Let's not pretend that we know what the universe is, what God might be and what nature is because we don't. We are almost totally ignorant, we know enough to survive and we know enough to try and make our lives as comfortable and is reasonable as possible. And that's about it. Now when we think about God many people think of a being that has some kind of volition, some kind of choice. Spinoza's very, very clearly that the universe manifests necessarily. Very important word. There's no choice involved. The universe manifests as it manifests with no design, no purpose, no end goal - it manifests necessarily and necessarily means that at each moment it exists in the only way it might possibly exist. There is no contingency, only necessity. Now if you think about that a little bit you'll find that you can ask questions such as "was what has happened in Syria recently necessary?" And the answer is of course yes. The second world war, and the deaths of 50 million people if you include Stalin's purges, was that necessary? The answer is yes. This is a manifestation of nature, the universe, God, whatever term you want to use. And people don't like that, they don't like the idea that God, who is an entity that does not manifest in a way where choice is involved, is the cause of all these awful things. This is reality. Most people turn to religion because they want comfort. You'll find no comfort however in contemplating reality. God is not some anthropomorphic entity that thinks about things and says "oh yeah I'd like a few planets over there and some galaxies over there and oh I'll create this law of gravity." There's none of that. That the universe exists necessarily means that it is just a pure manifestation of the nature of existence, or the nature of God. These things are hard to understand but they are life changing if you really understand them, and they'll change your whole approach to life. The universe does not exist for the sake of an end, the universe has no purpose, there's no end in view, so neither does it act for the sake of an end. The earth, your life, my life, nature on this planet, our galaxy, none of it exists for a purpose. It is just a pure manifestation. Purpose is a purely human invention, and in any case as you may or may not know, our galaxy the Milky Way, is due to collide with Andromeda in about two billion years. Of course there will be mayhem on a grand cosmic scale. Although when you consider that there are four trillion galaxies in the universe then it will be as nothing. Locally it will be mayhem but in the context of the whole universe, nothing.
If the universe has no purpose, if the universe if a pure manifestation of being, a manifestation that is necessary in its nature, then that is also the nature of our lives. Now because we are not infinite beings, there are things we have to do. The idea of purpose in human life is useful but fundamentally unfounded. You may go to college to gain some qualification because you want to earn a reasonable amount of money in some better-paid job - well that's clearly some kind of purpose. But it's only one kind of purpose, its a life serving purpose, it serves the purpose of your existence, your physical existence, making sure that it continues. In reality if you were to ask a cat hunting a rat or a mouse whether it was fulfilling some kind of purpose, and if it could answer then I think it would probably say "no I just hunt mice that's what I do." There's no purpose it's just a manifestation of its nature, and so this desire to survive is just part of our nature, it's not something we've created as such, it's not a purpose as such, it's just part of the nature of existence.
ABANDON HEROISM
Big boys don’t cry – or so they are told. Girls may get similar programming in the form of ‘be sensible’ or ‘grow up.’ The preference for heroism starts at an early age, and from society’s point of view it is advantageous – it makes us tolerate all kinds of crap that maybe we wouldn’t do otherwise. The British are particularly good at this with their stiff-upper-lip. Society as a whole promotes all kinds of hero – entrepreneurs, celebrities and of course military personnel. To gain self-worth many young people feel they have to emulate the hero, and indeed society is not reluctant to bestow honors on the hero. What isn’t so visible is the price that is paid to be a hero and the millions of people who do not make it to hero status who as a result feel inadequate to some extent.
Well, society is one thing, and we might expect nothing better of mammon. However, for those pursuing so-called spiritual, religious and even philosophical activities, the hero dynamic is still in play. It can take particularly pathetic forms in some groups and movements, and I know of one group of people where heroism equated to how much chicken shit one could move in a given period of time. More generally the heroes come in the form of the enlightened ones, gurus of various types, the wise ones, and anyone who cares to claim they have specialized knowledge. We are all suckers for this because we are desperate to transfer our fear and uncertainty onto someone who seems to have all the answers. In this way, we abdicate responsibility. But there are no free lunches. If we have made such a transfer there is an implicit understanding that we must emulate such a person – do as they do, say as they say, understand what they understand. We will be advised to be mindful, to meditate, to study, to make efforts beyond the norm – in a word to reinforce our already overloaded superego with should and shouldn’t.
Abandon heroism in all its forms – the guru, the enlightened, the entrepreneur, the celebrity, the movie star, the striving student. It is obvious that we should have a correct understanding of our capabilities – what we can do and what we cannot. The world around us is infinitely more powerful than we are and can destroy us in an instant (oops you didn’t see that 40-ton truck?). Capitulate to the power of the universe, and as the Stoics would say – reason never demands anything contrary to nature. So, if it is raining, you must abandon your plans to go sunbathing. If you are unwell, take it easy. If math isn’t your thing, put in minimum effort to achieve what you need to accomplish. If your philosophical pursuits are not fun, drop them. In any case, life laughs at our self-importance and pompous pretensions. Learn to capitulate, and in the immortal words of Homer – if at first, you do not succeed, give up. Practice weakness and taking the easy road – because this easy road is the hard road!
Abandon enlightenment, the search, striving and effort, and as it says in the Tao Te Ching, bend like a willow in the wind. Do not resist - and drop ambition. Easier said than done, but we all recognize unnecessary and forced effort. Ultimately, we will abandon desire because we see how futile and vain are the things that we desire – even life itself.
DO NOT CHANGE ANY SETTINGS
It seems that most people are looking for something, and two things can drive that. On the one hand, it can be because they're in some emotional pain. It's a natural thing to look for some remedy to that. Maybe they feel insecure, or they're frightened, or they feel inadequate, or they feel uncomfortable with other people, whatever it is that causes them pain. Emotional pain can linger in the background pretty much all the time and obviously affect most of the things you do. A lot of people are looking for relief from their unhappiness or sadness. They wouldn't formulate it like that, but basically, that's what they're doing. The second reason people are very often dissatisfied is because they've read somewhere that there are things like enlightenment or moksha or salvation or anything along those lines; they've learned there's some preferred state to the one they already have. The people that sell that kind of thing are always charlatans, and I make no exceptions. If anybody is talking to you about some happier state that can come about through some meditation or whatever, then they are charlatans because it doesn't work like that.
Let me talk about two approaches to this thing we call life. The worst thing you can try and do is to try and change. Even if you're very unhappy or very dissatisfied, the problem doesn't lie with you. It lies with the ideas you've been fed or the things that have happened to you. If you've had, for example, a dismissive father or a violent father or an abusive father or mother or whatever, then those things would have produced scars and will have an impact on the way that you handle your life, and there's nothing you can do about that. Trying to do something about it is almost certainly goin
g to make things worse. Trying to change yourself is an act of violence toward yourself.
I remember many years ago, after spending fifteen years reading the works of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and various other people, I met someone who'd worked with Gurdjieff. At the very start of the conversation, she said 'what do you want?' And I said, 'I want to change.' She just looked at me and said, 'why on earth would you want to do that?' I was so shocked because I realized that those fifteen years of reading and studying, what was essentially gobbledygook and nonsense, had made things much, much worse for me. And here, now, was a voice of reason. A clear-headed, intelligent voice of reason. I'll always remember it because it was like fifty tons of weight dropped off my shoulders.
So, do not try and change yourself because trying to change yourself is an act of violence against what you are right here and now. What you are here and now is determined by your genetics and by the environment. It's just like trying to change anything that's been molded by the environment, say a stone that's become rounded by the constant action of water. If that stone was to speak to itself and say, 'I don't like myself being rounded, I should be a pointy stone,' that would be an act of violence toward itself. You are whatever you are, and whatever you consider being your shortcomings, they're fine. I'm not dismissing the fact that there may be things within you that cause you pain, but you don't address those things by trying to change them. You address them by looking at them and by understanding them. That isn't quite as easy as it sounds, but I'm offering you some relief by telling you that to try and change your behavior or to censor it in some way is a violent thing to do towards yourself.
That's the first thing people do when they realize their life isn't what they want it to be, they try and change themselves. Well, there is another route, and that route is through understanding. Understanding doesn't mean that you look at yourself and say 'I do this in this situation if I was different...' or you read a book that says when you're in this situation and need to do something else. No, no it's nothing like that, you understand your nature and the way that you work, and that's a long-term project. If you're not undertaking that long-term project then at least don't try and change anything, you will make it worse. Understanding is the real way to achieve some liberation within yourself.
There are two ways to try and acquire understanding. The first way is to consume any old rubbish that comes your way, and I talked about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and of course, if you've looked at Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, then you can read that, as many people have, for twenty, thirty years and still get almost nowhere with it. I know people who've done that and all they do is project a whole pile of their own stuff onto it and that doesn't help, because Beelzebub's Tales does not help you use reason. It doesn't help you use reason because either Gurdjieff is talking in terms of parables or some metaphors or whatever and you must apply some interpretation. And the same with Ouspensky, and you may or may not know that Ouspensky abandoned all his work at the end of his life realizing that it was all a waste of time. Why? Because there was no reason involved in all of that.
We've got to the point where many people think that spiritual work if you want to use that term, or psychological work, or some quest for understanding, means indulging in things that are slightly esoteric. So, avoid anything that is esoteric, and by 'esoteric' I mean something that cannot be appreciated by your reason. If you're reading something that is just making statements you either must believe merely because someone said it, or if it only offers very, very poor justifications, then drop it. There is something strange about human beings, and it's something that Epictetus, a Greek philosopher, said. He said, 'our reason will not be fooled.' Something within you knows when something doesn't make sense or when it doesn't hang together. All the books on astral bodies, enlightenment, speaking with the dead, strange occult practices, forget it. It's just going to screw you up.
What's the other approach to understanding? Well, the other approach is to use your reason. That doesn't necessarily mean bypassing Hindu texts or Buddhist texts, and even some Christian texts. If reason is being applied then you will get something from it, you will get some understanding. The Renaissance philosophers are particularly rich in meaning. Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kant are my favorites, but you can also read the Stoics, the ancient Greeks. People like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epicurus who wasn't a Stoic but even so is informative. If you want further reading, you're going to get reasoned wisdom from these people. Things that you can apply in your life that will help you understand life instead of confusing you, which is what most mumbo-jumbo type spiritual and self-help books do.
Let me go over that because I've covered quite a lot of ground. First thing: do not try and change yourself. Of course, if you are going to do this it implies a change, but maybe it's the only change you should make. If you are going through some process of comparing yourself against some ideal, and you believe that you should modify your behavior or what you are, against that ideal, drop it. It's going to mess you up, guaranteed. You're not going to try and change yourself; you're going to try and understand. Understanding does not mean 'oh I've just read that I should be kinder to people and I understand that, so I'm now going to try and be kinder to people.' Don't do it. Anyway, if the book you have read has somehow convinced you that you need to be kinder to people, then there is almost no understanding in that. You need to understand 'why do I feel hatred towards people sometimes?' and if you read what I wrote previously, you might get some understanding of that.
Understanding is the way and reason is the way. The problem is, of course, that following reasoned arguments is far more difficult than listening to some assertions that sound comforting and affirming that have no sense or reasoning behind them. When you start understanding, you might perceive an in-depth understanding of your own nature, your emotional nature particularly, and why you feel crap a lot of the time. So stick with reason and don't believe anything just because you read it. Take your time from one step to another step and open your eyes gradually through understanding.
To summarize, if you're looking for something, then it's either because you're unhappy or because someone has convinced you that you're not OK as you are. You may genuinely be a happy person but not know it. There are only two approaches to the situation if you are unhappy and want a more fulfilling life; The first one is you try and change, which is just an act of violence against yourself so don't do it. The second one is to acquire an understanding which requires work on your part, and if you want the most valuable thing on earth which is contentment and peace, then you will have to pay the price. There's no way around it I'm afraid, so you make the choice.
BEYOND PLEASURE AND PAIN
Anthony de Mello was a Jesuit Priest who said, ‘life is both wonderful and awful.' The Vatican heavily criticized his unconventional outlook, but it didn't stop him from pursuing his own path. The fact that life is both wonderful and awful is something we all experience, and I'd like to suggest that we should rise above this duality of experience, simply because it causes us so much pain.
We naturally tend to seek pleasure, because pleasure is life-affirming – food, shelter, companionship, family, approval, a warm sunny day. All these things are non-threatening – usually anyway. And since our primary animal driver is the desire to survive, and pleasure is nothing but the reinforcement of this drive, we find survival enhancing things pleasurable. It's our programming by nature, and we cannot usually escape it. On the other hand, anything that threatens our survival creates pain – poor health, lack of money, loneliness, disapproval – and so on. Again, this is our programming. Nature needs us to seek life-affirming situations because it is in her interest that we survive and breed. Any species that is not driven in this way would not survive and would become extinct. And so, the whole dynamic is self-selective.
So, let's take two extremes of experience. You spend a warm sunny day with a new partner, have lunch at a fabulous restaurant, and walk along a st
retch of beach holding hands. Or, you visit your doctor and are told you have terminal, incurable cancer, and only have a few months to live. Without a doubt, we would all prefer the first circumstance, because our programming for survival would be well satisfied – food for the body, accommodating weather, and a potential mate for procreation. The second situation is catastrophic for the survival instinct, and so we feel intense pain.
The Corporeal Fantasy Page 16