The World is My Mirror by Richard Bates Page A

press to test-drive the birth of a new addition to the family. Finally, it gets wrapped and boxed and labelled as ‘trumpet’.
     
    Now, abstraction is the same kind of process as the one described above. Let us take something not man-made, say a flower, a rose, maybe. If you could observe one right now you might notice its stem and its leaves. You can feel the thorns and smell the aroma. Count the petals and notice those central projections we call stamens that produce pollen at the tip, and we are well on our way to describing the rose. If thought is our factory production line, then we have taken the raw materials, in this case the noticed parts, the visible parts, of the flower, and stuck them together through investigation and knowledge. The parts have been processed. We have selected some parts over others. But, just as with the trumpet, there is no flowerness or trumpetness there which is above and beyond the entire process of mental model building and labelling. Look at it this way: if the trumpet went out of fashion and orders were down, the factory could start making fancy brass funnels out of the end piece of the trumpet. Similar processes could take place to produce it, it would just be quicker and a new label would be printed saying ‘brass funnels’. The same brass is functioning differently. There is no trumpet or funnel that can be labelled once and for all. For those of you in a pedantic mood there is no brass either: brass is an alloy of zinc and copper.
     
    Similarly, the thing we call ‘rose’ might simply be regarded as a natural device for making petals, whose only use is to scent water for special ceremonies and rituals on the fourth Sunday of every month in a leap year. Roses would therefore be non-existent: they have no function other than to make petals for a sacrament. Sending a single red rose to a loved one might be considered offensive, or even blasphemous.
     
    So concepts are the result of mental abstraction and not the depiction of a solid, preformed, pre-existing and unchanging world out there, to be observed and recorded for all time. If you are brave enough, look at the body and the self in the same way. The mind may resist this kind of exploration; just give it a slap and tell it to listen for once. I will leave you to explore this on your own without any of my ideas contaminating you. All I will say is this: if you come up with anything interesting, discard it and start again.
     
    My take on things, as you will realise, is to look for yourself, feel for yourself and stop hanging on to a guru, master or celebrity spiritual teacher. They are all a load of pants, and rightly so. I am not being disparaging here; I am just alerting you to the fact that you are the sole authority on yourself and not the ideas from fictitious characters in a book or film. Paying more money to sit closer to a famous teacher is just unnecessary. Mind you, you won’t listen to me or my load of pants either. Your dream is your dream. Just because I didn’t go to meetings does not mean you shouldn’t. That bolt of lightning might strike you‌—‌who knows? In some ways writing down these words will always be my take on things and I won’t pretend it isn’t.
     
     

Look Into My Eyes
     
    Don’t forget, we are still in the pub, you and me, and the red leather seats are warming up nicely. The snow is still falling and the ale is still flowing.
     
    ‘Another plate of strong cheese and fresh crusty bread, please, barman!’
     
    ‘I want you to simply relax and concentrate on my voice. Look into my eyes, and allow yourself to trust me completely, unquestionably and wholeheartedly… You’re under.’
     
    ‘Everything I say from now on you are to believe and not doubt a single word: you are a separate entity that was born in the past and will die in the future. You live on a planet we call ‘Earth’. You exist with other people similar to you. There is something called ‘time’ that will ensure