Friday 18 June 2010

Reith Lectures 2010 - lecture three: What We'll Never Know

 As soon as I saw this absurd heading I was aware of the thought: "will we ever REALLY KNOW any thing?".

Within our own defined terms we 'know' things - but a genuine investigation might ask - what is the presumed I that knows? What is IS knowing? WHAT really is being known - in any event or circumstance?

No matter how ingeniously inventive a mind may be - its own reality to itself is built on presumptions that run exactly like a computer program. Unless of course we 'be still and know'. (In which case such programs can be observed along with the desires and beliefs that they are constituted of).

The mind in exercising judgements and definitions attempts to control reality - and increasingly thereby suffers an oppositional reality to which it is helplessly victim.

The mind in the presence and flow of awareness expresses an inherent movement that is the nature of the flow - and is characterized by a communioned trust. You could say this is a 'mystical' knowing - except it is universal and always already the case -  a Universal knowing that is utterly beyond all dualistic mentality - yet is utterly native to your being.

Explaining things and calling such explanation 'knowing' is utterly absurd. The absolutely interrelated nature of all things includes the act of consciousness itself. To assert a world outside of mind - and then attempt to 'know' it in order to control it for 'our own good' is to accept without question a starting point of willful self delusion.

However, the investigation into the manifest world WILL yield fruits of an awakening and startling nature - for what we presume to be 'out there' will reveal itself - or be revealed - as a profound and inescapable nature - in which what we thought to be our mind is realized to be an instrument of feedback for a greater Mind - capitalized because the truth of mind we identify with exclusively is but an extension within what can be called Mind - yet cannot itself be known - except by its effects.
And yet the DIRECT expressions of Mind - are of an order and quality whose nature constitutes all that truly Is. Much of what we take to be our mind is a superficial clutter and chatter - not unlike a static signal serving to jam or block the airwaves.

Could there be any proof to what I suggest?

Consider in honesty the following statement:
“I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what
I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on my?
self.”

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will
TELL you of Itself.
(From A Course in Miracles)