Innocence

I'm still thinking about the second lesson from The Way of the Wizard. It promotes innocence as a way of transforming how we look at the world. Innocence doesn't make all the distinctions we usually make, and innocence is what Adam and Eve lost when they gained knowledge of good and evil. It was not so much from knowing evil that they lost their innocence but from beginning to make distinctions, such as between good and evil, heaven and earth, etc. This idea gets highlighted during the next lesson. Merlin is running around with a huge butcher's knife. When Arthur asks what he is doing, he explains that he thought all mortals use their minds like knives, and he wanted to find out what it is like. With my background in analytic philosophy, I know exactly what he means. Analytic thinking breaks concepts down into smaller concepts and so forth. It understands by cutting up what it seeks to understand into pieces. Chopra is maintaining that the Wizard sees without doing this.

In my dissertation, I maintained that the end of innocence allowed for responsibility and meaning, that the loss of innocence portrayed in the Eden story is ultimately a good thing, because it allows our lives to be meaningful. Chopra is offering a different perspective on innocence, one in which innocence allows a more transcendent perspective on things. It is something to consider thinking about as I read the book. Curiously, the distinction between innocence and guilt is one that arises from the loss of innocence. That's a koan to mull over.