Aikibojitsu

Biologists love to classify things. Confronted with (for example) an unknown bird, they will consult various field guides until they have determined the species in question. Having identified it, the biologists how know a number of things about the bird: its formal taxonomy, where it lives, what it eats, whether it migrates, when it breeds, and so on. The biologists are now in possession of a set of information or images comprising the known of the bird.

They do not, however, possess any information or understanding of the existence of the bird itself. They know plenty regarding the necessary contingencies of being (i.e. they know the known), but that does not extend to understanding being itself. They do not know the unknown.

In the same way, human beings begin to assemble an internal field guide to the world the moment we are born. We accrue facts and begin an endless slideshow of images of the KNOWN that allow us to survive (don't jump in front of moving trucks).

But like the biologists, we have not gained any understanding of being itself. The field guide cannot generate any information regarding itself; our system of images says nothing about the reality that underlies the images, because the unknown has no image.

Unfortunately, the ability to be experience the unknown is critical for human beings to function properly. If we spend our lives locked into an endless field guide of images, we waste energy and cause endless stress. Dropping, even for a moment, the generation of images causes a fundamental transformation of the individual, releases all the energy expended in the construction of those images, and for moment allows for intelligent action.

We are born into existence with no warning and then we must survive based on what we are taught, on what we gain from experience. A slip in front of a speeding truck, a drink of the wrong kind of liquid, contact with a certain virus - there is no end of ways that lead to the end. From birth, we must live life with no rule book, no way of knowing what Truth is.

From the earliest moments, we are involved in a crucial process: developing the ability to generalize, to form images of what we see, hear, and feel - images that give a sense of continuity to that which is really ever-changing. Without the image function, life would be impossible for such frail creatures as we.

The image structure was developed throughout childhood, based on circumstances as they arose, influenced and formalized by the input of events, climate, racem culture, and genetic prediliction. There was no overall plan, no careful scrutiny. It was a random process, hopefully well done, but with no guarantee. As adults, we live in the world constructed from those images, for better or for worse. This image structure will betested, day in and day out with no respite, for the rest of our natural lives.

When adolescence ends, maturation of the image is nearly complete. Energy tied up in its development begins to free up, as it is no longer needed for that purpose. The newly freed energy might have been used in further development of consciousness based upon direct contact with the unknown. But it doesn't do that.

Instead, the newly freed energy finds nowhere to go but back into the plane of images. It is an innocent error, as the development of the image has been the goal since the earliest moments of life. It is a natural error as no other mode of living has ever before been encountered. But it is this simple, innocent, natural error that unwittingly commits vast amounts of excessive energy to the image structure.

The result is disastrous. Excessive energy within the the image has resulted in a psychic spasm, an unconscious frozen mental condition from which there is seldom release. As a result, attention has become bound to the image nearly totally, with little left for direct perception of the unknown. It is this, the primary psychic spasm, that underlies the crisis of humanity on both an individual as well as a global scale.

If the problem of the image spasm could be touched directly, seen in its totality, there would be the response of intelligence, and the image would release, ending the problem instantly. But the image prevents contact with the spasm, and there is always just another image. It is a main task of meditation to go beyond this, to understand and release the entirety of the field of images that comprises the known.

The unknown is a bird in flight, cold gusting wind, gathering clouds, drifting mist on a mountain peak. The unknown is water in a stream, the night sky, the world, ourselves. The unknown is the manifestation of the Absolute, untouched, independent, always new, never tainted.

The known is the totality of images by which the brain represents the unknown. The known is incredibly complex, beautiful in its way. It cannot help the fact that it is basically a lifeless representation that inadvertantly masks what it purports to represent. This would not be a problem if it would just release, coming into being as needed, then giving away easily to the purity of the unknown when its utility comes to an end.