A short monologue distinguishing two forms of religion: (1) mythic, literal-belief systems (e.g., scriptural narratives) and (2) psychotechnologies—practices like meditation and yoga that change consciousness and yield access to an 'absolute' mode of knowing. The speaker argues that experiential realizations (e.g., satori) are more convincing than relative truth and claims such experiences are accessible even to highly educated people.
Chapters
See that? Spirituality, religion, that there are at least these two different forms of religion. One is believing in myths, believing in a certain story, believing a certain narrative. Moses left Egypt, really did part the Red Sea. That's a literal truth. Frogs were rained down on the Egyptians for punishment while they were trying to stop the Israelis. All of those mythic, literal, concrete, mythic beliefs are one type of religion. Another type is literally a psychotechnology of changing consciousness. And that generally goes under the rubric of things like yoga or meditation, where you actually sit and you focus the mind and you concentrate the mind in certain ways. And that gives you access to a second mode of knowing. First mode of knowing relative truth. Second mode of knowing absolute truth. Now, in today's world of nothing but relative truth, to even say absolute truth is, a lot of people will just go, okay, well, he is nuts. We all know there's no absolute truth. He's clearly fanatic or cultic or fundamentalist or something like that. The fact of the matter is, if you take any number of PhDs in any number of fields and you have them practice Zen until they have a satori, 99% of them will say that the satori is real. And in fact, they're more real than relative truth, and so they will recognize the two truths. I have never seen a highly educated person have a satori and say, that's just subjective silliness. It is an overpoweringly convincing realization of truth, and that is what is so desperately needed in today's world.
