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Gnosis
To Touch is to Know
by Andrew Gara
As human beings we suffer from two primary delusions about the outer world
that surrounds or encloses us, and the inner world that each of us
surrounds or encloses. The first delusion is that external reality is a
public and shared world that we are all present to. The second delusion is
that internal reality is merely private and mine or yours.
The first delusion — that external reality is public and shared — leads us
to believe that we are observers of an objective reality ‘out there’,
which is independent of us. This delusion means we would not think of
saying MY sunset as if the sunset I see with other people is my private
property, something that I personally ‘own’ or ‘possess’. Even less would
we think of a sunset or any other object ‘out there’ as something we
personally created (like an essay we might write) and therefore different
than the personally created sunset that the other person sees. Another
consequence of this delusion is that we can look at external reality
without interacting with it or being effected or changed by it in any way
— the myth of pure observation.
The second delusion — that internal reality is private and personal —
leads us to believe that we are creators of a purely subjective reality
‘in here’, which is completely dependent on the individual. We say that we
HAVE thoughts and feelings and dreams and we mean by this that they are
our own personal creation and therefore we own them, like personal private
property. We take for granted that the thoughts that I HAVE are MY
thoughts, the dreams that you HAVE are YOUR dreams. This delusion means
that we do not think of the inner world of ideas and dreams and
imaginations as an inner universe of ‘psychic’ objects or entities that we
can all be aware of and scientifically explore and validate, just as we do
the outer world. A consequence of this second delusion is that since
thoughts and feelings are our private property and creation and since they
are ‘inside’ our heads or our bodies, we don’t seem to have any ‘distance’
from them, we believe that we ARE our thoughts and feelings. Thus we can
be very affected and changed by them, so that if I have a thought that I
am a bad person, I can quickly come to feel that I am bad and then believe
that I am bad, resulting in me saying to myself or others that I am bad.
Peter Wilberg’s writings set out to change both delusions — he maintains
that our so-called ‘objective’ outer world is very personal indeed, and
our so-called ‘subjective’ inner world can be explored scientifically and
the results validated by anyone. What follows is my understanding of a
little of Peter’s enormous body of work dealing with the true nature of
inner and outer reality.
THE INNER UNIVERSE
I have thoughts, I have a headache, I have a sore knee, I am angry — all
of us have said these sorts of things countless times. If I feel guilty I
might say to someone that I ‘HAVE guilty thoughts about…’ meaning that I
am thinking ‘negative’ thoughts about myself AND they are changing me and
I am actually feeling bad. I may even end up saying to someone that I am a
bad person. But, in general, we would not say I have a tree or a sunset or
I am a dark cloud. At times we may say that we feel ‘wooden’ or we may say
that we feel sunny on a beautiful day but we don’t take that next step and
say, “I am a tree” or I am the sun. We know that we are aware of a sunset
or a dark cloud, that we see or hear these phenomena. The same applies to
the phenomena of our inner reality. Put quite simply, we are aware of
thoughts, we are aware of having a pain in our heads etc.
If we can become aware of thoughts and aware of feelings and aware of
pains and discomforts or pleasures, then we are not identified with them,
we can gain some distance ‘from’ them. As Seth says, “You have thoughts
and feelings like you have eggs for breakfast.” (As distinct from the way
I have used the word ‘have’ before to mean ‘possess’ or ‘own’, Seth means
‘have’ in the sense of ‘things’ we can pick up and use or eat.) Thus, for
Wilberg, we can relate to the elements of THE inner universe in an
analogous way that we relate to the outer universe. Each thought, dream,
expectation, idea – any inner entity - we are aware of has a shape and a
tone and a texture, a colour, a warmth or coolness of soul etc. And having
qualities like these means that our awareness of them takes on a SENSUAL
nature, we feel these ‘things’ bodily. We can be ‘turned on’ or feel
‘accelerated’ by ideas and feelings.
And since they are ‘things’ we can be aware of, we don’t just have
thoughts and feelings, we SENSE them, we feel them with our awareness.
They are, if you want, part of the constellation of ‘objects’ or
‘elements’ that make up the inner universe. Our outer senses sense the
outer world, our inner senses sense the inner world.
THE OUTER UNIVERSE
To touch is to interact. When we touch a cat, we not only feel the cat’s
fur, but we feel what our hand feels like in touching the cat. We cannot
touch someone or something without at the same time being touched. But
more than this, when we look at an object, we know what it would feel like
to touch it. To see is also to touch, to feel. Thus, to see is to feel is
to know. Since seeing is also a touching, seeing is an interactive
process. We go about our lives believing that we can objectively view
things or see or hear people and this isn’t an interaction, we are simply
observing. This isn’t correct. As quantum mechanics has been saying for 80
years, all observation changes both observer and observed. To observe is
to touch is to feel is to interact. We are just beginning to overcome the
delusion of ‘objectivity’ — that when I look at you or you hear my words,
there is no interaction, I or you aren’t changed by these observations. We
are. Every observation of the outside world is actually an interaction, a
merging if you want. Seth says that early man ‘spoke’ the language of
love. That when they ‘observed’ a stream, they could allow their awareness
to be drawn into the water and be carried along by it. When they felt in a
rage they could allow their awareness to be drawn into and carried along
by a storm. In this way they could directly experience Nature as the
outward expression of their ‘feelings’. Nature was the language of their
feelings. As early man started to forget this natural language, they
learned to speak languages to express their emotions.
Analogously, Peter is saying that we can break down the separation that we
have from ‘objective’ nature and merge our souls, our awareness in any
object. This completes the circle. Not only can we get some distance and
‘objectivity’ into our inner lives by becoming aware of and explore the
shape and colour etc of the elements of inner reality but we can also
break through the barriers separating us from the world around us, and
merge with wind and rain, nails and rocks and people.
SENSE AND GNOSIS
If we pick up an object and FEEL (that is, SENSE) it, we KNOW that it is
round or smooth or flat or heavy or sharp or cold or hot etc. How do we
know? Silly question. We trust the ‘evidence of our senses’, something
which science says is the only basis for knowledge. We sense directly the
sensory qualities of the things around us through touch. Through this
touch we know (about) reality. To touch is to know. Feeling an object is
inherently meaningful, because when we feel it, we know whether it is what
we are feeling for.
When we listen to music it is inherently meaningful. We need no scientific
theories about sound vibrations to explain to us why the music means so
much. It just does. When we look at a sunset, it is also inherently
meaningful. It just is. But why? What is it about music or a sunset that
immediately ‘makes sense’ to us? For Wilberg, music and sunsets touch our
souls. That is, when we look at a sunset, we see the sensory qualities of
light and colour etc, but what gives meaning to the experience (makes
sense to us) is that we also sense or touch the inner sensual qualities —
the soul of the sunset. To sense or feel these sensual qualities of
awareness is to know them. Everything in the universe has an inwardness,
has Soul, and this Soul is the meaning. When we are touched inwardly by
something or someone that process is inherently meaningful.
And we should not be surprised by this for what does the word ‘sense’
mean? In German and English it has two meanings. To sense as in to feel or
to be aware of, and to understand as to ‘make sense of’. When we try to
remember a dream, we go inwards and try to ‘sense’ or feel our way into
that vague remembrance of ‘something’. In Peter’s terms, we feel our way
into the felt sense of the dream. When I try to remember a name I have
forgotten or a face I have seen, I become very still and silently go
inwards, feeling my way into the name or face, trying to sense or feel
‘what is there’. Then something forms. It is almost as if I am palpating
idea shapes, ‘testing’ them out to find which one fits with my felt sense.
When I finally sense or ‘touch’ that name I am trying to remember, or that
tune I heard on the radio, I know whether the name that has come to me
‘fits’ with what I am trying to remember. How do I know? By the evidence
of my senses. The name will feel right in the same way that sometimes we
can tell whether a word is spelt correctly because it ‘looks right’.
Sensing the idea shape and knowing are one and the same, because in
sensing something psychically or physically, we are touching that
something and touch is inherently meaningful because to touch is to know.
When we are listening inwardly, we are sensing or touching idea shapes,
and we are knowing them at the same time. They are inherently meaningful.
This inner knowing is what is called GNOSIS. When we are in touch with
ourselves, when we are connected to that inner knowing we are whole. We
are grounded in our inner being. When we aren’t in touch with this inner
being, we are ‘out of sorts’. When Jesus was walking around doing his
thing, some people knew him for who he was. They simply felt it. They knew
he was the Messiah. How did they know? When he looked at someone, I am
sure they felt touched inwardly, pierced to the core. I am also sure that
when he said, “Go forth and sin no more” or whatever else he said, people
did so, not because he told them to, but because his words touched them to
the core and changed who they were in their very essence. I am sure that
when he beheld people in the gaze of his feeling awareness, they felt
touched and KNOWN to the core. To touch in this way is to know. To know is
to change. That is inner knowing or gnosis. Jesus was absolutely grounded
in his own inner knowing and being in this state of grace, could touch
others.
For science, there is no inwardness, therefore there is no inherent
meaning, there is simply the universe of outer matter moved by chance
forces and random occurrences. Meaning is something that is external to
nature, that human beings must create or discover and put into nature. But
meaning is always there, in every blade of grass or ‘crazy’, bizarre
action of a schizophrenic, everything. All we have to do is learn to read
or learn to listen. When a child says that an ‘elephant stamped on my
ear’, this statement is full of meaning – this child’s way of saying they
have an earache. When a person with schizophrenia says that the voices are
telling them to do such and such, this is inherently meaningful. When we
listen to THAT speech by Martin Luther King, it is absolutely meaningful,
we feel touched to the core and we KNOW that racism is a crime.
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