{"id":4369,"date":"2012-10-06T15:56:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T23:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4369"},"modified":"2012-10-08T14:28:49","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:28:49","slug":"the-central-teachings-of-mysticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/06\/the-central-teachings-of-mysticism\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Religion 1: The Central Teachings of Mysticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any SF writer wonders from time to time if he or she might be able to found a successful religion. I\u2019ve had some thoughts along these lines recently.<\/p>\n

But never fear, I\u2019m thinking in terms of a novel <\/em>I\u2019m writing, and not in terms of \u201cdominating the world.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

This week I\u2019m going to put up two, or maybe three, posts on the SF-related religion theme. Today I\u2019ll get started with a piece I wrote thirty years ago, not without interest in its own right, and in the following posts, I\u2019ll talk about how this fits into my current grand scheme.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Central Teachings of Mysticism<\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introductory Note<\/b><\/p>\n

I wrote \u201cThe Central Teachings of Mysticism\u201d\u009d in 1982 and gave it as a talk. It appeared in my collection Transreal!<\/em>, WCS Books, 1991, and is in my Collected Essays<\/a><\/em>, Transreal Books, 2012.<\/p>\n

When I wrote this talk in 1982, my wife and I were living in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a poet friend of ours named Mary Molyneux Abrams had been taking classes at Sweetbriar College so she could get her Bachelor\u2019s degree. She and her husband David Abrams were friends of ours there. David is a photographer. I used Mary as a model for Sondra Tupperware in Master of Space and Time<\/em>, and David took the photo of me which appeared on the dustjacket of the hardback edition of The Secret of Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1982, Mary decided to stop going to school, and her husband said, \u201cWhy not give Mary a graduation party anyway?\u201d\u009d He made up engraved invitations mentioning me as the commencement speaker. At the party, I handed out mimeographed copies of \u201cThe Central Teachings of Mysticism\u201d\u009d and read it to the audience of some forty people.<\/p>\n

My father Embry Rucker, Sr., who was an Episcopal priest, happened to be there and he gave a blessing. And at the end of the ceremony we sang \u201cTake Me Out To The Ballgame.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Talk<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not going to be very funny, but I hope it\u2019s at least interesting. One reason I like to talk about mysticism is that talking weird gets me high: the air gets like thick yellow jelly, you know, and everyone\u2019s part of the jelly-vibe jelly-space jelly-time\u2026<\/p>\n

All is One<\/em>. That\u2019s the main teaching, that\u2019s the so-called secret of life. It\u2019s no secret, though. It\u2019s a truism that we\u2019ve all heard dozens of times. The secret teachings are shouted in the streets. All is One<\/em>, what can I do with that? How can I use it in the home? If that\u2019s<\/em> the answer, what\u2019s the question?<\/p>\n

I guess the most basic problem we all have to deal with is death. In Zen monasteries, the entering students are given koans<\/em> to solve. A koan<\/em> is a type of problem unsolvable to the rational mind: What was your face before you were born? This is not a stick. [Holds up a stick.] What shall I call it?<\/em> Each of us on Earth has a special koan to work on, it\u2019s the death-koan, handed out at birth: \u201cHi, this is the world, you\u2019re alive now and it\u2019s nice. After awhile you die and it all stops. What are you going to do about it?<\/em>\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The mystic escapes death by denying that he or she exists as an individual bag of meat. \u201cI am God,\u201d\u009d is the easiest way to put it, though this doesn\u2019t always go over too well. \u201cHi, I\u2019m God, this is my wife, she\u2019s God, too. These are the children, God, God, and\u2026\u201d\u009d What I have in mind here is that God\u2014or the One, if you want to be more neutral-sounding\u2014what I mean is that God is everywhere and we are all part of God. We are like eyes that God grows to look at each other with.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cGod\u201d\u009d does grate. Organized religion puts a lot of people uptight (we will be passing out the plates soon) and when a lot of us hear that word (get your hands outta there, friend) our first impulse is to find a brick and throw it, or just leave or go to sleep (you\u2019re gonna burn for this)\u2026<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the second central teaching comes in. All is One, fine. But: The One is Unknowable<\/em>. \u201cGod\u201d\u009d\u2014that\u2019s just a noise I\u2019m making up here, a kind of pig-squeal. We don\u2019t know God\u2019s name, and we never will. The ultimate thing, the fundamental Reality\u2014it\u2019s not something the rational mind can tie up in a net of words. I can\u2019t really tell you what I\u2019m thinking about. In a way it\u2019s pointless to talk about mysticism at all. \u201cIf you see God, only piss to mark the spot\u201d\u009d\u2014that\u2019s a line from a poem I wrote when I was thirty. I was down in the islands, standing on a beach at night. If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s two teachings: All is One<\/em>, and The One is Unknowable<\/em>. The third (and last) teaching is The One is Right Here<\/em>. You\u2019re totally enlightened right now, right as you are. You see God all the time; you can\u2019t stop seeing Him. We\u2019re all in heaven and there is no hell.<\/p>\n

First I claim that all of reality is one single thing, a sort of giant orgasm or something. Then I say that this One is unknowable, but right away I turn around and say that the One is perfectly easy to see, it\u2019s everywhere. Do we have a contradiction? How can the mystics say that, on the one hand, God is unknowable, and that, on the other hand, God is everywhere?<\/p>\n

People who have a traditional view of religion are perfectly comfortable with the idea of God as something way up there, something unattainable: the Commander in Chief, the Head Technician, our Fearless Leader, the Great Scientist who put all this together. The Church of Christ, Cosmic Programmer. What\u2019s God thinking about? Smart stuff, hard stuff, stuff we can never understand. That\u2019s the God is Unknowable<\/em> teaching. No rational human description can exhaust the riches of the One.<\/p>\n

The other side of the coin is that we know the One perfectly well. You can\u2019t describe God in any complete way, but God\u2019s as much a part of you as your body is. You can know something in an immediate way without knowing it in any kind of analytic way. You don\u2019t need to be a geneticist to know how to make babies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So when mysticism says The One is Unknowable<\/em> and then says The One is Right Here<\/em>, there isn\u2019t really a contradiction. It\u2019s just that there\u2019s two kinds<\/em> of knowing. We can\u2019t know the One rationally, but we can know it in an immediate and mystical way. Anyone can go into the temple, but you have to leave your shoes outside. \u201cTemple\u201d\u009d stands for a mystical vision of God, and \u201cshoes\u201d\u009d stands for conventional ways of talking. You take off your shoes and walk into the temple.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to go to the Far East to find mystical religion. Christianity is based on the idea that, on the one hand, God is way up there in seventh heaven, and that, on the other hand, Jesus comes down to live in our hearts. It\u2019s a strange thing that many of us are more comfortable with Buddhism than we are with Christianity. It\u2019s strange, but the reasons are pretty obvious\u2014I mean, imagine if there were a 24-hour-a-day Buddhist Broadcasting TV network:<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends, I want to talk to you about samadhi<\/em>. This blessed state of union with the Void\u2014Void being Nothingness, friends\u2014this blessed state was first experienced in a little town near the Ganges River. God brought a man\u2014a man<\/em>, friends, and not a woman\u2014God in His wisdom brought forth this human\u2014a human<\/em>, friends, and not a Communist\u2014God brought to this seeker a vision of the Void. How best might you, in your ignorance, in your sin, in your present debased circumstances, how might you best seek the Void? The Void can be found in your wallet, dear seeker, if only you will send its contents to me\u2026\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

So you go turn on the radio, man, and instead of music there\u2019s some grainy-voiced guy yelling:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026hatred. Yes, hatred<\/em>, my fellow enlightened ones, Buddha came to preach hatred. I know this may sound strange to some of you out there in the radio audience, but it\u2019s not<\/em> a matter of conjecture. God hates the unbeliever, just as the unbeliever hates me<\/em>\u2026\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There is so much negative stuff associated with religion, that many of us would just as soon never talk about God at all. But there\u2019s still that death-koan<\/em> hanging overhead: life is beautiful, life ends, what can I do?<\/em> If I decide not to think about bad stuff like death and loneliness, then I end up spending all my energy on not thinking. I can buy lots of stuff, but every visit to the repair shop is an intimation of mortality. I can get real high, but I always have to come down. And not choosing anything at all is itself a choice.<\/p>\n

Mysticism offers a way out. It\u2019s really just a simple change of perspective. A person\u2019s life is like a design in an endless spacetime tapestry. Molecules weave in and out of your body all the time. Inhale\/Exhale; Eat & Excrete. You breathe an atom out, I breathe it in. I say this, you answer that. Atoms, thoughts and energies play back and forth among us. We are linked spacetime patterns, overlapping waves in an endless sea. No one exists in isolation, everyone is part of the Whole. If a person can only take the word, \u201cI,\u201d\u009d to be the Whole, then that \u201cI\u201d\u009d is indeed immortal. In the book of Exodus, Moses asks God what His real name is. God answers: \u201cI AM.\u201d\u009d All is One, All is One<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If this were just an abstract idea, then mysticism would not be very important. What makes mysticism important is that you can directly experience the fact that All is One.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I used to read about mysticism and wonder how to score for some enlightenment. There\u2019s something so slippery about the central teachings\u2014the way the One is supposed to be unspeakable, yet everywhere all the time\u2014it used to really tantalize me. And then finally I started getting glimpses of it, sometimes with chemicals, sometimes for no reason at all. I\u2019d see God, or feel the world synch into full unity, and I\u2019d love it, but whenever I tried to grab onto it, the life would somehow drain out, and I\u2019d just have some dry abstract principle.<\/p>\n

After I got so I could occasionally feel that All is One, I started being uptight that I couldn\u2019t be there all the time. I bought lots of books by totally enlightened men. Eventually I concluded that no one does stay up there all the time. You can\u2019t always be having a shining vision that All is One; you have to do other stuff, like deal with your boss, or fix the car, meaningless social hang-ups, the stuff like walking and eating and breathing. You can\u2019t always be staring at the White Light.<\/p>\n

But you can. That\u2019s the next level, you see. The Light is everywhere, all the time. Being unenlightened is itself a kind of enlightenment. There are no teachings, and there\u2019s nothing to learn.<\/p>\n

Congratulations, Mary.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/b><\/p>\n

(Recall that the “Mary” I mention at the end was the woman for whom this “graduation talk” was for—as mentioned in the introductory note.)<\/p>\n

Rereading my little lecture twenty or thirty years later, I enjoy its flow, but I feel like it\u2019s missing something. God (or the One) isn\u2019t just some kind of logic puzzle, the Absolute can directly touch your heart. Over the years I\u2019ve added a fourth and a fifth \u201cteaching.\u201d\u009d These are: (4) God (or the Cosmic Light) is Love, and (5) The One will help you if you ask. Help you do what? To be less selfish, more loving, less driven, and more serene\u2014to let go and stop trying to run everything. Seek and ye shall find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any SF writer wonders from time to time if he or she might be able to found a successful religion. I\u2019ve had some thoughts along these lines recently. But never fear, I\u2019m thinking in terms of a novel I\u2019m writing, and not in terms of \u201cdominating the world.\u201d\u009d This week I\u2019m going to put up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4369"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4381,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4369\/revisions\/4381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}