The Parable of the Poisoned Arrow

The workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles are so counter-intuitive, training the mind to reverse all its assumptions, that working with the course can feel like being dragged through a hedge backwards. The metaphysical explanation the course gives for who we are, why we are here is particularly thorny: a psychological Theory of Everything, expressed in Christian metaphor and convoluted prose.Try and explain it to someone yourself and see how their eyes instantly glaze over, too.

 

But we do not need to know what it is talking about. We learn the course by reading it, experimenting with its workbook lessons, redirecting our thinking in the way it teaches...and reading it again. The process itself will bring us to understanding. That is what it is for. The language teacher Michel Thomas repeatedly said it was not the pupil's job to learn, only to let the teacher teach. These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding...It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding, and assume that you have it already (W9).

The course itself tells us that a good teacher does not overload a child with too much explanation. A simple directive like 'Just do this' (T6 V 3) saves much fear and confusion. So do we need the mind-boggling metaphysics at all?

It is said that the Buddha refused to discuss metaphysical questions. There is a story that illustrates why. A monk comes to the Buddha and challenges him to answer the 'fourteen unanswerable questions' (see below). The Buddha tells him this parable:

"Suppose a man were wounded with a poisoned arrow. Friends are there to help, a surgeon is here to cure him, but the man says, 'Before you remove this arrow, I need to know whether the man who wounded me was a warrior, a priest, a merchant or a worker? What is his name? Where is he from? Is he tall, medium, or short? What is the colour of his skin? Tell me, was the bow that wounded me a long bow or a crossbow? Was the bowstring of bamboo, sinew, hemp, or bark? Were the feathers of the shaft those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird? I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether it is a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed or an oleander arrow...'  While he is still asking questions, the man dies. And his questions remain unanswered." (adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poison_Arrow)

So what were the fourteen questions that the Buddha thought so irrelevant and diversionary to the awakened mind that he refused to answer them? Here they are (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_unanswerable_questions). They can be boiled down to just four:

Concerning the existence of the world in time:

1. Is the world eternal?

2. ...or not?

3. ...or both?

4. ...or neither?

Concerning the existence of the world in space:

5. Is the world finite?

6. ...or not?

7. ...or both?

8. ...or neither?

Referring to personal experience:

9. Is the self identical with the body?

10. ...or is it different from the body?

Referring to life after death:

11. Does the Buddha exist after death?

12. ...or not?

13. ...or both?

14. ...or neither?

Unlike the Buddha, A Course in Miracles does address these questions, and many more. It asks for complete open-mindedness, encourages us to question every belief, every value, to not be fobbed off with 'mysteries' (T9 IV 7). Like the Buddha's parable, though, the course points out that many of our questions are really statements in disguise. They are questions-to-refute, questions-to-control, questions to impose a view of reality that precludes any other. This is why they are unanswerable. Our asking them only reinforces our state of unknowing and prolongs our pain.

It is like a volunteer at a hypnosis show who has been hypnotized into forgetting the number seven. The number no longer exists for him. He is surprised to find that however often he counts, he now has eleven fingers. He is confused. Do three and four make six? Or eight? No explanation will make sense as long as his puzzlement is based on an illusion. As soon as he comes out of trance, he will know that he has ten fingers, has always had ten fingers, and his temporary confusion was part of a hallucination.           

The purpose of the course is to tell us, while we are still in the trance we call 'life', that it is only a kind of trance. It is like that lucid thought we sometimes have while we are dreaming: 'I'm dreaming!' The course gives us a new answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, in the form of a creation story that is at once entirely new and yet deeply familiar. It frames its teaching as a journey, a journey from being lost to going home. It explains 'where' we have come from and 'where' we are going, although it is talking about a state that is outside of time and space and talking to a mind that neither comes nor goes.

The course does not give us what our limited minds might consider to be satisfactory answers. It gives just enough of a background story - like, 'You are experiencing a kind of tunnel vision, the effects of a hypnotic suggestion - curious, isn't it? - and shortly you will wake up' - to put its mind-training lessons into a meaningful context: A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible (W in).

But its emphasis is always on direct experience, not on intellectual contortions. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application (T11 VIII 5). ...You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now (T18 IV 7).

What you can give, or give up, or forgive right now is all that matters. There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can understand. When revelation of your oneness comes, it will be known and fully understood. Now we have work to do, for those in time can speak of things beyond, and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them? (W169 10)

As the surgeon might remind the man in the parable of the arrow, The urgency is only in dislodging your mind from its fixed position here (T16 VI 8). And that is done by stopping trying to control the process, stopping trying to second guess where the course might take you. When you shift your focus from your wounds and pondering their causes, healing can unravel whatever problem you thought there was.

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God (W189 7).