You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

CHApTER 1
Why? You Are Not
T he first question that arises around a book with a title
like You Are Not: Beyond the Three Veils of Consciousness
is why choose this title? The answer is contained within the
thread that will carry us throughout the book: YOU ARE
NOT.
Before we focus on the term, YOU ARE NOT, let’s start
with the subtitle, Beyond the Three Veils of Consciousness.
What exactly do we mean by “veils of consciousness”? To
best appreciate this, recall the famous Sufi story of the three
blind men who are asked to describe what an elephant looks
like. The first blind man feeling its trunk says, “An elephant
is like a snake.” The second blind man feeling its leg proclaims,
“An elephant is like a tree trunk.” The third blind man
feeling its ear asserts, “An elephant is like a big thin plate.”
Now, obviously, for someone who can “see,” all of these are
untrue descriptions of what an elephant looks like, because
once we “look,” we can “see” the whole elephant (underlying
unity). Using this story, with only a slight addition, explains
why “I” chose Beyond the Three Veils of Consciousness as the
subtitle.
Now let us imagine our three “blind” men. However,
rather than each being blind, imagine that each wears many
blindfolds or veils made of thin cloth or gauze covering their
eyes. As in the story of the blind men, the veiled men cannot
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