From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Subject: Re: Psychic energy/Chi/L.V.X.
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1993 07:55:58 EST

Richard M. Romanowski writes:

>> Sound advice ... but when you stop thinking about it, plant in your
>> mind the true seed-thought that there is no difference between body
>> and mind. There is no division.  You are not a car containing a
>> passenger.  Your body is not a box, imprisoning the real you.
>> Everything blurs.

Bryan J. Maloney said:
> Ah, pretty much the thing that modern neuroscientists and others are
> FINALLY beginning to accept.  If anyone runs into Descartes in their
> journeys, kick him in the pants for him setting science back by
> centuries of potential work.  (I am serious on this point.)

It's important in any kind of teaching to challenge the fixed idea
that one is in control of one's life much as a driver is in control of
a car.  For those who are not yet ready to go beyond the dichotomy of
driver and vehicle, I find the following useful at times:

<Begin script>

You think you are, as it were, driving a car down the highway -- but
take a more distanced view, and you see instead of a driver in a car,
a would-be driver sitting at a video-game pretending to drive a car
down a highway.  This is a very sophisticated video game in a way: the
highway that appears on the screen is derived from the surrounding
scenery, only distorted.  But the video-game itself is mounted on the
back of an old, creaky farm wagon, pulled by a team of horses.  On the
box sits a deaf- mute farm hand, who holds the reins and thinks that
*he* is the one controlling the horses.  Since the farm-hand is a
deaf-mute, the only way to talk to him, once you notice his presence,
is by gestures or pictures [ritual, symbols, whatever].  The horses,
moreover, are not pulling the whole contraption down a highway, but
through a rural landscape.  At times they go down a paved road, at
times a dirt one (potholes and all), at times through woods, at times
across open fields -- when spooked, they may even go over a cliff, as
horses sometimes do.  Also, their gait may vary, from a walk to a
gallop.

So, if all you judge by is the video-game screen, you may think you're
getting somewhere, though when you turn the game off and get down from
your seat, you may be very surprised at where you've ended up, and how
little it resembles what you saw on the screen.  If you're a bit
wiser, you'll notice the rural landscape from time to time, and may
occasion- ally try to communicate with the driver, not realizing that
he neither hears nor speaks.  This can be even more frustrating.

The person well on the road to real wisdom may be attending to the
landscape all the time, as well as to the screen; and he may even have
figured out how to communicate with the real wagon-driver.  This,
however, may sometimes spook the horses (wild gesticulating and all
that), which can be very dangerous -- or not, depending on the terrain
at the moment.  A very few of us, perhaps, may be communicating with
the wagon-driver on a regular basis, and not spooking the horses,
either.

Yet even so, the wagon-driver has a mind of his own, and can get
stubborn.  And beyond the wagon-driver, there are the horses, who know
very well where they want to go, and are controllable only at times by
the deaf-mute who holds their reins.  (Ultimately, of course, you, the
wagon-driver and the horses all have more or less the same
destination, for their own different reasons; so most people end up
more or less where they hoped to go, even if they don't recognize it
when they get there.)

Finally, as a far-off ideal, more striven after than realized by
anyone, there is the person who can get down from the wagon and walk
towards a destination from time to time, or who may even just prefer
to walk all the time, whether s\he has a destination any longer or is
just enjoying the planet of which s\he, ultimately, is a part.

<End script>

This generally shakes up a few preconceptions among my university
students.  -- Robert

(Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM)