the fundamental question

From Carlo Suares:

In some detective novels, at a point similar to this, the author sometimes challenges the readers. They have all the clues. Can they find who the murderer is? The question here is somewhat different: can the reader guess what the author thinks he can murder him psychologically with?.. (There are two kinds of deaths: the dead death and the death of resurrection. I do not care to know whether it is possible or not to resurrect dead bodies. It is irrelevant.)

Of course the reader will only find here words, words. He will not die psychologically unless he plays the game. If he plays the game he may or may not, at his will.

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Here is the game.

"Have you in mind any basic fundamental question, really vital for you?" asks C.S. to a friend.

"I have," says X.Y.Z., "three fundamental questions: What is living? What is death? What is life?"

"I've heard them already and am sorry to say they are not basic. When you ask: what is living? that question stands upon, is supported by, your notion of living. That notion is not fundamental: it rests on the concept "living" as opposed to "non-living". Dig into it and you will see that the concept "living" is a conclusion, an abstraction, a projection of the mind. When you ask "what is death?" you complicate the matter still further. As I already said, you oppose arbitrarily death to life. When you ask "what is death?", you are implicitly and unknowingly asking "what is birth?" Do you want an answer based on biology, ethnology or natural history? And of course, when you ask "what is life?", you are sure to receive innumerable answers. Scientists, metaphysicians, mystics, or anybody around the corner, will tell you "what life is". Everyone has his notion of what life is. This question is anything but fundamental."

"But I have no idea of what life really is. My question is really fundamental."

"It isn't. You have in mind, again, the distinction between that life is and that it is not. Do you consider it to be a state of ceaseless change, a functional activity peculiar to organized matter? Or is it a mental projection resulting from such assertions as "I am life," etc. . . supposed to have been uttered by some deity? Whatever you mean by "what is life" has an enormous background of knowledge, observation, creed or faith. It is not a fundamental question. It is based on a qualification and a classification resulting of an inner feeling of "being" and an outward superficial observation of things that are considered a priori to be alive."

"All right. So what are the fundamental questions?"

"Not the questions: there is one and there can only be ONE fundamental question; don't you see? Two questions would not be basic: they would arise from two different points of view, concepts or perceptions, hence they would contain a cause unknown to you, for being two. They would be effects of that cause. An effect is not fundamental, nor is the cause, because a cause is always the effect of another cause. By definition, the basic question is based on nothing. It arises from the nature and structure of thought in its clearest perception."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Of course you don't. You do. I have formulated the fundamental question in every one of my books, lectures, articles. You have read it a number of times in the last twenty years. I always declared it to be basic."

"You mean I skipped it and it is fundamental?"

"No. You skipped it because it is fundamental."

"Let's drop your rigmarole and come to the point. What is it?"

"We've gone a longer way than you think towards it. Will you now, please, keep in mind everything you know, believe in, think about; everything you feel to be obvious, every certainty, such as the simple fact that we are both here, talking together. . . or, reader, the obvious fact that you are reading this. Now, if you came to play the game, keep in mind everything, conscious or unconscious that is in your mind, and even the fact that you exist, keep it all under your scrutiny so as to be sure that you will not use any part of it, absolutely not. Shut your eyes, open them, make a statement. State something."

"I see something."

"Wake up! You are not playing the game. Discard the I and the seeing."

"Well! There is something anyway."

"Correct. There is something. And if you are honestly playing the game, you are not satisfied in totally containing, limiting, classifying the things you see as: this is a book, a room, or anything else. The immediate causes for their being what they are and for being there do not explain away how it is that they are there at all. You know nothing about that. Your consciousness is in a state of waking up to the blunt, absolute unchallengable fact that there is something, period. This statement is so simple that it is already difficult to come to it. Any average mind, dreaming its childish dream, would say: of course there is something! And to prove its point, it would describe the outer world with the notion that every element it is obvious because it is perceived and recognizable through some equivalence. That obviousness of things acts as a screen to the fact that everything is included in the unknowable nature of time and space. We have now gone a long way towards the statement there is something, because on the way we have acquired the capacity of knowing that we don't know fundamentally what it is that is. So what is the basic question that arises?"

"What is it that is?"

"No, no: you are falling asleep again. Your question is an appeal to link something that you cannot think about to something that belongs to one or another of your memories. You want to exchange the unthinkable for the thinkable. You are trying to draw upon the provisions stored in your mind. As I said a while ago: think. Think with the naked intrinsic nature and structure of thought. Thought is made of time and space and cannot understand time or space: thought does not understand itself. So think!"
(Please reader, this is vital: Think!)

"Well... there is something... I do not allow myself to recognize any part in it, because, of course, I would not be thinking: I would only be searching concepts in my repertory of classified words. I am therefore compelled to state that I simply don't know how it is that that which is is here at all."

"We have come at last to the fundamental question; how is it there is anything at all? Can you answer that?"

"No. I have already seen through the texture of thought. Its nature is time, its structure is measures. So I cannot think how it is that anything is."

"That's it! I can think five billion light-years or one billion's part of a second, but I cannot think a beginning of time, or a time that has already always been. I cannot think a something created out of nothing - and anyway a nothing pregnant with a future something would already be something. I cannot think an always, always, and when I go deeper and deeper in it I feel insanity awaiting. An always always before and an always always after. . . always always go into it. . . If you tried to go into it, to feel it, to mean it, if you could for a single moment try to live with the notion that the something that you are compelled to assert has never begun and will never end, you would soon have your thought declare itself at its end. You have discarded as being already something the erroneous alternative of a nothing-out-of-which-something-was-created. So only the unthinkable is left."

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That is the end of the dialogue. The weapon for your psychological murder and resurrection is in you. It is up to you. It is up to you to allow it to go through you.

During one whole day keep it in mind. Do whatever job you have to do. Meet whatever people you have to meet. During one whole day keep on saying to yourself:

I do not know how it is that anything is.
I meet a Christian, a Jew, a Moslem
They say God-Elohim-Allah.
It is irrelevant
Would deities be something?
I do not know how it is that anything is.
Some say there is a liberation
A transformation
From irreality
A facing oneself,
It is irrelevant
Would such things be something?
I do not know how it is that anything is.
Some say: who am I?
I am not this gross body
I am this gross body.
What is the nature of awareness?
What is the self?
Is there a self?
There is a self.
There is no self.
The world is to be removed
It is not to be removed
What is the nature of the mind?
There is a path to inquiry.
There is no path
I must practice
I must not practice
Everything is the Siva, the Self.
Give yourself up to God
Do not.
Do.
Whether such things are or are not
It is irrelevant
I do not know how it is that anything is.

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I do not know, I do not know. I do not know. In your religions, philosophies, wisdoms, paths, no-paths; in your self-knowledge, your assertions, no-assertions, in whatever you say, not say, do, not do; in your petty exalted minds; in your self-centredness non-centered; in your conflicts, peace; wherever you are, however you blend with the All; you are satisfied in evading the fundamental devastating question; you stop at some point; you do not go far enough; you do not enter the dangerous zone; you cling to erroneous evidences, you do not go through.

I cannot go through
My consciousness is a prisoner
A prisoner in the immeasurable world
However large and deep
However exalted
The "is" is a prison to my awakening
I do not know
I know nothing
What is this?
And I am this.
What? What?
And because I cannot go through and because I do not consent to stop asking myself and not being able to say how it is that anything is, the question hits me right in my solar plexus; it causes nausea; I feel sick; I feel in my blood my psyche dying. Yes. It is driven to its death because every element of what once was its structure is dissolved in the fundamental enigma, in the unfathomable mystery of the fact that something is.

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If you are not afraid to "lose your mind", if you play the game with great purpose and vigor, you will discover that what you are doing is obeying the Aleph's impulse in your psyche to free itself from all the memories that capture it, anaesthetize it, or, alas, more often than not, annihilate it. Your psyche becomes the empty dwelling of the Explosive Energy, whereas your body is more and more cognizant of its conservative, compressive purpose. Psyche and body, "in joint opposition" recreate in you the cosmic game of the One Energy in two opposite directions, and the human sense of fitness is alive and operating in and through you.

Be watchful! Never, never lose the fundamental question: Your fitness is no answer! Let not the established order in you trap you into any certainty. You know, yet do not know that the Cosmic Energy is at work in its abode in you. You know yet you do not know what its process is. You understand yet you do not understand the words Explosive-Compressive Energy. You no longer hear what so many people have to say about spiritual experiences, self-realization, good and evil, irreality and reality, being in a dream, being awake. You don't know. You don't know what the ultimate reality of a person, a flower an object is. Therefore you are free to look, to see, to respect, because, after all, there never is any murder.

"Because I respect everything," says Cain, "I am only an orderly craftsman. Because I respect the psyche I do not want it to give itself, to prostitute itself to every false obviousness in which Aleph is lost. Because I respect thought I do not want it to believe that it can find Aleph, hence lose it. Because I respect words I only accept those that have a real, understandable meaning, signifying a clear designation. I, because of Aleph alive, am only its humble craftsman. I want every Bayt I make use of to be as perfect as possible, in its category. I therefore respect my body to begin with. I want it in good enough shape to do whatever the unknown inner impulse of explosive Aleph in me can do with my abilities. Because I respect my abilities I put them at the service of Aleph, polishing them endlessly. Yes! I am only Aleph's craftsman."

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Some understand Cain, die and resurrect psychologically. Others don't know what he is talking about: he doesn't exist for them; they go on carrying the weight of their ordinary existences; they are satisfied to think they are this or that; they are their beliefs, creeds, opinions, positions, aspirations, habits, customs, memories and all their psychological structures. Those feel instinctively that Cain's look into them, through them, could dispel their very notion of being. Those, indeed, kill Cain. Mind you! They kill him in themselves! Hence, they remain simple bags of blood, and Cain, in contrast, is exalted "sevenfold".

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/suares/cain2.html

Unconditional Love

We don't begin to understand what this means.
So let's begin - from the master kabbalist, Carlos Suares:

"An important postulate of the Yetsira is: Aleph with everything and everything with Aleph: Bayt with everything and everything with Bayt (or Vayt). Aleph being the timeless, unthinkable, eternal, or explosive Energy (or whichever word we wish to use for what evades all mental concepts) and Bayt (or Vayt) being any container in whatever form, shape vibration, undulation, ray, etc. . . that postulate means -- if I can use an obsolete, inadequate, but convienient set of words -- that everything that is, in whatever realm, is both "spirit" and "matter", or that there is no explosive Energy without compressive Energy, and reciprocally no structural drive without the opposite disintegrating drive. Thus everything that is, is considered by the Yetsira in terms of two co-ordinates, Aleph and Bayt. Where Bayt prevails powerfully, as in a piece of iron, Aleph is hopelessly in bondage; it cannot be active; in the biosphere Aleph operates; in the exalted mental emanation of a man made perfect, Aleph operates through time and space by means of so subtle mediums that they evade perception. So both Aleph and Bayt exist in different ranges from the inert to the very active. If by any chance one could have in oneself and be made of Aleph alive and Bayt alive, one would be in touch and commune with Aleph wherever it is and with the Bayts, whatever they are, therefore with everything that is. Aleph alive would be Aleph-Hay (Hay: 5 is the sign for life; when Abram is given the life of Aleph he becomes Abraham, with the corresponding added Hay -H in our writing) and Bayt alive would be Bayt-Hay. Therefore Aleph-Hay-Bayt-Hay would be in that person and that person would be in that schema, would be that schema in very truth. That schema, pronounced Ahavah, means LOVE in Hebrew! Its idiomatic meaning is desecrated, as is desecrated the word love everywhere in the world. The stupendous Aleph-Hay-Bayt-Hay was originally a cabalistic opening towards being at-one with all that is."

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/suares/cain2.html

Lucid Awareness

Lucid, from the latin lucere: to shine; lux: light; lucidus: full of light.

There's a lot of books on lucid dreaming so there's no need to cover that here.
But I would like to emphasize the similarities to lucid wakefulness.
A great place to start is to watch yourself fall asleep, trying to stay aware/awake
as the body goes into sleep paralysis. This is a great accomplishment when you
cross that veil, but even greater is to bring this ability, this watchfulness, into
your everyday life.
Watching your body fall asleep is an art, a matter of great skill and subterfuge.
The body won't sleep until it knows the mind is asleep - and of course we want
the mind to stay alert and watchful. So the mind has to pretend it is sleeping.
How do we achieve this?
First let's take care of the body. When falling asleep there are several things to
notice. First, there is a sleep breath. If you haven't noticed your own sleep breath
and you sleep with someone else, notice theirs and mimic it. You should of course
be relaxed as possible, and you may begin with some deep relaxing breaths, but
the sleep breath is not a deep inhalation at all, but quite brief.
As you find a gentle sleep breath rhythm, let your body relax and sink into your
bed or chair or whatever you are napping in. You are not going to move anything
for a while so find a comfortable position and don't cross your legs/ankles or arms;
but if your hands are comfortably resting one on the other, they are a good way to
feel the paralysis set in - often you won't know where one hand ends and the other
begins. This is a good sign to look for.
It is important to take care of the eyes. If you watch yourself fall asleep, there is an
eye position or focus that you'll notice. If you haven't seen this to mimic it, it is
sufficient to just keep your gaze still, perhaps focussed at the root/bridge of the nose.
I am not talking about REM eye patterns. We just want stillness. We want sleep
paralysis.
Then we want to deal with the mind. You want to be as free of thoughts as possible -
to be mentally quiet and still. This is mimicking a theta brainwave state which is
what we're after. So all we need from the mind is stillness and vigilance. If you use
visualisations, try to do so without talking to yourself about them.
With all this preparation, we are ready for sleep paralysis. Keep a relaxed breathing
rhythm, a quiet yet alert mind and relax your body completely... and be aware of the
body getting very heavy - so heavy you can't move any of it... like a blanket filled
with wet sand is laying over you.
And when your body is asleep and your mind is awake, this is a magical platform
for lucid dreaming, astral travel, healing and affirmations (communicating with the
subconscious mind).

After practicing this, and hopefully making a habit of it, you may begin to see that
there is no reason to drop your guard, to lose vigilance at any time during the day.
That same strong intention that kept the mind awake when your body fell asleep
can be used for mindfulness, presence, heightened awareness throughout the day.
That same intention and stealth can keep you from identifying with the past or
worrying about the future, or taking any moment for granted (going unconscious).
This can be more rewarding than lucid dreaming.
And if you learn not to lose yourself, you won't have any fear of death, for you will
be present for that too, even into the afterlife.

The way of love

Have you ever loved?
Have you ever been unable to stop thinking of someone?
Have you ever imagined you cannot live without your beloved?
It's true.
But perhaps you have not realised who the Eternal Beloved is.
Did you ever love from a distance?
Did you ever know the pain of love unreturned?
Did you ever worship a person that didn't even know you exist?
Then imagine how the Eternal Beloved dreams of embracing you.
Won't you gaze inward and behold the face of the One who dreamed you?
If you saw this face, you would never see anything else.
There is no other love.
All else is but an emanation of this Eternal Love.

Can you hear what I am saying?
This is not an abstraction!
Turn around without your face and see who sees from behind your eyes!
There is no Yoga (Union) but this.
Shiva and Shakti, face to face, lingam penetrating yoni, yoni receiving lingam.
Shivering Universe - can you feel it?!
Are you trembling?
This orgasm is unending!!

words

The words are concepts - we can argue the words, but they are only pointing to what
cannot be ex-pressed or conceptualised. Do not be fooled or taken or lost by the words.
It's what cannot be said that I am trying to say.

Everything must be verified by you. You must look for yourself.
My words are nothing compared to what you can do.
Seeing is the change; realisation comes with awareness.
Awareness is not caused by comprehension or understanding.
Your mind cannot reason this - it cannot be grasped.
The greatest poet cannot convey the sweetness of fruit like your own tongue.

"Burn your books and whiten your laton."
Why should I define "laton"?
If you look, it is obvious what must be whitened/calcined on the ashes of these books.

The homonculus is an empty shell of a human being. It is oneself stripped of all things,
all concepts, all time, all meaning... the black phase, the dark k/night.
And then, like the Frankenstein monster, it must be given new life.
We must breathe life into it - the spirit must descend upon it.
And from this spirit it must form a heart. The word is written on our hearts, not in books.
The words are your very heart-strings, your flesh and blood and sinew and bone...
let these be your words. Let the seeing of truth be its own action/verbum.

Do you see how we kill ourselves... we wash ourselves... we burn ourselves...
and a phoenix rises from the ashes.

the end of time

When the time loop/bubble pops - no time has passed and nothing has happened.
Such is the mystery of being born again, of entering your mother's womb.
Such is redemption and baptism from sin.
You are present, as if born of a virgin - not from sex, not the product of any pre-existing bodies...
The virgin birth is truly the death of the whore/image/idea of the seperate ego.
It is like waking from a dream.




The three in one. The tria prima "pop" dimensionally from unity as seen in
the tetrahedral image of triunity/trinity.

You

You are everything.
Realise the significance of being the microcosm - it's all you.
You are consciousness.
You are time.
You are dimension.

Let me say that another way for perspective.
You are not IN time. You ARE time.
You are not IN the cosmos. You ARE the cosmos.
You are not IN a dimension. You ARE the dimensions.

You do not achieve a state of now/presence;
you ARE now/presence, and everything issues from you/now/presence presently.

From now, one thinks of the past and future or "enters" the dimensions or alternate
states of awareness/consciousness. And all those things are you.
The now portal is you.
If you only become more deeply aware of yourself, you will simultaneously
become more aware of time, dimension, consciousness, "God", because these
are not other than you.

The "other than you" idea sets up an unnecessary struggle between you and the other,
be it time, dimension, consciousness, cosmos...
The idea of God, the idea of consciousness, of time, of dimension... all ideas...
the idea is an abstraction. You are the present reality. You are the direct
unmediated essential.

On Philosophy and Wonder

"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher; and philosophy begins in wonder." - Plato

"Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best,
the wonder remains." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts it
raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from
the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are,
it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant
dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps
alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect." - Bertrand Russell

"Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring

fact of mystery." - Henry Miller

"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know." - Bertrand Russell