As we have explored meditation instructions and doctrinal perspectives as taught by the many apophatic spiritual teachers over time and across different cultures, we now know that we can attain awakening and know No-Thing. We can give up our suffering and the harmful consequences of dualistic alienation for a life of well-being, contentment, wisdom, and compassion. We now know that via negativa is, in fact, a positive path of spirituality and of experiencing the Transcendent that results in a firm understanding of the interconnectedness, interbeing, and continual transformation of all existence. Let us all assert the apophatic way and accomplish knowing the “unknowable”—the No-Thing. God is No-Thing An Apophatic Assertion: An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization– revised -. Copyright Rodger Ricketts Psy.D.,2023
Recent developments in the neuroscience of consciousness have shown that the world we experience (i.e. everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste) is a combination of two things: Incoming sensory information from the environment (photons of light, vibrations of air, etc). And our brain’s best predictions about what caused those signals. This means we don’t see the world as it is. Instead, we receive sensory information from the environment (photons, vibrations, etc.,) and then our brain uses our past experiences to predict what that particular configuration of stimuli mean. Then, it puts these two things together (stimuli and predictions) to create a 3D mental representation of the world around us. And we call this reality. Alan Watts put it succinctly when he said:“In a world where there are no eyes, the sun would not be light, and in a world where there were no soft skins, rocks would not be hard, nor in a world where there were no muscles would they be heavy. Existence is relationship, and you are smack in the middle of it.”Niall McKeever, MSc
In a very real sense, no person is alone, no man is an island. We are not isolated atoms, each jostling and competing against the rest in a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest. Instead, each of us is supported and constituted, ultimately, by all there is in the universe. We are at home in the universe. In this entangled universe, we cannot do violence to our fellow human beings or our fellow inhabitants of the Earth without doing violence to ourselves. And the most effective way to benefit oneself may be to benefit others. Most of all we are not impotent observers outside nature, subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Instead, we are participants in the creation drama that is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe, shaping our common futures, making our dreams come true, and realizing our potentials and our ideals. Mae Wan Ho
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 