MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

knowing by not knowing is an unconscious understanding
that exists subtly as transcendent and lofty

it is revealed knowledge
that flows with ease from within

all the knowledge of the universe can be sensed
at the corner of your senses
locked away inside each and every cell of your bodymind

getting to it requires
that you flow with ease from within

trying to understand the subtle and transcendent
consciously
will put you in a state of
dis-ease
blocking the flow from within

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey

Perhaps if your are as I was (and, in a sense, still am), very scientifically and secularly minded, the idea of revealed wisdom and revelation sounds too much like magic, mysticism, and delusion to you. Your skepticism is reasonable and applicable in more cases than it is not. Knowledge of chemistry, physics, and an accurate account of history don’t just emerge from the æther or from some source of divinity. On this, we agree.

Now, with that out of the way, let us play with our conception of revelation for a moment. Setting aside knowledge of what is, let us instead ask if it might be possible that wisdom as to how we should act could somehow be revealed to us from within (i.e. our inherited biological instincts—for the sake of keeping things secular; as I said, I’m not a believe in the supernatural, myself). For clarity’s sake, allow me to ask that question again: is it possible that wisdom pertaining to certain modes of behavior exists within our instincts, and is it possible that such wisdom could be revealed to our consciousnesses if we put ourselves in the right state of mind?

I think you’ll find your first answer to be “Yes.” After all, what animals don’t possess instinct, untaught patterns of behavior? And are we not animals? As Dr Jordan Peterson suggests, if you watch yourself and other humans long enough, you’ll find that we’re not unlike chimpanzees full of snakes.

What about the second question? Can a human being become consciously aware of the pressures placed on him by his instincts? You may be more skeptical about this claim; however, you’ll find that it too is undeniable. I’ll even give you a falsifiable proposition: observe any number of human beings for at least an hour (yourself included, if you have a camera), and mark down their behavior. Interview the subjects afterward and ask them if they remember doing everything you marked and why they did those actions (many won’t, if the hypothesis is correct). Then, post interview, ask them to pay attention to themselves and see if they notice themselves doing anything else which they weren’t previously aware of and can’t explain why they did it. Run this experiment, and I propose you’ll find that people are under the possession of unconscious habits, some of which will be biologically motivated (i.e. related to instinctive function as opposed to socially constructed habits). Furthermore, you’ll find that when a conscious mind observes itself (the bodymind separates so that the mind more closely watches the body, if you will), unconscious tendencies can quite easily be brought into conscious awareness.

But maybe you’re wondering now, “what was the point in all of this?”

It is to make you realize that wisdom exists not just in knowledge about what is, but also in our inherited patterns of behavior, those instincts shaped over millennia through generations of selective pressure on our ancestors about how to act in the world as a human being. It is to suggest that under some circumstances, the arrogance of consciousness stops us from realizing a truth that is already in-built. It is to say that in certain contexts it is better to defer to the unconscious wisdom of the universe as it embedded itself onto the instinctive functioning of our ancestors.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Seventy-One”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. p.132