THE WRITINGS

October 2022

From "The Sacred Other" by Henry Templeman

421. It is early morning. The streets are empty of people and cars. There is a stillness in the brain, vast, boundless, unearthly. There is the sense of being here and not here. It is as if one lives in two worlds, the earthly and unearthly. Without the stillness, life remains partial and fragmented. The stillness is what makes life complete and whole. It is the thing that gives life meaning.

422. The mechanics of desire are simple. Initially there is the observation of a thing, then there is the memory of a past pleasure with it, and then there is the reaction to attain it in order to repeat the pleasure. For example, you see a beautiful person, and you recall the pleasure of physical intimacy, sex, and all that. You then try to repeat the pleasure, which means struggle, effort, manipulation, stress, jealousy, and all the heartache that goes with it. It is not the sex or physical intimacy that is the problem, but rather the struggle, stress, and psychological conflict that takes place. Only a relationship that is easy, natural, and effortless, which means no conflict, has meaning. If there is conflict in relationship, then love is absent. When there is one the other is not.

423. The other appeared. It was in the air, the clouds, seagulls, and earth. It was a movement outside the field of time, memory, and thought. It was a complete absence of sorrow and the suffering of man. Nothing can touch, alter, or influence it. No prayer, hope, or act of will can approach it. All of that implies thought. Thought is an unbroken string of memory that moves, churns, and operates in time, which means the past. This other is not a thing of the past. It has nothing to do with time. Thought is limited. This other is not limited. It retains nothing, which means everything is within it. The past, the future, and all that is, lies within this vast, unlimited, and impenetrable other.

424. Meditation is not an activity that involves the ego. It is an action in which the ego plays no part, unplugs, and thereby deactivates. The deactivation of the self is meditation. They are the same.

425. Discard the known, and that which is unknown reveals itself.

426. To love yourself means to take care of the yourself. It means to give your body good food, clean air, exercise, laughter, and great fun. It means to not bottle up anything inside, to be honest with whatever thoughts and feelings that may arise, and to live without fear. When one lives without fear, which includes the fear of failure, the fear of loss, and most of all, the fear of death, then the body flourishes. It thrives.

427. Follow your gut feelings.

428. People get caught up in thought, the rerun of memory, which is innately finite. People do not seem to be able to break through. They continually miss that which gives extraordinary meaning to life. Only when the whole of thought is thrown out the window does that infinite other show itself.

429. When love enters the brain, the brain changes. The brain changes and keeps on changing, which means one becomes a new person each day. There is no longer any solid or fixed you. Love wipes away the old you, and a rebirthing takes place. A new you is born that is ever changing, ever new. One suddenly begins to learn things as never before. One starts to grow in an entirely new and different way. Love destroys the past and along with it any wrong you may have done. It does not forgive the errors or mistakes you may have made, because there is nothing to forgive. Love does not judge. Anything you ever thought, felt, or did cannot affect, move, or in any way influence the majesty and magnificence of what is love. Love has no conditions. Love is unconditional. Anything less is not it. Love is the most magnificent thing a brain can ever come upon. There is nothing greater.

430. Release all personal opinions, beliefs, and mental images in which the brain seeks security, and allow whatever may happen to unfold.

431. If you are faced with the decision to harm or kill another, commit a despicable or evil act, or else die, then it is all right to die. The refusal to commit a wrong is right. It is good. It is an act of goodness, regardless of what may happen. Bodily death is insignificant compared to the majesty and sacredness that is goodness. If you fear death, then find out what is goodness. Do that and all fear, including the fear of death, falls away. It disappears completely.

432. Unconditional love is a door. It is a door that keeps opening.

433. Love destroys depression. It deletes any and every sense of despair, heartache, and sorrow. Nothing else knocks out the totality of psychological conflict that exists within a person. That means bodily death cannot even do it. The implications of that fact are huge. It means if you fail to learn what is love during your life, which means you live with depression, loneliness, heartache, and all the rest of that insanity, and you die, then that failure continues. Conflict goes on. It goes on in another person. It manifests in another brain when a person is born. This is important to realize. The person that is born is not different from you. You are the same. You have the same self, the same ego, the same conflict. It means nothing has changed. If you realize what this means you would devote your entire being, every ounce of energy, and every waking hour to finding out what it means to love. Nothing is more important. Nothing.

434. The moment you desire to be what you are not, psychological division takes place. Desire means division, and division is conflict. It is conflict that takes the form of frustration, anxiety, unease, distress, torment, and all the mental agony that goes with it. Watch yourself without judgment, censor, or comparison. Observe yourself, how you dress, what you do, how you think and feel. When you observe yourself without comparison, you not only learn about yourself, but you learn about the self. The discovery of what is the self ends the ignorance within. The end of ignorance is intelligence. It is this intelligence that ends the desire to become, the division within, and therefore all the conflict that goes with it. The mind is no longer at odds with itself. It is no longer divided. As a result an inward unification takes place. It is a unification that happens in the mind. What occurs is beyond the imagination.

435. Most people seek certainty in that which is known. They derive a sense of security from possessing solid and fixed knowledge about things, regardless whether there is any truth in it. However that sense of security is no security at all. To inwardly possess knowledge, or any sense of possessiveness at all, means fear. It means fear for the loss of the possession. Live with curiosity and doubt. Pay no mind to the totality of the known, which means the whole of human knowledge. Live with doubt and uncertainty in daily living. Play with it. Explore it. Do that and something happens. A door opens that reveals a field of life filled with absolute wonder that otherwise remains completely hidden.

436. There were several people on the elevator. A group of elderly women chatted with each other about medical problems. A man and woman stood silently near the elevator door waiting for it to open. The man was dressed in blue jeans and a long sleeve shirt. He was quiet, looking down, apparently in deep thought. The man was a well-known television actor, but nobody in the elevator seemed to recognize him. The doors of the elevator opened, the man walked out, and quickly disappeared around the corner. The following week the news reported that the man committed suicide. People expressed great shock and sadness over his death. It was reported that he suffered from depression and had physical health problems as well. Every form of mental depression, melancholy, and sadness, vanishes when the brain is highly alert, sensitive, and watchful. They end instantly. Watchfulness does not distinguish between what is taking place inside or outside the brain. Watchfulness does not compare, find fault, or criticize. It does not choose the beautiful flower and avoid the dirt in the street. Choice implies comparison, which involves memory, and therefore time. Memory means time. Watchfulness has nothing to do with time, which means it has a choice-less, and therefore timeless, quality about it. The beauty of that inner state of watchfulness, which is totally outside the field of time and does not choose, not only puts down all feelings of depression, melancholy, and sadness, but it obliterates all forms of psychological conflict. It cancels it all out instantly. Do it now, and see what happens. Watch whatever thoughts that may pass through the brain in the same way one watches a bird in flight, a tree swaying in a breeze, or cloud as it slowly moves across a vast, open sky. Do it, and see what takes place. See what occurs with the whole activity of mental depression, anxiety, sadness, and sorrow. Watch the entire structure of every form of psychological conflict fall away. That is what happens. It falls away.

437. If you feel superior or inferior to others, then inwardly you are divided. Inner division means conflict. It means conflict in you. Conflict denies love. As long as you feel dissimilar from other people you do not love. Learn what it means to look at another person without any sense of separation, which means no judgment, no comparison, no approval or disapproval, and therefore with no image of that person. Mental imagery is what separates people from each other. It separates the observer from the observed. Find out what it is to live without any sense of mental separation. Do that, and every form of inner division and conflict stops. It disappears completely. When that happens, and the whole of psychological separation comes to a halt, then love shows itself. The end of separation is love. They are the same.

438. If you think it takes time to solve any mental problem then that idea is a mistake. It is a mistake because if the solution takes time, then the problem can never end. It means the problem always remains.

439. Living attached to thought as personal opinion and belief is living in illusion. Attachment to thought holds illusion in place. If attachment to thought ends, then so does the hold to illusion.

440. Consciousness is the flow of thought in and out of memory, which means there is no difference between the consciousness of one and the consciousness of another. The consciousness of the individual is the same and the consciousness of mankind. It means psychologically you are every human being who has ever existed. You are the saint, the politician, the businessman, the criminal, the lawyer, the farmer, the baker, the rich man, the beggar. You are all that, not different, and therefore one and the same. To feel that as a fact brings an end to any and every sense of being different from another. It ends the separation between you and the world. The end of that separation is the beginning of love.

441. Love negates the past. It turns the past to dust.

442. If you try to escape, suppress, or in any way manage fear, then fear remains. Only when you watch fear, look directly into it, and face it head on, do you learn about it. When you learn about fear, why it arises, where it exists, how it is sustained, and all that, then it is no longer a mystery. When the mystery of a thing ends, which means you face it and learn about it completely, then it naturally withers away. It perishes. The end of fear reveals what it is to live with great strength and intensity. It reveals what it means to live fearlessly.

443. A person is like a drop of water in a river. The river is made up of drops of water and each drop is a different person, a different ego. Each ego is unique and at the same time it is merged with the other egos that form the river. The ego is a river of thought. It is a river of limitation, and people are caught in that river. They are entangled in it. Limitation means partiality, divisiveness, and therefore frustration, struggle, conflict, and sorrow. To step out of this river one must find out what it is to abolish the ego. The ego is thought as the psychological reliance to past experience which takes the form of memory. The memory may be of a spouse, a job, a profound philosophical idea, a spiritual concept, a near death experience, or whatever. It does not matter. If the brain relies on it, gives it value, or makes it all important, then an ego forms, which means division, conflict, and all the hurt that goes with it. To step out of this river means to shed the whole of human experience. It means to scrap it now, and from moment to moment. If you abandon every past experience, no matter how significant or meaningful, and psychologically possess nothing, then suddenly one comes upon freedom. One discovers what it means to be psychologically free. Do that and unexpectedly an entirely new world opens up. One is free to observe a lizard as is sits motionless on a wall, a tree as it bends and sways in a warm wind, a bird as it soars effortlessly in an open sky. One is free to observe the whole of life without the filter of memory of any past experience to limit and distort the observation. To be free is not a thought. It is not an idea. It has nothing to do with memory, which means it is not limited. The mind that is free comes upon an extraordinary dimension to life that is limitless, and therefore sacred. Words cannot convey what takes place. Do not get caught up with the words of the thing. Words can only point. The words and description of this sacred other is not it. Go beyond the words because it is there. It is there.

444. If what you do in life is based on fear, apathy, or anything that does not come from you deep inside, then it is a wrong action. If you learn a skill or acquire a specific knowledge because you want to earn a lot of money, have a secure job, own a house, and all that, and not because it is your deepest passion, then it is a mistake. It is a waste. Every mistake one has ever made in life can be corrected. It can be corrected by taking the right action now. The right action is made with your gut feeling, deepest interest, and greatest passion. Find out what it is to live without fear and apathy. Do that and you will discover what it is to live a passionate life.

445. A day of passion is greater than a lifetime of apathy.

446. When a person living in the world today sees the fallacy of the mental attachment to ideas, images, and beliefs, then an extraordinary aloneness follows. It is not a sense of isolation or loneliness, but instead it is the discovery of what it is to be completely alone, and perfectly content in that aloneness. That means there is no division in the aloneness, but rather an impenetrable sense of psychological oneness, completeness, and wholeness. The aloneness is wholeness, and the mind is not separate from it. It is an indescribable thing.

447. You may feel trapped in memory, encased in the past, which means fear, sadness, loneliness, frustration, and all the inner torment that goes with it. However, if you discard your particular culture, personal upbringing, all the beliefs drilled into you since childhood by the society in which you live, and instead you follow your own instincts and passion, then a dimension to life that has nothing to do with memory or the past comes into play. Memory is the world of the known, and therefore restriction. When the whole of that is given no worth or stature of any kind, then an extraordinary thing happens. The mind comes upon a field of existence that is unrestricted. It comes upon a vast, unrestricted, and therefore holy thing, which otherwise remains concealed.

448. End the division within. There is nothing else to do.

449. There is no way out of inner heartache, anguish and despair, unless one finds out what is love. If you fail to learn what is love, which means a love that brings a final end to every form of anguish and despair, then the learning goes on. It continues until that love is learned. It may take a thousand or million years. Regardless how long it takes, despair continues until love is found, because only love ends despair. It ends it all at once.

450. A group of dogs playfully ran around each other, jumping, dodging, and rolling around through the lush green grassy field. The owners stood by watching as the dogs played with each other. The morning air was crisp and fresh. The blue sky stretched across the bay as far as the eye could see. The tall trees stood still, deadly silent. A black crow with ragged feathers slowly limped across the grass. It appeared weak, unable to fly, and near death. Death is not something that can be divided. That means what happens at psychological death reveals what takes place at bodily death. The end of the ego or the self is psychological death. They are the same. The self is every idea present in the brain that is given worth. It includes every personal philosophy about life, every personal opinion and belief held dear, every mental image given value, which means the image of a spouse, a child, a dear friend, a job, a possession, and so on. Most importantly it is every image one has about oneself, the image of being good or mean, happy or unhappy, intelligent or ignorant, important or unimportant, successful or a failure, and so on. Every mental image and thought that one embraces creates the self. That means the self is thought. Thought is you. The nature of thought is that it is bound to memory. Memory is measurable. Therefore thought is measurable. That means the end of that which is measurable reveals death. It shows what happens at death. Only when every image that you embrace about yourself is thrown in the garbage, and only when the entire self image-making process comes to a stop, does another side to life, another dimension to existence, reveal itself. It is a realm of existence that is not measurable, which means it is immeasurable, infinite. One must actually discard every form of thought as the self which one holds dear. One must do it. Otherwise what is death remains a conjecture, a theory, an image, which means the actuality of it remains hidden. Only when thought as the self ends does the mystery, the vast immensity, and sacredness of what is death show itself. Nobody can show you what happens when the self ends. It is something that can only be done alone.

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