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It was either an audience of one, one armed person, or the meeting professional’s worst nightmare, or the ability to focus attention beyond the obvious to see relationships behind an apparent reality. Those magical moments that vaunts the perceiver to new levels of awareness. Even though we can finally never know anything it is that idea that if we try really hard perhaps we will glimpse something that will be useful, maybe even make us famous or rich, but it is not the end result that drives us. It is the brain itself.

“The brain is so desirous of associations that it will amplify the tiniest link to find a useful one.” Edelman G. A Universe of Consciousness

It was my first philosophy professor Dr. Atkins (he liked to say he was 4 feet tall and 4 feet around) who on the first day of class said “We are like frogs in a well we jump up the sides to get a glimpse of the world only to slide back down and we jump up again higher this time just to see a little more we know we will never get out of the well it is the trying to see more of the world that makes it worth while. Albert Einstein said “To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets.” Truly nature hides her secrets in a thicket

Lorne Eisley in The Ages of Gaia writes “imagine primitive man huddling under a bush in a lightening storm knowing he was different from other animals and not knowing how.” For us to realize more about reality we need to recognize that there is an infinite amount of diversity to be discovered as long as we LISTEN FOR THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING. To see beyond an apparent reality we must learn to attend in ways never thought of.

Allow me to Canadianize an elegant metaphor from The God Particle by Leon Lederman. A delegation from another planet Aglaia lands in rural Canada, they’ve come just to make contact and learn about life on earth. They look like us, talk like us, and think like us with one unusual quirk in their visual apparatus they can’t see small black disc shaped objects. We take them to art shows, schools, dances, and a hockey game. They can see everything but the puck. They figure out there are opposing teams, each with 6 players for most of the time. The players seem to have a force that causes them to scurry back and forth at great speeds, often the force causes several of the players to squeeze together in one spot, maybe this is the so called Law of Attraction that a bunch of high priests of secrecy have been going on about. They also notice that at each end of the playing field there is one person standing in front of a net supported by what looks like a sturdy frame.This player is somewhat bulkier than the rest and pretty much stays in front of this net like thing most of the time, and occaisionally falls down or throws out his hand and then one of the stripped shirted people blows a whistle and everything stops and they regroup either to the right or left of the guy who stands still, and once in a while one group throws up their hands and skates back to the bench and they all touch gloves in what looks like a celebration.The Aglaians pay close attention and chart the movements of the players trying to figure out the invisible force. Two of the younger Aglaians notice that just before the play stops the back of the net seems to move, they concentrate and focus their video cameras on the nets they then slow the motion down and zoom in on the shape of the bulge in the net. Could they figure it out “Hey maybe there is a little disc shaped thing they are playing with that Earthlings can sense more easily than we can.”

“Say what” reply the elder Aglaians.

It is this kind of paying attention to. This kind of wondering at the secrets that I am referring to when I say we need to listen to the sound of one hand clapping. And if we are going to make such an effort we must be prepared for society to reply “Say What!”

Galileo was stead fast in his refusal to desert the Ptolemic concept that the earth was the centre of the Universe, until in January of 1610, using a telescope to pay strict attention to astronomy he tracked 4 tiny ‘stars’ moving near the planet Jupiter. He was forced to conclude that they were moving in a circular motion around Jupiter. If bodies were orbiting around Jupiter the notion that all planets and stars orbited the Earth was wrong.

The Church sentenced him to life imprisonment later commuted to permanent house arrest. It wasn’t until1985 that the Church acknowledged he had been wronged and was indeed a great scientist.

Half a billion years ago was the most outstanding instance of the results that can accrue from sensing in a way that had never been done before. The residual effect was the Cambrian Explosion. “After a long dark era, there was a sudden great flourishing of life that even Darwin could not explain” In The Blink of An Eye, Andrew Parker. The Cambrian Explosion has been called a pivotal moment in the history of life 544 million years ago there were three animal phyla, that is there were basically just 3 forms of internal systems which controls how an animal can exchange gasses, obtain nutrients, and reproduce. But at 538 million years ago there were 38 phyla the same number as there are today. So what we had was 3 primitive phyla sponges, jellyfish and comb jellies, a bunch of worm shaped soft body forms. The early forms of all these phyla did not acquire hard body parts which makes them distinctive, and then all at once they all did. How did this happen and why did it take place. One creature the Trilobite developed vision and instead of waiting for something to bump into it so it could consume the prey, the Trilobite the most successful of all creatures could hunt. Predation was born and all the differences in all the species on earth were ignited as defence mechanisms.

There are so many other levels of reality that are beyond our cognocentric capacity, and even when they are within our capabilities we don’t see them because we habitually focus on only certain aspects of the seamless field of awareness. And so doing we weave the illusion of space and time.

The future belongs to who so ever can get past the place we are at now in our five senses reality, and Hear The Sound Of One Hand Clapping. Valuable are those moments we accomplish growth for they give us a glimpse of new possibilities indeed a new reality. And any meeting planner who can bring that to their event has done a remarkable service.