February 24, 2018
Be willing to look at the biggest picture. Be willing to seek the pattern that overlies all, for the Gestalt within which form and meaning can accrue. It will require seeing into the far distance beyond the province of the known, apprehension of the unknown, that which has not been experienced. It will require new perception, new lenses absolutely clear and powerful. It will necessitate the abandonment of the old instruments, the destruction of all internal filters, the elimination of all concepts. It demands pure seeing.
There is a seeing that is like a razor cleaving space, like a laser beam of incalculable intensity. It cuts absolutely through time and space, it penetrates to that which is beyond. You cannot will yourself to see this way, you cannot make any move to approach it. It is a grace, given from that place which is no place, that state which is no state. It comes from out of the blue. It is a slit in the fabric of things and times and places. Through this rent pours the unspeakable, the unknowable.
If you are full, if you are possessed by your self, there can be no room for the grace. Thought and knowledge and concept and memory might fill you up, might filter all that you see through the constantly recycling chaos within. Through these filters there is no true seeing. Thought and knowledge and concept must come to a stop, time which is their matrix must come to a stop. The rushing momentum forward must end. The momentum of time and thought must be burned away, the residue washed clean. The restless movement toward knowing must sit still.
How can this be? It might appear to be not possible, you might turn away, you might want to not see, the prospect might be dizzying, you might be terrified. Without your thought and time and memory what might there be? There might be emptiness.
If you were to let yourself in its totality become very still, if you were to sit very still, let your body come to rest, if you were to let your mind slow and come to a stop, if there were profound stillness of thought, if there were no movement whatsoever, then something unreached for might occur. In a state of total watchfulness there is the possibility that the grace might come to you, fall on you like a thunderbolt, might steal over you like a cloud, might empty you of your self, and you might become vacant, empty.
Beware if you are hoping for something to fill you up, to give you security, to establish meaning, to be a goal for you. Beware if you want it. It is not a goal, a state to be hoped for. You cannot reach for it, you can only be willing. But you must be very sure that you are willing to loose all attachments to time and place and things and persons. If that grace comes to you, all that you have known, all your identity, all will be seared away. You will be lost to all that was, you will be in the cloud of unknowing.
There is no known way to get there, there is no there to get to. It is outside the domain of any form of destination. It cannot be thought out in advance, it cannot be predicted. There is no imagining that can approach it. There is no way to desire or hope for this apprehension. It appears to be inaccessible, and for all constructions of thought this is the case. It has nothing whatsoever to do with thought, there is no room for thought. There can only be willingness and watchfulness and observation.
All that can be said is that its apprehension is the unwilled unintended result of the silent mind. Silence and seeing. The pattern in its incomprehensible immensity is there now, and always has been, and always will be. It is outside the realm of time. It exists in the pure fluid essence beyond any notions of light or dark or energy or anything that can be named. Simultaneously it is form and emptiness. It is the flux from which the bands of emanations originate. Immensity and silence and stillness and emptiness. Nothing else can be said.
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