Dear Friends,
"Time to change channels," a friend writes to me about this never-ending god-business. Were it so simple. What I've learned is that there is no changing channels when the medium itself is the message. It's all TV. It's all bifurcated consciousness. It's all the God Game. I see myself now as a recovering god-aholic. And talking to you via this blog is my way of staying in a 12-step program that meets in cyberspace and staying sober. Talking, sometimes screaming, sometimes ranting, is my way of going to meetings. "My name is Dave and I am a chimera trying to stop chasing the chimera called God." One chimera is enough, as Ramana Maharshi might answer if I talked to him using such terms.
A Zen master was asked how he treated neurotics. He said he gave them plenty of pasture but made sure there was a fence. As another friend so eloquently wrote me yesterday, giving plenty of pasture was the method of his/our teacher, Bawa Muhaiyadden. I remember once arguing with Bawa about the importance of a mantra given to me by a previous teacher. "I was told this was the sacred mantra used by sages throughout time to unlock the secrets of the universe," I pleaded stubbornly. Bawa said simply, "That was then, this is now. Time for something else."
I lost count of all the something-elses years ago. Only recently did I realize that the god-aholic was in a constant quest for new methadones to substitute for the original heroin. That heroin: religion. So the torments of sobriety bring new cravings and pain. Life without religion as a useable adjunct is very hard. Developing the theory of evolution cost Darwin his Judeo-Christian faith; but out of fear and compassion for others, he withheld his findings for years and years.
As much as I hate to say this, religion is for me an incurable wound--like shrapnel embedded in some place too deep or delicate for a surgeon's scalpel. I have to learn to live with this handicap. That means meta-physical therapy.
This past weekend, I was readying boxes of books to take to a local thrift store. I put most of Bawa's books in the sacks I was loading. As I did so, I trembled, as if I was daring the God I am fighting hard to be done with once and for always to strike me down with a vintage bolt of his signature lightning. That guilt gave me an instant reading of the progress--or lack thereof--of my recovery.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I need this exchange. I need your company. I need to see how you cope with your drinking problems. I know I need to talk about mine. And from the beauty of your emails I know you need to talk about yours. I don't know if, as my friend Ed Weiss believes, evolutionary biology will explain the one remaining question: why Creation in the first place? I still believe in what is now being called "moral intelligence" and I still believe that there is a 100th monkey 10,000 miles away unaccountably, spontaneously ready to act in a higher-order way no creature in the vast immediate vicinity has before. Sooner or later, my mythology of ontogeny tells me, non-duality will become a permanent, common feature of consciousness--and that in this way we God-aholics are evolutionary pioneers. Unitary consciousness will become coin and custom of the realm. It is then that we will have the protection of revelation against the veils that keep us from it. Nothing to seek or find in a world of constant disclosure.
Please keep your cards and letters coming. Address them to the name Buddha is rumored to have taken after his enlightenment, "No One You Know"--Yet.
Love to you all, and I'll keep brewing green tea.
David
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