5. I'M HERE

When I say that something is located here, what do I mean? How close is it, how handy, how intimate? When I describe something as this something, what are its limits? Where does it start and stop?

It all depends. In the very same breath I can speak of this lung, this country, this group of galaxies. In fact, my this and my here are limitless in their bigness and smallness. I'm infinitely elastic.

And I take this fact seriously. I ask myself WHO it is that at will expands and contracts so effortlessly and smoothly and naturally. What is the true identity of this Magician?

I realize there's only one who fits the bill, and that's the One who is my Source and Center. This realization isn't an idea for entertaining occasionally: it's an experience for getting the feel of throughout my life.

6. I'M NOW

Similarly, when I say that an event is happening now, what do I mean? How much time (if any) does the present moment bite off and masticate?

Again, it all depends. I hear myself talking so glibly of this lightning flash, this week, this decade, this millennium. The fact is that I'm as capacious of time as from time to time I need to be. And the paradox is that this capaciousness is my mastery of time, and I can enthusiastically endorse the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death. . . . Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Let me sum up the whole matter this way: I am the consciousness which observes that it has no beginning, no interruption, no ending, and I shall never die.

7. I'M SELF-ORIGINATING

This is the big one, the crux and climax of the Eleven. All the rest is anticlimax: necessary anticlimax no doubt, and wonderful, but downstream of the Source.

Let me outline the Earthly history of the One who “impossibly,” with no help and for no reason, gives birth to Himself before He is, before even Nothing gets cracking.

(a) In December 1945, an earthenware jar containing thirteen leather-bound Gnostic books was accidentally unearthed in Upper Egypt. These books comprised fifty-two “secret” texts written in Coptic. Probably they had been buried some fifteen centuries ago by the monks of a nearby monastery who feared their discovery by the Catholic Church.

Among these “heretical” texts was one attributed to the Barbelo Gnostics. All honor and praise to their anonymous teacher who, not many decades after Jesus' crucifixion, was the first to speak of the Self-originating One.

Quite a number of the later Gnostic texts (a Gnostic is literally “one who knows”) tell the same story. For instance, The Gospel of the Egyptians: “This great name of Thine is upon me, O Self-begotten One who art not outside me.” Though most of these Gnostics were Christians, they were virtually exterminated by the Catholics well before 500 AD.

(b) Around 800 AD, in the court of the Emperor Charlemagne, the Irish philosopher John Scotus Erigena taught that it isn't WHAT God is that's crucial but THAT He is.

(c) The famous German philosopher Leibniz (1646–1716), with his doctrine of the Monad, was of the same opinion.

(d) In 1935 another German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, wrote in his Introduction to Metaphysics: “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing? Obviously this is the first of all questions. . . . Each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden power of this question, even if he is not aware of what is happening.” And he goes on to tell of the Ground of Being that gives rise to this fundamental question.

(e) Around the same time, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher I've already quoted, wrote that it's not WHAT the universe is that is mystical but THAT it exists.

(f) Over the last half-century I've shared with many people the wonder of the Self-originating One. Their number runs into at least three figures. No surprise! It's a small part of the realization that's springing up in the most unlikely places and a reason for abounding joy in a world that's short of joy. It's also my end—which means my purpose and my ceasing, my deliberate vanishing in your favor.

8. I'M UNKNOWABLE

Which is worshipful, the Rock-solid God who has to be or the Oceanic Self-originating God who doesn't have to be?

So far from frustrating Him, his abysmal ignorance of how He produces Himself is heavenly bliss for sharing with His friends. To unlock the secret of Self-origination would be to strip it of its power and plunge us headfirst into a hell of everlasting boredom.

9. I'M ALL SEERS

What is the scorpion, the octopus, the chimp, the young child looking out of, in its own experience?

Certainly not out of a scorpion's face, or an octopus's face (if it has one), or a chimp's face, or my own face as a young child and a grown-up. All creatures who see are looking out of One and the Same Empty Space. Not out of empty-for-empty space but out of empty-for-filling space, space that's vacant accommodation for other faces. This primordial and self-denying Capaciousness is the bright and charming Original Face that Zen Buddhism is all about.

10. I'M ALL SENTIENT BEINGS

Am I then denied entry into and union with the deaf and dumb, the blind, the creature who's in any way handicapped? Of course not. No sentient being can be without being me, without being BEING ITSELF. In fact it's impossible to overrate the cumulative power of this elevenfold and all-embracing rescue bid.

Consider the immense but hidden power of the question: “How come the orderly structure and smooth running of the Universe?”

Exactly what is the most far-reaching and wished-for yet laid-on of powers?

It's none other than the power to take in, to take on, and to take away the suffering of all sentient beings.

11. I'M YOU

What I'm looking AT is my problem, and What I'm looking OUT OF is its solution. And—paradox of paradoxes!—the real solution is that you, along with all the others, and certainly not myself, are my Cure, the Antidote for my ingrained self-centeredness. Right Here, I Am You!