Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
FRANCIS LUCILLE: Yes. They are thoughts, but they are more
than thoughts, because they are thoughts with a me attached to it.
For instance, I can have read Karl Marx, and understand the logic,
the rationale, but that doesn't make me a communist. To be a
communist I need to have read Karl Marx, but I need something
more, I need to be attached to Karl Marx' concepts. So it is the
same thing here. I can have the concept of Santa Claus without
believing in Santa Claus. I can have the concept of nonduality
without understanding and experiencing it, or having experienced
it; just as I can have the concept of being a separate individual
without believing in it. So the moment I believe in it, then it is
ignorance. So that's why the problem of ignorance is something
more than a concept, it is a concept but we are attached to this
concept, this concept is our pet project, we love it, we are in love
with being a separate entity.
TRIP: Speaking of ignorance, you said something interesting, you
said, "You cannot dissociate enlightenment from ignorance, and
the interesting place to be is where you're neither ignorant nor
enlightened. Over time that must be hard, not that you can't
hang out there, but over time after you've spent 10, 20, 30 years
becoming as informed as you are, isn't it tempting for you to feel,
wow, I'm enlightened, I'm pretty enlightened? I mean, it's difficult
for you to remain in that place in between ignorance and
enlightenment, isn't it?
WIZARD: Can thought ever say it is or it isn't? Because thought is
temporary. I mean that which is Truth is not a thought, so any
attempt to grasp or know with thought to me would seem to be
futile. Trust or Faith, an innocent Faith, would trump a belief or
thought.
FRANCIS LUCILLE: A belief maintains itself until proven false,
like the belief in Santa Claus maintains itself until you catch mom
and dad red handed buying toys, or you catch your dad buying the
toys at Toys R Us, while mom is trying to divert your attention
from that. But you see that dad is in fact giving the credit card to
the cashiers, and that he is taking some objects back to the car. So
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