Volume 5, Issue 2, page 10


vision tubes -- but it likes best what you
create and give to it.

This knowing and not-knowing is a very
special ability of yours. In order to
have a problem, you have to have something you do not know and something you
do not have. This is the qualification to
make it complicated enough so it will be
interesting. So we go around and pick our
problems.

I want to teach you a little trick --
and it is a trick, believe me— a kind of
dirty trick, because if you use it you
won't have a problem, and this may make
you feel very uncomfortable. Instead of
saying "I've got to know this" or "I've
got to know that", let's consider that
there's knowingness and not-knowingness --
both very special abilities. To know is a
high level ability, ,but to not-know is
just as high a level ability. You, as Totality, have total ability to know and
total ability not to know. And the only
thing that can change this is you. You
put it there in the first place.

Instead of concentrating on the knowingness, making it a compulsion••I've got
to know this -•concentrate on the notknowing. How do you do this? You have a
problem and you say, "Well, what can I
not-know about that problem—what DO I
not-know about it?" And you say, "Well, I
don't know where the money's coming from."
You keep this up and all of a sudden, if
you get enough answers about the notknowingness, what will happen? They will
become knowingness. The unknowing areas
of your problem will dissolve.

Schopenhauer spoke of this as the two
kinds of will: the will of knowledge, as
he called it-•real knowingness; and the
will of compulsion -- the automatic, hidden
unknowingness, the so-called subconscious
that controls you and makes you do things
you don't understand why.

For example, let's take that lamp. If
I ask you, "Give me something you do not
know about that lamp -- something you're
absolutely sure you don't know." You say
you don't know who glazed it, you don't
know where it was manufactured -- and the
minute you say you don't know where it
was manufactured, you'll get a picture of
a factory and maybe a chap in overalls
glazing it. Then you say, "Well. I don't
know where it was," and you'll suddenly
get the idea "Cleveland". You keep this
up, and pretty soon you'll know who made
the lamp.

In metaphysical circles, this is called
"psychometry". In everyday living, this
is called being practical about your
power. Some persons can pick up a stone,
feel the vibrations, and can know the
pictures of everyone who has walked by it
in the last 10.000 years, all the thoughts
that are impinged upon the stone.

This is an interesting trick. You walk
into a room. Everything that's ever been
said in this room, everything that's ever
been done, is recorded in the cells of
that wall.

Some persons can be aware of this.
Eileen Garrett, one of the world's leading
mystics who publishes a magazine "Tomorrow'', can walk into a room and read it
like you read a newspaper. And what is
she doing? She is examining the areas of
not knowingness.

In your every-day life, you can do
this on very simple things. If you do
this often enough on enough areas, maybe
you could learn to walk into rooms and
read them, too.

Schopenhauer says, ''If you can regard
that every being with whom you come in
contact is walking within you and is you,
this automatically removes part of the
unknowingness, the separateness, the divisions of will." Also, he said, intuition
is the key to removing this separateness.
He used the word "intuition" for Totality, or knowingness.

You can sit in the stillness of Totality and just not do anything—just BE
you. Mystics and metaphysicians have been
meditating and doing this for thousands
of years. But that isn't enough, because
there are many manifestations going on
here which have been created and put into
action by you and set up on an automatic
pilot, you might say -- the body is a machine, an automatic mechanism that runs
without your attention on it, even.

When it gets into complete ''no control", the body wanders around and doesn't even remember who it is. This is
called amnesia. You've really pulled your
attention off it when this happens. And
you CAN withdraw from the game completely.
The Hindus call it sitting in the night
of Brahm. Actually, you can step out of
the game, and maybe enjoy serenity for 13
trillion years. But as long as you
want to be engaged in an activity, you
have to know and you have to not-know -- and
people decide, due to what has happened
to than, whether it is safe to know or
whether it is better not to know.

Our unknowingness has kind of got out
of hand. We take it for granted that
there are things we cannot know. In fact,
many books have been written about the
things you cannot know •-you're not allowed to know. Authorities will tell you
things it isn't safe to know. Certain religious organizations publish lists about
books it isn't safe to know, and various
and assorted games of not-knowingness are
in force.

As Totalityy you have a choice. But
some of the things you have to decide is
whether you're willing to accept responsibility for knowing, and whether you
think it is safe, what will the neighbors
think if you really know? What will happen to the body -- would it live better? Be
happier? More comfortable? And would life
be more, or less exciting?
(Next month—Joanna on Schopenhauer)