Manuscripts by EO


* * * From Unpublished Notes * * *


Evolution of man makes him stop moving


Let's put aside the question if there is such a thing as the evolution of the consciousness of mankind or not.
There is a tendency in the man's evolution totally opposite to the diversifying universe, namely in the direction toward stillness from the movement.
If we make rough classification of human according to the corresponding chakra system, it would be in one of six types based on where the center of gravity of consciousness is located.

  1. Three lower chakras. Those who live up to their stomach are, so to say, animals.
    They just move, make babies, train themselves in simple power. Or, if they are good at something, it would be in martial art or as an athlete. Because the belly chakras are related to maintenance and exhaust of the life force only.
    * * * * * * *
  2. Breast. Their intensity in the movement is somewhat less than first type, but they will wonder around their world for any emotional impact, awe, heart beating experience.
    They would make an explorer, a lover of arts, voyage, or someone addicted to love affairs at the best. What they want is the emotional movement what so ever, regardless of the "quality" of it.
    They don't analyze the experience nor really think. They spend their life for, literally, the faster heart beat.
    * * * * * * *
  3. Throat. People in this third category adds a limit in their movement. They don't move aimlessly.
    They have a purpose, and they move just for that. Their main focus is on collecting.
    If they make a voyage, it is to search a data rather than for the emotion like second type.
    This third type makes a maniac of information, a collector of something.
    They would carry a recording equipment like video for their journey.
    They record and collect, but some specific information, not just everything.
    These characteristic comes from throat chakra, which is related to the record, memory.
    But people in this type can combine information in technical and/or business like manner only, leaving the creativity for the people based on the next chakra.
    * * * * * * *
  4. Forehead. They are scientists or inventors. They would think about anything "except one" to create something new.
    They would not go out for the trip unless for acquiring necessary information for their thought.
    People who has very expanded movement belongs to first three types. The forth type, a scientist for example, stay in his lab. It is a characteristic of the shift, which the center of gravity makes toward upper chakras, that the sphere of activity and the focus of the thought get smaller.
    Fourth type make their journey on the map of the logic and the road of the equation
    * * * * * * *
  5. Above the forehead. When we talk about this fifth level, they don't even have a lab. They don't do any experiments, either. Their sphere of activity is on the desk, and within the movement of the hand and the eyes. They don't use any equation, just strolling in the logic. They do not think to create something. They think only about the "one exception" the fourth type omitted. That is "Why do I think ?". This is the subject the fourth type would never treat. Because it is a fatal subject for the fourth type.
    This subject has no value in commercial sense nor as an entertainment.
    But the fifth type thinks these question; "Why think?. What for?. What is this thing called thought in the first place?".
    And "What is looking at own thought?" is the fundamental question of theirs.
    They are philosophers. They don't move away from their desk.
    If they question "What is the world ?", they do not start elucidating about the law of universe like scientist, nor they would not make trip to search. They do not care about how the world moves around, but focused on the definition and the meaning like; "What is the world?", "Why the world exist?".

    And their center of gravity is above the forehead, a little foreword of the top of the head. They do not identify themselves with most of the thought, but totally identified with the thought like, why we think, why everything exists, what constitutes the subjectivity of the self. It is rather strange to see that the sphere of the activity gets smaller and smaller.
    * * * * * * *
  6. This sixth type leave the question about the question itself to stop totally. Nothing moves even in their head. We don't know if they have gone back to their "home" or just mentally disabled, but they don't even have inner movements at this level.
    * * * * * * *

Thus the human "evolution" shift through physical activity to emotional, and finally mental, and come to stop the thought after passing the question about mental activity itself.
The way from the movement to the stillness, if we summarize, this is the journey in the direction of the enlightenment.


The feeling of "subjectivity" varies for each individual.

--- The term "subjectivity" is brought up here for the word possibly translated as "self" because the word seemed to be employed in sense of "host", "point of origin" of the observer, and we would like to reserve "self" for the something which covers around this "subjectivity". For many people, this distinction is nearly non-existent since they do not really see into themselves backward. For them, they feel only their self, not subjectivity --- cloma

There seems to be a deviation in the feeling of "subjectivity" for each person. I thought for the long time that the "subjectivity" is recognized as the "awareness as the observer" by everyone. But I have realized that it was an error. I thought that everybody has the self-recognition of "the core of fluent awareness" in oneself, which is not originally, truly influenced by the content of the thought or the experience. But I've understood that the feeling of the subjectivity, "the thing with which a man get, remember the sensation of Who I Am" varies depending on the chakra where one's center of gravity is based upon.
The self-recognition of "subjectivity" for a given person differs according to the location of the physical center where one's "concentrated attention" has been repeatedly placed upon, in other words, where one's focus of attention has been pulled.

  1. If the consciousness had it's center of gravity repeatedly on three lower chakras, that person would take physical body and/or physical strength as oneself.
  2. If the center of gravity was often at the breast, one's the emotional characteristics will be taken as the self.
  3. If the consciousness was concentrated on the throat again and again, the memory would give the feeling of the subjectivity of the self.
  4. If the focus of the attention was usually on the forehead, that person would think oneself, subjectivity, as a thinker, someone with ideas.
  5. In the case of the person who's consciousness is focused above the forehead in front of the top of the head, he will sense subjectivity as "the one who is aware" of all phenomenon of the thought and the perception.

And at this fifth state, there is a problem one does not have at other states, first to fourth. At four other states, there is a solid object of the attention, namely physical body, emotion, memory, thought, which can all taken as an object.
Thus one can reflect these on self to recognize as the subjectivity of the self.
But "the subjectivity of the awareness, the one who is aware" at the fifth state cannot be an object, and that creates the problem.
Despite of that, he takes firmly that the awareness is his pure subjectivity, in his "thought", even though it can never be a recognition with solid sensation, sadly.

And if he start to search the subjectivity of the awareness eagerly, he would find only the void as something that can be taken as the object. Thus when the philosopher at the fifth state starts his actual search for the subjectivity of the self not by the thinking but in a meditational process, it's quite normal and not a tragic story to find only the void, nothing, there.

--- note by cloma.
If we take this "the one who is aware" as a mirror, what EO is saying might be easier to understand.
Any object can be reflected by a mirror, but not the mirror itself.
This is what happens at first four states.
A mirror trying to reflect itself will find nothing on the reflective surface at the fifth state.
--- end

If the subjectivity has solid existence as thought, emotion, memory, it can be taken as on object.
Since the pure subjectivity in the true sense cannot be known as an object but only by "matching", it is limited to the sixth state to have no lag.
In other words, only those who has came to total mental halt can live the pure subjectivity not as an object of observation. And then, a mystic is born out of the philosopher.


Going through Satori by matching with the subjectivity


Now, not by taking it as an object, but to know the subjectivity by "matching" can be well suggested in the description by Bernadette Roberts. Though the terms and the expressions are quite different from the original translated text, it can be summarized as following.
(Ref. The Experience of No-Self, Bernadette Roberts, SUNY ISBN 0-7914-1694-1)

--- Translator's Note: Following text is written by Bernadette Roberts first, then translated into Japanese, then summarized by EO with his own terminology, and finally I translated it back into English. It could be interesting to find the original text and compare by yourself.
The term "Satori" is employed in the sense on "The Unknown Unknowable".
It is not used as customary sense of "preview of, or partial death of self".
Unless you had at least small preview, it doesn't make any difference though. ---

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* * * From The Taoism of Darkness * * *


Introduction by the editor (-- summary --)


This manuscript is made of lines hand picked by EO from his previous books.
It is intended to be carried around as if it was the guide book for those who practice the Death Zen method arranged by him.

Part 1 *-- Enlightenment --*


If you want to wonder in the TAO,
wonder never assuring if one is alive or dead.
You live and die every moment. So, make sure nothing.

* * * * * * * * *

All the identification of the self is a dream.
Any claim about the self, like, " I am such and such. ", is just a thought.

* * * * * * * * *

There is nothing you can really do. If you give up all your mind in the insight of no capability, you would loose all your hope and start doing nothing. When this goes deeper down to the abyss of minutes after minutes, meditation is there.

* * * * * * * * *

I have repeated again and again. It is not the " Addition ".
Subtraction. Zen and Tao's like are absolutely Subtraction.

* * * * * * * * *

The peace of the mind in TAO is just the absence of fear.
It is not the product of thoughts and beliefs,
based on the delusion of eternal existence of the soul.

* * * * * * * * *

--- More to be translated. ---


Part 2 *-- Philosophy --*


The death cannot be fought against. Things people claim to fight are nothing more than " the phenomenon of the life that may lead to the death ".

* * * * * * * * *



Part 3 *-- Diverse subjects --*


Cognition is not an expansion, but the " delimiter ". Out of your limited world of the cognition, the world does not exist for you. Things like "World" exists only in the limited cognition.

* * * * * * * * *

"Where" the hell do you become happy or unhappy? "Where" are those feelings happening? Where is the real "spot"? It's all alone, in your consciousness.



Part 4 *-- Meditation --*


Why am i sitting there? The true answer for this question can't be other than "I am practicing dying".

* * * * * * * * *

Even though a man could be enlightened in the dangerous situation, keep in mind that the silence just like a death, rather than the danger, gave birth to many buddhas.

* * * * * * * * *

What was the work, the search?
It is unnecessary, searching for something special, to be completely done with all the unnecessities, till being undeniably clear how unnecessary it was all along. It is all about the work.
Just relax mindlessly, and move mindlessly. The buddha nature is just that.
The long journey to receive the insight, that was all, only that is worthwhile, is the question, the search.

* * * * * * * * *

Now, I understand very well why there are only few enlightened being among hundreds of Zen monasteries and temples in Japan.
Indeed, the enlightenment is not really needed yet.
Nobody is desperate enough for that.

* * * * * * * * *

The true search is born only when you face the existence in the desert all by yourself.
It is the match, "You alone VS universe".

* * * * * * * * *

People who imagine about the multiplicity, the vastness, never really shuts up. Moreover, they keep discussing about the eternity and the expansion all life long. But those who doesn't image, those who truly "meet" them, just drop into silence. Because feeling them directly will pull your consciousness. Utterly wordless. There is nothing to say, then.

* * * * * * * * *

Go to break and to destroy all the questioning and the enlightenment in the darkness.

* * * * * * * * *



Part 5 *-- The Method --*


* To be translated later