Using Space Odyssey 2001 as our metaphor for Emptiness or the Question, we are looking at the power of Not Knowing. When the black Obelisk appears in the moving, the apes and the humans has no idea what it is because is has absolutely no reference to anything known. That is emptiness. It is empty of meaning. But everything has meaning. When something has no meaning it’s because our field of the known, our knowledge reference field does not include this new Unknown. What happens then? 

We by necessity have to expand our field of inquiry to find the link to the meaning of the Obelisk. This is the way decisive mysteries work. The inspector must expand his field of the known until he connects the Obelisk to some meaning in the context of the evidence field or the crime. Man must have meaning. 

The meaning of the Obelisk is that the meaning must be discovered by the viewer. The apes and the astronauts don’t know. Space Odyssey is inviting a SNAP of a leap of consciousness. Space Odyssey is art that activate our evolution of consiousness from one level of understanding to the next wider order. The Obelisk is the activator, in the movie and in our own lives. 

When you come upon a dilemma, something new, something confusing in your life, a problem, a situation with ambiguity….that is the Obelisk. If we can rest with the Not Knowing, with the Obelisk, Knowing is born. Knowing is born from Not Knowing, but we must relax our compulsion to know and reference everything to the known, which is the past and our personal or collective memory. When we relax and rest with the Obelisk, we activate Knowing. Our Being Knows best. But we have to activate it through Not Knowing.

This is a good talk. I was surprise by it. I had no idea what was coming until I sat down at the FB before my talk and there was a post asking: What is the Question? SNAP. Space Odyssey 2001 popped in mind, the great question: What is it? 

And this flipped to the Great Question that has moved my life: Who am I? As if I were the Obelisk in SO, I don’t know. When I know, I’m not so happy. When I don’t know I’m alive and creative. When I reference myself to my past, I’m neurotic; when I don’t reference myself, I’m free