Taboos are actions so bad that everybody knows not to do them. Theoretically. Such as killing people.

The 20th century managed to kill 200 million people. Clearly that taboo is not working too well.

Other taboos concern actions that stop short of death but result in individual and social harm. Incest, for example.

Schools have no classes to teach that incest is bad. Somehow we just learn that that is the case.

We learn this so well that as adults we don’t even have to think about it. We know. Period.

R.D. Laing, the Scottish philosopher, was the first to point out that not only does society have rules of behavior, it also has what he called meta-rules.

Meta-rules are rules about the rules.

Rules concerning taboos are generally not discussed and or even written down, because there are unwritten meta-rules which effectively state that the rules are not to be discussed or written down.

That’s not all.

There are also meta-meta-rules which effectively state that the meta-rules do not exist.

If this is the way things are, the much-heralded "examined life" ("the only life worth living is the examined life") is almost impossible.

If the rules, meta-rules, and meta-meta-rules are in fact the case, then the statement must be changed: "The only life it is possible to live is the UNexamined life."

Taboos vary somewhat from society to society, from culture to culture, from time to time.

We inhabit a society, a culture, and a time in which dreams are largely taboo.

Only in marginal behaviors, popularly described as "dysfunctional", are dreams taken seriously, and then only as one of many analytical tools used to help an individual stop being "dysfunctional."

Though science has demonstrated that we all dream, from an early age and many times every night, the common response to any attempt to talk about them is, "I don’t have dreams."

This widespread belief is evidence of the dream taboo at work.

In periods of stress, fatigue, despair, or grief people in this society may remember dreams, briefly if at all.

Only kooks, weirdos, New-agers, and the drug-crazed speak of dreams. Completing the circular argument, the fact that only such people speak seriously of dreams provides the final proof that dreams are of no importance.

Against many taboos, big and small, we have for some time now pushed the limits of exploration.

Macro-exploration got us first over the ocean horizon and lately has got us into space. Micro-exploration got us down to looking at parameciums and lately has got us into tiny vortices of improbable probability where our vaunted logic suddenly seems frighteningly impotent.

Efforts in both directions of exploration will no doubt continue, no matter how disconcerting the revealed new worlds.

Oddly, the world we inhabit constantly, day and night—the world of consciousness—remains taboo.

By day, we are submerged in the constructs of consciousness, which we call "reality." Endlessly fascinating, often rewarding, these constructs powerfully hold our attention across the years, indeed, across generations, centuries, millennia.

Yet, once every 24 hours we all disappear as we sleep, and then we miraculously re-appear to once again take up the interaction with the constructs of consciousness.

Since we have no rules about sleep experience, we go about pretending that nothing of importance happens during sleep, at least nothing more important than "rest", a re-charging of the biochemical batteries.

Back in "reality" we pursue our playful, compulsive manipulation of what we take to be the world, where "world" means "all that is."

The rule here is: "Nothing exists beyond what I experience when I am awake."

The meta-rule here is: "It is foolish and a waste of time to think about the rule."

The meta-meta-rule here is: "The preceding meta-rule does not exist."

The heretical possibility—and the true frontier—is that the doorway to the ground of being is the bed.

Not the analyst’s couch, not the researcher’s lab. The bed.

The only frontier is the one we approach when we sleep.

The great temptation, to which religionists, philosophers, soothsayers, and scientists have all fallen victim, is to force bed-experience into the constraining, distorting, limiting mold of waking experience.

The result of our failure to learn how not to do that is the tragicomedy called history.

How simple yet how complex: That which cannot be talked about, cannot be talked about, and we persist beyond all reason in trying to talk about it.

The result of that on-going failure is the manifold diversions called religion, science, philosophy, art, sex, "life."

Delightful, useful, entertaining, diverting, such activities have more than temporary value only when carried out against learned, repeated, and remembered awareness of that which cannot be talked about.

Otherwise they become and remain commodities of base competition and rampant speculation.

The great silence is not all, but without frequent and ready access to it, the rest becomes chaos.