Contents

Cover page. 1

Who is Wholenous! 3

BUDDHA BEING.. 5

THE TWELVE PRINCIPLES OF BUDDHA BEING.. 7

EIGHT SAMADHI. 9

What is a Buddha?. 13

God and you. 15

BUDDHA’S BOOKS SERIES. 19

Title. 21

I. WAYS OF TRUTH.. 27

The Way of Experience and the impasse of the intellect 29

The First Question. 32

The Only Way to Truth. 34

Who can speak for God?. 36

Reason as a means. 39

Truth and Symbols. 42

The Word as a Modern Expression of the Myth. 47

The True Vision, beyond thought 51

Experience and interpretations. 54

Truth and the nature of thought 56

Awakening to Reality. 58

II. INTERNAL PHILOSOPHY.. 61

The reality. 63

Reality and Illusion. 65

Varieties of Illusion. 67

III. CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS SEVEN ACTIONS. 71

Introduction. 73

The Seven Actions of Consciousness. 75

The Inner Symbolism.. 79

The Language of Symbols of direct perception of reality. 81

The mental language, of thought, of concepts, of "shadows"  83

The Liberation. 85

The Liberation of Yoga (nirodha) 87

The True Meditation. 91

The Hermetic Initiation. 93

The Path of Secrets ( Meister Eckhart ) 97

The Real Action. 101

After all! 102

IV. HUMAN NATURE.. 103

The gate. 105

The Road of Life. 111

Freedom and limitations. 115

The True Nature of Man. 117

Educating people. 123

Human Destiny. 133

V. EDUCATION IN INTERNAL PHILOSOPHY.. 141

The Awakening. 143

The Awakening to the True Self. 146

The Real World. 156

The Entrance to the Real 163

The Kingdom of the Real 168

The Depth of Reality. 172

The Supreme Divine. 178

VI. THE WAY OF MYSTICS. 183

The Secret Knowledge. 185

The True Experiential Theology. 187

The Divine Unity. 190

The True Knowledge of the Mystics. 193

The One Nature. 195

The Path of Mystics. 199

The One and Only Reality. 203

Absorption in Divine Reality. 206

VII. REFLECTIONS. 223

Inside Knowledge, Comparison and Syncretism.. 225

Finally, What?. 229

The Eternal Mistake of Perception. 235

Reality and Perception. 238

Roads of Existence. 240

VIII. LEXICON.. 245

Basic Hellenic-Latin-English Philosophical Terms. 247

I. WAYS OF TRUTH

The Way of Experience and the impasse of the intellect

From the beginning, from the emergence of consciousness in man, since man felt himself, and had experience of life, he tried to talk about everything he lived: About the Existential Environment, about himself, about the experiences of. This is how Language was created, which has an internal mental content and an external verbal expression. Mind and Language are two aspects of the same thing. Talking about one necessarily refers to the other.

In fact, both mental perception and verbal expression are human constructs. They aim at the real, but they are not an experience of the real. They remain on the outer level of description, of construction. Truth is above intellect and words. Descriptions can be accurate or inaccurate, complete or incomplete, real or imagined, etc., etc.

What Really Is, is Here, Always, Present, regardless of what we perceive or describe, etc.

The closer we get to Truth (through descriptions) the more we try to free ourselves from constructed (often petrified) perception-language and attempt to speak in terms of "experience", derived from direct contact with Reality. Thus, everywhere, all over the planet, and always, throughout history, people who approached the Truth tried to lead others to the Experiencing of the Truth, beyond the descriptions, in the life, in the action, here, now. There is a Universal Esoteric Tradition that arose by itself (and is not the construction of any particular people), a Language of Experience that all initiates understood. So there is, in fact, a Unity in the Human Perception of the Real, beyond any external perceptions-verbal expressions.

Truth Is One, True Religion is One, True Philosophy is One: It is the Approach and Description of the Real. So, there is no Eastern, Western religion, nor Eastern, Western philosophy. Human effort is one and human knowledge is one. Even as "geographical" terms, the terms east, west, are limited, since the content, like experience and knowledge, is the same.

It is only intellectuals who fail to rise to the Experience of Truth and remain in descriptions. They even think that by mentally-linguistically analyzing something, some object, they clarify it, revealing its real content, while in reality all they clarify and arrange is their own perception of things.

What is the difference between the Way of Life, of Living the Truth, and the mental perception-verbal description of Reality? In the first case What Is, What Happens, Precedes and the perception and descriptions come simply as a storehouse of experience and a conclusion. In the second case, perception takes on a dominant role and it is this perception that will speak to us, explain to us what exists, what is happening. In other words, in the first case we have Life and inferential thought, while in the case of the intellect we have thought, revelation (through thought supposedly) of life, of the real. In the first case we live and describe. In the second case we think, we describe, but we do not live. In fact, this schizophrenic attitude leads to the separation of theory and practice. But we rarely apply, or apply poorly. One who is Just can speak of justice. Intellectuals talk about Justice to be applied but never do. Unfortunately the world is ruled not by Wise and Authentic People but by intellectuals of ulterior motives, hypocrisy and fraud.

If someone wants to Approach the Truth, he must do it by Experiencing the Truth and not by staying in the descriptions of the Truth. The journey into perception-language is always a construction, something artificial. It never leads to Truth. Truth Is Alive. Breathes, Moves, Changes, Evolves and Completes. It runs ahead and always Precedes all fossilized descriptions of Reality.

The True Journey of Wisdom takes you outside, into True Life, into the things that exist, that you can touch. The journey of the intellect is a reverie in the realm of the imaginary.

Truth needs no words. It Just Happens. It is the imagination that in order to exist needs words to describe. So, Whoever Is Truly Wise abandons the intellect, burns the books or throws them away and Lives... And we, here, (someone will ask) why do we write? We simply use mental speech-language to transcend it. If we succeed in this, speech can be justified (only as a means of approaching the Truth, not as the Truth), otherwise our words are but air that travels far and is lost.

The First Question

Reality Is What Is, What Exists, What Happens. If someone has direct contact with Reality, i.e. he perceives without "distorting", then we can say that he Experiences Reality, that what he perceives is True. But if someone does not know how to perceive correctly and uses ways of perception that distort and give a false image of Reality, he is obviously in confusion, ignorance and a dead end.

We mean to say that there are two ways of Approaching Reality. There is the Way of Experiencing, of direct contact with Reality that does not even need to be transferred to an external-mental-linguistic level. And what is conveyed in "speech" are only traces of experience, symbolic signs that refer to the real and alive.

On the other side there is the path that people have followed, thousands of years now, the Path of Intelligence. By conveying the experience of things, whether they come from the transcendental field or from the external world, where people usually live, on the mental level they create ideas, images of things, concepts, and all these are also expressed verbally (so mind-language is two aspects of the same activity). In this case, we do not have direct contact with Reality, for any conclusions to follow afterward. We operate through the system of thought-concepts, which we are introduced to by experience, society, personal research, etc.

From the above it becomes clear that we can approach any subject in one way or another.

God Exists! Those who experience His Presence, who live in His Presence, feel what it is, how it works... and can say something about their experience. Their word is experiential, alive, and is checked and proven true only by those who can have the corresponding experience.

People who do not experience the Presence of God, but have learned to operate on the intellectual level, treat God as a conception of their perception, as an idea. In this way, by putting God into their mind as a concept, they make him small and limited, smaller than their mind. This, obviously, is not God, it is only the perception these people have of God. God Is Always What It Contains  not the content. It cannot become the content of any perception. Obviously this road is a dead end.

Therefore? How should we approach God? Will We Approach What Really Is? And which transcends the intellect? Or will we talk about God as perceived by the various theologies, theories, that people have constructed with their thoughts? And does researching theories make sense, who is right , who is wrong? Will intelligence give us the answer? We get entangled in the imaginary space of thought, of words, while the Truth Is All Living outside of it all. We must touch it, experience it. And from this experience we will later draw many conclusions.

God Is Here. We live in Him. If He is Trinitarian and how He is, how He works, or if He is not, we must find out for ourselves. What Relation we have to God we must Find it. What we really are, how to have true self-awareness is something we have to do.

Ultimately, the First Question we must answer, before we answer anything else, is this: Do we want to Approach Living Reality, God, Absolute, really? Or do we want to deal with people's perceptions, ideas, beliefs or prejudices? Do we want to function in real life at the level of experience? Or do we just want to think and to cross thoughts? They are two completely different things. So, what do we want to do?

The Only Way to Truth

It is different to Really Experience what is, what is happening and afterwards express it mentally, in terms of the intellect (which is a lower level of perception, artificial, constructed with symbols, the word-concepts), than to be intellectual, to think (i.e. operate exclusively on the mental plane) by investigating truth mentally, with word-concepts.

In this case, when we operate mentally, we should observe some logical rules when we think, speak or discuss, so that our thought-speech is true and not false. Above all, not only should the concepts-words we use correspond to real (supposedly) objects, but also the combination of concepts-words should correspond to logically real relationships or situations. Otherwise, our thought-reason has no real meaning but only verbal. But sentences that may be verbally correct (because they contain a subject, verb, predicate or object) do not mean that they are also logically correct. Unfortunately, most people do not think logically, they only think superficially, verbally. This is why there is so much confusion and ignorance.

We can Experience Reality when we are in direct contact with what is, with what is happening. This Attention, Observation, Recognition and Reaction is the only way to Experience Reality.

Looking closely we can see that the perception of an individual existence, an ego, is a construction of thought. The ego has no ontological substance but only a "functional" presence. It's a thought.

So, that which is not real, but only apparent, cannot rise to the Level of Reality, come into direct contact with Reality, Experience Reality. The untrue cannot become True, Truth. No ego can experience Reality.

It asks an ego how the ego can experience Reality. There is no way for the ego, no way to Experience Reality. The ego that uses practices or techniques of meditation or prayer or anything like that simply perpetuates its activity, remaining on the level of thought. The ego which is directed towards external activities will never find the Truth.

The Only Way to Truth (i.e. Experiencing Reality) is the Truth Itself, to See the Truth, to see what is, what is really happening, immediately, in real time, now, here and not to misinterpret what it is in front of us or happening inside us, or to follow theories, or to believe what we are told. We ourselves, alone, must see the Truth. This is neither a teaching, nor a practice or a technique, it is life, an act of life, the only True Action on the Path to Truth.

Who can speak for God?

To talk about something we have to know it, really know it. That is, we must have contact with it and not simply acquire in one way or another mental information about it.

Who can speak for God? Only he who Experiences the Presence of God, who Lives in God, who is One with God... can testify to the Truth and his "word" is Authentic. Anyone who has this Experience can speak and his speech will be genuine and will not deviate from the Truth. A Drop of Experience can become a True Message of Reality.

Thoughts, information, accumulation of knowledge, all the knowledge of the world, operating at another level, outside the Realm of Authentic Experience, in the realm of intellect. They reveal nothing. They cannot go beyond their nature (of mental apprehension) and they cannot help us to go beyond that level, to feel things, to touch them.

But who can partake of God? Who can answer what God is and in what way we partake of God? If we are talking at the Level of True Life of Genuine Experience, of Experiencing, then all knowledge and information is useless, we must follow another path. Intellectual inquiry is useless. The emotional approach doesn't get us far. And certainly all external activities, whether we consider them holy acts or not, have no effect.

If we really want to search for Truth we should start from what we have (the only) given. And this is our Present Consciousness. By its Nature Consciousness is Consciousness of Existence, Sense of Presence. In whatever state Consciousness finds itself, it is, in fact, Consciousness of Existence, Participating by its Nature in Existence.

So, if we Pay Attention to Ourselves (whoever, whatever ) and do it seriously, we can find the Mito of Ariadne (the beginning of the Thread of Knowledge and Life ) that will Guide us out of the labyrinth of ignorance. Careful Observation, Attention, Direct Contact with what is, what is happening, is true action, true knowledge and can Lead us to True Self-Knowledge. And through Self-Knowledge to Find a Way to the Limitless.

So, what does Caution reveal? The unadulterated observation of what is happening? It reveals precisely the limitations of existence, the misguided activities, and the improper "functioning". Awareness of these limitations, i.e. recognition of what is happening, leads to the dissolution of wrong activity. Thus, Calm Mindful Observation is True Action Leading to Right Activity. The dissolution of the limitations of existence, the breaking of boundaries, leads out of personal existence, into True Authentic Existence, Limitless Existence, Infinity, and ultimately into the Land of Truth. We must break the shell of limitations if we want to go out, into the Light, into Freedom. There is no other way.

And don't ask "how is this done"? Just Do It.

Ultimately, only if we know, through Self-Knowledge, through Self-Development, through Liberation from limitations, the Immensity of Existence, can we know what God Really Is. And only then can we talk about God.

God Is That Limitless We Find Within, when we transcend all personal limitations. We thus emerge in a Universal Consciousness of Existence, in the Awareness of the Unity of Existence, that everything, ultimately, in their depth, Is One. We experience this State of Oneness as the Depth, the Foundation upon which All Rests. This State of Oneness Is the Principle From Which All Begins, All Sustains and All Returns... But even this State, the Perception that All is God, that We Live Within God, that We are One with God, is not the Supreme Condition. God is one step further. Because there is still Separation from God. And Separation, however subtle, is separation. There are very few who reached Here and even fewer who "crossed" the "Last Barrier" and became God. Like the drop that joins and is lost in the Ocean.

This Experiential Approach to the "Depth of Reality", beyond personal deviations is the only path that Leads to Reality, the Way. There is no other way. And this is the Path of the Ancient Mysteries, which were certainly not external activities or popular celebrations.

If we stay on the Surface, in personal existence, consciousness and perception, then all the information we can acquire will be smaller than our mind... Can the Infinite that is Beyond All and Includes All (and our mind) fit within a limited mind? What the intellect apprehends is limited, a mental construction, a perception of what is, not That Which Is. The God of Intelligence, the God of men, religions, universities and theological schools, the God of daily popular worship, is an Idea, a False Thing, an Idol...

Of this Idol God some sages said that "God is dead." They were actually referring not to the True God but to people's perception of God. We should not "stone" people who tell the truth. If we can't respect them, let's at least shut up. Defending a lie neither makes you a good person, nor does it justify you. Those who seek such an Idol God can easily find him because all mankind worships this Idol God. But that doesn't mean that what everyone thinks is true is really True. People are heathens. Their theology (construction of intellect and cerebration) is fantasy. Their religion, a poor imitation of the Esoteric Mysteries, is misplaced. And all their religious activities, without any result. People experience existence in the Land of Ignorance, and the God they worship is a "creation" of ignorance.

Reason as a means

True Life is Experience, Direct Contact with things, what exists, what happens. The Perception of Reality can be simple and clear or it can be enriched in interpretation, but at the risk of distorting the image of reality. The description of the Truth is not the Truth. This is obvious.

It should be understood that thought, speech (which expresses it), function symbolically, are symbols of Reality. Of course they indicate Reality, but one has to Experience the Message, the content of the speech, for the speech to function as a means to the Truth.

A means, by definition, is nothing more than an aid to transition. It has value if it functions as an aid to transition. Reason itself has no independent existence of its own, nor can it stand as Truth in the place of Truth, not even as (holy) reason, as something real. It is only a Hint of the Truth.

So, to lock ourselves into a concept, a description, a teaching, a sacred text (which we think of as the "word" of God), any text thinking and claiming it to be the Truth, we are making a gross logical error. Speech is not Truth, it speaks of Truth. A Truth that we owe, that we must, to Experience, to be True. We ourselves must Become the Truth to Understand the Truth. To treat a teaching, a text, no matter how sacred people consider it, to draw intellectual arguments and support an intellectual position means that we have not understood anything, that the True Message has not gone through us and all that we have grasped and have, mental description, is our property. We believe, we say, we proclaim but we do not "do". This is childish behavior. And unfortunately most people operate at this level.

A Sacred Text, and people have, since ancient times, many sacred texts, is not this one sacred in itself. But it acquires value when it talks about the Holy and it leads us to the Holy, to the Experience of the True, that is, when it "works" for the purpose for which it was written and when it has results. In other words, it is not the Text, what the text says (the intellectual discourse) that has value but the Understanding we gain, the Experience of Truth. Then the text becomes the "boat" that takes us from the world of ignorance to the Opposite Shore of Reality.

Apart from any "usages" or interpretations of the "holy word", what matters is the result. If indeed He leads us to the Truth. In this sense, seeing only the essential that is beyond speech, neither interpretations, nor differences, nor disputes matter. It is important for one to Pass on the Opposite Bank of the river of ignorance, time, evolution, completion, on the Shore of the Knowledge of Reality. It doesn't matter what shape the raft is or how it's tied (we're talking about formatting the text). When you Pass Beyond the raft is abandoned, it is no longer useful because the Purpose has been Achieved. This was said by a Sage 2,500 years ago in the land of India, but it is a Truth that always applies to everyone.

And in the final analysis the trial is with Truth, with True Life, with the Experience of things, with direct contact with what exists, what happens. Why do people strive to promote their own interpretation as the ultimate truth? Why the conflicts between religions? of churches? of schools? Are they not Experiencing the Truth, not Knowing the Truth, not Defending the Truth, but only projecting their human selfishness, one-sidedness and lack of real knowledge? And yet, the strange thing is that this whole affair is served by brilliant minds, by excellent intellectuals, by moral people, by selfless workers of humanity (though not always) who are consumed with proving that the only star they see in the sky is the only real star, or that only one road (one ray) leads from the circumference to the center of the circle.

Ultimately, if we are serious people and honest with ourselves and others, we should accept the Truth that is Obvious to us, the Real. The Truth Is Here, Now, Before Us, In What Is, In What Happens. The Truth is not in the imaginations of men. It does not circulate in society, in the markets of society, like material goods, nor is it taught in universities, in the occult schools that people make (usually to satisfy their selfishness to gain glory and money), nor is it written in books because that what the books convey is not the Truth but people's (incomplete) knowledge of the Truth. The Truth is the Understanding We Conquer Within Us and it is as Complete as the Depth of Our Understanding. Within Us is the Way. Within us is the End of the Road. Within us is the Truth, when Self-knowledge Blooms and becomes the Wither-less Flower of Divinity.

Truth and Symbols

Truth, as an Experience of Reality, as an Occurrence, as an Event, is beyond all descriptions, beyond all symbols, beyond all words. In reality there is (established and recognized and accepted) a completely arbitrary relationship between the Experience of Reality and an external symbol, an external activity, or speech, or deed. Truly spiritual people Experience Reality and Understand that Truth (as Experience that it is, as Event) is not transmitted. Whatever they say will not be the Truth but only the description of the Truth, i.e. an activity on a completely different perceptual level, that of the intellect. On the other hand, people who do not Experience Reality but have theories about Truth (philosophies, theologies, religious activities, etc.) consider Truth not Actual Truth but its description. But remaining at the relative level of duality, of separation, of one-sided perception through the ego, of a “position”, whatever they claim will be a position among others similar and different. As much as they struggle to reduce a relative intellectual position to absolute truth they simply demonstrate their ignorance and obsession.

That Truth is beyond all descriptions and all symbols or symbolic acts can be demonstrated. But of course the uneducated will still take an intellectual truth as truth and use (arbitrary) symbols and symbolic acts as if they had real content.

To explain and understand this we will take two examples from the World Religious Tradition. One concerns the Buddha, the Enlightened One. The other concerns Jesus, the "Son of God."

They say, they narrate in the Texts and in the Buddhist tradition, that once upon a time the Buddha was sitting with his disciples and they were all waiting (and at every opportunity they were waiting) for him to reveal to them the Supreme truth, about Asamskrita, that is, the Uncreated Reality, Nirvana, Enlightenment, Completion. They say the Buddha simply picked up a flower. This was his Teaching. In Buddhist art the Buddha has been represented thousands of times holding up a flower. Was that the teaching? What did he want to say? They say that only Kasyapa understood. But what did Kasyapa understand? What one understands depends on one's spiritual development and mental state. And Kasyapa could understand a lot, depending on his intellectual level. They say he understood the Truth. But what is the Truth? They say that the Buddha conveyed something, some message, and that only Kasyapa understood. But the Message that the Buddha conveyed by lifting the flower, the Truth that Kasyapa Realized , have anything to do with the lifting of the flower? Are they really related or is their relationship completely arbitrary and basically unrelated? In fact the latter is exactly what happens.

The Buddha wanted to say that the Truth is completely beyond all external activities and we must See It Directly, ourselves within. It is not transmitted by external actions and symbols. Could he, instead of picking up the flower, get up and leave, or do anything else, or say "why are you stupid"? Reality is completely outside of all this and the relationship established between the Indication of Reality and external action is completely arbitrary. We should not stick to practice. So, what does lifting the flower mean? Absolutely nothing. Did it transmit something? No. So, what was the lifting of the flower? It was a simple human outward act, the lifting of the flower, nothing more. People just need to Look Elsewhere. And what the Buddha conveyed was precisely the exhortation for the disciples to Look Elsewhere. But only Kasyapa did it and for Kasyapa the lifting of the flower was simply the lifting of a flower, the Message was not there. But some others stuck to the external act and tried to see what this meant. Even to this day there are some who think that the lifting of the flower communicated something.

Now see the pitfall, how the Buddha's Genuine Experience, his Genuine Teaching which few Understand, can be misunderstood. In the history of Chan (Zen in Japan) there have been many enlightened people. There were people who had Genuine Experience and people who mentally grasped the Truth. Remember the example of Hui- Neg and his antagonist in the Monastery, with the composition of the poems on Truth (and Mind). When a Master was asked what is Truth, what is Buddha, what is Dharma , if he was a genuine master he could take the student out of the mental process. But there were also people who believed that they became enlightened simply by imitating the Buddha, making some gesture or some action. These people were not Experiencing Reality and did a related arbitrary act, they just did an arbitrary act thinking that this is the Truth, this is the Teaching, this is the correct way of transmitting the Truth. Certainly we cannot expect anything from an external act which is anyway an external act. But are these people who do not Experience the Truth and do not Understand help anyone? Genuine teachers are distinguished by their effectiveness, not by name, reputation, students. Genuine teachers have no students because everyone is a teacher of himself. And genuine teachers reveal this to their students who quickly go their own way.

Let us now look at the Story of Jesus. Jesus had undoubtedly come as close to God as anyone, had been United with God and could say "I and God are One". He was of course using the ego for the sake of human understanding. In fact Jesus was Aware of the Oneness of Everything and could not separate any self from God. It was Unity, God. We say "was" for the sake of narration, Jesus Is, Is Still, Is Always, because He is outside of time. So, on the Night of the Last Supper, he spoke to his disciples for the last time because after a while he was arrested and crucified by the people who had welcomed him with wild and blooming branches when he entered Jerusalem. So that night, at the time of the Supper, at some point Jesus took the bread, cut it and distributed it to everyone saying "This is my Body, eat of it all". And then he took the Cup of wine and said "This is my Blood, drink of it all." And the question is: What is the point of all this? The deed, the words and the epilogue "do this in remembrance of me"? Did the bread become the Body of God? Did the  wine become the Blood of God? And Jesus instituted a Holy Sacrament that has been repeated since then every Sunday in the Christian churches where Mysteriously, with the Help of the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ and whoever partakes is saved? None of this is happening. Jesus Was (Is) God, Spirit of God, Unity of All, Another State of Existence, different from Creation and the external world and what happens in the external world. What He Indicated was for Humans to Participate in this Precisely Divine State, to Have True Spiritual Communion With God, Living Direct Contact With Divine Reality. This is the True Body, the True Blood of God, that Gives Eternal Life. People must have an Experience of the Divine Essence, Direct Real Contact, just as with the bread and the wine. The outward act of partaking of the bread and wine was completely arbitrary and unrelated to the Inward Reality. There was simply a symbolic correspondence. Jesus was referring to the True Holy Communion and was simply setting a corresponding example on the outer level. He happened to say it at the Supper and used as symbols what was before him. If he was in Olive Groves  or Edge of the Lake or Mountain, he might have done something else. After all, Jesus often likened the Divine Essence or the Kingdom of Heaven to various things or actions. And from there the Establishment of Mysteries could be justified. The real reason the "holy communion" was instituted had nothing to do with either Jesus or the Supper. After all, "divine communion" is a well-known practice in other religions and goes back many thousands of years.

But what did people finally understand? What did they establish? And what do they teach 2000 years now? What do they teach their children? They say, if you really believe and if you really accept as truth that the divine communion is Holy Communion, Union with God, then it happens. However, this is not how Reality works, but childish magical thinking. Although millions of tons of bread and wine were consumed, the Christians did not become better, did not unite with God and did not gain Salvation. They continue their external material life, make wars, do injustice, fight and their society is constantly going from bad to worse. But let us say that these are not genuine Christians. So, where are the genuine Christians? Are they the ones who frequent the churches? The priests? The monks? Did they all Ascend to God? Were they united with God? Did they reach Theosis (Union with God) ? Did they overcome the ego? We all know the answer. As Shakespeare says, "Something rotten is in the kingdom of Denmark". What are we talking about?

Finally we see that Truth is another different Existential Space that has nothing to do with intellect, description, external actions, symbols. So, what is True Buddhism? Buddhism Is Nirvana, Experiencing Reality, elimination of personal existence. They are not theories, schools, disagreements and all the things that people do in history. What is True Christianity? It is Union with God, Theosis, Event. All the others, theologies, orthodoxies, Catholicisms, Protestantisms, are all human vices.

But, as we said at the beginning, what if we talk? And who cares about us? People will continue to seek the truth outside, by external means. They cannot understand that the Truth Is Themselves, the True Nature that is buried within them, beneath thoughts and knowledge and experiences and activities and deeds. Someday they will wake up.

The Word as a Modern Expression of the Myth

For thousands of years, since man, people, became aware of their presence, their "existence", they simultaneously became aware of the environment, like the “other”, which does not belong to the self but lives “within it”. The first representations about the environment came of course from what was perceived by the senses. But little by little, and as man became richer in consciousness and experiences, he began to make concepts of things and create the first interpretations of his existential environment. This started at least 50,000 years ago. It is natural, since the human perception could not proceed in depth, and ignorance to exist and gaps to exist, gaps that were filled by imagination. Man has always felt, by nature, by things, the need to have a complete perception of the environment, in order to feel safe. Thus, since there was not sufficient knowledge he necessarily resorted to imagination to interpret the phenomena or to fill in the blanks when he faced "regions" of reality that he could not penetrate.

All this effort, this journey of knowledge, we understand, was "intellectual". Man was trying to give a theoretical (intellectual) interpretation of reality. Thus, slowly a World Mythology was created. In the beginning there were simply mythical concepts about Existence, the self (the soul), the environment and life, which were loosely connected in a blurred worldview. Later and anyway after the creation of the first urban societies, i.e. 10,000 years ago, organized worldviews began to be formulated and thus the Great Cosmogenic Myths were created, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, and later in Greece and elsewhere. So, at the beginning of their modern history, people interpreted the world through Myth. We have already described the characteristics of mythic thinking. In fact we are not out of the Myth region, even today. Almost all the inhabitants of the earth who think they have a complete picture of reality, have a mental picture that contains both ignorance and gaps and has a lot of imagination. This does not bother people who are usually busy in their daily lives with more earthly and "real" things. But it gives the possibility to some power groups who own the wealth, the social power and control the economy, to maintain, renew or feed the Modern Mythology, thus manipulating the people. In fact both formal university knowledge certified by "degrees" and religions and philosophies and political theories are in the Myth Region.

Watch this. Understand it. It is supposed that man, modern man, has passed from the Region of Myth to the Region of Reason, of Reason. But is it so? This was proclaimed by some official sages. But it can also be part of official social propaganda. We can see the issue in its real essence and how it is realized in life, in the lives of all of us.

First of all, we are talking about a mental process. Both Myth and Logical Interpretation are mental constructions, made by thought. From the operational point of view , it is the same process. So, how does the Myth differ from the Logic, the Logical Interpretation? Many will say they differ in "content". While the Myth uses a pro-logical-intuitive-fantasy-poetic language and fills in the blanks with many arbitrary inspirations, it is assumed that reason, logic, logical interpretation, has eliminated all these fanciful elements. But is it so? In fact the rational-scientific-mind has dramatically narrowed the area of knowledge to what it can directly, experimentally, confirm, leaving out almost the entirety of existence. Beyond some logical interpretations of nature that can also be questioned, what exactly does man know? Does he know what the Cosmic Environment is? What is Soul (beyond "behaviors")? What is God? All this is beyond the knowledge of man. So, even people who have "scientific thinking" are forced to have a "full picture" of reality to adopt many hypothetical-imaginary elements related to the areas that are outside of scientific human knowledge. So, what Logical Interpretation are we talking about? How does Modern Reason differ from Myth? In fact, Modern Reason, Logical Interpretation (which contains a very small "illuminated" area in the general darkness) is Myth, no different from Myth. As much as people like to think they live in the Realm of Reason they actually operate in the Realm of Myth, of Mythic Thinking.

Therefore, both Myth and what people call Reason, Logical Interpretation, except that as functions (as thought, as thought-process ) are exactly the same thing, they prove to be incomplete processes, they cannot reach the Truth. The Truth Lies beyond the Myth and the Logo -Myth, in the Area of Direct Contact with Reality. This Path was Followed by some extraordinary people who Experienced the Reality and Spoke of the Path to Truth. What these people experienced and which is the True Religion has of course nothing to do with the Official Mythical Religion that has dominated societies for several thousand years. Actually what the Buddha Experienced and "transmitted" as a hint for us to experience the Truth has nothing to do with the official Buddhist sangha and Buddhist schools and Buddhist teachings. And what Jesus experienced as Union with the Father, as the Divine Kingdom, has nothing to do with the official Christian churches, which are human creations, regardless of what their representatives claim. Why do we say this? You can see it. While Truth is Direct Contact with Reality, it has an Experiential Character that exists only in absolutely real time, that is, in the Present, in the Moment Flowing through Eternity, and this is True Religion, the "religions" of men are mental constructs, they operate in the Region of Mythic Thought (even when they use a supposedly "scientific" discourse) and cannot lead beyond mental activity and external physical-material action. True Religion is "something we do." The "religions" of men are "intellect", theories, theologies, theoretical interpretations, thought, concepts, words, words, words, and external actions. These are two different Levels of Existence, of life.

When we speak of Religion, at least in the Circles of the Initiates, we speak of the True Religion of Experience, the One Taught by Orpheus, Lao Tzu , Buddha, the Masters of the Upanishads , Jesus, and others. The "religions" of the people are intellectual fossils, without real life in them, which simply feed the thought and recycle the mythical knowledge and experiences of the people. The Truth is Beyond All This. And the Principle of Truth is Here, in the Present Consciousness, in Everyone's Consciousness. By following the Myth of the Real we can get out of the Labyrinth of Thought, of the Myth of Theseus, we can "escape" from the Cave of shadows-concepts-words, described by Plato, Outside, into the Open Space of Freedom, of the Light that it reveals the True Existence, the Divine Reality. But the real question is do we want to Take That Journey that from the imaginary lands of Scylla and Charybdis, the Lotus Eaters and other exotic shores of the imagination, Here, Back, to That which Never Changed, to That which We Always Are, to Our True Nature, in our Divine Nature?

The True Vision, beyond thought

Reality (if it can be apprehended and roughly described) is Direct Perception of what is, of what is happening, without distortions. With this meaning Reality is Identified with the Real, with the Truth. So, if Reality is the Direct Unadulterated Contact with the "real" and this is something we live, that we experience, Reality (with this meaning) is Life itself, What We Live, Here, Now. The "Depth of Reality" is gradually Revealed to one who experiences reality.

So, all beings that are alive experience Reality, a Direct Contact with the real as a Primary Perceptual Experience, as a basis of conscious life, as a basic content of awareness. So, things are extremely simple when we simply live. But this Primary Experience of contact with reality does not remain pure. We don't just live. We don't just go with the Stream of Life. We violently interfere with the True Experience of life. We internalize ("we mean" or mentalize, that is, we transfer "experience" to the abstract symbolic level of concepts) the original perception (which is a complete conception of things, internal and external) and we make internal abstract images-concepts of things, "fixed images" of living fluid things or situations. We think that by "immobilizing" living things we can thus "know" them better, "control" them better. In this way we replace (in our thinking) all living fluid things with “fixed images-concepts” of things, and instead of living the living reality we simply think about life and run after goals and fantasies. We think that this way we can better explore reality, manage life better and find answers to our questions. But is it so?

In fact, this should be obvious by now, thinking is not direct contact with reality but a transfer to an abstract symbolic conceptual level-space. It is a construction. It is real as “construction”, as “function”, but not real as “content”. A construction, apart from being an imitation, is always subject to errors in "construction", to misjudgments, to misinterpretations of things. So, instead of living life we approach life, things, through thought, i.e. a distorting filter. This is where all the problems come from.

People believe (and this is what thought "tells" them) that intelligence, thought, is a higher function than spontaneous direct unadulterated perception precisely because it is processed by our intelligence, an "improvement" of perception. But is it so? In fact, the exact opposite is the case. The Direct Unadulterated Vision of Reality, of what is really happening, is not only more genuine, it is also more complete because it is done with "whole" being. On the contrary, thought, however developed or complex it may be, is only a relative perspective, and as a "perspective" it always gives a false picture. Thought is a valuable tool (as a transfer of reality to an abstract-symbolic-conceptual level) but it cannot replace direct perception of life, it cannot replace real life. So, it is better to leave things as they are and not interfere. The Purity of Nature is always more Beautiful than the most beautiful creation of man.

In fact, although intelligence, thought, is based on Direct Perception (which it distorts) and appears as a higher and more sophisticated function, it is nothing more than a function, a tool, that people use in a bad way. The abandonment of thought so that the Direct Vision of Reality can function is not a regression in man's evolution but a Deepening of Direct Vision to a higher level, since the illusory experience of thought has preceded it. This is how we experience it. Thus, the "conquest" of Direct Vision as an Elevation of Consciousness above thought, in the evolution of human consciousness, is the "quest" for man, it is a conquest that man will realize as a species in the "future".

And to explain this better. In fact, the Ability to Directly See Reality has existed from the beginning with the birth of human consciousness for thousands of years, as a basis for further development and any right or wrong "intervention" in perception. Direct Vision of Reality has not fully Manifested since the beginning of human history (at least the last 50,000 years). It is slowly revealed as human consciousness deepens its awareness. From the initial external perception with the senses, man slowly begins to feel the "psychic reality". Then the intellect develops, as an internalization (at an abstract-symbolic-conceptual level) of "experiences". Finally, we understand that only by Direct Contact with reality can we experience the Truth, live truly, Here, Now, in Real Time, that is, in the Now Flowing Moment, which is Eternity (since it never "stops" and is outside from the conventional linear time of thought). And Deeper still, beyond this Perception, Condition, we can Feel the Vast Depth of Divine Reality that Lies beyond all, and Stillness and Motion and True Existence and Phenomenon, Beyond All, as the Absolute Fixed Base of All, God, Uncreated Reality (call it what you will).

Today humanity is still at the beginning of its history and intelligence (in the species) is just developing. It will take perhaps millennia of conventional linear time for man to surpass the level of intelligence. What is certain is that it is developing in this direction. Think about it a little. In the 50,000 years of essential human history, People like Orpheus, Lao Tzu , the Masters of the Upanishads, Buddha, Jesus, Krishnamurti, appeared... In a few millennia, what Kind of People will come to earth to enlighten us? What is certain is that we will be more mature to "listen" to them.