Early people lived closer to their experience, and trusted it more, than we do. This became clear to me reading James David Audlin's 'The Circle of Life' (2012), based on his wide experience of Native American peoples.
If for example, you saw an owl sitting on a tree, and as you got closer
you saw a pine cone in the same place, you would not say, as we do,
that you had been mistaken. No, you’d say that the Spirit of what was
there presented itself to you first as an owl, then as a pine cone. And
then you might read something into that.
And I think that metaphysically as well as practically, these people are right. Because what else do we have apart from our direct experience? Only abstractions.
And these days, much of our ‘knowledge’ consists of abstractions, of realities that we do not experience, but which we are told are how things ‘really’ are. And that, to my mind, is a great cultural disempowerment. It leaves us weak, and vulnerable to manipulation and to control.
This is the bit where some of you might think I am being a bit crazy, or wilfully contrary, but I am not. Take the earth and the sun. Our EXPERIENCE is of the sun making a daily journey across the sky, of the sun going round the earth. But we are told that ‘REALLY’ the earth goes round the sun. Does it ‘really’ do this?
If you went to space, it seems you would have the experience of the earth going round the sun. How interesting, I would say: from this perspective I see the earth going round the sun, yet back home I see it the other way round. Wow! In both cases I would give value to my experience, I would treat them both as equally real. I would not set one above the other.
I have worked with this one a lot, because I have been told all my life that other people with their equations and equipment and PhDs know how things ‘really’ are. That head knowledge is more real than experience; that authority for what is real lies, crucially, with others and not with myself. Just as it did with the medieval church - it is the same mindset.
I think this is so important, that we reclaim the power of our experience by treating it as real. Because without it, we have nothing.
Another example, perhaps, is the 'flat' earth. Which is closer to your direct experience, round or flat?
There is no deeper reality behind our experience. There is just our experience.
"In the seen, just the seen. In the heard, just the heard." (The Buddha)
This is the crazy wisdom of the shaman, the yogi, the mystic. But it is only crazy from the viewpoint of public reality and the tramlines along which we are trained to think.
And I think that metaphysically as well as practically, these people are right. Because what else do we have apart from our direct experience? Only abstractions.
And these days, much of our ‘knowledge’ consists of abstractions, of realities that we do not experience, but which we are told are how things ‘really’ are. And that, to my mind, is a great cultural disempowerment. It leaves us weak, and vulnerable to manipulation and to control.
This is the bit where some of you might think I am being a bit crazy, or wilfully contrary, but I am not. Take the earth and the sun. Our EXPERIENCE is of the sun making a daily journey across the sky, of the sun going round the earth. But we are told that ‘REALLY’ the earth goes round the sun. Does it ‘really’ do this?
If you went to space, it seems you would have the experience of the earth going round the sun. How interesting, I would say: from this perspective I see the earth going round the sun, yet back home I see it the other way round. Wow! In both cases I would give value to my experience, I would treat them both as equally real. I would not set one above the other.
I have worked with this one a lot, because I have been told all my life that other people with their equations and equipment and PhDs know how things ‘really’ are. That head knowledge is more real than experience; that authority for what is real lies, crucially, with others and not with myself. Just as it did with the medieval church - it is the same mindset.
I think this is so important, that we reclaim the power of our experience by treating it as real. Because without it, we have nothing.
Another example, perhaps, is the 'flat' earth. Which is closer to your direct experience, round or flat?
There is no deeper reality behind our experience. There is just our experience.
"In the seen, just the seen. In the heard, just the heard." (The Buddha)
This is the crazy wisdom of the shaman, the yogi, the mystic. But it is only crazy from the viewpoint of public reality and the tramlines along which we are trained to think.
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