Stories

(From the Archive of writings from 2009-2011)

Human beings love stories. Throughout the ages, the art of storytelling has provided an accessible and enjoyable way of sharing ideas and information, as well as a source of entertainment in itself. So what is it about stories that makes information so much more interesting and ‘alive‘ than a logical and academic presentation of the facts? The answer seems to be that human brains are characterised by an amazingly complex capacity for pattern recognition. The brain doesn’t process things in a logical, linear way, but instead instinctively looks to approximate new experience to pre-existing patterns. Thus, for example, if we arrive in an airport in a new country, we tend to quickly process, and make sense of, the previously unexperienced environment, through unconscious reference to patterns originating in experience of other airports and similar buildings . This allows us to navigate our way through it in a way that we might not be able to if we had just teleported in from another planet made of jelly, where buildings do not exist. For earthlings, there still might be some confusions of language, social custom, architectural conventions etc, but at least there is likely to be recognition of doors, windows, corridors, people in uniforms etc, even if we might never have encountered ones quite like these before.

It seems that when we hear stories, they evoke images that link them to amalgamated previous personal experience, whether actual or imagined. This new information is then naturally processed and broadens our ability to make sense of related, and possibly more complex, stories and experiences.  We might read about Anne Frank at school. As a young person, we recognise similarity in some of her experiences, which also helps us to imagine and ‘take on board’ (incorporate into our mental patterns) those which are less familiar. This helps us to make sense of a film we happen to see, set in Nazi Germany, which in turn makes other films and literature on similar or related topics more accessible and interesting and might even contribute to an inclination to study history, politics, psychology, international affairs, film-making, languages or a multitude of other subjects at university. 

So what happens when we hear stories about non-duality? Perhaps we hear the tale of when liberation apparently happened, or a description of how life appears now. Perhaps we  hear an attempt to describe the indescribable. What happens then? It seems likely that the brain will attempt to fit what is described with similar experience, in order to make sense of it. The problem is that what is actually being alluded to cannot be experienced or imagined. Instead it is so intimately known that it is not referenced when looking for a pattern to match it with. This is because what is being pointed towards is universal to ALL experience and ALL imagining. It is the experiencing itself, the ground of all experience, and as such, is not necessary to remember or process in any way at all. It is omnipresence and it is what we are. And it seems to be overlooked as long as there is an identification with part of the experience. As long as there seems to be a sense of a somebody who has experience, is affected by, owns, manipulates, creates, imagines or remembers experience, there is an illusion going on. 

We are not an idea of a brain, or a witnesser, or a little person walking around in a big world. We are not a collection, or collector, of apparent memories or sensations, or some sort of special spiritual thing. We are the still, silent, timeless, spaciousness itself, absolutely untouched, unchanging, emptiness, in, or on, which the fullness of life appears.  Including apparent little people and ideas of brains and spiritual (or any other) experiences. This cannot be understood through thought. It cannot be partly seen, or found and lost. It is the timelessness in which a sense of time can seem to appear.  It is always obvious in itself and apparently obscured to any ‘one’ that looks for it. There is no point in trying to find it, yet in revealing itself it could never have been hidden at all. Looking for an answer in thought just seems to generate more questions. We are that in which thought, and everything else appears. Prior to thought, prior to questions, prior to stories. Nothing to be done for there is no doer and nothing ever happens. Yet doing and questions and answers and stories seem to appear, and life lives itself anyway. Now how can a brain even start to reference that….