In the dim light of dawn, better than fifteen years ago, I sat stunned by what I read in Wei Wu Wei’s book, “Open Secret.” As a Psychologist, my level of upset made it clear what I read was profound. In retrospect, it is clear consciousness is superficially divisible into what the truth is, and what we defend as the truth. Truth seems to reside in the ‘unconscious’ part of consciousness, and kept out of sight and out of mind via amnesia. Truth exists, and amnesia tries to dismiss it because it always threatens to remind us that what we defend as ‘the truth’ resides in the conscious part of consciousness.
Time displays how amnesia works, more or less successfully, to reject truth as false, so we can defend what we want truth to be. Because we can only obscure truth with amnesia, it contradicts everything we defend as the truth. The fiction we defend as “the truth” is false, and what we reject as false is the truth. We live, in other words, at the mercy of truth, always threatening to come out of hiding to remind us that nothing is what we insist it is.
The disparity between the two can be as much as 180 degrees out of phase, which is sufficient to explain what makes us anxious and insecure. Fear provides indirect proof that ‘we know,’ at some pre-conscious level, that what we defend as the truth is a lie. In this sense, insecurity makes perfect sense: truth bleeds through amnesia to remind us that the conclusions that run our life are understandably fragile. Reality, in this light, displays how we live a lie as if it is the truth. The stance we assume in life is always at risk. Our collective amnesia defines the box we occupy. The box we occupy is always under siege because as long as we dismiss truth as false, we are impostors. Reality is the setting in which we impostor who we insist we are to dismiss the truth of who we are. We live a double life, and it can be argued that every problem we endure stems from ‘living a double life,’ as if that’s not true.
Everyone lives in fear that truth will manifest, revealing who we are, and who we pretend to be. We pay close attention to ‘body language’ because it acts like a lie detector, reminding us that our performance is a fiction kept in place with a huge collection of lies. We are engaged in a complex cover up. Bottom line, no one is who they appear to be. Everyone is an impostor, and almost everyone ‘knows’ this at some level; and we agree to work as a team to pretend our definition of reality is valid.
The evidence suggests that amnesia can keep truth out of consciousness, but we are still responding to it indirectly. How do we know we are being scammed long before the facts appear? How do we know the story we just heard is fabricated when it was delivered so convincingly? Do we really believe what people are saying, or do we record their lies and still act like they are telling the truth? Do we do this to protect them, or to protect the fact we don’t want to know we know this is what everyone is doing? What we don’t want to know is that we are living a double life to prolong the fiction truth is false.
All of this came to light on that fateful morning. I had a hunch that what I read was not only tapping into what the truth might be, but the unconscious warehoused a story about reality that, once retrieved, would reconfigure truth for ever. The implication was that we live with a lie and call it the truth, and that “the rest of the story,” once recovered, would be nothing short of astounding. My pounding heart seemed to know that I was heading into ‘forbidden territory.’
Buddhism shares a common story about truth, but it is a generic language with many dialects, some defending truth as fixed, permanent and non negotiable, and some arguing for relative reality, perhaps as a concession to our preferred rendition of truth. Wei Wu Wei deconstructed all of Buddhism to come up with their core view of reality, and then argued for truth as absolute. This is how he got to me: truth exists, and when we are one with what it is we are awake; life displays the sum of the delusions we foster to defend the fiction truth is false. Everyone displays the kind and intensity of the delusions they argue for to pretend it’s possible to prove truth is false.
His view of truth, synthesized from Buddhism collectively, is that consciousness is all there is. Consciousness is not only what right now is, but consciousness is a dream in progress. Consciousness is the context for all content. Everything is content in this dream, including people. Nothing exists outside this dream. There isn’t this dream and something ‘real’ outside of this dream. The dream for example, includes that ‘car’ going down the road, ‘the sound’ it makes, and ‘you hearing the sound’ it makes. Everything is in the dream, with no exceptions. Reality is consciousness happening as right now.
He made it very clear that something, we know not what, is dreaming this dream in its entirety, all the time, with no exceptions. History includes those who gave the name of the dreamer of this dream many different names, but he settled for the concept of mind. It is the ultimate creator of this dream, including everything in it, and the way events in the dream unfold. The point is, nothing ‘going on,’ no matter what, has any more reality than what mind is dreaming, from one now to the next.
The more I read, the more I felt amnesia coming to the rescue to reject truth to defend the fiction I am a real person in a real reality outside the dream mind is dreaming. In my journal I wrote, “could this explain the war we feel ‘gong on’ between what the truth is, and what we do in the dream to dismiss truth to prolong the idea ‘the people’ in the dream are people and not content in the dream, like everything else?” The internal war manifested as a tug of war between the suspicion that what he was saying was some how irresistibly compelling, and the worst piece of news I ever heard in my life.
Ideas flashed fast, like why does calmness occur when you feel detached from the self? Does meditation ‘work’ because it slides you out of who you insist you are, back into the simplicity of who you are? Why do so many of us report that specific, intense events go by “like a dream is happening?” Why do we report that intense events “seem surreal?” Why does intuition snap you into a different dimension of seeing truth in a much bigger, grander way? Why do creative people, engaged in ‘the creative moment,’ suddenly sense that they have tapped into something that is ready to dictate a poem, solve a math equation, or move the brush from pallet to canvass? In such moments we become the vehicle for the outcome, the results of which often seems impossible. It is as if there is “The Big Picture,” which includes the small part we occupy, leaving us wondering about the architecture of something that exists outside of the small range of experience we refer to as “life.”
In spite of my own trepidation and downright fear, I knew, intuitively, what Buddhists have said all the way back to the Unpanishads, long before the birth of Christ, was what I was looking for, and that I would devote the rest of my time to his books, his ideas, his view of Buddhism. Intuitively, I liked the idea that truth isn’t relative; that it’s all or nothing: either the dream is absolute and never relative, or this view of reality is utter nonsense. My gut said, stay with it. I had no idea then that I was going to deconstruct his eight books to assemble a new way to work with suffering.
The next installment will describe more about the apparent architecture of the dream mind is dreaming, and how this could be transcribed as a way to deal with suffering. One thing was very clear: if everything could only be content in a dream, then nothing was ever people based, including suffering. Even when I thought I was a ‘Psychologist,’ I had this nagging awareness that dreamers required suffering in this dream to prolong the fiction truth is false; this is real, and not a dream, and that suffering works to keep ‘reality’ very real.
Do you find that people “get” this based upon the logical force of your explanation, without any meditation-type states? Also, is the change quite sudden, or do you see a gradual and slow “recovery process” with definite stages that are similar for everybody you work with? Once a person has “awakened,” are there any problems post-awakening, such as recovering memories from other lives, conflict with family members who are astounded by the idea that consciousness is all, or people simply losing interest in making money and becoming hermit flute-players? That last question is actually the one that interests me most.
TRP includes forms of meditation and mantras that travel with where you are right now with the truth. It’s important to get it, dreamers meditate to find relief from
the bondage of pretending to be people. Meditation could reveal there are no people to meditate, but only with a thunder clap of insight.
oftentimes i like to pretend i’m a person reading words written by other people. then i realise i’m reading words i wrote to myself, reality goes all ‘mystic’ for 5 minutes, then i go play another fool’s game.
No, dear Andrew, you won’t become a hermit flute-player. Life will go on as before but somehow easier and with an everyday’s laughter on your mouth.
I love your running short words from 4 and more hours ago, dear Greg. Can one print them out for I am not so quick in English and would like to study and laugh about!
Just want to say your article is striking. The clarity in your post is simply striking and i can take for granted you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please keep up the ac complished work. Excuse my poor English. English is not my mother tongue.
I’ve been reading some of Wei Wu Wei’s work (though not a while book, I’m yet to find a retailer with them, I may buy off of the internet soon) from wherever I can and I’m feeling a similar way as you described when you first read ‘Open Secret’. I do wonder though, how do you respond when asked “Who are you?” or are asked to introduce yourself?
PS. Do you have a facebook? I have many questions for one more experienced in such trains of thought (excuse the phrasing, the english language doesn’t always accommodate Wei Wu Wei’s concepts practically!).
Amazon sells all eight of Wei Wu Wei’s books.