The Big Questions

I Think, I Think I Am Therefore I Am, I Think




At The Farm
Nov. '70

I was going back to school. I still didn't have a clue as to what I
wanted to do with my education. All I knew was that I liked school
more than I liked dividing my time between Carole Sue, work, and
getting stoned at the farm. At school, I could usually count on at
least one good class a semester. It's the only place I've ever found
inspiration. Money has always been a problem, though. This time, my
parents were going to help—without it, school would be out of the
question.

Actually, when I think about it, I haven't really been without
inspiration. I can thank Paul for that. He turned me on to a
couple of books plus Segovia (actually it was the work of interior
house painting that turned me on to Segovia, a homeowner loved
his music). One of the books, In Search Of The Miraculous A Key To The
Enigmas Of The World – Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching (1949), I
borrowed, and the other, Tertium Organum – I went out and bought. On
the front cover of the first book it read: "Ouspensky combines the
logic of a mathematician with the vision of a mystic in his quest
for solutions to the problems of Man and the Universe." On the back
cover, the Saturday Review calls the work, "A very provocative book
that can lead to a complete reassessment of what a reader takes to
be his knowledge."

I will not attempt to summarize what has been going on in my head
since I've read these books (I couldn't if I wanted to). This
passage from the book gives at least a sense of the kind of stuff
that the author deals with:

"…And when the question was asked how the consciousness of this
divine sonship could ever have been lost, the answer given by
Christianity was, by sin, the answer given by the `Upanishads' was,
by avidya, nescience. This marks the similarity, and at the same
time the characteristic difference between these two religions. The
question how nescience laid hold of the human soul, and made it
imagine that it could live or move or have a true being anywhere but
in Brahman, remains as unanswerable in Hindu philosophy as in
Christianity the question how sin first came into the world…

Both philosophies, that of the East and that of the West, start from
a common point, namely from the conviction that our ordinary
knowledge is uncertain, if not altogether wrong. This revolt of the
human mind against itself is the first step in all philosophy…

In our own philosophical language we might express the same question
by asking, how did the real become phenomenal and how can the
phenomenal become real again; or, in other words, how was the
infinite changed into the finite, how was the eternal changed into
the temporal, and how can the temporal regain its eternal nature;
or, to put it into more familiar language, how was this world
created, and how can it be uncreated again." (Tertium Organum, p.
231)