Simon Small: On the Inner Path and Contemplative Life

"I stand at the bottom of the pond as the fulcrum of limitless space, within and without, a gateway to both, an icon that joins the two. But who am I, so small and insignificant yet at the heart of existence? As I ponder this question, infinite space reveals itself once more. For as hard as I look, I cannot find myself. I can only find thoughts, memories, fears, beliefs and concepts that constantly arise and cease. But whoever I am does not arise or cease. I am who I have always been. Different thoughts and a new body, but I am who I am. And as my mind stills consciousness expands without limit. There is a deep sense that, indeed, it has no limit. It too is infinite, a vibrantly alive space. As I stand at the bottom of the pond, I am the still center of awesome space, but so is every other human being. And, in its own way, so is every animal, plant, virus, bacteria and living cell. And in some far distant galaxy, on another insignificant lump of rock, at the bottom of another pond, stands another still center of space staring uswards and inwards, filled and humbled by the mystery of existence."

-- Simon Small --
 ("At the Bottom of a Pond")

In a recent interview (attached below) Iain McNay, co-host of ConsciousTV, sat down with Rev. Simon Small, an ordained Church of England clergyman and author, to explore the latter's journey from run-of-the-mill modern materialist businessman to a Christian contemplative. Small's inner journey of self-inquiry led him from spiritualism, through A Course in Miracles, to Theravada Buddhism and back to his Church of England roots, revealing to him the spaciousness and interconnectedness that is at the heart of all the world's great wisdom traditions.

Small describes the fruits of the inner path in the following terms: "One begins to experience a taste that one is not separate to everything else, that this hard sense of being separate and cut off from all of this, and just relating to it, is actually just a perception, and that whatever I am is flowing out of the source of everything, just as this table is, and this room, and everything outside."

"Contemplation," he notes, "is an ancient Christian word for a universal experience. (It) describes what happens when we have those moments . . when suddenly our very small world that we are living out in our head almost seems to dissolve and suddenly there is this vast mystery there in the moment. We all have experiences like this. Many of us have them out in nature. We will be walking along and there will be a moment when the sunlight coming through the branches and hitting the leaves just stops us in our tracks. There is a sense of time almost stopping as well, and there is almost a sense of resonance in the moment so that we are no longer separate to the sunlight and those leaves. There is something vibrating there that is vibrating in us as well. We all have these moments."

A life of contemplation may not, however, be for everyone. The fruits of the inner path and contemplation are very rich, Small notes, but they come at a price, a price that many people are, perhaps, loathe to pay.

"At first, (contemplation) is a wonderful experience," he points out, "because you have never quite tasted anything quite like it. It is like the finest wine you have ever tasted, and you become aware. . . . Suddenly life has gone to colour from black and white.  But then very quickly," he warns, "one begins to realize that if you are going to pursue this you are not going to be able to live the same way anymore in the world. Things that you used to value, you won't value anymore. And you will begin to value things that you have never dreamed of before."

Small's advice to those who wish to explore the contemplative way is: "Enter stillness. Try and taste the wonder of being. Go out into nature, (into) whatever it is that brings this sense of wonder into your life. And then as you are experiencing that quality of consciousness, hold the question: Where do I go from here?" The answer will come, he notes.

Thomas Merton: 'The Birth of Man'

"Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is no such a way, how do you go about finding it? What should you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you refuse to accept? What should you love? What should you hate?"

-- Thomas Merton --
("Thoughts On the East," p. 16)

  
"The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.
     Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
     The difficult and the easy complement each other;
     The long and the short offset each other;
     The high and the low incline towards each other;
     Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.
     The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;
     It gives them life yet claims no possessions;
     It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
     It accomplishes its task yet claims to no merit.
It is because it lays claim to no merit
     That its merit never deserts it."

-- Lao Tzu --
( "Tao Te Ching," Verse II)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Taoism emphasizes balance. The feminine balances the masculine; rigidity balances suppleness; the yin balances the yang, and because of this everything returns to a certain equanimity, to the ease of being that lies in the center.

When there is an imbalance the world does not recognize the beautiful as beautiful, the good as good, or the bad as bad. Yet this is bound to be temporary, for everything is bound to return to the balance of equanimity that is the nature of the Tao. 

We are, it would appear, in a world that is out of balance; thus, as so many wisdom traditions note, we are in the process of returning - in this instance, returning to a center where there must be harmony between yin and yang, between man and nature, between the manifest and the unmanifest.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to."

"What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death."

"What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labor, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to. If people find that they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair. They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy."

"The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use. In so doing, they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were slaves of others."

"The ambitious run day and night in pursuit of honors, constantly in anguish about the success of their plans, dreading the miscalculations that may wreck everything. Thus they are alienated from themselves, exhausting their real life in service of the shadow created by their insatiable hope."

"The birth of man is the birth of his sorrow."

-- Thomas Merton --
("Thoughts On the East," pp. 16-17.)

The Evolution of Consciousness: A Global Imperative

"Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival - this is humanity's challenge now. The dysfunction of the egoic human mind, recognized already more than 2,500 years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified through science and technology, is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet. Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness - also pointed to by the ancient teachers - was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not imperative."

"A significant portion of the world's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness."

-- Eckhart Tolle --
("A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose")

"Evolve or die." These are strong words, but they capture the essence of the stark choice that we have confronted ourselves with as the result of an ever burgeoning scientific technology unchecked by effective religious, spiritual or moral insight and actions. While virtually all of our ways of life have been fundamentally altered by our embrace of the last several centuries of technological change, it appears to be only now that the need for a wholesale change in the very nature of our consciousness is becoming readily apparent - or an evolutionary imperative, as Tolle notes.

While there is a plethora of material out there (including Tolle's powerful first book "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment") describing what needs to be done to change one's level of consciousness, and how that might be achieved, it is by no means an easy challenge. Few truly evolutionary challenges are.

"If," writes philosopher Gerald Heard, "we are to advance through the evolution of consciousness beyond self-consciousness, to reunite consciousness now divided into the self-conscious and subconscious, and bring about a new and single quality of awareness and being, there is required of us a peculiar and rare quality of attention. It must be intense but without effort and strain. It must be that over-plus of evolutionary energy, which we call curiosity, and the German tongue calls Neuiger, the new appetite, raised to what Plato called illuminating wonder."

"Indeed," Heard observes, "because we are now so deeply prejudiced in favour of the assumption that it is only possible for one real experience to be presented to us, and that can only be the world of common sense, the necessary state of mind required for enlargement of consciousness must be one which is even without expectation."

"We are waiting for an experience of which we have no conception from the past," he points out, "and that being so, any clear expectation must distort or even completely inhibit a radically new awareness."

[Gerald Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," pp. 164-165.]

Fortunately, since Heard's time (he wrote those words in the dark days just before the onset of the Second World War), we have had breakthroughs in technology which have allowed those who have experienced equal breakthroughs in consciousness itself to intimately share their experiences (and methodologies) with us.

Below, are two teachers, the "neo-Buddhist" teacher Adyashanti and Tolle himself, sharing their integral teachings with us. Each shares the fundamental insight that there is an untapped, inherent state of higher consciousness within each of us.

Beyond Desire to Spiritual Awakening

"When a man surrenders all desires that come to the heart and by the grace of God finds the joy of God, then his soul has indeed found peace. He whose mind is untroubled by sorrows, and for pleasure has no longings, beyond passion and fear and anger, he is the sage of the unwavering mind."

-- The Bhagavad Gita, 2:55-56 --

"Spiritual experience," writes famed translator, Jose Mascaro, "is the only source of true spiritual faith, and this must never contradict reason, or as Shankara, c. AD 788-820, says in his commentary of the Bhagavad Gita: 'If a hundred scriptures should declare that fire is cold or that it is dark, we would suppose they intend quite a different meaning from the apparent one!'"

"What," he then asks, "is the indispensable condition for this spiritual experience? It is very simple, and it can be very difficult: it is the absence of desires."

[Mascaro, "Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics)," p. li.]

But, the question remains: How will we know when we have mastered desires?

In his treatise, "On Desire: Why We Want What We Want," author, William Irvine observes that when we have mastered desire, "(w)e will experience what . . . has been the goal of most of those who have thought about desire - a feeling of tranquility."

"This should not be confused with the kind of tranquility brought on be ingestion of a tranquilizer," he cautions. Rather, he notes, "(i)t is instead marked by a sense that we are lucky to be living whatever life we happen to be living - that despite our circumstances no key ingredient of happiness is missing."

"With this sense," Irvine observes, "comes a diminished level of anxiety: we no longer need to obsess over the things - a new car, a bigger house, a firmer abdomen - that we mistakenly believe will bring lasting happiness if only we can obtain them. Most importantly," he points out, "if we master desire, to the extent possible to do so, we will no longer despise the life we are forced to live and will no longer daydream about living the life someone else is living; instead, we will embrace our own life and live it to the fullest."

[Irvine. "On Desire: Why We Want What We Want," pp. 6-7.]

The "desireless realm" described by the Buddha, and so many others, is thus, a universal spiritual state of being described in all of the world's great wisdom traditions. In the New Testament, for example (at Matthew 6:27-34), Jesus addresses our overwhelming desires and worries, observing:

"And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!"

“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

"(T)he time and effort we spend trying to master desire," Irvine suggests, "are probably considerably less than the time and effort we will expend if we instead capitulate to our desires and spend our days, as so many do, working incessantly to fulfill whatever desire floats into our head."

"Do thy work in the peace of Yoga and, free from selfish desires," says the Gita (at 2:48), be not moved in success or in failure. Yoga is evenness of mind - a peace that is ever the same."

Emptiness, Oneness and Reality: Where Buddhism and Science Converge

"Buddhism has all the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

-- Albert Einstein --

Albert Einstein: "Science without religion is
lame. . . . Religion without science is blind."

In the book "The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama," editor Arthur Zajonc makes the following comments on the ways in which the so-called "New Physics" has turned classical understandings of the cosmos and reality on their ears:

"During the three centuries that established classical physics and cosmology," Zajonc observes, "the mechanistic and materialistic character of physical theory came to dominate Western thinking even outside these areas. Increasingly, philosophy came under the powerful sway of science through such thinkers as Descartes, Kant and Locke. The life sciences, longing for comparable precision, sought out a similar path to development to that of physics. Genetics, evolution, and cellular biology displaced natural history and whole-organism biology. The mind itself, traditionally understood as the expression of the spirit, gradually became part of the mechanistic universe as well. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the physics of the seventeenth century had successfully conquered the adjacent areas of science and was already encroaching on that of the mind. A single mechanistic paradigm and its associated materialistic metaphysics came to dominate Western thinking."

However, he notes:

"With the opening of the twentieth century, the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity would make incomparable demands on our conception of the universe. We are still struggling to grasp their full implications. They challenge the simple mechanistic accounts of matter and the cosmos we inherited from earlier centuries, replacing them with accounts that shun such pictures. In addition, both quantum theory and relativity grant a new prominence to the observer. It is hard to overestimate the significance of these developments. The ramifications of twentieth-century discoveries for physics and cosmology have been enormous, changing our very notions of space and time, the ultimate nature of matter, and the evolution of the universe. They have also begun to affect philosophical discussions in significant ways."

For his part, the Dalai Lama notes that, "In Buddhism in general, and particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, the basic attitude is that you should remain skeptical at the beginning. This skeptical attitude automatically brings up questions. Questions bring clearer answers, or investigation. Therefore, Mahayana Buddhist thinking relies more on investigation rather than on faith. . . (An) attitude that is very, very helpful in communicating with scientists."

"There are two kinds of wrong views," the Dalai Lama notes. "One exaggerates what is actually there, superimposing onto a thing a property of existence or status that is not there. The other denies what is actually there. So both absolutism and nihilism are seen as wrong views. Thus, even in ethical discourse, a correct understanding of reality is very much emphasized. Therefore, scientific findings are very helpful to Buddhist thinking."

The three-part video discussion, below, (like the dialogue between scientists and the Dalai Lama in 'The New Physics and Cosmology') examines the areas where "the new physics" described by Zajonc seemingly converge with traditional Buddhist teachings about emptiness, Oneness and the nature of 'reality.'

The Further Evolution of Consciousness

The greatest change that a man or woman can effect is a change in the state of their consciousness and being. All external challenges fade into simplicity compared with this one internal challenge, yet an evolutionary change in the internal consciousness and being of mankind may be what is required to deal with the plethora of existential challenges which mankind faces now and the immediate future. As Einstein famously remarked: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Our collective challenges, therefore might only be resolvable with an evolutionary change in our collective consciousness.

"We must recall," writes Gerald Heard in "Pain, Sex and Time," his masterwork on the evolution of consciousness, "that the problem which has confronted man during history is how he may forward his evolution. He has unused still within him such pent vital energy that he can still evolve. His evolution, however, is no longer physical but psychical. If then he is to evolve, it will be through an extension of consciousness. His development demands such an extension because the world, as he now sees it with sharpened animal senses, gives him no sanction for using his immensely heightened animal powers. The guards of instinct have been removed, but the guidance of vision has not been gained."

Heard's book, originally published in 1939 (and republished in 2004), highlights the historical systems and methodologies that have been used down through the ages in an attempt to evolve human consciousness. Yet even as we have gained a broad and comprehensive understanding and mastery over our external world, as a species we have exhibited (it seems) but little mastery over the consciousness which is central to our being. Will this change of necessity? Will there be a conscious psychical evolution of consciousness itself?

In a probing inquiry that is just as relevant today -  or, perhaps, more relevant now than ever - Heard asks: "If there is an evolutionary future for mankind, if humanity is to surmount its present impasse and enter on a new order, is that future for all, through a gradual infiltration of the light from the highest lit to the most dimly aware, or is it for the few who alone can take it in fully?"

"Is evolution," he asks, "to continue with its iron rule, 'many called, few chosen,' a minute number solving the Sphinx's riddle and the rest flung back into decadence and destruction? Is there to be progress, a pervasive salvation, a steady rise of each grade until all are ready for complete transformation, or do society and civilization end here and now and the few go on to an utterly different condition of consciousness?"

"Can evolution still be psycho-social," he asks, "or must it be now, if it is to continue at all, purely psychological? With self-consciousness do we attain the highest degree of consciousness compatible with life? Beyond that must the body become untenable, the blend of soul and flesh unviable?"

Einstein's Agnosticism and Natural Religion

There are very, very few individuals who permanently change the worldviews of large portions of mankind. In ancient times there was Lao-Tze, Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed - all men who reconciled man with the world and the God or Being of their understanding. In modern times, perhaps only one man - Albert Einstein - has had such an effect, this time reconciling man with the universe itself.

And although Einstein was a scientist, and not an atheist but an agnostic at best, his spiritual life and views are a poignant reminder of how incomprehensible yet teasingly close is the evidence of some greater Being or entity, of which we may be a part. For Einstein a non-anthropomorphic God was evident in the profound simplicity and order of the universe itself, although he did not believe in life after death or a personal God that intervened in purely human affairs.

"I cannot," Einstein remarked, "believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical, and this mysticality is the power of all true science."

At a very deep level, as the above video demonstrates, Einstein held profound religious (in the sense of unitive) views, the most famous of which was that "God does not play dice with the universe." Yet, it was in his explanation of the illusory nature of our 'reality' itself, that Einstein was most prophetic - not just of the coming scientific understanding of reality, but of an awakening spirituality which questions the role of consciousness itself in forming and informing our world. 

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe"," Einstein noted, "a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of consciousness."

"This delusion is a kind of prison for us," he observed, "restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

According to Einstein's own credo, "What I Believe," originally written in 1930, he explains that "(t)he most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is," he observes, "the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness."

"In this sense, and in this sense only," he concludes, "I am a devoutly religious man."

Science, Consciousness and God

"The great problem of the modern age is to preserve the religious spirit, whilst getting rid of the superstitions and absurdities that deform it, and which are alike opposed to common sense."

-- Ernest Renan --
("Life of Jesus")

Whilst a religious belief that contradicts or ignores the realities science has uncovered regarding man, the world and the cosmos quickly becomes absurd, a sole reliance on science to inform us of these realities says nothing about our inner condition, or how we chart a path to contentment and a truly sustainable relationship with the Earth.

In a concise three-part video, below, Peter Russell, a fellow scholar at The Institute of Noetic Science, critiques the blind Western reliance on science and technology to shape our worldview, describing it as being arid and sterile in terms of providing satisfactory values and meaning.

What science has been unable to explain, as yet, he notes (as many others have) is the phenomenon of consciousness, a matter that has been the subject of Eastern inquiry for millenia. Developing our understanding and experience of 'consciousness' and 'being', he proposes, will move us along a path to sustainable happiness and inner peace."

"Western science has been remarkably successful in explaining the world around us," Russsell points out, "but it hasn't given us meaning. The world it describes is a dry, material world without any real purpose. And science has also given us an abundance of technologies which we use to satisfy many of our needs and desires. But, again, it hasn't given us values. It doesn't tell us the best way to use this incredible knowledge and power. It also hasn't really helped us to develop inwardly. If anything, it has reinforced our sense of self-centeredness."

"We are probably more full of ourselves today than we've ever been," he notes, observing that what we really need "is an integration of our scientific understanding of the world with the wisdom that is held in the world's spiritual traditions."

"The origins of consciousness may remain a mystery," he concedes, "but how to awaken our consciousness, how to free ourselves from disguised attitudes and values, to discover who and what we really are, is not a mystery. That is not a mystery. That is something that has been explored by spiritual teachers from around the world, people who have gone deep within their own minds and discovered the true nature of consciousness, and from that how to live with joy and love in their hearts. And that is what we need today. We need to rediscover that wisdom for ourselves."

Science and Religion: "The Necessity of a Rapprochement"

In the video below, Apollo 14 astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to walk on the moon), recounts the profound spiritual awakening - an experience of what the ancients called 'samadhi' - which he had while viewing the Earth, Moon and Sun in synchronicity from the immensity of space.

Mitchell's transformational experience prompted him to look deeply into the confluence of the world's great wisdom traditions and science. As a result of this search, Mitchell went on to found the Institute of Noetic Science ("IONS"), a think-tank dedicated to "supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential."

Writing in the most recent IONS newsletter, Mitchell comments on the breach between religious and scientific outlooks over the last four centuries, and makes the case that a rapprochement between the two disciplines - one focused outwardly, the other inwardly - could allow humanity to tap into a vast and under-utilized potential for higher consciousness, thereby yielding a new moral ethic which could help us to resolve the existential problems we face.

"Perhaps after 350 years of divisiveness between science and religion," Dr. Mitchell writes, "we are on the threshold of a new era of knowledge and cooperation. It should be obvious that objective observation and reason do not by themselves produce a satisfactory ethic for living – neither for the individual nor for social systems. Facts become divorced from values, and action from need."

"On the other hand," he notes, "intuition and inspiration do not by themselves produce the agreement society needs to bring about order, structure, and survival in the material world. In this case, observation frequently becomes subject to individual interpretation according to the covert biases of the individual."

There is, however, Mitchell points out, reason to believe that these two great strands of humanity's quest for knowledge can, and should, converge.

"Research over the last fifty years by little-known but forward-looking thinkers," Mitchell observes, "has shown there is a vast creative potential in the human mind that is as yet almost totally unrecognized by science. Nonrational cognitive processes have so far eluded scientific description. However, this potential has been previously known and described by a few ancient sages and enlightened religious teachers, using veiled prescientific language to express what they discovered through subjective, intuitive, experiential means."

"We are," he opines, "on the threshold of rediscovering and redefining those concepts and insights through the objective, rational, experimental efforts of science – if dogmatism and outmoded belief structures do not prevent it. The proper direction of sophisticated instrumentation and laboratory techniques can be the means whereby the physical and metaphysical realms are shown to be different aspects of the same reality."

"If this is demonstrated," Mitchell wryly observes, "it would be ironic, but appropriate, that so-called godless technology and materialistic science should lead to the rediscovery of the essential unity of science and religion."

It is ironic, and just too, that this vision of a convergence of science and religion comes from an individual who glimpsed the potential for a confluence of humanity's understandings of 'inner space' and 'outer space' in space itself.

Dalai Lama: "Peace Must Come Through Inner Peace"

In a recent talk at Mumbai University in India, the Dalai Lama addressed an audience of students belonging to what he called "the first century" of the new millennium, noting that they have the responsibility to create a new world beyond the bloodshed and suffering of the twentieth-century.

Paying his respect to the great Indian traditions that brought Buddhism to Tibet, he acknowledges that Tibetan civilization and Indian civilization are different roots of "the same Bodhi tree." And, he suggests youth, particularly Indian youth, have a great opportunity and responsibility for changing the world for the better and addressing the common problems, like global warming, that we all face.

"Peace," he observed, "must come through inner peace."  But, he observes, it is necessary to have a realistic view of the world, and to "know reality fully" if humanity's problems are to be solved. For that, he stresses the importance of both ancient views, and modern knowledge.

Carl Jung: Mankind's Relilgious Impulse

Carl G. Jung
(1875-1961

The great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, was both psychoanalyst and social critic, as the video embedded, below, attests. He saw society suffering from its own neuroses, and felt that the individual could only come to terms with such outer neuroses, by developing psychological knowledge of his inner being, with all its mythological and religious significance.

Writing in his small but essential book, "The Undiscovered Self," Jung observed:

"Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors."

"The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own to the physical and moral blandishments of the world. For this he needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass."

"Merely intellectual or even moral insight into the stultification and moral irresponsibility of the mass man is a negative recognition only and amounts to not much more than a wavering on the road to the atomization of the individual. It lacks the driving force of religious conviction, since it is merely rational."

"(A) natural function which has existed from the beginning, like the religious function, cannot be disposed of with rationalistic and so-called enlightened criticism," Jung observed. "You can, of course, represent the doctrinal contents of the creeds as impossible and subject them to ridicule, but such methods miss the point and do not hit the religious function which forms the basis of the creeds."

Because of this, Jung, writing at the height of the Cold War, warned of the evil warping of the religious impulse by the deification of the state. In today's world, it is perhaps not so much the deification of the state that poses the biggest challenge to the exercise of one's religious impulse, but consumerism, materialism, religious and economic fundamentalism and apathy.

Nonetheless, Jung's recognition that we have within us the potential and need for inner transcendent experience remains a timely message. For, as Jung observed, it is the collective psyche of mankind that still poses the biggest threat to our survival, a point he noted long before anyone suspected or seriously projected the existential Malthusian challenges of over-population, desertification, global hunger, species extinction and massive global warming that now threaten our very survival. Thus, before he died in 1961, Jung observed that mankind creates its own greatest challenges. "We," he famously said, "are the origin of all coming evil."

Krishnamurti on "Computers, Thought and the Transformation of Human Consciousness"

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

In a talk given by the late spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti - at a time before the proliferation of personal computers, and a decade-and-a-half before the emergence of the Internet - Krishnamurti (who died in 1986) presciently examines what will happen when the computer outstrips man's intellectual capacities and computers and robots begin to replace human beings in the workplace, thereby depriving us of our occupations.

"The computer is going to outstrip man in his thought," Krishnamurti predicts. (A predicition coming ever nearer to realtity as leading-edge scientists begin to master the difficulties in creating 'artificial intelligence.)

"The computer," he predicts," is going to change the structure of society, (and) the structure of government. . . . This is not some fantastic conclusion . . . or fantasy," he observes. "This is actually going on now, of which we are not (necessarily) aware. "

"The computer can learn, invent, and as a mechanical intelligence, the computer is going to make employment of human beings practically unnecessary," he predicts. "Perhaps humans may have to work  a couple of hours per day. These are all facts that are coming," he notes.

"You may not like it, you may revolt against it, but it is coming," he says. "(But) thought has invented it, and human thought is limited. But the mechanical intelligence of the computer is going to outstrip man. So what," he asks, "is a human being then?"

"There are concerns about a human being whose occupation is taken over by the computer (and) the robot etc.," Krishnamurti notes. "Then what becomes of the human?"




"What," Krishnamurti asks, "becomes of the human? We have been programmed biologically, intellectually emotionally, psychologically though millions of years, and we repeat over and over again the same patterns."

"We have stopped learning," he observes. "Whether the human brain that has been programmed for so many, many centuries, whether it is capable of learning and immediately transforming itself into a totally different dimension," is an open question, according to Krishnamurti.

Whether, and to what extent, we are capable of such a transformation, is a question which we all have to face - and a question we will face sooner rather than later, it seems.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Three.

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Four.

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Five.

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Six.

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Seven.

Krishnamurti, "Learning that Transforms Consciousness," Part Eight.

Alan Wallace: "The Retinal Blindspot in the Vision of Our Origins," Part 1

Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

In an insightful and encompassing lecture on the competing visions of our origins - metaphysical and physical, spiritual and scientific, Eastern and Western - Alan Wallace, a polymath Buddhist practitioner and trained physicist, traces how the origin of the scientific method has evolved to generally exclude anything that smacks of 'subjectivity' - and, most specifically, the phenomenon of consciousness.

The scientific stricture on limiting its studies to the strictly 'objective' became a very limiting bottleneck in the study of 'reality' with the rise of relativity and quantum theory at the beginning of the twentieth century.  In particular, its historical preclusion of anything that that might be construed as 'subjectivity' became more and more untenable as one delved further into the role that the 'observer' (or consciousness) plays in the microcosmic world of atomic sub-particles

The brilliant Werner Heisenberg, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, in his book, "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science," highlights (and questions) the extent to which 'subjectivity' was precluded from 'classical physics,' a prejudice that was carried over, with mixed results, into the so-called 'Copenhagen Interpretation' of quantum theory.

Werner Heisenberg
(1901-1976)

In "Physics and Philosophy," at page 29, Heisenberg writes:

"In classical physics science started from the belief - or should one say from the illusion? - that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. This is actually possible to a large extent. We know that the city of London exists whether we see it or not. It may be said that classical physics is just that idealization in which we speak about parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. Its success has led to the general idea of an objective description of the world. Objectivity has become the first criterion for the value of any scientific result. Does the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory still comply with this ideal? One may perhaps say that quantum theory corresponds to this ideal as far as possible."

"This division," between 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity,' Heisenberg observes, "is arbitrary and historically a direct consequence of our scientific method; the use of the classical concepts is finally a consequence of the general way of human thinking."

But is this really a consequence of "the general way of human thinking," as Heisenberg posits? In the first part of a compelling, if lengthy, lecture, Wallace traces how the strictures against 'subjectivity' arose because the scientific method, ironically, arose out of traditional Christian theological and metaphysical assumptions and worldviews.

"From the time of Copernicus, right on through Kepler, Galileo, Newton and so forth," Wallace observes, "science as we have come to know it has been overwhelmingly extrospective in its orientation (and) its perspective. To understand the nature of reality scientists have looked outwards."



"There are very good reasons (that scientists look outwards), and a lot of them are based in Christian theology," Wallace observes. "It's very important to bear in mind that a great majority of the founders of the scientific revolution were themselves devout Christians. A number of them were theologians, such as Newton himself. And so there were very deep metaphysical underpinnings to the scientific revolution. It was not by any means a revolt against religion," Wallace declares, "but rather an expression of it for many of its participants."

"The scientific aspiration from the time certainly of Galileo on through Newton and for quite some time after that," says Wallace, "was to know the objective world from a God's eye perspective, free of the limitations of human subjectivity."

"Prior to the scientific revolution, prior to the Protestant Reformation," he notes, "there was Christian theology and there was together with that a fairly strong . . . contemplative ideal (and) discipline founded by people like Augustine and the earlier Desert Fathers - and later right on through the Medieval period - that was largely introspective in nature. . . . But with the Protestant Reformation there was this movement outwards, and so one finds no strong inward contemplative tradition, so to speak . . . in the new Protestant Reformation."

Sir Isaac Newton
(1643-1727)

Wallace notes that "the Protestant Reformation . . . did have a contemplative mode to it, an active mode of inquiry into 'reality,' but (one) which stood instead of contemplative practice - sitting quietly, introspecting (and) going within one's own soul - (and) looked outwards."

"I think you can virtually regard scientific research, or scientific . . . methodology, as being like the contemplative counterpart for Christian Protestant theology," Wallace observes.

The methodology of third-person 'objectivity' (a cornerstone of the modern scientific method), Wallace notes, was thus developed as a method to check that personal subjective biases were not clouding the way in which a 'God's-eye view' would actually look upon the 'reality' of the physical world.

This has been "extremely successful for opening up that facet of reality that lends itself to third person investigation, namely the physical world" Wallace observes. "The disadvantage of that is that it ignores - simply because it refuses to attend to scientifically - those facts of reality that do not lend themselves to that type of third person public scrutiny. What leaps to mind," he notes, "is the whole range of subjective phenomena."

"What happens," Wallace asks, "if your authorities for knowledge very intelligently and for a sustained period and in multiple ways attend to one aspect of reality, and in a very concerted way, scientifically speaking, ignores another aspect . . . (or) domain of reality?"

William James
(1842-1910)

Wallace cites the pioneering American psychologist and philosopher William James, who, in his classic work, "The Principles of Psychology," observes that:

"The subjects adhered to become real subjects, attributes adhered to real attributes, the existence adhered to real existence; whilst the subjects disregarded become imaginary subjects, the attributes disregarded erroneous attributes, and the existence disregarded an existence in no man’s land, in the limbo “where footless fancies dwell.” . . . Habitually and practically we do not count these disregarded things as existents at all . . . they are not even treated as appearances; they are treated as if they were mere waste, equivalent to nothing at all."

And so, this quirk of the Eurocentric evolution of the scientific method excludes the radical 'subjectivity' of millennia of Eastern philosophical and psychological insights, thereby erecting a largely artificial interpretive barrier to understanding consciousness and the subtler aspects of 'matter' that are increasingly less amenable to Western interpretations as quantum theory and our understanding of it develops. A point that is well made by Wallace in the first part of his lecture.

(Part Two of this article is available here.)

Mind or Brain? East or West?

Dean Radin, Ph.D.
Institute of Noetic Sciences

For a number of years Dean Radin, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has been doing leading edge research regarding the boundaries of the mind-brain interface and chaos theory. His research, and that of his colleagues around the world, have melded their research regarding the influence of 'mind' on 'randomness' into the "Global Consciousness Project," a collective effort which explores whether the intentions or attention of large numbers of subjects have any statistical effect upon the results produced by random number generators.

Describing this interface of the scientific study of so-called 'paranormal phenomena' and the 'mind sciences,' Radin observes that the research being done through the project "all devolves back into the question of what is the role of mind in the physical world."

"From a Western science point of view there isn't much," he observes. But in describing his own work, and that of his colleagues, Radin notes that both the intention and attention of individuals do appear to have an effect in the wider environment. In describing the fascinating results coming in from the Global Consciousness Project, Radin notes that he and his colleagues have come to the startling conclusion that there is "a context where we can infer there is a mental concurrence going on, sometimes due only to attention."

"We don't know whether it is simply a lot of human minds that are somehow changing randomness, or whether this is a reflection of something bigger, something like a collective mind," Radin notes, "a collective mind which includes everything else including what we think of as matter and energy."

It may be, he posits, that "the same kind of organizing event that changes random events also changes our attention."





In a related video, Radin explores how the leading edge of Western scientific inquiries into consciousness seem to be converging on the same conclusions reached by millennia of Eastern inquiry into the nature of the mind.

"If you keep following out on Eastern lore," Radin observes, "you find things (at some point) of 'mystical union' with the entire universe. At that level, the report is - the reports across cultures and throughout history - that the universe is not the meaningless object that Western science says that it is. But, rather, that the universe is permeated with meaning and is saturated with consciousness."

"There is consciousness everywhere," Radin notes, "in which case, while the Western viewoint is that your mind, your awareness, is locked inside this structure (the brain), from the Eastern viewpoint this structure is the entire universe, and you can experience it like that."

"Western science has not quite gotten to the point yet where it is able to verify that that's the case," he notes, "but I think the signs are very clear that that is becoming an interesting question. And methods are being developed to take Western science and move it along this continuum to begin to verify in Western terms what the mystics have been talking about for thousands of years."

"Make Gentle the Life of this World"

In an impassioned and inspiring presentation to the recent TedWomen conference hosted by Ted.com, Jacqueline Novogratz - an experienced NGO operative who has spent her career in developing and implementing philanthropic projects to fight global poverty - carries a message that a life of transformation and transcendence can make a difference in a world that faces a multitude of problems. 

Recounting the relationships with difference makers from around the globe that have shaped her worldview and inspired her work, Novogratz reminds us that each of us can and should make a difference by immersing ourselves in whatever the difference-making task is which may lie at hand.

"We face huge issues as a world," she observes, "the financial crisis, global warming, and this growing sense of fear and otherness. And everyday we have a choice. We can take the easier road," she notes, "the more cynical road, which is a road based on a sometime dream of a past that never really was, a fear of each other, distancing and blame. Or, we can take the much more difficult path of transformation, transcendence, compassion and love, but also accountability and justice."





"We need leaders, Novogratz observes." We ourselves need to lead from a place that has the audacity to believe we can ourselves extend the fundamental assumption that all men are created equal to every man, woman and child on this planet. And we need to have the humility to recognize that we cannot do it alone."

Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)

Quoting Robert Kennedy, she notes that, "(f)ew of us have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events; and, it is in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written."

Inspiring words, indeed, from one great generation to the next, and the next thereafter.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

In delivering the news of Martin Luther King's assassination to a crowd gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana, RFK - an inspiration to millions as the 60's tilted further into a violence that would end in his own assassination months later - urged his audience to "gentle the life of this world," a sentiment that should still be valued today.

Speaking within minutes of MLK's death, the following is the text of his remarks:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.


Thank you very much.

Spiritual Awakening? Who Cares? . . . YAWN . . . zzzz-zzzz-zzzz . . .

I was really caught by an Associated Press article on what (AP) called YAWNs (Gen-Xers and Ys that are 'Young and Wealthy but Normal'). People in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are OK financially (wealthy, is a relative term), "socially aware, concerned about the environment and given less to consuming than to giving money to charity." They are identified as people "who want nothing less than to change the world and save the planet."

I was born at the beginning of 1961, right on the cusp between the 'boomers and Gen X. I saw....but I was too young to take part in, the "tune in, turn on and drop out" social revolution of the '60s. And I didn't even hear about Gen X until I was in my early 20s, and then only from the little brothers and sisters of the people I was partying with.

My graduating class - as if I graduated, at least 'on time' - was fed the "sex, drugs & rock 'n roll" ethos that the '60s mantra of "peace, love and understanding" had to a large degree devolved to by the time we made it on the scene. And while the majority of the cohort that came of age in the '60s morphed into the yuppies and 'boomers we are all all-to-overly-familiar with, while a smaller band of counter-revolutionaries stayed on in the San Francisco-area to kickstart Silicon Valley, the internet and this whole digital revolution thing, I was stuck for many years chasing them one way or the other, being blown this way and that in the winds of change with a whole bulging lump of 'boomers queing up in line in front of me. It was damn near enough to knock the wind right out of me, or at least out of my sails.

When by my late 20s I realized I had missed the whole party and had shown up only in time for its dreg ends - when the remaining partygoers were getting woozy and sick of it all, and the true lights of the party had long moved on to more inspirational or materially rewarding endeavours - I too morphed. I went back to university part-time, then law school and in one career move went from blue-collar factory worker to pin-striped corporate lawyer - just in time to see the dot-com bubble burst. I had more material stuff than ever - was wealthy, I guess - but I was running on empty and sure didn't feel "normal" whatever that is. For people around my age - post-boomers, pre-busters, or perhaps of any age - I think "normal" is always a moving target. Chasing "normal" must inevitably cause suffering in the end, is my experience.

Now . . . Finally . . . I discover the truth . . I'm a YAWN! I may not be wealthy in the conventional sense, but I've always been sort of unconventional. But, I live in the West, ergo I am wealthy by default.

(Note: it's hard to starve to death in Canada - or even in America, for that matter - unless by choice, handicap or disability you slip through the social safety net. You might not have all that crap you would think makes people, especially those 'wealthy', most privileged 'boomers happy, but you won't starve to death.)

And that's the point of the (AP) article: All of our STUFF can't make us happy! It hasn't for the 'boomers, the most privilege generation a culture or the world has ever seen. By and large, they're not happy - just chasing more stuff and desperately trying to hold on to what they've already got. Turns out the Beatles were right - Money Can't Buy (Me, you, or any of us) Love! It just buys or rents a bunch of crap - stuff that we don't really need, and can't hold on to in the end anyway!

Stanford University sociologist, David Grusky, says recent history has demonstrated that we pendulum back and forth between materialist and anti-materialist cultural phases. But this time it might be different. "Society tends to follow cycles" according to Grusky, "with anti-materialist periods like the hippie movement generating a pro-materialist reaction - the yuppie period, and so on."

But perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . this time the pendulum will not swing back. Perhaps, we have come to a place culturally where materialism (a) is no longer desirable, and more pointedly (b) is no longer sustainable - what with global warming, species going extinct at a rate not seen since the last really big meteor hit the Earth, 'boomers, yuppies and Gens of all type (X, Y, Z & ?) no longer able to even borrow a buck to continue the feeding frenzy, and with global food riots breaking out as we finally turn to burning what should be their food in our oversized-luxury cars and SUV's that are melting the icecaps. Look what is happening as India and now China chase their very own "American Dream" in a belatedly unfashionable fashion.

"It is a cultural and demographic 'perfect storm'", Grusky says. A storm that "may well push us decisively toward an extreme form of post-materialism in the upcoming period." Let us hope so. Let us hope that we are entering into a cultural storm that will propel ever more of us to a spiritual awakening and a clear, conscious awareness of who we really are in the depths of our being.

Let us hope these winds of change will allow us to see, with compassion, what we have done to the world we will inevitalby leave behind us - a damaged world that not only our children and grandchildren will have to try to save, restore, redeem and live in, but a world that will have to sustain the children and grandchildren of our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, India, Asia and all across the so-called 'developing world" (the children and grandchildren of all those who have not been able to enjoy, but have only been plagued, victimized and deluded by, the West's myopic frolic with materialism).

It is liberating (and I mean that in all of that powerful word's finest sense) to see that people of my generation - perhaps it should be called Generation ? - are starting to realize that the cupboard is bare, but need not be. "The green thing is just a part of it" consumer trends expert, Pam Danziger, says. "Our closets are full. Our attics are full. Our garages are full. Enough already."

"Go into your dark closet and pray or meditate on that," an ancient Rebbe would have said. If you have room that is! Hopefully, if anyone of us takes the time to do so, he or she will come out of that dark closet self-transcendent, and spiritually awake to the winds of change that may herald a "perfect storm".

Spiritual awakening? Self-transcendence? . . . Who Cares? . . . YAWN . . . zzzz-zzzz-zzzz . . .