IT’S ALSO ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE in an even simpler, more subtle way. How we perceive things, and therefore what we call ‘real,’ or ‘true,’ or ‘right,’ has to do with our perspective from where we sit in the overall continuum. This is basic, but is so often completely overlooked. The tendency is to absolutize one’s own perspective, to make everything relative to that, when in fact our perspective is what is relative. The entire ‘history of humanity’ including the present is filled with every form of exploitation and subjugation and injustice and intolerance, all of it made possible by the fact that from some perspective, from some point of view, it seems justified. Clearly, the basic assumptions about the way things are, are in fact very relative and dependent on perspective, on one’s relative position in the overall spectrum.

The Understanding carries with it a massive shift in this perspective. To the dream characters, things in life matter and are important. From the latest war, to the environment, to what your children are being taught in school, to the way that man just looked at you, things and events are thought to have significance and to be important. That’s what seems to make life worth living. Thinking of things as important and having value; causes, crusades, principles, values, getting involved in what you believe is right, working against what you believe is wrong, making the world a better place.

But in the Understanding, it is seen that all this only serves to further the illusion and perpetuate suffering. Values, seen as absolute in the dream, upon examination turn out to be arbitrary. The values espoused in one body/mind are dependent on the programming and conditioning from a certain time and nation and culture and race and family, and are the opposite of values held just as dearly in another body/mind.

Right, wrong; good, evil; important, unimportant; according to whom? From whose perspective? It is the way of all the earth for most people to feel that those things that are closest to them are most important. From your perspective, you will most likely feel more distraught over the death of one family member than you will over the death of thousands in a foreign country you have never seen. From one perspective, an act of terror is evidence of evil; from another, it is evidence that God is great. It is neither; it just is. It all simply arises in the wholeness of Consciousness, which is totally impersonal, and entirely neutral. Right or wrong, important or not, are only your projections, from your perspective.

But the ‘perspective,’ as it were, of impersonal Consciousness is unfathomably immense. Uncountable zillions of life forms in uncountable billions of solar systems, matter and life and energy in forms we cannot imagine and on scales that make all life we know, all this planet itself, all of the universe that we know or can imagine, hardly noticeable. The beauty is that in fact all this we know is more than noticed, is in fact nothing other than Consciousness, is Consciousness Itself, as perceived by us as these things. But that anything we may think we are, or think we know, or believe we want, or believe to be ‘right,’ is of any special importance, is simply a matter of our extremely limited perspective.

Anyone who writes or talks about this subject will at one time or another be inundated with questions around this issue of importance and value, right and wrong, good and evil. How can there be evil in the world; how can there be natural disasters; how can there be wars; how can a God allow poverty, or violence; how can a God, or Presence, or Consciousness, allow children to suffer?

All of us have experienced (or been close to someone who has) some form of tragedy, some form of violence or loss or misfortune or pain. Some more than others. There is no escape from this; it is of the nature of this dream ‘reality’ that it contains what is experienced as pleasure and pain, good stuff and bad stuff, and no one knows what the next moment will bring, or what the overall mix will be for any body/mind. There is no answer, no reason, from within the dream.

"Suffering is a call for inquiry. All pain needs investigation." (Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Suffering and pain raise questions like nothing else does. Inquire into it; investigate it. The “Why?” question gets nowhere; that is only the ego/mind seeking for nonexistent control. It will never be satisfied, and leads only to resentment and more suffering. Instead, investigate into the suffering. Who is it that is suffering? From whose perspective is this unacceptable?

Buddha said, samsara is dukha. Taking the dream to be real is not what causes suffering; it is the suffering. The only possible solution to the question of evil and suffering is to see through the illusion. Suffering in all its forms is the greatest invitation to awaken, and it is never far away.

Or in the immortal words of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, in Casablanca,

"It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that."