It has been a few weeks since I posted my last episode. No real reason, except I had nothing to say. And when I have nothing to say I find it best to say nothing. During these weeks I have been interviewed on a couple of podcasts and did a couple of one-on-one Zoom calls. I have also received and answered a number of emails.
I have been reflecting on those conversations. There is one thing that I keep coming back to, and that is the inability of me - or anyone for that matter - to communicate the nature and the experience of this unitive reality that Jesus called the Kingdom of God, and which most of us simply call God or the Divine or the One or Reality, or something along those lines.
As much as I try there is no way I can communicate this very well. I find it amazingly difficult even to point to it. Jesus pointed to it so well in a unique way for his time and place. I struggle to point to this except in a very awkward manner.
People email me questions. Sometimes they are very lengthy and complex questions. They are always very sincere and thoughtful questions. Intense and emotional questions sometimes. People are struggling to apprehend or comprehend nonduality. They are struggling to get their idea of what nonduality is to fit the evidence. Always behind the questions is the assumption that it should all make sense. That there are clear and simple answers to the difficult questions about the meaning and purpose of life and the universe.
I respect those questions very much, and I respect the people who ask those questions very much. But the hard truth is that there are no answers, at least not the kind of answers people are looking for. People are looking for a worldview that will make everything make sense, but this nondual reality is beyond the mind. As I have often said, that is the literal meaning of the word repentance in the NT.
This is beyond the ability of the psyche of comprehend. This means there are no logical solutions to the problem of evil and suffering and meaning and purpose. There is no answer to the question “Why?” At least not an answer that can be framed in words. But when Reality is seen and known from the inside, then it all makes sense in an intuitive way.
I often point people to the Book of Job in the OT. It describes this better than any other. It is one of my favorite books, along with another OT wisdom book, Ecclesiastes. Job is a person who asked all the hard questions. He was insistent and relentless, and he would not take the silence of God for an answer. He also did not accept the theological answers provided by his religious friends, who are given the names Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Near the end of the book another guy named Elihu comes in also.
They are religious people who think they have it all figured out. They know the cause of suffering and evil. They say it is a matter of cause and effect. OT scholars calls this the Deuteronomic philosophy of history. It is represented in Eastern religions with the concept of karma. People think that karma explains it all. And when it was realized that it didn’t explain things in this lifetime, they pushed cycle of cause and effect back into a previous lifetime.
That is just kicking the can down the road. When you push it into a past lifetime, it becomes impossible to prove because one could never know exactly what one did in a previous lifetime to cause what is happening in this lifetime. The Buddha did not buy it and I don’t buy it. And Job didn’t buy the Hebrew equivalent of karma. It is too much of a pat answer that does not hold up to scrutiny.
In his time Job would have none of it. It did not make sense to him, and he would not accept it simply on faith or based on religious tradition and authority or what his friends said were their personal experience. It wasn’t his experience. He didn’t buy it. That is why I love Job. He refused all the answers of the religion his time, just like the preacher of Ecclesiastes did. In the end that refusal to religious systems bore fruit. Job persisted until God showed his face.
Job had an epiphany. What did God say? God did not give any answers to the questions that Job asked. Instead God provided only more questions. The result is this divine questioning was a direct encounter with the Divine in which Job experienced the reality that he had been seeking through all his questions. Job did not receive any logical answers that could be put into words at the end of the book, but he knew intuitively the Answer (capital A.) He knew the One that transcended and dispelled all questions and answers.
The problem with spiritual seekers is that they are in their heads. They think that what they are looking for is answers to questions in their heads. But ultimately there are no answers to the questions in our heads. Maybe we can deceive ourselves and convince ourselves for a while that the stock answers provide by our religious tradition are true, but if we are honest with ourselves we will eventually admit they are not sufficient. Only when we come to the end of the need to ask questions and have answers, do we paradoxically become one with the Answer, the Reality that transcends questions and answers. Questions and answers drop away. There is no longer the need for questions and answers.
We see that all our questions were really ways that we invented to put off coming to grips with Truth. Another way of saying this is that all religious answers are seen to be false in the light of Ultimate Reality. All religious and spiritual systems with all their in-group complex language and terminology are just clever ways that the ego has developed to avoid its own death, which is the necessary prerequisite to Truth.
The ego wants to have something to hold onto. If it cannot have it worldly things then it will have it spiritual things. Then it will spend its years trying to convince itself and others that its spiritual understanding and interpretation is true and other religions and schools of thought are false. So religions divide into sects and schools and traditions and denominations, all following their own founders and teachers. It is all a huge spiritual ego trap.
Truth is not in our head. It cannot be understood with the mind. It cannot be communicated with words. That means that the most direct path is to get out of our heads. Don’t let our minds control the process. All we need to do is lay aside our minds for the briefest of moments and notice the Reality that is always present here now. That Reality is the unspoken answer to all questions.
I cannot give anyone any answers. That is why I do not call myself a spiritual teacher. No one can teach this. The most anyone can do is discourage people from wasting their time. In one sense all I can do is point, but even that is not really accurate. For how can one point to something that is not separate from you – from where one already is and what one already is. It is more a matter of saying “No, no, no. no.” Not this, not that. Neti, neti. You point out what it is not hoping that people will get worn out by coming up with new strategies and ideas for what it is, and just notice what is always only here now. Anyway that is enough talking about what cannot be talked about.