor do I wonder or allow myself to conjecture why it is so. It just is. It just is what it is and I give deep thanks everyday that I am so blessed.

I truly feel that my life is blessed and I feel great joy that I have this perception. It is a central wellspring in my life. Tomorrow, it may all change. So be it. I just want to see it ‘as it is’ without any negotiating crutches and without any quid-pro-quo reasoning about why it is.

I engage in no reasoning that involves mystical elements. They are mystical. And, by definition, I think that places them beyond reason.

Rather, I focus on the illusions that block me from seeing more clearly. I focus on identifying my beliefs and understanding why, psychologically, I might emotionally prefer to hold such beliefs – rather than choosing to just see things as they are.

My rationality is not designed to quash the mystical from my life. It is designed to see the truth of how things are, as much as I can. And, if the mystical continues to bless me, then that is sweet.

You kidded me about if there is or is not a “God”?

I have no idea. And I don’t think I’m going to ever going to be capable of deciding such a thing either – except by faith. And that takes me back, again, into the beliefs, biases, hopes, fears, and wishes loop.

I’ve got no business in that loop if I want to see clearly. The unknowable fact of whether there is or there is not a God, simply doesn’t come into my concerns.

I have to confess that I do not see the “ultimate reality” or “naked reality”. And I haven’t a hope of doing so.

But then I’m not claiming to. That was never the point.

Our experiences and our narratives, are a moving frame; a frame that is advancing through time. A frame in which the contents inevitably change as experiences are experienced and as understandings develop, deepen or are transcended.

As the saying goes, no one can put their foot into the same river twice.

Consider:

Many of us who, have looked at a bias held by another, will have thought, ‘This person is being partially blinded by this bias.’ I.e., they are not seeing the world around them as clearly as they might.

I’ve told the story several times about walking into a psych lecture in university. The subject was Freud’s Defense Mechanisms. 45 minutes later, I walked out and saw a changed world around me.

Experiences and insights inevitably push at us to absorb them. After all, we live in an existence wherein change is said to be the only constant. Change presses upon us; whether we open our arms to it or not.

Change changes us. The contents of our moving frame changes. What we are experiencing changes because the contents of our frame have changed.

And, yes, our experience is all still undoubtedly subjective.

There is no question of pulling the curtain away and seeing the “ultimate reality” or “naked reality”. That was never the point.

But the person who transcends a partially blinding bias will see what is there to be seen more clearly without the distortion.

And thus it is with all beliefs, religions, biases, opinions, hopes and fears; to name a few of our sources of distortion.

Each distortion we diminish lets us see a bit more clearly. Each moves us some immeasurable distance closer to the unobtainable ultimate. Each new thing we learn changes the contents of the frame and alters the view.

If the mutability of the moving frame that our experiences arise from is grasped, then the possibility of influencing what the frame is fed can be conceived.

Choosing to try to diminish all the beliefs, opinions, biases, hopes and fears from within a frame seems likely to increasingly clarify the frame’s perception of the reality around it.

It is a road that promises new vistas for the frame without ever a hint of a promise of the road’s end.

After trying many other things, I’ve found that this is the thing that I find the most intriguing.

This ‘need’ for meaning in our lives shapes so very much of how we perceive the world.

The first thing I would say about this is that for the vast majority of the human race, I would never consider trying to deny them the sustenance of believing that there is a meaning for their life.

But for those few of us out here in the hinterlands thrashing in the bushes, I’d say that we should consider why we humans feel such a thirst for meaning.

We are as clearly the product of the evolution that shaped us.

We are, at this late stage of evolution on this planet, intelligent self-aware creatures.

And the evolution, that we are the products of, has honed us, and the survival of all creatures, upon our ability to reliably detect and understand what is going on around us in the environment; as the optimum way to ensure survival and propagation.

So, we are hard-wired to incessantly try to understand what we are seeing when we look out at the world.

And it is from this trying to understand that arises a terrible cognitive dissonance.

Having manifested self-awareness and the inevitable and concurrent sense of personhood that accompanies self-awareness, the observation that we appear to just live and then die deeply offends our sense of personhood, presence and continuity.

“I am, and I can see that I am, and then … I’m not?” Why, why, why?

Even today, with all of our biological knowledge, the central point of Dawkins’ book, “The Selfish Gene”, eludes us.

“You mean it is not all about me and my sense of persistent personhood?”

In the deeper stages of Zen Buddhism, and other meditative and introspective practices, it is often seen that our egos and our sense of personhood are illusions.

Everything is change. We come, things happen and we go. So it is.

Only the illusionary sense of personhood, and the associated automatically arising defensive barrier, the ego, resist the simple evidence of our transience.

So, in the face of this terrible cognitive dissonance, we dream up religions to ‘explain’ things and to comfort ourselves that our person-hoods are not really just transient patterns.

The book, “The Worm at the Core”, by Sheldon Solomon discusses all of this quite nicely.

If our need for ‘meaning’ drives us to construct religions that we believe in to comfort ourselves, then I can only group this phenomenon into the same basket with the other distortions which stand between us and increased clarity.

Determinism or Free-will, These two are a real quandary. People tend to line up on one side or the other of the question; as if there were no other sides.

But there are.

The ‘Either-Or’ construct was probably the earliest bit of logic that our recently evolved semi-intelligent ancestors became consciously aware of. And thus it was enshrined, early on, as one of our first ‘go to’ strategies to be used when reasoning out the world around us.

But in truth, the reality being considered is under no obligation to conform to an ‘Either-Or’ expectation.

Nor does the choice between Free-will and Determinism define the only relevent alternatives.

And that’s a good thing. Because pure Determinism renders us pointless. And Free-will requires us to be Gods independent of existence.

The alternative we have been missing lies all around us; in plain sight.

It is looking out of your eyes this very moment and it in your cat lying on the couch on the other side of the room.

If you are an animal which experiences the urge to survive, then you are that alternative.

Existence is not defined solely by Newtonian cause and effect Determanism on one hand and Quantum probabilities on the other.

There is another dimension to our reality called complexity.

Visualize a line that runs from Determinism on one end to Quantum probabilities on the other. Now, add another line which rises vertically from the first and call it Complexity.

It is on this line that you will find “Life”.

Life is patterns of matter which replicate themselves using energy harvested from the environment around them.

Life has evolved and increased its complexity for nearly 4 billion years.

One form, the evolving complexity took about 600 million years ago, was animals.

The more complex animals have nervous systems. These systems allow the animal’s environment to be sensed so decisions, which optimize its survival and propagation, can be made. Emotionally, these animals ‘care’ if they survive or not.

This is life-based ‘local will’.

So, when you put milk in your coffee today, it was not an action presdestined to happen since existence began. Nor did it require your God essence, from somewhere beyond this causal existence, to step in to help make the choice.

It was just you, you sweet little self-replicating pattern of matter. You, who preserves the coherence of your physical manifestation using excess energy shed by the local stellar unit.

And that’s good.

Good because the saddest part of the Determinism/Free-will debate concerns those who cannot find their way out of this determinist/Free-will trap.

Many of these people are genuine seekers; people who have waded deeply into philosophical questions, spiritual traditions and into non-duality.

And they have begun by correctly concluding that our sense of a personal self and of ego-hood are illusions. And they are.

But then they’ve further concluded that if all existence is one thing, then a personal will must also be an illusion.

This is wrong.

And they do themselves and the world a terrible disservice with this conclusion. Embracing it removes some of our best and brightest from actively contributing to the shaping of our future.