Preface

There are two types of human beings in the world. You might call one “good,” or striving to attain to good, and the other “evil,” or attaining to evil.

Of course, there are a good many people stuck in the middle, between good and evil. Some of those who want to be good are unable to be good because they don’t know how to go about it. They fail to understand the forces that influence them. If you want to join the ranks of the good, the noble, and the brave, you must know what those forces are, through a very special kind of knowledge that I hope to make available to you in the following pages.

Understanding is essentially the same for all men of goodwill. While we are separated by different languages, we all share the same intuitive knowing—unless, of course, it has been “educated” out of us by the misuse of language. The language I am using has just one purpose: to bring you back to that common ground of understanding. The problem is that most of us have been partially alienated from our understanding, so it trails behind us as conscience.

For this reason, we are extremely sensitive to words. We tend to equate language with reality, so that a mere word affects us in the same way as the thing for which it stands. For example, someone calls you a fool. You react, you become upset, and you act like a fool.

Words, except when they are loaded with meaning in order to convey understanding, can be confusing. One person uses words to say the right thing. Another person, with rhetorical slyness, twists the facts, but his words go down just as well. Which one do you believe? What is the truth? Confusing? Yes, but if you have understanding, you will not be confused, because you can see the intent behind each person’s words

Words are poison when they are coming from a wrong place, or falling on wrong ears. When they are not backed by understanding, words are a ship without a rudder, without a captain. Your words collide with the words of others, and their words collide with yours. You both react to each other’s words and, in doing so, you blind yourself to any reality those words might be representing—or covering up.

This book will teach you how to become detached from words—your own, and those of others. You must be able to understand what people are really saying, without words. You were born with the ability to do so; it is as natural to you as the instinct that causes bees to build hives and birds to build nests.

The main flaw in the way we exist on this earth is the fact that we have been seduced by words—or, more accurately—by the spirit, or serpent, behind the words of our deceivers. They have seduced us away from our original genius, and we have compensated for our loss with artificial knowledge, represented by language. Now, as perhaps never before, we are caught up with the leading spirit of language, and accelerating our rate of fall from intuitive understanding. Of course, in the light of truth, we can see how the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil got us kicked out of Paradise. All we had to do was lend an ear to ideas and concepts that were inherently untenable but oh, so alluring, so believable, to our pride.

Surely you have noticed the difference between true religion and religious-sounding words. They are two different things, but words have a way of conjuring up the “reality” of a false religiosity. The danger here is that when you listen to a person talk, you hear him juggle ideas and concepts to create an emotional “reality,” and before you know what has come over you, you cannot deny the “reality” that has captured your emotions. You feel, you believe, and you are deceived.

Therefore, you may store up in your brain all the knowledge in the world, and yet not be a truly intelligent person. You may be sincerely misguided. Knowing every truth there is to be known about God, as the result of going to church or studying in a seminary, can never certify you to be a spiritual person. Secondhand knowing, the kind that can be “learned” from another, rarely produces real understanding, the kind that saves you. What you need is pure understanding, and the only way an outsider’s words can help you to find it is by stripping away the false claims and pretensions of the knowledge freaks and inviting you to see Reality for yourself, through your own God-given understanding. I pray that my words will be so loaded with right intent and clear seeing that they will wake an echo in you, and you will be able to live by your own inner understanding from now on.

Simplicity, innocence, a knowing without knowing why you know, and growing to maturity through that knowing: that is what life is all about. When you understand, you will not know why you know; yet you will be sure that you do know, because your knowledge will have grown out of the spirit of understanding, and in this kind of knowing there is no doubt. Living by this knowing frees you, once and for all, from confusion and ambivalence, and draws you closer to your Creator.