IS THERE FREE WILL?

Continued

Knowing is Ignorance

Question: ‘But God is realised as knowledge every moment and can’t be held on to as knowing,’

It may be that the sentence reads exactly as Barry has intended it, but from my perspective (without, hopefully, being impertinent), the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ should be transposed

I read the word ‘knowledge’ as being information, mental constructs, and somewhat static, while ‘knowing’ suggests a moment to moment movement of realisation of Being, an apperception, if you will. Of course, Barry may have quite the opposite sense of the words.

Answer: ‘How forcible are right words,’ said Job so rightly 5,000 years ago. Such knowledge of the logos, the word, is rare in our jargon-driven society. Jargon means the absence of self-knowledge in what is said.

You know your address. You know your mother and father. The scientist knows Einstein’s theory. Everyone knows something because knowing is of the memory, the mind and emotions the ignorant self.

You do not say ‘self-knowing,’ do you? Because anything you know is in the past. Knowledge is now. God is now. So God cannot be known. God realisation is uninterrupted timeless knowledge. When such knowledge is complete all questioning ceases.

Yes. Where I come from your perspective on knowing and knowledge, as I’ve shown above in common sense, is flawed. And yes, again. Most of what I say is the opposite of human wisdom and interpretation.

Question: ‘What happens when you give up all desire to have “my own will”, “my” own way?’

It is my sense that there is really no ‘you’ who gives ‘up all desire’ (this also seems to follow from the general thrust of earlier statements in the article). It appears, situationally, that desire drops away when we’ve had enough of the experience of the pain of apparent choice.

There appears to be a paradox in Life. That it is full of possibilities within each moment, but yet there is no real ‘chooser’ who chooses, and that it is this paradox that has been resolved by the claim that everything is pre-determined. But it is an action/movement that is really beyond the mind’s ability to comprehend, but only intuit non-verbally.

Answer: I used the word ‘you’ because if I said I some people would think I was speaking of the writer. Every ‘you’ is outside. There is only one I in the universe and that is inside the reader now. This I make clear at all my public meetings since human ignorance self always projects the truth outside. Hence concepts arise which are the known, not knowledge.

It is I, my self, that gives up all desire to have ‘my’ own will, ‘my’ own way. And why do I give it up? Because the pain (the electric fence effect) of having had ‘my’ will and ‘my’ way has become unbearable.

You cannot say ‘apparent choice’ while you still choose. While you continue to choose, choice is not apparent; it is a fact of your life. And it has all the painful effects I’ve described. If it were not a fact there would be no effect, no pain.What you’re doing is presenting as your own knowledge something that you’ve heard or deduced and are not living. Only what I live is the truth. Otherwise what I say is intellectual.

Paradox? No. A paradox is an apparent contradiction. There is no contradiction in knowledge, only in knowing which derives from the interpretation of events.

Life is not full of possibilities. All is as it must be and you can only do as you do each moment while the Source draws the relative intelligence of knowing self howling, doubting and questioning back towards the indescribable Consciousness of Supreme Being.

Are you sure you’ve not mixed the knowledge of life with the knowing of living?

Kriben Pillay clearly has self-knowledge. But he’s gone into that advaita thing again. You cannot say there is no real chooser. Are you saying that the pain of your self when you are broken hearted, depressed, confused, stricken by jealousy or guilt, is not real to you? Rubbish. If it were not real for you you would not have it and have no pain. Such talk is again intellectual.

Nor can you say, as Matreya’s hypothesis suggests, ‘I am not separate from That (the reality of God),’ while you still have fears, doubts and questions. You are in fact separate. Again your knowledge is flawed because you seem to be distracted by doctrinal or traditional ways instead of pursuing to the end the immediate simple truth of self-knowledge without concepts. Such a pursuit would raise the question, ‘How’s your lovelife?’ Not a question traditions like to address; but a great source of self-knowledge.

Question: ‘“I” merge with the pure intellect and realise God.’

This ‘I’ that merges is really that state after ignorance has dropped away. But has there ever been an ‘I’ except as a thought constructed by memory that is identified with the body-mind? And is not realisation seeing through this erroneous idea?

Answer: Yes and no. Yes finally. But not in the multiplicity of realisations of truth or God on the long, long way home to the Source. In those deep realisations, ‘I am’ is a powerful knowledge, although only to I who realise it. Ultimately however I vanish though the body does not. What ceases, as you have intellectually conjectured, is identification with the body-world. (Not the body-mind. Identification with the mind has long since stopped by then.)

When you stop identifying with the body-world and stop calling your self I, I’ll believe you are the knowledge of your conjecture. But then I don’t believe anything or anyone.

Truth comes down to having no identity not even That.

Barry Long

A simple and generous email arrived from Kiben Pillay the next day: ‘Please thank Barry for his gracious responses. There’s nothing more to ask.’