We Do Not See Things as They Are

On a fall afternoon—I was five or six–I walked along one of the tree covered lanes on
our farm. On the left along the dirt path, large, curled, dried, brown leaves of the May
apples, on the right the moss covered bed of a trickling stream. The fresh smell of the
earth. The crispness of the air. The cool touch of a snow flake burst into awareness as it
fell on my cheek, and in the distant charcoal-grey sky, billowing black clouds of an
approaching storm. I stood motionless in the silence.

Snow flakes fell around my feet. A few melted as they hit the ground. Others remained
intact. Then I heard the silence get louder and louder and the then the falling of the
snow—the softest hissing sound.

I stood transfixed, listening…..then knew what could never be expressed: that the
natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees. And what
is outside happens within me, that inside and outside are unseparated.

This was not a belief. I experienced that there was an eternal law or principle at work
underlying what appeared as a perpetually changing world in motion. A unity, a
oneness, a moral order, the nature of life forces, the right, the idea of the world, the
method, the way, a holographic intelligence that informed all that is.

All of these words stand for abstract ideas or metaphors. It is like water that gives life
to everything and yet it does not strive to do so. It cannot be seen or heard. It is
intangible and yet it is the intelligence behind that informs everything. It flows
everywhere and is inexhaustible and at the same time brings everything into fulfilment.
This was my childhood. Experience after experience of directly knowing the
transcendent, that which is unexpressible through words, a quality of revelation that set
the stage for my life. After a time, I realized that others saw the world through the
blinders and filters of the rational mind and what I saw and heard and experienced they
did not as yet perceive, because “we see things as we are.”

The unifying principle I experienced underlies the major eastern religions, although
each may call it by a different name. Each holds that all phenomena from particles of
light to galaxies are aspects of the one. A little later in life I noticed that the orthodox
Judeo-Christian traditions had a different view of reality and emphasized opposing
dualities, God above, sinful human below, soul in opposition to world, spirit struggling
to overcome flesh, man in opposition to woman.

Modern atomic physics leads us to a view of reality that is very similar to the mystic’s
intuitive vision or reality. The picture of an interconnected cosmic web in which the
human observer is always a participator, emerges from quantum physics. At the atomic
particle level, the world view becomes very mystical; time and space become a
continuum, matter and energy interchange, observer and observed interact. The
physicist now knows through mathematics what the mystic has know through
mediation. They both share two basic themes: the unity and interrelationship of all
phenomena and the intrinsically dynamic nature of the universe.

The way for the experience can be prepared, my father knew this. When he moved his
family to a remote part of upstate New York, it was this awareness, this insight, that
nature would convey the message to his children with more infinite articulation than
any words he could ever proffer.

His action helped set the stage for an intellectual awareness and acceptance of this
spiritual awakening. Each week, and in each process I set a stage to share this
awareness of true silence with you. If there is a receptivity and openness, an intuitively
felt experience can follow.