Certainty and Doubts, Hope and Faith

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Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. ~ Christopher Morley

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[Michael]

This subject has been stewing around in that Strange Loop that is my reflexive reflectivity.  So I use this medium as a way to externalize and share, in a blogish fashion.  Comments are welcome.

The following are a lot of quotes and some personal thoughts mixed in here and there:
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Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. - Václav Havel

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. -    M. Cartmill

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. - Ashley Montague

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. - Ursula K. LeGuin

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind. - May Sarton

No great deed, private or public, had ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty. - Leon Wieseltier

[Michael]

Robert Masters: THE ANATOMY OF DOUBT

Doubt is an inner questioning infused with uncertainty and enough agitation to make it a relatively unpleasant state. Doubt, in an everyday sense, is what happens when we find ourselves stranded in ambiguity’s carrels, trying to think our way out, stuck in cognitive traffic jams that catch us in their treads and flatten us as much as they fragment us. Trying to make a meal of the grey fare laid out by the fractured realism of such doubt simply enervates and depresses us.

Typical doubt is skepticism that has lost its clarity and confidence, bound up in worrisome shades of uncertainty. Anxiety may be lurking nearby, bringing more of an edge to doubt. Although doubt is not dread, it can become dread if sufficiently fed.

Doubt can manifest as moral impotence, existential fence-sitting, fear of making a decision, indulgence in ambiguity, avoidance of taking a stand, cognitive obsessing, and so on; and it can also, albeit far more rarely, manifest as a necessary questioning, a courageous inquiry that can both tolerate and investigate uncertainty. Doubt is no more "bad" than "certainty" is good.

There’s everyday, mostly neurotic doubt, a self-contracted questioning injected with constricted, unpleasantly turbulent feeling, moving with myopic desperation through the presenting layers of uncertainty; and there’s another doubt, a questioning that carries us beyond facile certainties and automated beliefs deep into the inherent insecurity and uncertainty of Life, inviting us to adopt a nonproblematic orientation toward it.

But before getting into the latter sort of doubt -- which it takes real faith to have -- let’s get more into everyday doubt: It’s important to be able to work well with such doubt before going for the deeper, more awakened kind of doubt. And working well with it means knowing it well, even becoming intimate with it.

Doubt is a collapse of heart that’s gone to mind, an unhappy, unillumined inquiry that’s interested not in discovery or revelation, but only in persisting in repetitively touring its culs-de-sac. It puts a lot of energy into going nowhere, spinning its wheels until it’s exhausted, leaving us asleep at the wheel.

Doubt is the contracted and divided mind doing time in uncertainty’s mental mazes, providing apparent justification for worry.

Whereas skepticism is a healthy, incisive, often robust questioning, doubt is an unhealthy, indecisive, often anemic questioning, a dead-end inquiry, a bottled-up questioning terrified of being uncorked.

When the energy of doubt is allowed to mushroom in our headquarters, it invades and colors whatever content is handy, immediately framing it in a darkly questionable light.

While immersed in doubt, we often inject fearfulness or negative anticipation into various intentions, plans, doings, and so on, obsessing about possible outcomes, chaining ourselves to chronic worry.

Doubt is what the mind tends to do both when it is cut off from the vitality and openness and primal intentions of our depths, and when rationality itself just does not satisfy. And doubt presumes to have an overview, but in fact has none -- it cannot even see itself, let alone accurately assess its environment.

Nevertheless, doubt is not an enemy. What matters is what we do with it. Do we identify with it? Do we give our power away to it? Do we allow it to enlarge? Do we believe in it? Do we make decisions based on it? Or do we illuminate it, outbreathe and outdance it, crashing its slumber-party with such resolute focus that it cannot help but dissolve into a more Life-giving form?

In its unchallenged arranging and cementings of key thoughts, doubt is closely related to belief, being a blue collar frequenter of some of belief’s sleazier hangouts.

Belief is static, abstract, perfectly reproducible, far too stiff to be Truth, hyperfocused on its own replication and confirmation, driven to see its flag raised everywhere and everywhen ("Belief is when someone else does the thinking," said Buckminster Fuller). Doubt is its less popular cousin, a grimy plebeian, just as mentally constipated as belief (even in its chronic changing of teams), but not so glossy or chrome-plated or mass-legitimized, being more musty, dingy, and decentralized, huddled up in less tidy corners of mind, except when shaved, bathed, dressed up, and brought into the antiseptic chambers of Science, where it, now more hardnosed skepticism than mere doubt, breathes life into scientific methodology.

Doubt usually reinforces our sense of separation. Doubt tends to empower our unhappiness -- however miserable doubt may make us feel, it is familiar, so densely familiar that it generates a sense of identity: I doubt, therefore I am.

Not many of us can stand being in doubt for extended periods of time. We crave breaks from it, but the breaks we ordinarily take from it do not undo it, but only remove us from it for a time. Doubt easily becomes the core of our alibi for holding back; we use our doubt to talk ourselves out of stretching to make the necessary leap.

Those who are mired in doubt have great difficulty in telling what is false from what is true. They get stuck in between, lost in the tales told and retold by their doubt.

Trying to work with doubt through mental means only doesn’t really work. The self-suppression that catalyzes and animates doubt must be seen, felt, known from the deep inside. The whole being must be eased, expanded, given permission to come alive. The torso must be loosened, the limbs unfrozen, the heart entered, the reach made both powerful and vulnerable, the entire anatomy brought into supportive resonance with our core of Being.

Doubt must be seen for what it is, as it is, without getting lost or absorbed in its point of view; only then will it unfist itself, only then will our endarkened familiarity with it come unstrung, only then will our indecisiveness be unequivocally undone, flung into the raw Truth of what we are.

When doubt infects you, don’t give it a thought. Neither avoid it nor let it recruit your mind.

Doubt your doubt, and then pour your full attention into the noncognitive openings generated by doing so. Go into its feeling dimensions, breathing them more alive, giving fitting expression to them; if this is overly difficult, consider going to a therapist who’s skilled in working with such things.

When doubt does manage to infiltrate your mind, read its contents once-through as though they belonged to a supermarket tabloid, taking careful note of which headlines most easily snare your attention. Then immediately shift your attention, and shift it completely, to the physical and physiological correlates of your doubt, resisting the temptation to scoot back into your thinking mind.

No matter how tempting it is to immerse yourself in what your doubt is telling you, shift your attention from whatever it is that you’re doubting to the actual phenomenon of doubt itself. Feel into and through its tensions, its downbeat textures, its contracted tones, its positioning, its emotional qualities, its bodily ramifications and anatomical peculiarities; feel what it is doing to you, feel what it is doing to others near you, feel how it’s staining your speech, vision, hearing, perception, posture, your very being...

And do this without trying to change or trash your doubt. Sometimes simply keeping your attention on your doubt as an energetic phenomenon, as opposed to focusing on its content, will cause it to dissolve. Other times, deliberately doubting your doubt will make it dissipate. Doubt may also sometimes be defused by taking a risk of Being, such as a not-so-easy but much needed movement toward someone or a timely expressing of something painful that needs to be said, especially if these are done not in order to get rid of doubt, but because they are imperatives of Being, arising from something deeper than our everyday mind and conditioning.

Doubt is, among other things, a kind of low-grade fear. As we expand our energy, the contraction at the heart of doubt starts to loosen up, until we’re not fearful, but simply excited.

Through attending closely, caringly, and carefully to the particulars of our doubt, we decentralize it, so that its viewpoint is no longer in a position to govern us.

When the light goes on in the slums of doubt, then doubt is little more than skepticism having a bad day.

The key is to actively and decisively disidentify with our doubt, while also allowing the surfacing and fitting expression of whatever feeling states are associated with it -- fear, sadness, anger, shame, disgust, longing, and so on.

Do not make doubt wrong. Simply realize that when you lose yourself in doubt, you are shortcircuiting a deeper song.

Now toward the healthier zones of doubting! Even in the most deadening doubt there sometimes can be gems of insight, bits of intuitive savvy mixed in with all the mental debris. These often get overlooked in our trying to get away from our doubting mind.

Doubt tends to be a big baby, and there’s not much bathwater (having been displaced by doubt’s multi-armed flailing), but even the little that there is is worth keeping; as it settles, and some clarity emerges, what’s valuable in our doubting becomes more obvious. Various intuitions, for example, may now be accessible. (It’s interesting to note that intuition sometimes masquerades as doubt, mostly when we don’t want to hear it.) Growth-stunting beliefs, beliefs that we no longer need, may lose their grip on us. For a belief to be dismantled, doubt about it is needed. Doubt is a wonderfully deadly virus for belief systems that have outlived their usefulness.

When we give ourselves permission to doubt certain things -- like "expert" pronouncements, self-proclaimed "higher" structures, religious and political certainties, impermeable belief systems (including our own!), and so on -- and we do so without losing touch with our core of Being, we are a little freer, a little less seducible by others’ promises of security. Then doubt does not entrap or flatten us, but rather brings us closer to what is really happening, making us more at home with the Zen saying: "Great doubt, great awakening; little doubt, little awakening; no doubt, no awakening."

Spending quality time with doubt makes us capable of what John Keats (in 1817?) called "negative capability" -- or the ability "of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Hanging out with doubt can be a drag, and it can also be a portal into the matrix and essence of Existence. It all depends on how we handle it. Initially, it’s usually wise to work with doubt as an energetic phenomenon (noticing its characteristic sensations, staying mindful of breathing and intentions, keeping grounded, allowing emotional release, etcetera), only secondarily paying any attention to its content -- we need to be able to be near it without getting sucked into its viewpoint.

This requires not only meditative practice, but also the ability to know and appropriately express what we’re feeling. Later, we can move in closer to our doubt, entering not only its physical and emotional dimensions, but also its mental dimensions, and start mining it for its valuables. Still later, we can allow our doubt regarding the Big Questions to carry us -- and not just intellectually! -- into the mysteries of the Unknowable, beyond both certainty and uncertainty...

[Michael]

The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter. -  Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

I believe that uncertainty is really my spirit's way of whispering, "I'm in flux. I can't decide for you. Something is off-balance here." - Oprah Winfrey

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world. - Michael Crichton

The future is uncertain... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity. - Ilya Prigogine

If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch. - George W. Bush

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one. - Voltaire

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. - Mark Twain

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency. - Jeremy Collier

Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty. - Jacob Bronowski

I prefer complexity to certainty, cheerful mysteries to sullen facts. - Claude T. Bissell

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without. - Eric Hoffer

The very essence of love is uncertainty. - Oscar Wilde

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. - Vincent Van Gogh

Knowledge would be fatal, it is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things beautiful. - Oscar Wilde

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. - Alfred Korzybski

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. - Laurens Van der Post

Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought. - Albert Guerard

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. - Peter Ustinov

Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom. - Chinese Proverb

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning. - Aleister Crowley

The believer is happy, the doubter is wise. - Irish Proverb

[Michael]

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. - Robert Browning
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Robert Masters: THE ANATOMY OF FAITH
Faith knows the way by heart.
 
Faith is radical trust in action. Trust in what? In Being, in our own Buddha- nature,  in What-Really-Matters. We may not see It, we may not hear It, we  may seem to stray far from It, but through cultivating faith we open to the  recognition that It — however invisible It may appear to be to us — is ever  with us, regardless of  our thoughts to the contrary.

Faith is, among other things, intimacy with not-knowing.

Faith is forged in the crucible of  our suffering, emerging as a dynamic openness  that helps us navigate through zones of  ourselves commonly submerged in  darkness, despair, and depression. The presence of   faith, however, doesn’t  necessarily mean we will have clear sailing. Even when our faith is strong, we  may still find ourselves down in the muck on our hands and knees — but not  so inclined to make ego-suffused drama out of  our situation.

Faith responds to problems, but not on the level at which they occur. That is,  faith takes a nonproblematic orientation to problems, providing a spiritually  intimate openness that holds us and our areas of  concern with great care.

This openness — sacred space in the flesh — contains without binding, and  releases without abandoning. Its value is verified by direct participation in it.

Direct  experience, not belief, provides  the  relevant data or material — physical  and otherwise — through which faith is cultivated, known, appreciated, and  more fully embodied.

Faith is not a matter of  believing in something; it is much deeper than belief   or any other mental construction. And nor is faith merely synonymous with  hope — hope is rooted in the future, faith in the present.

Where hope promises, faith gives. Where hope dreams, faith awakens.

Where hope is nostalgia for the future, faith is acceptance of  the now —  not  a  blind, misguided,  or  submissive  acceptance,  but  a  dynamic  acceptance,  unpolluted by hope and other romancings of  tomorrow.

Faith deepens through situations that test it. Without such conditions, faith  remains in the shallows.  Pain comes with Life, and what better use to make of  pain than to deepen  our faith? Instead of  turning our pain into suffering, we can allow it to fuel  our way into a deeper  life, a  life abundant with faith. Then affliction  is not  so much a fall from Grace as it is Grace in its dark, deglamorized disguise,  providing the very conditions through which we can more fully awaken from  the entrapping dreams that we habitually fuel and populate.

There is perhaps no more worthy gift to have than unshakable faith.

What are the ingredients of  such faith? First of  all, a strongly felt connection  to Being, in conjunction with an ongoing recognition that this connection still  exists when we don’t feel it. Second, a non-despairing abandoning of  all hope  of  fruition, an unforced letting go of  being invested and caught up in particular  outcomes. Third, a patience that waits without waiting, that endures without  having to have a clear endpoint. Fourth, a dynamic embracing of  not-knowing  (and  not  having  to  know),  honoring  the  knowledge-transcending Mystery  of  Being. Fifth, accepting what is exactly as it is, including our feelings and  intentions and actions regarding it. And, last but not least, cultivating gratitude  for what we currently have, including the ability to develop faith.   Faith makes us feel good even about not feeling good.

If  our faith is well-rooted, we usually do not forget it for long — we cannot  help but remember what gives us faith, even when our remembering is gray,  opaque, or far from stable. Faith provides not an antidote to our suffering,  but rather a compassionate space for it, in which we can more clearly hear and  sanely respond to what our pain is telling us.

Although faith might not make pain go away, it takes the suffering out of  it.

Faith does not necessarily still the storm, but allows us to be with it — and to  become intimate with it — without losing track of  What-Really-Matters.

Spiritual stamina.

Faith teaches us not to control, but to let be. This is not mere passivity nor  some sort of  spiritualized irresponsibility, but rather a powerful quietness or  stillness out of  which can emerge fitting action, choices made by something wiser than our mind. When our faith is strong, the necessity of  the situation  is the only catalyst we need for taking fitting action.

Faith is often made synonymous with what is commonly referred to as “blind  faith.” But real faith is far from blind — though it may sometimes lack clear  vision,  it knows  the way by heart, even  if   it has  to  inch along on  its belly  through the sniper fire of  doubt.

Faith allows us to live sanely and compassionately in the midst of  all that is  happening. Bad days don’t destroy or cripple it, but only strengthen it. So for  faith, suffering is not just bad news. The presence of  faith does not signal an  end to difficult states — as in fantasies of  saintly detachment — but rather  an appropriate context for them. Bringing things to an end is not the point;  radical trust in Being is. Faith is the embodiment of  such trust.   Faith is the highest form of  devotion.

Faith  is  the  lifeblood of  real patience, explaining nothing and revealing all.

Through it, we find the necessary energy and endurance for the most signi?cant  journey of  all.

Faith knows the way by heart.

[Jana]

Yea I was working on this this morning...doubt it appears is a form of avoidance and anethetization caused by our lack of courage and disguntlement. Instead of waiting for the world to support us, we have to support ourselves in a valiant campaign of being.

Solar Heart—Coherence, or the “stabilization” of consciousness, is probably different from "sameness" in heart beat which is supposed to be a negative effect. In a way we might not be talking about beat persay, but the "feeling" in the heart neurological tissue and the "coordination" between the brain/breathing/metabolism-thyroid. The Heart Field...then producing a loving EMF or Merkabah (divine light vehicle) in which the bodymind can reach a higher level of health, integration and unity. Through this "vehicle" the connection with All is created, the universe becomes beneficent to us through this field of "love."
The world in its divided state cannot provide us with the coherency, sanity and love necessary to build up a strong Merkabah in which to travel peacibly through our lives. Therefore where "spiritual" practice enters the picture is to provide us the spacetime to build within ourselves that which is inherently ours but latent, untapped...vast depths of love opening to infinity.

On my website I have the Inner Arts which describe ways to "get in touch" with this potential for coherency and unity. Especially the Cardiomuscular Release.
http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php?story=CardioMuscularRelease

Wilhelm Reich was working at achieving the liberated heart from the perspective of removing the body armor (painbody). Addressing the dragons that stand guard at the treasure of our True unburdened nature. Many others have explored means of getting the shut down and dissonance out of the way so the coherence of Presence can emerge...including Ellie van Winkle
http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php?story=ToxicMindTheory

And Michael Brown http://www.thepresenceportal.com/
Michael Brown is right on target for dealing with the radical emotional dissociation, removal from the body, separation from earth and cosmos and all forms of dyscommunication with existence. There is really no one other than him that really got the deeper schism and learned how to set about healing it.
He is going to be in Aspen for a workshop after being in Boulder...you can see about it at his website. He is going to be in the upcoming movie The Leap.

“Turning toward our pain — our contractedness, our fear, our distress, our numbness, our unhappiness — puts us on the road to authentic happiness…The closer we get to our pain, the greater are the odds that we will  be able to relate to it rather than from it. And when we thus relate to our pain, we free ourselves from the pain of avoiding our pain…Real happiness arises when we stop turning our pain into suffering.  Suffering, in brief, is what happens when we identify with our pain, dramatizing it to the point of overpersonalizing it. Suffering is something that we are doing with our pain, something that makes our pain worse, something that keeps us removed from any significant exploration and  illumination of our pain…Real happiness does not require an absence of pain, but rather that  we face and enter our pain, and enter it not headfirst, but heartfirst,  employing our awareness like a miner’s lamp. ” Robert Augustus Masters
http://www.robertmasters.com/newsletter/July2008.pdf

[henry]

yay heart, anahata, courage

[jimtzu]

michael....  how do you think doubt ties in with your quest or understanding of meaning??   

[Michael]

michael....  how do you think doubt ties in with your quest or understanding of meaning??  

Doubts can be useful in meaningmaking, because they help clear the mind of the clutter of static thoughtforms; or conglomerations of meaning; solidified, crystallized, calcified structures that get in the way of novel fluid constructions.

Interpretations of experience are at the heart of meaningmaking IMO. Interpretations and their kissing cousins, evaluations form the building-blocks of explanations and stories, which are (partially) given meaning by means of paradigms and worldviews.  All processed forms of meaning along with undigested experience, tend to clutter and clog the bodymind sort of like like plaque in arteries. 

The state known by Zen practitioners as "beginner's mind" is the opposite of this condition.  And a handy way to achieve beginner's mind is by means of doubt.  Even better is confusion  !  If you can cultivate a good healthy confusion you're fortunate indeed!    

I envision certainty to be like one of those snow globes:

Where when everything settles, you have a set static scene.

But healthy confusion is like shaking it all up,

thus creating a charged dynamic condition where all sorts of new patterns may become available.

What is beginner's mind good for?  Aside from the benefit of providing the fertile ground for an awakening experience or satori, it's the best antidote for feeling stuck, or caught in a closed loop.


There's more I want to say about doubt and certainty from an opposing view, but I'm having to work up to it... 

[jimtzu]

nice....

"beginners mind" also known as the "uncarved block"  is the process of realizing the prescence of the present, mindful awareness in action.

thoughts are one step away from reality, interpretations and evaluations are even another step away. at that point contemplating the koan(s) of life are the only thing that will get one back on the pathless path of being, becoming aware that the closed loop is open in the middle and finding out that one was never stuck in the first place.   

i realize this is just a re-interpreation of what you said, and means nothing at all...      please excuse my non-dual attempt at humor   

[Michael]

Interlude from Douglas Adams' Restaurant At the End of the Universe:

On  a small obscure world somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular - nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it is protected by a  vast field  of  unprobability  to which only six men in this galaxy have a key - it was raining.

It was bucketing down, and had been for hours. It beat the top of the  sea into a mist, it pounded the trees, it churned and slopped a stretch of scrubby land near the sea into a mudbath.

The  rain pelted and danced on the corrugated iron roof of the small shack that stood in the middle of this patch of scrubby  land.  It  obliterated  the small  rough  pathway that led from the shack down to the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of interesting shells which had been placed there.

The noise of the rain on the roof of the shack was deafening  within,  but went largely unnoticed by its occupant, whose attention was otherwise engaged.

He  was  a tall shambling man with rough straw-coloured hair that was damp from the leaking roof. His clothes were shabby, his back was hunched, and  his eyes, though open, seemed closed.

In his shack was an old beaten-up armchair, an old scratched table, an old mattress, some cushions and a stove that was small but warm.

There  was  also  an  old  and  slightly  weatherbeaten  cat, and this was currently the focus of the man's attention. He bent his  shambling  form  over it.

"Pussy,  pussy, pussy," he said, "coochicoochicoochicoo ... pussy want his fish? Nice piece of fish ... pussy want it?"

The cat seemed undecided on the matter. It pawed rather condescendingly at the piece of fish the man was holding out, and then got distracted by a  piece of dust on the floor.

"Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think," said the man. Doubt crept into his voice.

"I imagine this is what will happen," he said, "but how can I tell?"

He proffered the fish again.

"Pussy think," he said, "eat fish or not eat fish. I think it is better if I don't get involved." He sighed.

"I  think  fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?"

He left the fish on the floor for the cat, and retired to his seat.

"Ah, I seem to see you eating it," he said at last, as the  cat  exhausted the  entertainment  possibilities  of  the speck of dust and pounced on to the fish.

"I like it when I see you eat the fish," said the man, "because in my mind you will waste away if you don't."

He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the stub of a pencil.  He held  one  in  one  hand and the other in the other, and experimented with the different ways of bringing them together. He tried holding  the  pencil  under the  paper, then over the paper, then next to the paper. He tried wrapping the paper round the pencil, he tried rubbing the stubby end of the pencil  against the  paper  and  then he tried rubbing the sharp end of the pencil against the paper. It made a mark, and he was delighted with  the  discovery,  as  he  was every  day.  He  picked  up  another piece of paper from the table. This had a crossword on it. He studied it briefly and filled in a couple of clues  before losing interest.

He  tried sitting on one of his hands and was intrigued by the feel of the bones of his hip.

"Fish come from far away," he said, "or so I'm told. Or so I  imagine  I'm told.  When  the  men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black ships, do they come in your mind too? What do you see pussy?"

He looked at the cat, which was more concerned with getting the fish  down as rapidly as possible than it was with these speculations.

"And  when  I  hear  their questions, do you hear questions? What do their voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to  you."  He reflected on this, and saw the flaw in the supposition.

"Perhaps  they  are  singing  songs  to  you,"  he said, "and I just think they're asking me questions."

He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just to  see  what  it was like.

"Do  you think they came today?" he said, "I do. There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and  a  memory  of them  in  my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. And look what else they've left me."

He reached over to the table and pulled some things off it.

"Crosswords, dictionaries, and a calculator."

He played with the calculator for an hour, whilst the cat  went  to  sleep and  the  rain  outside  continued  to  pour. Eventually he put the calculator aside.

"I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions," he said,  "To come  all  that  way  and  leave all these things for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behaviour. Or so it seems to  me.  Who  can tell, who can tell."

From  the  table he picked up a cigarette and lit it with a spill from the stove. He inhaled deeply and sat back.

"I think I saw another ship in the sky today," he said  at  last.  "A  big white  one.  I've never seen a big white one, just the six black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who say they come from so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one  big  white  one  at certain  times.  Perhaps  I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely."

He stood up and found a glass that was lying on the floor by the mattress. He poured in a measure from his whisky bottle. He sat again.

"Perhaps some other people are coming to see me," he said.

A hundred yards away, pelted by the torrential  rain,  lay  the starship Heart  of Gold.

Its  hatchway  opened, and three figures emerged, huddling into themselves to keep the rain off their faces.

"In there?" shouted Trillian above the noise of the rain.

"Yes," said Zarniwoop.

"That shack?"

"Yes."

"Weird," said Zaphod.

"But it's in the middle of nowhere," said Trillian, "we must have come  to the wrong place. You can't rule the Universe from a shack."

They  hurried  through  the pouring rain, and arrived, wet through, at the door. They knocked. They shivered.

The door opened.

"Hello?" said the man.

"Ah, excuse me," said Zarniwoop, "I have reason to believe ..."

"Do you rule the Universe?" said Zaphod.

The man smiled at him.

"I try not to," he said, "Are you wet?"

Zaphod looked at him in astonishment.

"Wet?" he cried, "Doesn't it look as if we're wet?"

"That's how it looks to me," said the man, "but  how  you  feel  about  it might  be  an  altogether  different matter. If you feel warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in."

They went in.

They looked  around  the  tiny  shack,  Zarniwoop  with  slight  distaste, Trillian with interest, Zaphod with delight.

"Hey, er ..." said Zaphod, "what's your name?"

The man looked at them doubtfully.

"I  don't  know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name."

He invited Trillian to sit in the chair. He sat on the edge of the  chair, Zarniwoop leaned stiffly against the table and Zaphod lay on the mattress.

"Wowee!" said Zaphod, "the seat of power!" He tickled the cat.

"Listen," said Zarniwoop, "I must ask you some questions."

"Alright," said the man kindly, "you can sing to my cat if you like."

"Would he like that?" asked Zaphod.

"You'd better ask him," said the man.

"Does he talk?" said Zaphod.

"I  have  no  memory  of  him  talking,"  said  the  man,  "but  I am very unreliable."

Zarniwoop pulled some notes out of a pocket.

"Now," he said, "you do rule the Universe, do you?"

"How can I tell?" said the man.

Zarniwoop ticked off a note on the paper.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Ah," said the man, "this is a question about the past is it?"

Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn't  exactly  what  he  had been expecting.

"Yes," he said.

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account  for  the  discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"

Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his sodden clothes.

"So you answer all questions like this?" he said.

The man answered quickly.

"I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say  things. More I cannot say."

Zaphod laughed happily.

"I'll drink to that," he said and pulled out the bottle of Janx spirit. He leaped up and handed the bottle to the ruler of the Universe, who took it with pleasure.

"Good on you, great ruler," he said, "tell it like it is."

"No,  listen to me," said Zarniwoop, "people come to you do they? In ships ..."

"I think so," said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.

"And they ask you," said Zarniwoop, "to take  decisions  for  them?  About people's  lives,  about  worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?"

"Out there?" said the man, "out where?"

"Out there!" said Zarniwoop pointing at the door.

"How can you tell there's anything out there," said the man politely, "the door's closed."

The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside the shack it was warm.

"But you know there's a whole Universe out there!" cried  Zarniwoop.  "You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!"

The  ruler  of  the  Universe  thought  for  a long while whilst Zarniwoop quivered with anger.

"You're very sure of your facts," he said at last, "I couldn't  trust  the thinking of a man who takes the Universe - if there is one - for granted."

Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.

"I only decide about my Universe," continued the man quietly. "My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay."

"But don't you believe in anything?"

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said.

"You  don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!"

"I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of. And  neither, I  suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if  they  exist.  They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears."

Trillian said:

"I think I'm just popping outside for a moment."

She left and walked into the rain.

"Do you believe other people exist?" insisted Zarniwoop.

"I have no opinion. How can I say?"

"I'd better see what's up with Trillian," said Zaphod and slipped out.

Outside, he said to her:

"I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?"

"Very good," said Trillian. They walked off into the rain.

Inside, Zarniwoop continued.

"But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?"

The  ruler  of  the Universe waited for as long as he could. When he heard the faint sound of the ship's engines starting he spoke to cover it.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said, "I am not involved with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Ah!" barked Zarniwoop, "you say `The Lord'. You believe in something!"

"My cat," said the man benignly, picking it up and stroking  it,  "I  call him The Lord. I am kind to him."

"Alright,"  said  Zarniwoop,  pressing home his point, "How do you know he exists? How do you know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what he  thinks  of as your kindness?"

"I  don't,"  said the man with a smile, "I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. Do you  behave  any differently? Please, I think I am tired."

Zarniwoop heaved a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looked about.

"Where are the other two?" he said suddenly.

"What  other  two?" said the ruler of the Universe, settling back into his chair and refilling his whisky glass.

"Beeblebrox and the girl! The two who were here!"

"I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for ..."

"Stuff it," snapped Zarniwoop and ran out into  the  rain.  There  was  no ship. The rain continued to churn the mud. There was no sign to show where the ship  had been. He hollered into the rain. He turned and ran back to the shack and found it locked.

The ruler of the Universe dozed lightly in his chair.  After  a  while  he played  with  the  pencil  and  the  paper  again  and  was  delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with  the  one  on  the  other.  Various  noises continued  outside,  but he didn't know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for a week to see how it would react.

[Michael]

.

[jimtzu]

   the flow chart is not the territory, but it is also not not the territory.  only when one has realized the folly of hope is there hope for a future that doesn't exist.  i hope i'm not being anti-semantic. 

[henry]

is this the work of r. Crumb? . winning map/poster for the biennial integral "theory" conference. . ...unknown

[Michael]

I won't hold your anti-semantic tendencies against you Jim.  And I don't know the author of the above diagram Henry, but as you say, it ought to win the Integral Conference map-of-all-maps contest...

I wanted to get back to another, and thus far ignored aspect of doubt and certainty, though it's a bit of a struggle to get my mind around it these days.  That's the whole "direct knowing" aspect.

I happened to come across that in a book I'm perusing called Inner Paths to Outer Space by Rick Strassman (of DMT the Spirit Molecule fame).  So am reminded of this interesting aspect of epistemology.

In the mode of "direct knowing", doubts and certainties don't really apply in the way they do with our more accustomed way of thinking and knowing, that of linguistic symbol processing, reasoning, rational deliberation and analysis etc.

Direct knowing seems to have its own integrity, rather apart from interpretation and reasoning.  It seems to be the source of most of what's most interesting in our human world of culture and consciousness, yet is rarely thought of in anything other than religious or artistic terms.

My sense is that doubts can get in the way of initiating this mode of consciousness, and to the extent that reasoning and direct knowing don't play well together in the same bodymind, doubts can muddy the waters.

So in the instance of a clear "channel" of direct knowing, doubt has little use and lots of detriment.  But in the phase of translation, or interpretation, where the Knowing is translated into linguistic form, and thus enters the realms of reasoning and consensual reality, doubts are invaluable.

The willingness to critically question every aspect of one's interpretation of revelation is precious IMO.  And an absolute prerequisite to being taken seriously by any reasonable person, again IMO.

I find that hope is almost completely useless in this process, but the faith that RAM explicates above is invaluable.  The kind of faith built entirely of experience and devoid of hope allows the distance to critically question one's interpretations of direct knowledge.


Another aspect of this is the "co-creation of reality" thing.

Here's yet another quote:

In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits. - John Lilly

I'll assume for the moment, that you more or less agree with the proposition about the myth of the given, and its implications.  (That reality is not a static set of forms that are 'given' to the senses as a construct, separate and independent from mind)  And that we are somehow creating or co-creating the very form of reality moment to moment.

To the extent that this is true, how do doubts, certainties, hopes and faith enter into this strange process of creation?

[jimtzu]

i would say that direct knowing, gnosis or whatever wordform you use to express this concept is,indeed, the purest form of experiencing both the inner and outer aspects of the world, barring any kind of blockage of the sensory "appapratus" (schizophrenia or other mental disturbances that impair the experience, although they would have their own "true" subjective experience). direct knowing is of the moment, before/beyond words, concepts, interpretations, totally non-linear.  once the experience moves into the language, emotional concept stage it is subject to any or all of the ways of the mind, it is already processed, a step away from the acutuality.  in that respect, hope,doubt, faith are all mental constructs of the mind playing with itself. language is how we talk to each other, but is not the purest form of communication.  in the linear realm of language co-creation is almost assumed to be two seperate entities working together to create when viewed from the outside, when in reality the two are actually different aspects of the one, so it is not co-creation, but simply creation, and as far as i can tell that's the "purpose" of being. hopes, doubts, (un)certainties are part of the myriad subjective possibilities that shape this fractal, living universe that we call life. 

or something like that......