1.8 By what process was this book written?

This book is based on the direct experiencing of reality by members of The Implicate Technology Centre. It explains how a simple daily exercise, practised in the context of your ordinary, day-to-day life, and understood within a relevant framework, leads to a transformation in your level of awareness.

From the vantage point of this more developed consciousness, which is accessible to everyone regardless of individual life circumstances, the central validity of the old models of reality is apparent. That is to say, each describes reality in a valid and culturally different way. This book is simply a recasting of the ancient teachings in contemporary Western cultural terms.

This book is not a new translation of books of other cultures. It is a recasting of the experience those works teach about into the ordinary language and concepts we use in the West. For those who are interested in such things, chapters 2 and 5 are based on the Chinese Taoist book, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Chapters 3, 4, 6 and 7 are a recasting, through the filter of experience, of the discussion on the Sidpa Bardo in the Tibetan Buddhist book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Chapter 1 is a recasting of the key message of Gautama the Buddha and many other teachers: this life leads us only to suffering unless we find a way to rise above it. Chapter 8 discusses the difficulties of having such experiences in a culture ignorant of such processes.

As an illustration of this process of recasting, consider carefully the following example:

The Secret of the Golden Flower begins with the key to the process of attaining enlightenment: “The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action.”(Wilhelm and Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower; London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1965, page 21).It elaborates this point: “The Master is further concerned that people should not miss the way that leads from conscious action to unconscious non-action. Therefore he says, the magic of the Elixir of Life makes use of conscious action in order that unconscious non-action may be attained”(Ibid, page 24). The text goes on to say that conscious action consists in the process and product of meditation.

The final chapter underlines the significance of this. “The most important things in the great Tao are the words: action through non-action. Non-action prevents a man from becoming entangled in form and image (materiality). Action in non-action prevents a man from sinking into numbing emptiness and dead nothingness”(Ibid, pages 53 – 54).

What does all this mean? Clearly, to the authors of the book, it is a matter of profound significance. Many in the West are drawn to understand the meaning of this; yet we do not have an understanding of the context within which Chinese culture produced such a discipline for living.

To establish this context, we must become aware of the differences in the technologies developed by East and West. Here in the West, we have well-developed explicate technologies; that is to say, we have developed technologies to deal with material reality; these are far beyond the explicate technologies developed in the East and the West’s products are eagerly sought in the East. Because of our advanced material technologies we consider ourselves the more developed culture, we acknowledge a responsibility to help the materially poorer cultures to raise their living standards.

Just as the West has turned its best minds to technologies which help us to understand and harness the power of material reality, so too has the East turned its best minds to the development of technologies which help in understanding and harnessing the power of non-material reality. Throughout the East there are many highly advanced technologies available. In contrast to the path we in the West took, these are implicate technologies; that is to say, technologies that deal with non-material reality. The products of these technologies are eagerly sought by many in the West: for years now, there has been growing interest in implicate technology products such as the martial arts, the various systems of Yoga and Zen and other Buddhist disciplines.

It is within this context that we can begin to understand what is meant by “action through non-action”. It is the product of Chinese Taoist implicate technology. Its function is to direct the consciousness of any person towards understanding how to deal with the experiences which comprise ordinary life so as to obtain the greatest fulfilment from that life.

All this can be understood by an ordinary intelligent person, but it does not yet explain what the words of the above-quoted phrase mean. We can only understand their meaning through practice in using a comparable product of Western implicate technology; such a product cannot be grasped or measured with the intellect alone. Only by incorporating such a product into one’s day-to-day life can its benefits be realised. This, then, is the key to gaining fulfilment in life, expressed in Western cultural terms.

Act according to your intuition.

Don’t interfere.

Just let things happen.

A fuller discussion on how to apply this product of Western implicate technology will be found in chapter 3.