The Truth Shall Set You Free
Hamlet: What have you, my good friends, deserv’d at the hands of
Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern: Prison, my lord?
Hamlet: Denmark’s a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.
Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet: Why then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.(Shakespeare, HAMLET ACT 2, SCENE 2, 239–251)
The point here is that, as A Course in Miracles (hereinafter: "ACIM," or "the Course") puts it: "My body is a wholly neutral thing" (Title of lesson 294), and we could equally well say the world is a wholly neutral thing. The Course on one level is a lesson in the discernment of Maya, e.g.:
⁶If anger comes from an interpretation and not a fact, it is never justified. ⁷Once this is even dimly grasped, the way is open. (ACIM, M-17.8:6–7)
Individual consciousness is always engaged in an attempt to justify its own existence, for the substitute must assert itself and seeks confirmation of the reality of its virtual world, which is always an elective view and interpretation of the objective facts.
I recently came across the very interesting article by Robert Thibadeau, How Your Brain Computes, here on Medium, and left some comments, but it inspired me to explore the issues a little deeper. To begin with, I simply do not buy the idea that the brain thinks, not even computes. The depths of the wells of inspiration teach me that, and eventually the Course gave me the complete metaphysics. What we think of as our mind and thinking is clearly merely the ripples on the surface of the mind, and brain activity is the effect, not the cause — it is in effect the surface of the mind.
You also believe the body’s brain can think. ²If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. ³It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it go. ⁴Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body’s eyes can see; the brain can think. (ACIM, W-92.2:1–4)
Thibadeau writes:
If you take a course in logic, you learned that a subject or a predicate do not necessarily have truth value. “Jump” and “dog” are neither true or false. You need to form a proposition or predication, ‘The dog jumped,’ which can be true or not.
Actually there is a detail of another Ψ function that I just left out which is very important. “The dog” is itself another unary predication as in ‘it is this dog.’
Our individual realities are all made up of interpretations of facts, never of facts. The classic account of that situation the Rashomon effect. I had my own experience of this when I once made a bicycle trip with a girlfriend from Rotterdam to Amsterdam when I was in high school. We were at a party and someone asked her about the trip. It was about a seven hour trip, and she told it in vivid terms, and as she did, I realized there were two different trips, hers and mine. She saw birds and trees, and I saw buildings, bridges, road signs and gas stations. That was when it really sank in for me how very partial is the overlap of individual realities.
A useful exploration of this issue is Jane Roberts' book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which is one of the "Seth" books. It is a very clear discussion of what is going on at the mind level in these kinds of collective experiences. The Corona circus was a particularly vivid demonstration that became more and more visible as time went on an the geographic differences in counter measures and concomitant effects on mortality, made it clear that nothing was as it seemed: the most stringent counter-measures produced the worst results, culminating in the vaccinations clearly causing significant excess mortality. It is interesting to think about the Venn diagram of how we chose to participate in this experience. I live in an area with fairly strict lockdowns and high vaccination rates, but I began to doubt the official story line early, at the first reports from the Diamond Princess, and some new associations developed as a result. We had a small support community.
Then just think about some of the groups that formed:
- Those who believed in the virus and the vaccine.
- Those who believed the virus was man-made.
- Those who believed the virus was natural.
- Those who shifted sides.
- The profound cognitive dissonance about the actual mortality expectation the IFR (Infection Fatality Rate), etc.
- Those who believed the Great Barrington Declaration.
- Those who categorically did not believe in the reality of viruses in general, but were more inclined to terrain theory.
- Those who trusted the vaccines.
- Those who did not trust these vaccines, but trusted other vaccines.
- Those who trusted no vaccines.
- And again many who shifted to different categories over time.
I need not go on, it is a complicated layer cake of Venn-diagrams of these groups, which were sometimes partially geographic, but more often merely virtual, a matter of ideas.
The Rashomon effect is alive and well. It is all interpretation from a myriad viewpoints, and true forgiveness as the Course teaches it, is an exercise on the way to that insight. The early lessons of the Workbook in the Course are all about making us conscious how our mind gives everything the meaning that it has.
Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. ²It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach them that the game of fear is gone. ³His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. ⁴Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured. ⁵The game of fear is gladly laid aside, when children come to see the benefits salvation brings. (ACIM, W-153.12:1–5)
A Categorical Look at Truth
The categorical view is that Truth with a capital "T" is of necessity non-dual for there cannot be any contradiction within it. Truth is whole and various alternative designations for it may be Oneness, Heaven, Kingdom, God, Eternity, Spirit, Infinity, Love, and so on. They all designate an experience of total Bliss and an absence of any form of conflict. Truth is true, and everything else is a lie. It is a condition we can only intuit somewhat, we can hardly fathom it, it is the Peace of God which passes all understanding, for once the mind chooses duality as its substitute reality, the Kingdom instills fear, for it exposes the dream we would rather have.
Consciousness, however, is dualistic: it is consciousnes of something not itself. One of my favorite teachers of that realization is always Jiddu Krishnamurti, and his realization that the observer and the observed are one, which seems such an alien concept to us, and yet it is so simple. Simple, but not easy. But at an abstract, contemplative level this can be intuited even long before we can feel at ease there.
In the section "The Laws of Chaos," the Course raises the issue that the laws of the ego, of individual selfhood, are chaotic, simply because they are by definition the denial of the oneness of Truth. At this level all truth has become a relative concept, and differences rule, not the sameness of Heaven where everything is all one.
- The truth is different for everyone.
- We are all sinners ( i.e. a "sin" elevates a mistake to something incorrigible).
- As a consequence, God has now become the enemy, the avenger of sin.
- You have what you have taken.
- There is a substitute for Love.
The thought system of individual selfhood is chaotic, and permanently beyond comprehension — what the Buddhists call monkey mind, and in Biblical terms it is the house divided against itself. The attraction of studying individual psychology is always the same: validation, making individual reality real. The house divided against itself shall not stand, but we are determined to prove otherwise. Such is the delicate balance of individual selfhood, in a world where every ego, really thinks it should rule the world. Survival of the fittest, and kill or be killed. That seems to be our reality.
Joe Jesseph, MD, in his book A Primer of Psychology according to A Course in Miracles, speaks of it in terms that abnormal psychology is fundamentally psychology of individual selfhood. The ego is a paranoid schizophrenic system, which can be explained by the metaphysics of its origin. We maintain the illusion of sanity and normalcy by declaring the extreme expressions of the system as diseases, but again, it is only a matter of degree. The system itself is a lie, but by branding some as sick, we maintain an illusion of normalcy for the rest. The Course explains the origin story in the following terms:
²Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. ³In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. ⁴Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. ⁵It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time. (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2–5)
In short, it treats the very thought of separation as illusory, correspondingly all of consciousness, is illusory, a dream, as Shakespeare understood so well:
Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Shakespeare: THE TEMPEST ACT 4, SCENE 1, 148–158)
The important difference with some other spiritual traditions is that it treats the separation as an illusory event. I like the image of a prism that is inserted into a beam of white light. The white light is not lost or destroyed by the insertion of the prism, yet on this side of the prism, we only see the myriad colors. Likewise our "mistake" of taking the thought of separation seriously, and living these lives in which we are the hero of our own movie, "The Life of Bryan," etc. are indeed a virtual realities as is implied by the work of an increasing number of metaphysicians, like Brian Whitworth, Thomas Campbell, and Bernardo Kastrup. But again, typically these thinkers, and many others, including older non-dualistic traditions, tend to regard consciousness as a given. Yet, the way the Course sees it, the very fact that consciousness itself is a joke is the reason for optimism, for we can choose against it, which is what the Course teaches its students. Ergo: "We can laugh them both away," in the quote above. As long as we continue to take consciousness seriously, we remain trapped in the system, which is why the ego is entirely tautological, and constantly comes up with alternative solutions that are nothing but false dichotomies that serve only to reaffirm the reality of the separation thought, the "tiny, mad idea." The optimism then comes from the notion that salvation is simple, even if that does not mean it is easy:
The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. ²No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. ³Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. ⁴Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. ⁵For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. ⁶Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream. (ACIM, T-27.VIII.10:1–6)
In the paranoid-schizophrenic system which we identify with, the situation seems hopeless, but that is its self-affirming nature, but the way out is trivial in the end:
We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. ²It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection. ³And being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood. ⁴Rejected yes, but not ambiguous. ⁵And if you choose against it now it will not be because it is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in your judgment, to be too much to pay for peace. (ACIM, T-21.II.1:1–5)
To put it differently, salvation is that change of mind, and we don't need saviors on white horses or anyone else to save us, we just need to change our mind, and the Course teaches us to do just that in small baby steps.
Reading Thibadeau's article on How the Brain Computes, is very instructive, for it is a very careful demonstration of how the entire thought system is turtles all the way down. This realization alone, makes it clear why AI isn´t. Artificial yes, but Intelligent, no. At best, AI is a logical system, as Thibadeau develops it. Its potential is to be artificial reasoning, mimicking the brain. At worst AI systems are full of baked-in assumptions, which render them suspect. Once more, the only thing keeping us imprisoned in this system, is the foundational assumption that consciousness itself is real, but it is in fact the final turtle and with one "tiny change of mind," it can eventually be unseated. Jesus historically always preached "metanoia," which was interpreted by the world as "repentance," and Jesus was seen as a teacher of morals, but in fact the word means "change of mind." That was all part of making the teacher of "my Kingdom is not of this earth," acceptable to Caesar, which succeeded wonderfully well. It helps to remember that words do not make meaning, but are merely a reflection of something, and the assumption that the brain thinks in words is a fallacy. With the Course, and in the spirit of Plato:
⁹Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. ¹⁰They are thus twice removed from reality. (ACIM, M-21.1:9–10)words are but symbols of symbols and therefore twice removed from reality.
The Course also points out that we can experience some of the original oneness of Heaven in revelatory experiences, but those don't last, for we would not last long here if we were to shift into that reality. Nevertheless, such experiences are like reminders along the way that there is indeed a way out.
Once we understand the dynamics of the "tiny, mad idea," everything about ego psychology finally makes sense: we do not want to know that it was our idea, so from very young, we defend ourselves with "I did not do it." And we live our lives like a game of blackjack in which we are always ready to blame others for taking away our peace, for the last thing we went to know is that we did it ourselves.
We are currently living a period where this is becoming extremely visible, and first of all, we are dealing with the belief in the existence of a virus that causes a disease, which ultimately rests on the psychological need to see enemies outside ourselves, and to project the blame. According to the CDC data, the mean Covid death in 2020 was above average life expectancy and 95% had four or more comorbidities, and 67% even had six or more comorbidities. This pattern was clear early on from the data on the Diamond Princess, yet we chose to ignore it, for the mass hysteria was motivated to see external enemies, as it always is. Covid was a lifestyle disease. We can add to this the research, published in BMJ, that healthcare workers in England had a 73% reduction in risk of moderat to severe Covid, if they were on a plant-based diet, still a 59% if they were on a pescetarian diet, while the risk increased by 20% if they were on one of the many popular low-carb, high fat diets. Likewise other studies showed that adequate vitamin D levels could reduce risk of hospitalization and death by 80%. In other words: the microbe is nothing and the terrain is everything. The viruses, if they even exist are moot, for they are not the causative mechanism. This was a lifestyle disease, regardless of what other contributing causes may be found.
A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream. (ACIM, T-27.VII.12:1–2)
As we now know, the mass of excess deaths started after the vaccination, so it is overwhelmingly clear that our self-made cure was worse than the disease, even aside from the fact that you cannot vaccinate your way out of a pandemic, even if there was one, which there wasn't (see Denis Rancourt). In short, the ego had a field day, first it could blame a non-existent virus, then it could blame a vaccine, and throughout it takes its favorite position of being the blameless victim, always a more popular role than being victimizer.
In learning to distinguish the two voices, the ego and the Holy Spirit, one of the lessons is that once we choose fear, it always escalates. So, believing in the phony virus story, made us (at least most of us), willing to take the (unproven) vaccine, and choose the certain risk of adverse reactions over the uncertain risk of a disease, which could readily be seen to be relatively harmless. As I read the first data from the Diamond Princess, and soon found the analysis of Dr. John Ioannidis, I used them to calm down some fearful people by arguing there was evidently very little to worry about.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)
And, while it is true that often times in human experience, our conscience can be relieved when we finally face the truth, in the end the Truth that will set us free, is what the Course describes with the concept that "I am still as God created me," in other words, Jesus is right and we are wrong. In the end, that is very freeing, but it takes most of us a while to truly realize that.
³I am not a body. ⁴I am free.
⁵For I am still as God created me. (ACIM, W-rVI.in.3:3–5)
P.S. I chose the image of Quan Yin, Avalokiteshvara, the Goddes of Compassion, for she is a powerful image of Forgiveness, of the Unconditional Acceptance that comes with the embrace of realizing what we really are.
