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 41
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 IV.8.1; VI.9.11
Science
The Implicate Order — Undivided Wholeness
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Science
The Cosmic Religious Feeling
Albert Einstein, 1929–1955: letters, a telegram and two essays (see each passage); the Goldstein telegram trans. as in W. Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), pp. 388–389
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
Rendered for this site from the Vishnu Purana IV.24 and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa XII.2; H. H. Wilson’s translation (1840) quoted beneath
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”
Perennial
The Same Machinery
John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Episode 36 (2019)
Perennial
Right in Two
Tool, “Right in Two,” 10,000 Days (2006)
Buddhism
The Hungry Ghost
Dhammapada 186–187 (trans. F. Max Müller, 1881); R. Spence Hardy, A Manual of Budhism (1853)
Hinduism
Yayati — Fire Fed with Butter
Mahabharata, Adi Parva, Sambhava Parva, Section LXXXV (trans. K. M. Ganguli, 1883–96); Manusmriti 2.94 (trans. G. Bühler, 1886)
Christianity
The Bigger Barns
Luke 12:15, 18, 20 (King James Version)
Sufism
The Rivalry in Increase
Qur’an, Surah 102 (At-Takāthur) (trans. E. H. Palmer, 1880; J. M. Rodwell, 1861)
Perennial
The Antibodies, Named
Terence McKenna, Eros and the Eschaton, lecture at Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, 25 March 1994
Perennial
The Antibody Suppressed
Terence McKenna, “The Edge Runner” (talk, May 1990); Food of the Gods (1992), Introduction; Eros and the Eschaton (Seattle, 25 March 1994)
Christianity
Without a Parable Spake He Not
Mark 4:33–34 (King James Version)
Buddhism
The Finger and the Moon
Śūraṅgama Sūtra, trans. Dwight Goddard & Bhikshu Wai-tao, A Buddhist Bible, 2nd ed. (1938), pp. 152–153; Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, ch. VI “Transcendental Intelligence,” in Goddard, A Buddhist Bible (1932)
Buddhism
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Udāna 6.4, trans. D. M. Strong, The Udāna; or, The Solemn Utterances of the Buddha (1902), pp. 93–96
Sufism
The Elephant in the Dark
Rumi, Masnavi III, Story V, “The Elephant in a Dark Room,” trans. E. H. Whinfield (1898)
Judaism
The Garment of the Torah
Zohar III 152a (Beha’alotekha), in Adolphe Franck, The Kabbalah, trans. I. Sossnitz (1926), Part II ch. II. Late 13th century, Castile; the text presents itself as 2nd century
Mysticism
Dissimilar Similitudes
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy II.3–5, trans. John Parker, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite vol. 2 (1899)
Greek
The Cave
Plato, Republic VII, 514a–517b, trans. Benjamin Jowett
Perennial
Carrying Over
John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Episode 2 (2019); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Rendall (1984), ch. IX; Ram Dass, address to the American Psychological Association, Montreal, 3 September 1980
Perennial
Eulogy
Tool, “Eulogy,” from Ænima (1996)
Christianity
They Have Their Reward
Matthew 6:1–2, 16 (King James Version)
Greek
The Self-Inflicted Wound
Herodotus, Histories 1.59, trans. G. C. Macaulay (1890)
Dispatches Engaging The Veil 4
Sister Themes