The Antibody Network ·Themes
Theme

The Veil

What separates the seeker from what is already here

The mystics agree the obstacle is not where you’d expect. It is not out there, in the world. It is much closer in.

Walk this theme as a course: What Gets in the Way →

Voices Across the Conversation 4

If the ground is what we are, and the self is what looks, then the veil is the question every seeker eventually has to ask: what is in the way? Why, if the Kingdom is already within, do I not see it?

The contemplatives are almost unanimous on the answer. The veil is the seeker. The grasping, the asking, the the-Kingdom-must-be-somewhere-else, the small self running its programs, that is what blocks the view. The Pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom comes, and Jesus answers that the asking is the obstacle. The Sufi al-Hallaj says: between me and Thee there is only me.

This is uncomfortable because it relocates the problem from out there, where it could be fixed by getting the right doctrine, the right teacher, the right practice, to in here, where it requires the small self to give way. And the small self has, understandably, no enthusiasm for the operation.

Every tradition’s practical core is, at some level, a method for thinning the veil. The Tao Te Ching’s not-grasping. The Beatitudes’ poor in spirit. Zazen. Dhikr. Lectio divina. The veil does not get removed; it gets recognized, and in the recognition becomes transparent.

Teachings On the Map 22
Gnosticism
The Kingdom Within and Without
Gospel of Thomas, Saying 3
Hermeticism
The Emerald Tablet
Tabula Smaragdina (attr. Hermes Trismegistus)
Judaism
Ein Sof — The Infinite Without End
Zohar / Lurianic Kabbalah
Neoplatonism
The Flight of the Alone to the Alone
Plotinus, Enneads VI.9.11
Science
The Implicate Order — Undivided Wholeness
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Science
The Cosmic Religious Feeling
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954) / The World As I See It (1931)
Perennial
The Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek
Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
Mysticism
God and the Godhead
Meister Eckhart, Sermons (c. 1300 CE)
Hermeticism
The Principle of Mentalism
The Kybalion (Three Initiates, 1908) / Corpus Hermeticum
Science
The Double Slit Experiment
Young’s double-slit experiment (1801) / Quantum mechanics (20th century)
Christianity
The God of This Age
Paul of Tarsus, 2 Corinthians 4:4–7
Hinduism
The Kali Yuga — The Age of Dissolution
The Puranas; the Bhagavata Purana; the Mahabharata
Perennial
The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
Perennial
The World Is Made of Words
Terence McKenna — “Alien Dreamtime” (1993) and collected talks
Hinduism
The Siddhis
Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, Book III (Vibhuti Pada)
Hinduism
Lila — The Divine Play
Vedanta; Alan Watts, The Two Hands of God
Taoism
The Fish Trap — Words and the Meaning They Carry
Zhuangzi, “External Things” (Chapter 26)
Judaism
The Fathers Have Eaten Sour Grapes
Exodus 34:6–7 (JPS 1917); Deuteronomy 24:16, Ezekiel 18, Jeremiah 31:29–30 (KJV); Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 24a
Greek
The House of Atreus
Aeschylus, Oresteia (458 BCE) — trans. E. D. A. Morshead, The House of Atreus (1881); Herbert Weir Smyth, Loeb Classical Library (1926)
Greek
Hamartia — Some Error or Frailty
Aristotle, Poetics, ch. XIII (trans. S. H. Butcher)
Greek
Icarus — Fly Between the Two
Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII
Taoism
The Old Man Lost His Horse
Huainanzi, ch. 18, “In the World of Man”
Dispatches Engaging The Veil 3
Sister Themes
The Antibody Network · The Veil