Jack Kerouac: The End of a 'Beat'

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

After the American Transcendentalists and the New Thought movements, with their various teachers and teachings, yet before the Hippies with their LSD, and before the New Agers with their crystals, there were the "Beats." And before the "Beats," as after the "Beats," there was the prolific writer and wanderer, Jack Kerouac - the singular "King of the Beats."

Kerouac, for all his hard-drinking and womanizing ways that were immortalized in "On the Road" and his many other novels, was nonetheless, and more than anything else an Arahat, a spiritual seeker. His most personal writings, the notebooks he kept that were published as "Some of the Dharma," reveal over and over the depth of the spiritual enlightenment he chased from his native Maine to New York City, and from San Francisco to the deserts of Mexico and the beaches of Florida.

In "Some of the Dharma," a masterpiece of existential poetry and prose, he writes:

MY PERSONALITY SELF is only like a river in its valley - the river is like Mind Essence, the shores Jack Kerouac - as soon as it gets "out to sea" there is no more river and my realization of essence of mind restored unshackled to shoreless void---but mind will continue to suffer down other rivers after my river runs out of its banks, so "I'll suffer again," because I'm mind, my realization of suffering is due not to my personality-shores but due and informed by the mind essence "waters" that stream through---So as long as ignorance exists I'll, as mind, suffer---consciously, too---The mistake of ignorance is in my own mind now.

["Some of the Dharma," page 183.]

Again and again, he would turn to the theme of ignorance, and the pursuit of his enlightenment with or without the help of the Buddha, the saints or God.

The world is what's in the mind.---
The reason why concentration is advised is because
sentient beings have a tendency to run wild in the
wrong direction and stampeded to Ignorance---

["Some of the Dharma," page 183.]

Kerouac died as he lived, and fittingly it was in 1969, before he would witness the demise of the love spread during that era. He died at the age of 47 from an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis of the liver, the result of a lifetime of hard drinking.

Yet, in the end, it seems Kerouac may have obtained, in his own way, a peace that few of us come to know. On the final pages of "Some of the Dharma," he writes:

The Karma Emptiness Movement works automatically, evil is paid up prompt. . . . . .

ALSO   It's worse than death not to know that "God" is the same thing as yourself----
and that's precisely the situation everywhere---and everywhere they're "dying"---

Kerouac concludes that his life was due to "a load of unpaid karmic debts," which his "automatic sentient suffering (would) make good."

Surely, it has . . . and still does . . .

Finding the 'Stillness' of Our Being

"Be still and know that I am God."

-- Psalms 46:10 --

What is the deepest truth of human existence? What is the deepest truth of who and what you are?

". . . thinking without awareness
is the main dilemna of human
existence."

-- Eckhart Tolle --

These are the the fundamental existential questions which enlightened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, examines in the attached video excerpt introducing his talk/teaching, "The Deepest Truth of Human Existence."

In the video, Tolle asks the listener to acknowledge and focus on his or her "realm of stillness underneath the stream of mental noise," underneath what the philosopher/psychologist William James termed the "stream of consciousness," underneath the mental phenomena of the human ego which Tolle rightly observes most people are mistakenly identified with as "themselves," or 'who' and 'what' they are in their essence.

"We are here to explore the deepest truth of who you are," Tolle observes, "because you are human existence. We are here to explore the deepest truth within yourself. Knowing yourself at the deepest level, (is) a level so deep that knowing yourself and knowing God become one and the same."

"That which acknowledges that dimension in you," says Tolle, that "which is able to listen to that dimension - (to) listen not to something but to nothing, (to) listen to 'no' thing - that in you which is able to acknowledge that dimension and to be attentive to that dimension, is a realm of existence underneath the stream of mental noise."

It is because of "this stream of mental noise," because of the misidentification of our egoic 'selves' with our real essence, that nearly all of us struggle with our thoughts and the existential questions of 'what' we are, 'who' we are, and 'why' we are here.

"Through thought you cannot pay attention to silence," Tolle notes, "because thought is noise." And, it is because of this conditioned way of constant thinking we have learned, that most everyone in this age struggles to experience the consciousness of God, and experientially witness the 'state of grace.'

Thus, as the psalmist urged millennia ago, it is now - as ever - necessary for the spiritual aspirant to "(be) still and know that I am God."

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

"The world is too much with us. . . ."

-- Wm. Shakespeare --

Consciousness, Morphic Fields and the Evolution of the Universe

Up to ten percent of respondents in the United Kingdom report having experienced what Cambridge Ph.D., Rupert Sheldrake, characterizes as "mystical experiences," though few are loathe to admit it. One respondent remarked that just as 'sex' was taboo in the Victorian Age, nowadays 'mysticism' is taboo as there is now an implicit fear that if one reports having undergone a mystical experience one might be thought of as "mad."



Sheldrake obtained a scholarship to study Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge. He specialized in biochemistry, graduated with double-first-class honours, and won the University Botany Prize. He was awarded a Frank Knox fellowship to study philosophy and history at Harvard University, at around the time Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) was published, which he writes informed his view on the extent to which the mechanistic theory of life is just a paradigm. He returned to Cambridge, where he obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry.

Sheldrake is, perhaps, most well-renowned for his work on morphogenetic fields and his theory of "morphic resonance," as well as for his online experiments on the sense of "telepathy" that morphic resonance gives to animals as well as humans. (Some of his most famous, puzzling, and implausible research results are published in his recent book, "Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.")

In the following three-part audio podcast from Youtube (linked below), Sheldrake discusses and explains morphic resonance; while, in the attached video, Sheldrake talks to EnlightenNext founder, and editor-in-chief, Andrew Cohen, about the the significance that his research results and theories may hold for a better understanding of the evolution of consciousness and - possibly - for the evolution of the universe itself.


"The Extended Mind," part 1 of 3:




"The Extended Mind," part 2 of 3:




"The Extended Mind," part 3 of 3:




The "Sheldrake-Cohen Dialogue:"




In September 2005, Sheldrake received the Perrott-Warrick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology, which is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge. As a result, he is the current Director of the Perrot-Warrick Project, as well as the Academic Director for the Holistic Thinking program at The Graduate Institute Bethany, in Connecticut, U.S.A.

Challenging the Breadth of Scientific Inquiry and the Mind Sciences

In a discussion of what he calls the "three strands of deep science, integral theorist and philosopher, Ken Wilber, examines different scientific epistomologies (or, the methods by which we gain knowledge) and concludes they can be used to look at interior phenomena, and not just the exterior phenomena that rational empiricists would restrict them to.



For those who have been following this blog, Wilber's talk is a valid response to, and a continuation of Alan Wallace's challenge to mind scientists, urging them to "pick up the gauntlet thrown down by William James" one hundred years ago, and to examine "what" the nature of consciousness truly is.



While Wilber arguabluy remains outside of the "mainstream" of science, he does encourage (as Wallace does) mainstream mind scientists to challenge the existing predominant paradigm that consciousness is a correlate and product of the bio-chemical processes in the brain.

In a popular, interesting, and rather entertaining video, below, Wilber, a long-time meditator, pokes a finger in the ribs of mainstream science, and throws down his own guantlet, by consciously "stopping his brainwaves," as measured on a portable EEG (electro-encepholograph) machine during meditation.



The obvious question this raises, is if one can consciously shut down brain activity with the mind, how can the mind be shut down by what it allegedly produces? Neurological research on long-time meditators and contemplatives has, indeed, picked up in the last 5 years. Nevertheless, one wonders if this research is being done at all outside the dominant scientific paradigm that the brain causes consciousness.

Do you have any thoughts on this? If so please leave a comment.