It might be helpful to you to recall what I once said through the writings of the great Zen poet Seng-Ts’an:
I can see by your expression that you are simultaneously soothed and terrified by those words! What are you afraid of? That if in your mind you abolish the distinction between right and wrong you are more likely to commit acts which are wrong? What makes you so sure that self-consciousness about right and wrong does not in fact lead to more wrong acts than right ones? Do you honestly believe that so-called amoral people, when it comes to action rather than theory, behave less ethically than moralists? Of course not! Even most moralists acknowledge the ethical superiority of the behaviour of most of those who theoretically take an amoral position. They seem so surprised that without ethical principles these people behave so nicely! It never seems to occur to them that it is by virtue of the very lack of moral principles that their good behaviour flows so freely. Do the words “The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the human mind” express an idea so different from the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of Man due to Adam’s eating of the fruit of knowledge? This knowledge, mind you, was of ethical principles, not ethical feelings—these Adam already had. There is much truth in this story, though I never commanded Adam not to eat the apple, I merely advised him not to. I told him it would not be good for him. If the damn fool had only listened to me, so much trouble could have been avoided! But no, he thought he knew everything.” But I wish the theologists would finally learn that I am not punishing Adam and his descendants for the act, but rather that the fruit in question is poisonous in it’s own right, and its effects, unfortunately, last countless generations.
And now really I must take leave. I do hope that our discussion will dispel some of your ethical morbidity, and replace it by a more naturalistic orientation. Remember also the marvelous words I once uttered through the mouth of Lao-Tse when I chided Confucious for his moralizing.
All this talk of goodness and duty. These perpetual pin-pricks unnerve and irritate the hearer—You had best study how it is that Heaven and Earth maintain their eternal course, that the sun and the moon maintain their light, the stars their serried ranks, the birds and beasts their flocks, the trees and shrubs their station. This you too should learn to guide your steps toward Inward Power, to follow the course that the Way of Nature sets, and soon you will no longer need to go round laboriously advertising goodness, and duty.... The swan does not need a daily bath in order to remain white.
MORTAL: You certainly seem partial to eastern Philosophy!
GOD: Oh, not at all! Some of my best thoughts have bloomed in your native American soil. For example, I never expressed my notion of “duty” more eloquently that through the thoughts of Walt Whitman:
Reflections
This witty and sparkling dialogue introduces Raymond Smullyan, a colourful logician and magician who also happens to be a sort of Taoist, in his own personal way. Smullyan has two further selections to come, equally insightful and delightful. The dialogue you have just read was taken from The Tao is Silent, a collection of writings illustrating what happens when Western logician meets eastern thought. The result is both scrutable and inscrutable (as one might expect).
There are undoubtedly many religious people who would consider this dialogue to be the utmost in blasphemy, just as some religious people think it is blasphemy to walk around in a church with his hands in his pockets. We think, on the other hand, that this dialogue is pious — a powerful religious statement about God, free will, and the laws of nature, blasphemous only on the most superficial reading. Along the way, Smullyan gets in (through God) many sideswipes at shallow or fuzzy thinking, preconceived categories, pat answers, pompous theories, and moralistic rigidities. Actually we should—according to God’s claim in the dialogue—attribute its message not to Smullyan, but to God. It is God speaking through the character of Smullyan, in turn speaking through the character of God, whose message is being given to us.
Just as God (or the Tao, or the universe, if you prefer) has many parts all with their own free will—you and I being examples—so each one of us has such inner parts with their own free will (although these parts are less free than we are). This is particularly clear in the Mortal’s own internal conflict over whether “he” does or does not want to sin. There are “inner people”—homunculi, or subsystems—who are fighting for control.
Inner conflict is one of the most familiar and yet least understood parts of human nature. A famous slogan for a brand of potato chips used to go, “Betcha can’t eat just one!”—a pithy way of reminding us of our internal splits. You start trying to solve a captivating puzzle (the notorious “Magic Cube,” for instance) and it just takes over. You cannot put it down. You start to play a piece of music or read a good book, and you cannot stop even when you know you have many other pressing duties to take care of.
Who is in control here? Is there some overall being who can dictate what will happen? Or is there just anarchy, with neurons firing helter-skelter, and come what may? The truth must lie somewhere in between. Certainly in a brain the activity is precisely the firing of neurons, just as in a country, the activity is precisely the sum total of the actions of its inhabitants. But the structure of government—itself a set of activities of people—imposes a powerful kind of top-down control on the organization of the whole. When government becomes excessively authoritarian and when enough of the people become truly dissatisfied, then there is the possibility that the overall structure may be attacked and collapse—internal revolution. But most of the time opposing internal forces reach various sorts of compromises, sometimes by finding the happy medium between two alternatives, sometimes by taking turns at control, and so on. The ways in which such compromises can be reached are themselves strong characterizers of the type of government. The same goes for people. The style of resolution of inner conflicts is one of the strongest features of personality.
It is a common myth that each person is a unity, a kind of unitary organization with a will of its own. Quite the contrary, a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own. The “subpeople” are considerably less complex than the overall person, and consequently they have much less of a problem with internal discipline. If they themselves are split, probably their component parts are so simple that they are of a single mind—and if not, you can continue down the line. This hierarchical organization of personality is something that does not much please our sense of dignity, but there is much evidence for it.