Space is One
Partial transcript of a dialogue in Alaska in 1995.
INTERLOCUTOR: You keep saying that space is one and I don’t have the slightest idea of what you mean by that.
RUBÉN FELDMAN GONZÁLEZ (R.F.G.):Thought creates limited space.
American thought creates the space between Canada and México. Catholic thought creates the space between the Jew and the Muslim, or the space between the Protestant and the Protestant.
That’s how mankind managed to create a horribly divided world, full of wars: German against Russian, capitalist against Communist, black against white.
Thought is quite inventive, so it continues to create more divisions every day, in spite of the lethal or destructive consequences of those divisions.
Between the many flaws and incoherences of thought, this is probably the most important: the ability to endlessly invent divisions between human beings.
Now, if you daily and consistently attempt the wordless silence of Unitary Perception, listening to all sound, without words, at the same time that you feel the weight of your body and see everything that can be seen, without effort or concentration, starting right now, you may eventually come upon a second silence, a very deep silence of the brain, compatible with highly energetic action.
In this second silence of Unitary Perception it will become spontaneously obvious to you that space is one, because you will see every human being as such, without any label, without any overvalued word attached to him or her.
So, when space is one, every man is one with humankind, and time is irrelevant.
In this second silence there is intense communion with creation, in which everything is being silently created, right now.
When the mind is able to be so sensitively and deeply in touch with reality, it’s only because it is in the second silence of Unitary Perception.
Only a deeply silent mind can truly see a person or a tree, or the rain, or the sea, the cloud or the star.
When the mind is projecting thought and words, it can only be in touch with that thought. And so the mind is isolated from other minds or from the ultimate reality of creation.
(Silence.)
INTERLOCUTOR: (Silence.) I can intuitively sense that you are saying something very important… but… uh… I don’t seem to be able to fully understand it.
R.F.G.: Right! That happens to all of us.
See, we are used to go from what we know to what we know and we call that process of thought “understanding something.”
What I’m telling you now is to start with the second silence of Unitary Perception, something you don’t know and from there, the unknown, to go into the unknown, which is creation.
How could you ever understand such a thing with more words and more thought?
INTERLOCUTOR: I need to experience the second silence of Unitary Perception.
R.F.G.: Do you truly see the need for it or is it merely dialectics?
INTERLOCUTOR: Well, I have the sense that without the second silence of Unitary Perception I will be very isolated in my own mind and will only imagine what reality is, but I’ll never be in it.
R.F.G.: Exactly. But to be aware of the process by which the mind gets caught in thought is the first silence of Unitary Perception. You get instantly free from that trap, the very moment you listen to all sound without words.
INTERLOCUTOR: I have to start by concentrating on sound.
R.F.G.:No, not concentrating but listening.
Concentration is another trick by which thought excludes one little thing from the rest of all things.
If you truly listen without words, without naming what you are listening, you will sense the weight of your body at the same time and you will see everything that can be seen in the visual field at the same time. If you attempt Unitary Perception daily, you are opening up to the second silence of Unitary Perception, the end of isolation from reality, the end of isolation from space, which is truly one.
INTERLOCUTOR: Can I do it with prayer?
R.F.G.: There you go again! Back to words.
You are in love with words. You may be afraid of silence. With words you can condition yourself or another to be quiet or to kill.
With words you can hypnotize yourself or others to be very quiet, even cataleptically quiet. If you condition yourself, you’re again in the trap. Catatonia may be conditioned by either hypnosis or by brain disease (schizophrenia).
Catalepsy or catatonia is not quietness. The trap is thought, mediated by word.
INTERLOCUTOR: The second silence may come to a mind that is conditioned to be quiet.
R.F.G.: I wish it was so easy!
Creation is happening right now and it happens in great silence.
Thought cannot create creation nor can it be in touch with creation.
The process of thought excludes the mind from the beauty, the silence, the space in which creation is happening.
INTERLOCUTOR: But what if the only thing I know is language and thought?
R.F.G.: And what if the only thing you are is language and thought?
INTERLOCUTOR: Does it mean I have to stop being?
R.F.G.: It means you have to stop being merely as thought and language. It almost implies a form of psychological death, but nothing to be really afraid of. Once it happens it is so good that you’ll want more of it. It is being fully alive.
Now, wanting more of it is nothing less than “being thought” again, which is being half alive, to put it some way.
INTERLOCUTOR: Now, I know that some thought is necessary to function: I need to know what time it is, where I am, etc., but is there any thought that may favor or facilitate the second silence?
R.F.G.: Oh! You are not even attempting Unitary Perception! If you start to live in Unitary Perception right now, without procrastination, without effort, you’ll see that your thoughts wander.
It happens simply because you want to focus exclusively on one or two thoughts.
But if you don’t avoid any thought that emerges to consciousness, at the same time that you see and listen to everything perceivable… then what?
INTERLOCUTOR: No concentration, no exclusion, no focusing, nothing to achieve, nothing to gain… nothing to control…
R.F.G.: Nothing! See every desire, see every fear… And let it go! Fear and desire are only fuel for thought: always more of the same.
If you understand that you are thought funneled by fear and desire, then you will not be concentrating on any thought nor will you be distracted by any thought.
IN UNITARY PERCEPTION YOU SIMPLY LISTEN TO THOUGHT (EVERY THOUGHT) AS IF IT WAS ANOTHER SOUND.
Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, with no second thoughts, the second silence comes and you are in touch with creation. In creation there is no personality, no ego.
So with thoughts and words there is no second silence but in second silence, the realm of creation, there may be a good dialogue or simply further silence.
INTERLOCUTOR: It is up to me…
R.F.G.: NO! You simply follow the flow of reality and creation. You let yourself be. You stop seeking.
Fortunately or unfortunately, nothing can be said about the happiness of the second silence in Unitary Perception, since it is so far away from thought and words.
INTERLOCUTOR: So I start by listening to all the sound.
R.F.G.: Yes. The first step is the last. The second silence follows the first.