TWO: Will you answer a straight question in a straight manner?
ONE: Only if it is a question. I warn you - they are rare.TWO: What do you mean by that?
ONE: Most so-called questions carry their own answers in their pockets. Of the rest the majority are like the one suggested by Hubert Benoit: 'Why does the Eiffel Tower go for a walk in the skies of Paris every morning at 8 o'clock?'TWO: Mine is neither. It is simply: if there is any known method of transcending the ego, which, in your opinion, is the best?
ONE: The ego? Whatever do you mean? There is no such thing. Your question is an Eiffel Tower walking in the sky.ONE: I mean, of course, 'what we conceive as an ego'.
TWO: That is exactly like what you conceive as the Man in the Moon. But there isn't one.ONE: Then why do we think we know it so well?
TWO: We don't know it, well or badly: we just imagine it.ONE: And yet it is the supreme barrier between us and reality?
TWO: Not the supreme: the one and only.TWO: How incredibly difficult it all is!
ONE: Difficult? It is all as simple and obvious and evident as somebody's nose.TWO: Could you be persuaded to justify that?
ONE: By all means. We are brought up - by parents, schoolmasters, even university professors (who might know better) - to believe that the world around us, all that is perceived by our six - I said six - senses, is real, and that what is not so perceived is unreal. But from the earliest recorded times wise men, men who deeply considered such matters, have realised that the opposite is the truth. That which is sensorially perceived is phenomenal; whereas reality is sensorially imperceptible.TWO: Nowadays we all know that. Even some men of science, the top ones of course.
ONE: The 'we' you refer to have always known that.TWO: Noumenon and phenomena - the basic dualism. Is that what you mean? Or Subject and object, Cause and effect?
ONE: Words only mean what you wish them to mean. Ultimate Subject and objects, Initial Cause and effects, may serve in suitable contexts, but more particularly Pure Consciousness and objects of consciousness, all dualistic. Have I justified my statement that it is all as simple and obvious and evident as a nose?TWO: No, you have not. What has that platitude - for I think I may call it that? - got to do with the so-called 'ego'?
ONE: I am glad you see it as a platitude, for a platitude is something you no longer doubt, and the rest is all contained therein - in the waistcoat pocket of that platitude.TWO: Then please turn out the pocket.
ONE: Reality and phenomena, Subject and objects, Cause and effects, are dualistic complementaries, neither can exist except by reference to the other, or, if you prefer, relatively. That of which they are the dual aspect we cannot know, or conceive as we say, for that alone IS, and that alone we ARE - and en eye cannot see itself; but we can consign a word to it, such as Non-Being, the Principle of Consciousness, or just Tao - though all words are ultimately dualistic.TWO: That seems sound doctrine, and so ....?
ONE: When we say 'We are' the only adjective we can use is one such as those just suggested - Reality, Subject or Cause, and, of course, its complementary.TWO: We are Reality and phenomena, Subject and objects, Cause and effects?
ONE: Yes - and phenomena are merely derivative.TWO: So I-as-phenomenon am merely derivative?
ONE: Of course, but even so not just one phenomenon, object, or effect, but all phenomena, objects, effects.TWO: I see. Well?
ONE: Well what?TWO: How does that affect me?
ONE: You are Subject-'I' and all objects, not just the body and mind, the psycho-somatic apparatus you were brought up to believe that you were.TWO: So that as a psycho-somatic apparatus I only exist as a phenomenon, an object, an effect?
ONE: Just so - as an object of consciousness and not as a conscious object.TWO: Please go on.
ONE: Why, no phenomenon, effect, or object of consciousness could possibly itself have consciousness! A shadow cannot have substance: it is only a projection. It is a derivation; of itself it is nothing, has nothing, can do nothing whatever.TWO: So I cannot even think?
ONE: As an object of consciousness of course you cannot! The moon cannot give light of itself. There is only one sun in the solar-system.TWO: And that sun is the Principle of Consciousness, or Tao?
ONE: Exactly, call it what you will - for, being IT and nothing else, we cannot conceive IT.TWO: Then It perceives and conceives dualistically as us? Subject-us, of course.
ONE: I know of no other valid interpretation of being.TWO: And what we perceive and conceive to be a psycho-somatic apparatus is just an apparatus activated by Subject-us, seeming to be conscious by our consciousness, seeming to live by our life, kept alight and in motion by our current?
ONE: Just so.TWO: 'We' can do nothing, think nothing, know nothing, by or of ourselves as psycho-somatic apparatus, because we don't exist as such, in our own right, at all, but only as a reflection of the One light which alone we ARE?
ONE: Yes, but remember, one reflection is no more or less US than any other - all reflections are equally and together reflections of US.TWO: So that there is nothing that could be an 'I' (or an 'ego') except I-Principle-of-Consciousness?
ONE: That is so, though, dualistically conceived, we can know ourselves as Subject and objects, Observer and all that is observed, which is the only identification that is both real and dualistically conceivable. That identification dissolves the so-called 'ego' once and for all.TWO: Perhaps, after all, it is less complicated than I had thought.
ONE: Less? Where is there any complication? How could it possibly be otherwise? Nothing else could make sense. Therefore it is simple - as I told you. Did not the Maharshi tell you?TWO: Now that I come to think of it I believe he did, but I didn't hoist it in. I feel I must take it for a walk. Good night. The moon is full and one can see miles by moonlight.
ONE: Good night. But when you look at the moon don't forget where the light comes from - that you too are a moon! Moons, all moons....
