What is called the world is only thought. ~ Who Am I?
Ramana Maharshi. (Talk 556)
If the ancient mystics are correct, finding an explanation for the phenomenon that is Consciousness, that integrates it with conventional science, is the key to unravelling the mystery of Existence. Doing so will also resolve, (if we allow it to) the dreadful and ongoing conflict that exists between religious factions because it will define the seed and origin of religious belief and set it in its place in the scheme of things and in relation to the human condition just as, say, Relativity Theory, once unknowable, now has its place in the cosmic hierarchy of our knowledge. It is something of an understatement to state that in this respect there is some way to go. From a scientific point of view it will turn our understanding of life on its head. For those who have built careers on the notion that Consciousness and the life principle is rooted in our biology it will be something of a challenge to say the least. It is therefore not a definition we want to get wrong or base on a spurious hypothesis.
Conventional Science, being what it is, simply sees consciousness as another aspect, (albeit subtle and still incomprehensible), of material existence that it has yet to dissect in order to glean the remainder of its most elusive secrets. For centuries the criteria the scientific community set out to eliminate false premise protected our knowledge about the material world from wild theories that would carry us down blind alleys or into a mire of absurd speculation that was perhaps interesting but pointless. These criteria are set in stone which is both modern science’s strength and its weakness. Countless notions collapsed under the scrutiny of these criteria many of them sacred to religious believers. Within the scientific community’s hallowed halls only measurable certainties were allowed to prevail. Its strict criteria gave us the technological world we enjoy today. But on the outside of its sacred walls, clamouring for recognition, remain all those human encounters that still contradict a materialist view of reality – legitimate experiences that science, as it is, is unable to accommodate? Unless we can expand those walls to include them, our model of Existence will be incomplete and remain shrouded in mystery.
Unlike other subjects for analysis the exploration of the nature of consciousness will draw science into areas that radically challenge all its certainties about the actual nature of physical reality and how it comes to be so breathtakingly organised. If we look to the brain as the cause and seat of consciousness neurologists will inevitably come up with very plausible explanations that will satisfy most, and particularly those whose take on the nature of existence is corralled within the strict boundaries defined by physicality, but will not satisfy those who experience it as something other, and herein lies a conundrum. Because of its nature the only instrument that will enable us to witness and observe directly the true nature of consciousness is the human instrument – a machine that can be refined to become so subtle that it can travel beyond physicality into realms inaccessible to scientific scrutiny. Without direct experience our research into the nature of consciousness remains trapped within the constraints of inference and speculation and our definition implausible.
There is a world of difference between Speculation and the kind of Knowing that comes from direct and profound experience. Enlightened Mystics, (whom I will now refer to as Seers) who have plumbed the regions of subtle nature quietly disagree. Not because they have a different theory about what consciousness might be but rather because their experience verifies that it is something entirely different. For centuries Seers have urged us to see life alternatively but unfortunately the concepts they used were mostly cloaked in religious terminology and so were set aside as being just another religious belief. What they observed is that Consciousness does not originate in the brain. Rather the brain is a kind of port through which consciousness shines and in doing so creates self awareness and the phenomena that are emotion and reason. That Consciousness itself is other-dimensional. The ability to observe it is actually incredibly difficult and takes years of single minded practice.
Depicted diagrammatically the two positions look like this:
Fig 3:
What is clear amongst more open thinkers is that the field of material science is truncated by its research criteria and that as we move towards realising the esoteric nature of existence this is becoming a limiting handicap. We may find what Physicists call the God particle but Spirituality will remain an enigma because research into the nature of Causal Reality turns back at the very point where verification of causation transcends material existence or becomes subjective. The idea that we would look to subjective experience alone to verify the nature of Consciousness is anathema to those areas of science where certainty has to be measurable, and yet that is exactly where we must look to find the answer.
Daring to step beyond the boundaries of physicality into the exploration of Psychic Nature in search of the answer to the riddle of Consciousness does not imply that we are automatically adopting a religious view. That remains a choice. Understanding the nature of existence does not require that we believe in the notion of a God or bind ourselves to a religion any more than understanding and accepting quantum theory does. That too remains a choice. It is an experiential, (not a speculative) fact of existence that there is a subtle dimension to the universe that we have labelled Spiritual and that one of its properties is Consciousness. The difficulty lies in dropping our preconceptions of the word Spiritual and defining it in a way that integrates it with what we now know about physicality. In a social context, Religions have their place but it is only possible to truly understand where religion fits in the scheme of things once one has solved the conundrum, ‘What is consciousness?’ and not before.
Religions are a social phenomenon and as such they die out with the race to which they have meaning and significance whereas Spirituality is a timeless property of existence that exists whether we are there to believe in it or not. It therefore follows that a world perceived through a conceptually Spiritual lens is very different to one viewed through a conceptually Religious one. Separating these two out is essential if we are to move on from where we appear to be entrenched.
When Swami Bawra made the decision to teach us the 108 aphorisms of the Samkhya Karika all those years ago in 1986 I now sense that he did so, not in order to resurrect an ancient philosophy and a model of existence cloaked in archaic scientific terminology, but because he knew that the timeless aspect of its message would emerge and integrate conceptually with what the sciences have unearthed today. That we live in a universe that is far more enigmatic than we ever imagined even when we believed in magic.
Continued….
The conundrum posed by our existence is one that has challenged humanity’s best thinkers for millennia. Our conviction at having alighted on ‘the truth’ has provided us with endless hours of debate, inflamed our deepest passions and even divided whole nations and nations from nations, and it continues to do so. Imaginative stories handed down through generations and our wild speculations have determined the path humanity has carved through time, and millions have died defending a ‘truth’ that has later turned out to be false. Myths, it could be said, are merely truths that have fallen from grace.
What is abundantly clear is that humanity is on a long and complex evolutionary journey. Not so much a physical one, (though that is also true) but a conceptual one that has brought us to a critical point in our understanding of the nature of existence. It does not take a genius to observe that humanity for all its technological development is ideologically unintegrated, and some would say hopelessly so. If we are beings with a spiritual essence and are not just accretions of stardust then at some level we are united in our differences but on a psychological level our egocentric tendency to want to establish and reinforce our differences at any cost, rather than find that one idea that might unite us all, is tragic and tearing us apart.
Opinions now differ radically as to whether the cause of this human conflict is religious or due to the emergence of scientific reductionism or just down to plain old human nature. The one thing we can be certain about is that the divide is enormous and the gap not inclined to close any time soon unless there is a paradigm shift in our thinking. What is also certain is that conceptually there is no going back, though there are many who wish that we could.
Humanity has invested a huge amount of time and energy in technological development and to understanding the nature of material reality but its understanding of a Subtle Nature beyond material existence is still entrenched and shockingly naïve. Questions posed by much respected academics within the scientific community as to the nature of consciousness, to pick one instance, presume it to be a material phenomenon when there is a significant body of knowledge in existence to suggest that it is not. If the questions we pose have already eliminated the sphere where the correct answer may be found then we will remain trapped in ignorance.
There is a rather tongue in cheek attitude aimed at those who spend their time considering where all This came from and how we got to exist at all. Observing me at thirteen sitting idly in a chair apparently doing nothing but gaze into space my mother would ask, “What are you doing?”
“Thinking!”
“What about?” she would challenge.
“Life,” I would say.
“Well you just sit there and think about life and I will get on with something useful.”
Contemplating how life works on a subtle level, meditation if you wish, is often seen as a rather indulgent and selfish activity that does not contribute much to the ebb and flow of society itself, but the paucity of our understanding on this level directly impacts on the choices we make and the future we forge. The rudder of our society may be awash with academic brilliance but it is short on the wisdom that emerges from this supposedly indulgent activity to the extent that the direction we steer is often completely counter to what would be best for the long term whole.
A very long time ago when the population of Earth was relatively small it did not matter too much what we thought about the mechanics of reality but now, as we stand on the brink of a global environmental crisis and perhaps even the perfect storm, it really does. We are all being asked to reflect on the nature of our desires. If we can no longer afford to want the material objects that have so charmed us for a century, then what? The ascendency of the philosophy of despair that has emerged out of Scientific Reductionism; ‘life has no meaning beyond what we see’; ‘Success can only be measured by how we dominate others who are weaker,’ runs counter to what most of us want to believe. Even if we do not understand, we cling to the notion that life has a subtler purpose or that things are meant to be. Well does it have a purpose and is there a principle that orders meant to be out of chaos? And that is not all.
There is another aspect to this discussion that has little to do with how history unfolds or how technologically advanced we become. How we conceptualise reality, the model we each hold in the very core of our being – or how we See – has a direct bearing on the nature of personal suffering. Though intrinsic to human nature, Suffering is a phenomenon of self awareness and is a mutable condition that we have the power to affect. This has always been the case and it transcends the ebb and flow of social change and development. Not for no reason is Samkhya Philosophy considered as, ‘that knowledge, knowing which, does away with all suffering.’
The implication is implicit in the statement. As a product of nature we are bound to the certainty of change and ultimately that process of change leads to our demise. Since we can do nothing about this inevitability it is not possible to eradicate physical, or emotional or intellectual suffering except through a modification of our perception.
At one time religions completely dominated the, ‘what is existence’ debate. Within Christianity, ideas that challenged the dogma of the period were met with violent opposition and repression. Heresy was once a crime punishable by death. The injustices that were carried out in the name of God are legion and very well documented so there is no necessity to dwell on them here. Even so, even in the near distant past, it was still extremely difficult for scientists as individuals to be objective and to disengage their ideas from the notion of the existence of God and when discoveries emerged to challenge the dogma of the day, even as recent as Darwinism, it often produced tremendous conflict both personal and social.
In defending notions held to be ‘The Word of God’ but that were clearly out of accord with the emerging empirical evidence of the day, as free thinkers prised open nature’s underbelly, the authority of the Christian church was gradually eroded until Christianity became a shadow of its former self and as such was unable to guide the rising star that was to become Reductionist Science that would then go on to become the platform for the now expanding Atheistic view of the status quo (those collective bodies that determine the policies that seek to shape our lives) that prevails today.
Religious fundamentalism may appear to be on the rise but I would risk stating that its days are numbered and not because atheism is going to sweep the planet. Creative imagination will always challenge ideological entrenchment and it was only a matter of time before our Creative Intelligence outwitted blind faith and the religious hysteria that is mistaken for spiritual experience. It is no longer an either/or choice of Religious Dogma or Scientific Rationalism. Dogmatic science masquerading as truth is no better than dogmatic religion masquerading as truth. The alternative view is one that sees the development of conceptualisation as hierarchical – first Religious Dogma, then Scientific Rationalism, then Integrated Science or as some would have it Noetic Science.
It is a model that proposes that matter is orchestrated by an Intelligent Principle that is not material in nature and which produces a symphony from inert matter that appears life filled or animated – a cosmic drama of such immense beauty and complexity that it inspires awe in every sense of the word.
Fig 1:
Fig 2:
“When a question is posed from a false premise, or conceptual misunderstanding any answer we can imagine or conclusions we draw will most likely be incorrect. It is our questions more than our answers that convey what we truly understand.”
“That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”
Albert Einstein
Do not believe anything
because it is said by an authority,
or if it is said to come from angels,
or from Gods,
or from an inspired source.
Believe it only if you have explored it
in your own heart
and mind and body
and found it to be true.
Work out your own path,
through diligence.
Gautama Buddha
(For an overview of this blog please read ‘Opening Lines’.)
Reviewed and Edited 22 May 2011, 10 June 2011
For a short while through 1986 and 1988, in my determination to become a sanyasin, I lived on an Ashram in a place called Virat Nagar near Pinjore in India where I practiced Yoga and studied Samkhya Philosophy. Yogananda, a practicing yogi who also lived on the Ashram, took it upon himself to try to adjust our (three Americans and myself) everyday, conditioned perception of Reality, into one that stood any chance of seeing Reality as it really is and not simply as it presented. His method was simple. He would constantly challenge us by asking, (incomprehensibly to me at the time), “Who is the doer? Sit and ask yourself, who is the doer?” and when our social habits complicated our thinking would add, “Be Natural! Just be Natural.”
Adjustment was a huge fence to jump and it took me many years, and the persistent and inexhaustible patience of my teacher, Swami Vishvatma Bawra, to realise what he meant by this cryptic statement even though I made many stabs at trying to understand him. The dynamics of thinking, is something most of us simply accept from birth as being what it is – a function of a psychic inner world that is inseparable from Me – and that the terms I and Me are grammatically distinct but conceptually interchangeable. This is not so. The implication I received from Yogananda’s question was that there was something profound to be gained from resolving this conundrum, but what was he implying? Is there a realizable, distinction between I and Me that is not merely one for the sake of it – or to put it another way, (as is so often the case with academically conjured philosophies that are not informed by experience) – simply a case of clever and bewildering semantics?
Yogananda was a practiced yogi so his question was not an idle one? Yoga, is a process that, when performed correctly, produces experiences that inform a philosophy rooted in the Laws that govern the sub-material nature of Reality. Yoga is not a religion or ritualistic. Neither is it a discipline performed from speculative or fanciful ideas – though it often becomes something it is not when exploited by sophisticated societies. It is a process that has two aspects, Practice and Philosophy. Just as material science exploits the subtlest laws of phenomenal existence transforming stardust into technology, Yoga exploits the laws of subtle existence to transform and clarify consciousness. In this way practice deepens insight and insight deepens practice. The net result of this dynamic process is the revelation of Causal Reality in Experience. The boons and insights attained through the practice of Yoga are utterly timeless and ones that can be enjoyed in silent isolation, transcending the time-bound march of social change and the trap that is modernity.
All that said, back to Yogananda’s searching question – if I am not the Doer then what is? The notion that we are not Mind appears at first to be an absurd thing to say. But in Samkhya, Mind, like our bodies, is defined as being a product of Nature, even though it transcends the physical, (as distinct from nature with a small ‘n’) and as such we can watch it just as we can watch a sunset – with a little practice that is. What then becomes apparent is that Mind is not the Observer, (the witness) but rather, that the observer is something else far quieter and uncluttered.
When we touch the world beyond our body, (with any of our senses) the Ego, (defined as the Repository of Impressions) will respond by regenerating an aberration, (Mind) that it has recorded in the past. Ego is constantly being modified through our interaction with Nature and what we make it mean. If we respond unmindfully to those impressions, consciously or unconsciously, they become us and we them, to be swept up in the maelstrom that is thinking. In engaging with Mind as if it were real we add to it or fuel it. In Yoga Mind is seen as being a projection of Ego and as such it is endless – a ghost or shadow that persists as long we persist as an individuated sentient being.
When our identification with Mind becomes chronic we call it insanity and to some degree we are all insane. The benign state of this insanity is labelled Normal. Normal is the level of insanity we can live with. A kind of low grade noise that is not too intrusive and not too painful. Anything more intense we consider abnormal. Listening, (observing or witnessing) is the first stage in becoming free and sane. If we merely observe impressions, and do not engage with them, with time a distance appears between the drama and the observer and the turbulence that is Mind is seen for what it is, shadows of a past inspired by the present. Merely observed without resistance and without judgement impressions are free to pass naturally. The one thing we can be certain about is that everything in Nature changes. Ripples in the pond that is Mind die away to be ceaselessly replaced by other ripples. So long as we resist them, consciously or unconsciously, they endure.
Contrary to how it appears Observing is the only true act of Free Will. Everything else is rooted in Natural cause and effect or the illusion of free will. Stimulus, response: stimulus, response. Nothing we decide can be in isolation. Decisions are always determined by past experience. Mind will dominate our life so long as we affirm our ingrained lifelong habit and engage with it believing its shadows to be real. When we cease this automatic response to what we think and feel; observe without imposing ‘this is good and this is bad’, our relationship with Mind radically changes. Mental content ceases to present as real and becomes just content. When performed earnestly this process has a profound effect on the quality of our intellect which in turn ‘clarifies’ through this act of observing. This is a entirely natural process available to us all. In so doing we move from a state of disintegrated confusion towards clarified integration. We do not necessarily become cleverer or even worldlier, we simply become clearer. Linear logical (clever intelligence) gives way to Insightful, (perceiving the whole or intuitive intelligence) more commonly known as becoming Wise. Intelligence should not judged by its content but rather by its quality and profundity of its perception. We can know nothing of the world and yet still have a brilliant intellect. It is a state of perception in which contradictory profound truths can exist at the same time and still all be true. Such a person is in yogic terms, a Seer. Swami Vishvatma Bawra was a Seer.
The past appearing in the present is an echo nothing more. Echoes die away as long as we do not continue shouting. (Resisting or engaging with Mind is shouting! Longing is shouting.) We shout because it is what we have always done. We think our Mind defines who we really are but it doesn’t because it is not who we really are. I am not my past, or what I have learned and do, or what I believe however rational it may sound or appear. I am only the observer. What we actually become through this process of disengagement (detachment) is clear vessels filled with joy. A sensation we all pursue and yet one that cannot be obtained directly through its pursuit. Personal experience becomes the proof and validation of the process; speculation is the chaos that gives way to Knowing. And all this happens simply because we are conscious, sentient beings restless for meaning and understanding.
Please read PROFILE & DEDICATION in ‘ABOUT’
And read Opening Lines… in the ‘INTRODUCTION’ Category to get an over view of this site.
Thank you.
We live in extremely interesting times. Planetary conditions, and therefore the lives of its inhabitants, are, (according to expert opinion) changing at a rate that is unnaturally fast and it is now fairly clear that a significant part of the cause can be attributed to human activity and the industrialisation of society. If the pundits are right the future is set to be a serious challenge made all the more difficult by the darker aspects of human nature, not least our resistance to any imposed change to our present way of life.
Being born in 1949 – as I was – just after the end of the Second World War, I have seen remarkable changes during my sixty plus years. Born within a tiny, conflict free, (relatively) historical window I am fortunate never to have fought in a war, and I have enjoyed, materially at least, perhaps the best of what life on this planet had to offer despite my personal life being something of a challenge at times. In my early childhood so much of what we now take for granted did not exist, not even in imagination, most significantly the Internet and the globalisation of information that has so radically altered all of our lives.
As a professional I design living environments so sustainability and the whole Global Warming/Peak Oil issue is constantly on the agenda. I find what I do to earn a crust enormously rewarding and in that I also consider myself incredibly fortunate. But alongside that very practical and down-to-earth career path runs another path that is decidedly esoteric in its pursuit and about which I am passionate. I have, I confess, a compelling need to understand the bigger picture and find the common thread that links Science and Spirituality – a quest that has had a dramatic impact on my life and how it has unfolded. Inevitably it led me to India where I gathered as many conundrums as I found answers. What became glaringly apparent during those days of reflective solitude was that there is a direct relationship between our subliminal notion of Reality and the future that unfolds before us. The degree to which this impacts on all of us and society at large is profound – so profound in fact that to ignore it is an enormous folly.
There is a saying in India that a country is only as great as its philosophy. (Great, that is, in a noble sense.) It therefore follows that the same is true of the interconnected global community of the 21st C. Any community is only as great as its philosophy! A convinced atheistic physicist, for instance, will pose very different questions about the nature of Existence to those posed by a religious believer, or by a spiritually aware philosopher and they will each arrive at very different answers. The globalization of intellectually credible but subtly erroneous convictions has the power to do enormous damage – as we see. Our only defence against this globalised ignorance is a more persuasive, more holistically intelligent, counter argument that draws from a much richer, more inclusive, intelligently intuitive level of understanding.
In our pursuit of solutions to the planet’s current woes we have made some enormous assumptions, (as we have about the nature of Reality) that do not stack up at all when viewed from a different perspective. Not all of us agree to fixing the present scenario so that the future, with its iniquitous inequalities, can continue as business as usual even if it were possible. My gut feeling suggests that we might be placing our faith in the wrong objectives. That our future – all of our futures – will not be secured by the pursuit of technology but, put simply, by a paradigm shift in our thinking. This is not a problem we can fix and at the same time retain our current modus operandi.
Ancient thinkers have consistently offered that there is another way to Be, rooted in a more profound way of Seeing. This is not indoctrinare religious humbug. Religious humbug is part of the problem. The prevailing way is not the final take on human development and behaviour that could be our legacy. The current status-quo has emerged out of doing what we want – a kind of lowest-common-denominator, do-what-I like attitude to life that we have taught to our children as if it were a sacred and undefilable right when in fact it is a tenet that justifies an insidious form of neglect. We should have realised something was wrong when those same children started to display feral behaviour. Socialisation does not emerge as a human instinct. Socialisation has to be nurtured and engendered. But to be sustainable it must also be informed by a profound model of reality without which societies will disintegrate. Altruistic models that require any kind of self-restraint and that nurture unconditional generosity, kindness and compassion, are far more difficult to achieve and will not emerge from a science that is not informed by an acceptance of an intelligent synchronicity and an all pervasive Spiritual integration. In this regard we are, for the most part, still in the dark ages, still wallowing in the madness of belief. We have a lot to achieve in a very short time but achieve it we must if we are to survive into the next century.