God calls me a fool. I agree.

Churchless brothers and sisters, God spoke to me this morning. Now the spirit is calling me to share the word. I’m just a tool. Also, a fool.

That was the message: “Brian, you don’t know.” To which I replied, “Oh God, you’re so right. I don’t know.”

Now, I can hear the skeptics asking, “How do you know that God was speaking to you if what you heard was, You don’t know?” Well, all I can say is that I know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know. And I know that God was letting me know that I don’t know.

Seems clear to me.

As so much often does in the morning when the caffeine is flowing through my hyped-up neurons and reading one of my holy churchless books tunes me into the harmonies of the cosmos’ deepest mysteries.

Like, the ultimate mystery: existence. And, the penultimate mystery: why something exists within existence. In this rarefied philosophical territory, I’m gasping fruitlessly for the air of even the slightest understanding.

As are we all. Such was the divine inspiration stimulated by my reading of John Horgan’s “Rational Mysticism.” In a concluding chapter he says that no one—not Jesus, not Buddha, not Muhammad, not Moses, nor any other guru, sage, or prophet, no one—could ever know the ultimate whys and wherefores of creation.

Why is there something rather than nothing? No one knows. And if you don’t know that, then any claim to knowing It All is spurious.

Laughingly so. Ridiculously so. Which helps explain why, after my not-knowing revelation had been revealed to me, I felt so good. For quite a while my meditation mantra became “I don’t know…I don’t know…I don’t know.” With every repetition I became more connected to the great Don’t Know.

There’s a joy to being a religious fool. I could feel the pressure of got to know…got to know…got to know dissipating. I felt emptier, lighter, freer. I realized that I’ll never know, you’ll never know, no one will ever know. Not everything. Not the deepest mysteries. They’re unknowable.

Existence. Life. Consciousness. Science doesn’t have a clue. Religion doesn’t have a clue. Humanity is clueless. That brought a foolish smile to my meditative face. The pressure to know is off. Accept it.

You exist. You’re alive. You’re conscious. But nobody can know what existence is, what life is, what consciousness is. To penetrate those mysteries you’d have to be non-existent, not-alive, unconscious. Who, then, would be around to do the penetrating? Or be aware of what lies at the bottom of it all?

We are what we’re trying to know. It isn’t possible to know when there isn’t a sub-atomic particle’s distance between us and the object of knowledge. There can be no knowing when there isn’t a knower and the known.

But there can be fools who don’t know. I’m happy to be part of this august group. Which includes everybody on the planet. Including those who believe that they know.

Are they even bigger fools? Good question. Have to say, though: I don’t know.

Comments

[running snail]

Also, as the mystery of existence and clues, if we find purpose in the in the physical universe, is that's a clue to the mystery of existence ? Because purpose would mean existence was willed. Shoepenhauer, a german metapyhician, thought everything, including stones, was blind will. (That has darwin survival overtones btw.) Not that shepenhauer is important in anyway.

Purpose is the thing that brings everything into existence in the living world. For humans, Have you ever seen a machine that doesn't have a purpose ?

And animals all have remarkable tools, woodpecks chisel, bat sonar, owl night vision, . Animals tools are for their survival. They are the tool. Man makes tools, his body is not specialize for any particular function, He moves for being the tool to having tools. That frees our being from day to day survival and we set unlimited goals that go beyond our lifetime. I don't see how darwin surval accounts for this.

Is there purpose in the universe ?

[grayfields]

Ah..you've given voice to my own thoughts...and it is indeed freeing to know that I don't know!! It is indeed lightness!! And when you talked of giving up the "got to know" mantra, I could feel the tenseness form in my stomach. Yes, thirty years of gotta know, gotta know...what's wrong with me that I don't know...must not be working hard enough...gotta know, gotta know. Oh how wonderful that such pressure is now gone. Just to know I don't know is wonderful!

Keep on giving those of us out here who feel the same, a voice!

[ET]

After many years of consideraton I have concluded, many years ago now, that-

"I know everything and nothing."

The reason that I came to this conclusion is that there is nothing that I can really know. Therefore, knowing nothing and knowing that I know nothing is very satisfying to me.

[Hal]

I think that the universe was created in such a way that evolution would have to lead to creatures like ourselves. Humans arose from nature but also represent a turning point in evolution from biology to technology. It appears that humans can make up and choose their own purpose, but perhaps there is a deeper purpose that is beyond our understanding.

[Edward]

When existence is eternal creation, the universe neither has nor contains fixity. No "thing". Not one thing. Wu. Mu.

Which doesn't exclude some great special effects, and lots of elbow room.

The drive to know eliminates the completely present knower. It's a silly trick we use to navigate the (very effective) illusion of separation. Unity, in the sense of a coherent universe, has no lack of knowledge, and therefore no drive to know.

We, happy humans, don't do unity.

[Roger]

Brian.....when God spoke to you....did his voice sound alot like Bing Crosby's?