Labyrinth of Dark Passages

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. - Stanisław Lem, Solaris (1961)

Stanisław Lem on AI and Consciousness

We may not solve the riddle of consciousness in the coming millennium, but we may be able to imitate intelligence so perfectly that, surrounded by legions and swarms of imitations, we will come more and more closely under their protective tutelage. 

Nowadays we are offered veritable orchards of electronic apples of paradise, which will inevitably have both good and bad sides, because such is the ambivalent nature of things. 

Our greatest achievements, secondary or not secondary to biology, have served us to destroy the biosphere and to engage in vile war games, and finally, a great deal of what we have already managed to create on the way to the yet-to-be-achieved artificial intelligence often serves to foolishness, amusement, and eccentricities that are incomprehensible to me. 

I have read many works and books that absolutize the possibility of creating a non-human intelligence, as well as a no smaller collection of well-motivated justifications that are supposed to prove to the reader that this concept cannot and will never be realized. It is indeed difficult to rise above the crowd of such contradictory and expertly justified opinions. 

Without a multitude of dreams, attempts, disasters, there would be no aviation. Without constant assaults, artificial intelligence cannot appear. 

I am convinced that both the quantity and quality of these programs, directed especially at successive generations of computers working in parallel and at contaminating clusters of pseudo-neural networks, will achieve an expanding range of efficiency and thus will increasingly imitate the presence of an intelligent consciousness, and will even be taken by many people for a person or a personality embodied in a machine. In a sense, this will be a fraud practiced on people as interlocutors or collaborators of the machine, because imitators of this kind will not yet possess authentic, personally localized, conscious intelligence, called psychic life. 

The title of Carrel's old book "Man, the Unknown Creature" is still relevant. Not only do we not know ourselves, but we also do not know how we will behave in unforeseen situations. I do not know whether the insights that will eventually make it possible to create artificial intelligence will be good for our health. Let's hope so. 

From "The Blink of an Eye" by Stanisław Lem, (2000) 

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Philosopher and Theologian

Philosopher is a weird creature who looks for a black cat in a dark room that is not there... Theologian is a weird creature who looks for a black cat in a dark room that is not there and finds it. - Sam Keen, American philosopher

Image: Black Cat by Dominique Allmon©2016

The Mystery of Time

Time and Space constitute the two greatest mysteries of the human mind. Deeper even than the mystery of space is that of time- so deep, in fact, that it took humanity thousands of years to become conscious of its implications. Apparently the human mind becomes first aware of space and much later of the reality of time. Even a child is more or less conscious of the reality of space, while the time-sense is practically absent and develops at a much later stage. The same happens in the development of human civilization. The discovery of space, as an element of spiritual importance, precedes a similar discovery of time. 

This can be explained by the fact that space-feeling is first and foremost connected with the movement of the body, where as time-feeling is connected with the movement of the mind.

Time is the mind's conception of motion.

Though space-feeling starts with the body, however, it does not remain at this stage, but gradually changes into a spiritual function, by creating a space conception which is independent from the body, independent of material objects, independent even of any kind of limitation: culminating in the experience of pure space or the infinity of space. Here we no longer speak of “conception,” because infinity cannot be conceived, mentally “pictured” or objectivized, it can only be experienced. Only when man has penetrated to this experience and has mentally and spiritually digested and assimilated it, can we speak of the discovery of time as a new dimension of consciousness.

In early Buddhism the experience of space was recognized as an important factor of meditation, for instance in the Four Divine States of consciousness (brahmavihara), in which the consciously created feelings of selfless love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and spiritual equanimity are projected one after another into the six directions of space, namely the four points of the compass, the zenith and the nadir. These directions had to be vividly imagined, so as to make space and its penetration by the mind a conscious experience. In a similar way, space became the main subject of contemplation in the higher or more advanced stages of meditative absorption (jhana) until consciousness completely identified itself with the infinity of consciousness, in which the mediator becomes one with the subject of his meditation.

In Mahayana Buddhism, space played an even more important part in the development of religious art and its symbolism, in which a universe with myriads of worlds and solar systems and infinite forms of life and dimensions of consciousness was conceived- leading to the creation of new systems of philosophy, metaphysical speculation and a vastly refined psychology. The concept of time, however, was merely treated as a secondary, if not negative, property of existence- namely, as that on account of which existence was illusory, a passing show of transient phenomena.

It was only with the advent of the Kalacakra School in the tenth century A.D. that religious seers and thinkers realized the profound mystery which is hidden under the conventional notion of time, namely the existence of another dimension of consciousness, the presence of which we feel darkly and imperfectly on the plane of our mundane experience. Those, however, who crossed the threshold of mundane consciousness in the advanced stages of meditation, entered into this dimension, in which what we feel as time was experienced not merely as a negative property of our fleeting existence, but as the ever present dynamic aspect of the universe and the inherent nature of life and spirit, which is beyond being and non-being, beyond origination and destruction. It is the vital breath of reality-reality, not in the sense of an abstraction, but as actuality of all levels of experience- which is revealed in the gigantic movements of the universe as much as in the emotions of the human heart and the ecstasies of the spirit. It is revealed in the cosmic dance of heavenly bodies as well as in the dance of protons and electrons, in the “harmony of the spheres” as well as in the “inner sound” of living things, in the breathing of our body as well as in the movements of our mind and the rhythm of our life.

Reality, in other words, is not stagnant existence of “something”; it is neither “thing-ness” nor a state of immovability (like that of an imaginary space), but movement of a kind which goes as much beyond our sense-perceptions, as beyond our mathematical, philosophical and metaphysical abstractions. In fact, space (except the “space” that is merely thought of) does not exist in itself, but is created by movement; and if we speak of the curvature of space, it has nothing to do with its prevailing or existing structure (like the grain in wood or the stratification of rocks), but with its antecedent, the movement that created it. The character of this movement is curved, i.e. concentric, or with a tendency to create its own center- a center which may again be moving in a bigger curve or circle, etc. 

Thus, the universe becomes a gigantic mandala or an intricate system of innumerable mandalas (which, according to the traditional Indian meaning of the word, signifies a system of symbols, based on a circular arrangement or movement, and serves to illustrate the interaction or juxtaposition of spiritual and cosmic forces.) If, instead from a spatial point of view, we regard the universe from the standpoint of audible vibration or sabda, “inner sound,” it becomes a gigantic symphony. In both cases all movements are interdependent, interrelated, each creating its own center, its own focus of power, without ever losing contact with all the other centers thus formed.

“Curvature” in this conception means a movement which recoils upon itself (and which thus possesses both constancy and change, i.e. rhythm) or at least has the tendency to lead back to its origin or starting-point, according to its inherent law. In reality, however, it can never return to the same point in space, since this movement itself moves within the frame of a greater system of relationships. Such a movement combines the principle of change and nonreversibility with a constancy of an unchangeable law, which we may call its rhythm. One might say that this movement contains an element of eternity as well as an element of transiency, which latter we feel as time.

Both time and space (No!) are the outcomes of movement, and if we speak of the “curvature of space” we should speak likewise of the “curvature of time,” because time is not a progression in a straight line- of which the beginning (the past) is lost forever and which pierces into the endless vacuum of an inexorable future- but something that recoils upon itself, something that is subject to the laws of ever-recurrent similar situations, and which thus combines change with stability. Each of these situations is enriched by new contents, while at the same time, retaining its essential character. Thus we cannot speak of a mechanical repetition of the same events, but only of an organic rebirth of its elements, on account of which even within the flux of events the stability of law is discernable. Upon the recognition of such a law which governs the elements (or the elementary forms of appearance) of all events, is the basis upon which the I-Ching or “The Book of Changes,” the oldest work of Chinese wisdom, is built.

Perhaps this work would better be called “The Book of the Principles of Transformation” because it demonstrates that change is not arbitrary or accidental but dependent on laws, according to which each thing or state of existence can only change into something already inherent in its own nature, and not into something altogether different. It also demonstrates the equally important law of periodicity, according to which change follows a cyclic movement (like the heavenly bodies, the seasons, the hours of the day, etc.), representing the eternal in time and converting time quasi into a higher space-dimension, in which things and events exist simultaneously, though imperceptible to the senses. They are in a state of potentiality, as invisible germs or elements of future events and phenomena that have not yet stepped into actual reality. 

This sameness- or as we may say just as well, this eternal presence of the “Body of the Law” (dharmakaya), which is common to all Buddhas, to all Enlightened Ones- is the source and spiritual foundation of all enlightenment and is, therefore, placed in the center of the Kalacakra-Mandala, which is the symbolical representation of the universe. Kala means “time” (also “black”), namely the invisible, incommensurable dynamic principle, inherent in all things and represented in Buddhist iconography, as a black, many-headed, many-armed, terrifying figure of simultaneously divine and demoniacal nature. It is “terrible” to the ego-bound individual, whose ego is trampled underfoot, just as are all the gods, created in the ego’s likeness, who are shown prostrate under the feet of this terrifying figure. Time is the power that governs all things and all being, a power to which even the highest gods have to submit.

Cakra means “wheel,” the focalized or concentric manifestation of the dynamic principle in space. In the ancient tradition of Yoga the Chakra signifies the spatial unfoldment of spiritual or universal power, as for instance in the chakras or psychic centers of the human body or in the case of the Cakravartin, the world-ruler who embodies the all-encompassing moral and spiritual powers. 

In one of his previous books on Buddhist Tantrisim, H.V. Guenther compares the Kalacakra symbol to the modern conception of the space-time continuum, pointing out, however, that in Buddhism it is not merely a philosophical or mathematical construction, but is based on the direct perception of inner experience, according to which time and space are inseparable aspects of reality. 

“Only in our minds we tend to separate the three dimensions of space and the one of time. We have an awareness of space and an awareness of time. But this separation is purely subjective. As a matter of fact, modern physics has shown that the time dimension can no more be detached from the space dimension than length can be detached breadth and thickness in an accurate representation of a house, a tree, or Mr X. Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangement of things we perceive in it, and time has no independent existence from the order of events by which we measure it.” (Guenther, Yuganaddha, The Tantric View of Life, 1952)

Both space and time are two aspects of the most fundamental quality of life: movement. Here we come to the rock-bottom of direct experience, which the Buddha stressed in his emphasis upon the dynamic character of reality, in contrast to the generally prevailing notions and philosophical abstractions of a static Atmavada, in which an eternal and unchangeable ego-entity was proclaimed. (The original concept of atman was that of a universal, rhythmic force, the living breath of life- comparable to the Greek “pneuma” – that pervaded the individual as well as the universe.) 

“We ourselves create mathematical time. It is a mental construct, an abstraction indispensable to the building up of science. We conveniently compare it to a straight line, each successive instant being represented by a point. Since Galileo’s days this abstraction has been substituted for the concrete data resulting from the direct observation of things… In reducing objects to their primary qualities- that is, to what can be measured and is susceptible of mathematical treatment- Galileo deprived them of their secondary qualities, and of duration. This arbitrary simplification made possible the development of physics. At the same time it led to an unwarrantably schematic conception of the world.” (Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown)

Indeed it led to a science which was based on a “post mortem” of our world, on the static end-results of what was once alive, a world of facts and dead matter.

“The concept of time is equivalent to the operation required to estimate duration in the objects of our universe. Duration consists of the superimposition of the different aspects of an identity. It is a kind of intrinsic movement of things… A tree grows and does not lose its identity. The human individual retains his personality throughout the flux of the organic and mental processes that make up his life. Each inanimate or living being comprises an inner motion, a succession of states, a rhythm which is his very own. Such motion is inherent time… In short, time is the specific character of things… It is truly a dimension of ourselves. 

An experience of reality (and that is all we can talk of, because “reality as such” is another abstraction) cannot be defined but only circumscribed, i.e., it cannot be approached by the straight line of two-dimensional logic, but only in a concentric way, by moving around it, approaching it not only from one side, but from all sides, without stopping at any particular point. Only in this way can we avoid a one-sided and perspectively foreshortened and distorted view, and arrive at a balanced, unprejudiced perception and knowledge. This concentric approach (which moves closer and closer around its object, in order finally- in the ideal case- to become one with it) is the exact opposite of the Western analytical and dissecting way of observation: it is the integral concentration of inner vision (dhyana).

What does time mean from the standpoint of experience? Most people would answer: duration! But duration we have, even when there is no experience of time, as in deep sleep. The experience of time, therefore, is something more than duration: it is movement. Movement of what? Either of ourselves or of something within or outside ourselves.

But now the paradox:

The less we move (inwardly or outwardly) the more we are aware of time. The more we move ourselves, the less we are aware of time. A person who is mentally and bodily inactive feels time as a burden, while one who is active hardly notices the passage of time. Those who move in perfect harmony with the innermost rhythm of their being, the pulsating rhythm of the universe within them, are timeless in the sense that they do not experience time anymore. Those who move and live in disharmony with this inner rhythm, have existence without inherent duration, i.e., merely momentary existence without direction or spiritual continuity and, therefore, without meaning. 

What we call “eternal” is not an indefinite duration of time (which is a mere thought-construction, unrelated to any experience) but the experience of timelessness.

Time cannot be reversed. Even if we go back the same way, it is not the same, because the sequence of landmarks is changed, and moreover, we see them from the opposite direction- or as in memory, with the added knowledge of previous experience. The experience of time is due to movement plus memory. Memory is comparable to the layers of year-rings in a tree. Each layer is a material addition, an addition of experience-material, which alters the value of any new experience, so that even repetition can never produce identical results. 

Life- like time- is an irreversible process, and those who speak of eternal recurrence of identical events and individuals (as Ouspensky in his book, A New Model of the Universe) mistake rhythm or periodicity for mechanical repetition. It is the most shallow view that any thinker can arrive at, and it shows the dilemma into which scientific determinism is bound to lead. It is typical of the intellect which has lost its connection with reality and which replaces life with the phantoms of empty abstraction. This kind of reasoning leads to a purely stagnant and mechanical world-view, ending in a blind alley.

Whether the universe as a whole can change or not is quite irrelevant; important alone is that there is a genuine creative advance possible for the individual and that the past that is ever growing in him as a widening horizon of experience and wisdom will continue so to grow until the individual has reached the state in which the universe becomes conscious in him as one living organism, not only as an abstract unity or a state of featureless oneness. This is the highest dimension of consciousness.

What do we understand by dimension? The capacity to extend or to move in a certain direction. If we move outward, we can only do so in three dimensions, i.e. we cannot go beyond our three-dimensional space. The movement, however, which produces and contains these dimensions is felt as time, as long as the movement is incomplete or as long as the dimensions are in the making, i.e. not conceived as a complete whole. The feeling of time is the feeling of incompleteness. For this reason there is no time in moments of higher awareness, intuitive vision or perfect realization. There is no time for the Enlightened Ones. 

This does not mean that for an Enlightened One the past has been extinguished or memory blotted out. On the contrary, the past ceases to be a quality of time and becomes a new order of space, which we may call the Fourth Dimension, in which things and events which we have experienced piecemeal can be seen simultaneously, in their entirety, and in the present. Thus the Buddha in the process of his enlightenment surveyed innumerable previous lives in ever widening vistas, until his vision encompassed the entire universe. Only if we recognize the past as “a true dimension of ourselves,” and not only as an abstract property of time, shall we be able to see ourselves in proper perspective to the universe, which is not an alien element that surrounds us mysteriously, but the very body of our past, in whose womb we dream until we awake into the freedom of enlightenment. 

That the gods of Buddhist iconography and their symbols and functions do not belong in the realm of metaphysics, but to that of psychology, has been correctly pointed out by C.G. Jung in his Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower. Speaking of the great Eastern philosophers, he says: “I suspect them of being symbolical psychologists, to whom no greater wrong could be done than to take them literally. If it were really metaphysics that they mean, it would be useless to try to understand them. But if it is psychology, we can not only understand them, but we can greatly profit greatly by them, for then the so-called ‘metaphysical’ comes within the range of experience. If I accept the fact that a god is absolute and beyond all human experiences, he leaves me cold. I do not affect him, nor does he affect me. But if I know that a god is a powerful impulse in my soul, at once I must concern myself with him, for then he can become important… like everything belonging to the sphere of reality.” 

Lama Anagarika Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multidimensional Consciousness, 1977

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Expectation of a Miracle

Hairdressers in the sun, 1966 by Robert Doisneau 

"Yes, the expectation of a miracle. It’s very childish, but at the same time it’s almost like an act of faith. We find a backdrop and wait for the miracle. I remember a backdrop that never worked for me, possibly because I didn’t wait long enough, or didn’t return to it often enough. In the foreground you can see the steps of Saint Paul’s church, the background is a perfect faubourg, as you imagine them from literature or movies. I frame it in my viewfinder, from rue de Turenne to a shop called Le Gant d’Or, and wait there for an hour, sometimes two, thinking, “my God, something is bound to happen”. I imagine events I would like to photograph, one wilder than the other. But nothing happens, nothing. Or if it does – bang – it’s so different from what I expected that I miss it. The miracle did take place, but I wasted it, because I didn’t pay the right kind of attention. When you are tired, you become unable to react, your emotion is no longer available." - Robert Doisneau

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Is Reality All In the Mind?

By Peter Russell

The Need for Magic

Flight by Jake Baddeley, 2000

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer - they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. - Ken Kesey

Modern chaos science began in the 1960's when a handful of open-minded scientists with an eye for pattern realized that simple mathematical equations fed into a computer could model patterns every bit as irregular and "chaotic" as a waterfall. They were able to apply this to weather patterns, coastlines, all sorts of natural phenomena. Particular equations would result in pictures resembling specific types of leaves, the possibilities were incredible. Centers and institutes were founded to specialize in "non- linear dynamics" and "complex systems." Natural phenomena, like the red spot of Jupiter, could now be understood. The common catch-terms that most people have heard by now; strange attractors, fractals, etc., are related to the study of turbulence in nature. There is not room to go into these subjects in depth here, and I recommend that those who are interested in this subject read `Chaos: making a new science' by James Gleick and `Turbulent Mirror' by John Briggs & F. David Peat. 

What we are concerned with here is how all this relates to magic. Many magicians, especially Chaos Magicians, have begun using these terms, "fractal" and "strange attractor", in their everyday conversations. Most of those who do this have some understanding of the relationship between magic and this area of science. To put it very simply, a successful magical act causes an apparently acausal result. In studying turbulence, chaos scientists have realized that apparently acausal phenomena in nature are not only the norm, but are measurable by simple mathematical equations. Irregularity is the stuff life is made of. For example, in the study of heartbeat rhythms and brain-wave patterns, irregular patterns are measured from normally functioning organs, while steady, regular patterns are a direct symptom of a heart attack about to occur, or an epileptic fit. Referring back again to "virtual" photons, a properly executed magical release of energy creates a "wave form" (visible by Kirlian photography) around the magician causing turbulence in the aetheric space. This turbulence will likely cause a result, preferably as the magician has intended. Once the energy is released, control over the phenomena is out of the magician's hands, just as once the equation has been fed into the computer, the design follows the path set for it.

The scientists who are working in this area would scoff at this explanation, they have no idea that they are in the process of discovering the physics behind magic. But then, many common place sciences of today, chemistry for example, were once considered to be magic. Understanding this subject requires, besides some reading, a shift in thinking. We are trained from an early age to think in linear terms, but nature and the chaos within it are non-linear, and therefore require non-linear thinking to be understood. This sounds simple, yet it reminds me of a logic class I had in college. We were doing simple Aristotelian syllogisms. All we had to do was to put everyday language into equation form. It sounds simple, and it is. However, it requires a non-linear thought process. During that lesson over the space of a week, the class size dropped from 48 to 9 students. The computer programmers were the first to drop out. Those of us who survived that section went on to earn high grades in the class, but more importantly, found that we had achieved a permanent change in our thinking processes. Our lives were changed by that one simple shift of perspective.

Chaos science is still in the process of discovery, yet magicians have been applying its principles for at least as long as they have been writing about magic. Once the principles of this science begin to take hold on the thinking process, the magician begins to notice everything from the fractal patterns in smoke rising from a cigarette to the patterns of success and failure in magical workings, which leads to an understanding of why it has succeeded or failed.

Chaos is not in itself, a system or philosophy. It is rather an attitude that one applies to one's magic and philosophy. It is the basis for all magic, as it is the primal creative force. A Chaos Magician learns a variety of magical techniques, usually as many as s/he can gain access to, but sees beyond the systems and dogmas to the physics behind the magical force and uses whatever methods are appealing to him/herself. Chaos does not come with a specific Grimoire or even a prescribed set of ethics. For this reason, it has been dubbed "left hand path" by some who choose not to understand that which is beyond their own chosen path. There is no set of specific spells that are considered to be `Chaos Magic spells'. A Chaos Magician will use the same spells as those of other paths, or those of his/ her own making. Any and all methods and information are valid, the only requirement is that it works. Mastering the role of the sub-conscious mind in magical operations is the crux of it, and the state called "vacuity" by Austin Osman Spare is the road to that end. Anyone who has participated in a successful ritual has experienced some degree of the `high' that this state induces.

An understanding of the scientific principles behind magic does not necessarily require a college degree in physics (although it wouldn't hurt much, if the linear attitude drilled into the student could be by-passed), experience in magical results will bring the necessary understanding.

This series is directed toward the increasing numbers of people who have been asking, "What is Chaos Magic?" It is very basic and by no means intended to be a complete explanation of any of the elements discussed. Many of the principles of magic must be self-discovered, my only intent here is to try to define and pull together the various elements associated with Chaos Magic into an intelligible whole. For those who wish to learn more about this subject, I have prepared a suggested reading list for the last section, however, I must emphasize that there are always more sources than any one person knows about, so do not limit yourself to this list. Chaos has no limits...

By Mark Chao - From a paper "Defining Chaos"

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The Golden Middle

 Fibonacci Spiral - The Golden Middle

When men acquire something, they never get only what they desire and nothing more; when men reject something, they never rid themselves only of what they hate and nothing more. Therefore, when men act, it must be on the basis of some scale or standard. If a balance is not properly adjusted, then heavy objects will rise in the air and men will suppose they are light, and light objects will sink down so that men suppose they are heavy. Hence men become deluded as to the true weight of the objects.

Similarly, if man's standards are not correct, then misfortune may come in the guise of what they desire, and they will construe it as good fortune, or good fortune may come in the guise of what they hate and they will mistake it for misfortune. In this way, men become deluded as to the true nature of good and bad fortune. The Way is the proper standard for past and present. He who departs from the Way and makes arbitrary choices on the basis of his own judgment does not understand wherein fortune and misfortune lie.

Hsun Tzu

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The Art of Political Rhetoric

The School of Athens by Raphael, 1505

By Robert F. Beaudine

The ancient Roman rhetoricians developed rules for their oratory. They began with “the exordium,” an emotional or ethical appeal to put the audience in a receptive mood. The “narratio” followed, a narrative of the events leading to the situation to be discussed and an explanation of their manner of treatment.

The main body of their speech delivered the proof of their argument, confirming their conclusions and refuting their opponent’s claims. They developed techniques called “the praemunitio” and “the amplificatio,” which cleared away obstacles and amplified their case with a rhetorical flourish. They concluded with another appeal to the sympathies of their audience.

These rules have been used throughout subsequent history. Today, the majority of our citizens no longer require proofs from our political class. They applaud any slogan that stirs their emotions, and they conveniently forget when a promise is not fulfilled. This has enabled our political leaders on either side of the spectrum to continue the policies and spending that undermine our liberties and our economy.

Public education has been instrumental in the dumbing down of political speech. Beginning in the late 19th Century, our industrialists used their wealth and power to methodically dismantle traditional education and replace it with a progressive system based on the Prussian model. Rather than enlighten, education was redesigned as job training, a system to raise compliant citizens who always looked to the experts for answers. This schooling would become the central feature of their planned society with its planned economy, both necessary for our industrialists to maintain and multiply their wealth and power.

Using the experiential discoveries of psychology, it’s taken a century to perfect today’s public indoctrination system. The unthinking emotionally-driven perpetually-dependent products of this schooling attest to the success of their method. Our politicians are the beneficiaries and no longer need sound arguments to justify their position.

Our political class also enjoys the advantages of a two-party system, which divides the people in two opposing camps, the “haves” and the “have-nots,” terms verbal engineered into the common vocabulary by the Left.

On its simplest level, the Left appeals to the have-nots with promises of increasing governmental assistance to ease their sufferings under Capitalistic inequalities, while the Right appeals to the haves with promises of less taxes, less government, and more liberty. Each side has a receptive core that readily applauds when their emotions are aroused through simple sound bites and slogans. And when the promised benefits are not delivered, each side points the blame at their conniving opponents, arousing anger, further dividing our country, while engendering sympathy for their tireless benefactors.

These techniques have been setting up the final solution. After we’re irrevocably divided, we’re ripe to be conquered.

This false left right paradigm has successfully served each side over the years, as our government’s bureaucracy and power have continued to grow unchecked, and the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots have increased unabated. That is, until a few small groups on the Right no longer applauded. Rather than accept the status quo of continual broken promises, these tea-partiers and libertarian groups like the Campaign For Liberty have demanded accountability. They demanded a return to sound government not in the fairy tales of their fraudulent speeches, but in a reality darkened by a fiscally irresponsible federal government that continues to reach into all aspects of daily life, as it gobbles more power and throttles liberty.

Yet, these small movements have been demonized from the start and are now blamed for bringing us to the brink of insolvency, something they alone seem concerned with preventing. In this respect, the rhetoric of the mass media is similar to that of our politicians – the truth is inconvenient to their agenda. Without the safeguards of an objective press, the status quo in Washington continues. Our debt gets deeper, our economy more mired, and our liberties more threatened. It matters little whether the Right or Left is in power. Our country continues along the path to insolvency and moral bankruptcy.

The recent Debt Crisis illustrates the false paradigm. It was engineered under a Republican President with a massive bailout of big business, and it continued under the current Democratic Administration. These opposing camps have become hired mouthpieces without the will or inertia to do anything but the bidding of those who keep them in office, the international banking elites. If left unchecked, the US Dollar will continually weaken until it’s replaced as the world’s reserve currency, which will ruin our economy and facilitate our merger into one-world-government.

And still, the underlying causes of our debt crisis have not been addressed. We have both a spending and an entitlement crisis, as an unsustainable debt piles up. Yet, we hear the same rhetoric echoing from the halls of Washington. Both sides claim the other side won’t compromise and allow an equitable solution. While the Right wants to punish the poor with spending cuts and reward the rich with no new taxes, the Left wants to soak the rich with massive taxes and aid the poor with more spending. The so-called solution was demonized as a tea-party victory. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, these patriots didn’t celebrate because it’s a mirage with the appearance of spending cuts in the face of massive spending increases.

Will we find a real solution in time? Is there a Presidential contender on either side, besides Congressman Ron Paul, who will not continue this false paradigm with its broken promises and destructive policies? History would say no, as the mainstream media continues to marginalize any voice against the status quo, including Dr. Paul.

In 1966, the historian Dr. Carroll Quigley thought the international bankers were too powerful to oppose when he published his smug exposé, "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time." He wrote, “The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one perhaps of the Right, and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy … either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same policies.”

Future historians will wonder why we neglected to educate ourselves about a world dominated by an international elite, and why we never learned our lessons about our political class, who do their bidding with baseless rhetoric.

About the author:

Robert Beaudine is the author of the novel "Based Upon a Lie", which you can purchase as an e-book. To learn more, please, visit his website.

Sakura - The Celebration of Nature

Sakura at Hirano Shrine, Kyoto

Japanese aesthetics evolved around nature and its cycles. And while Shintō considers nature to be sacred, the Buddhists in Japan celebrates its beauty and impermanence. 

Like no other natural "phenomenon" sakura holds great significance for the Japanese people. Sakura, or the cherry blossom, symbolizes new beginning. Its fleeting beauty invites to a reflection on the meaning of life. Everything changes, everything is in constant motion, nothing lasts forever. In order to fully appreciate life, one must be able to live in the moment. 

Sakura mochi

Since ancient times artists, poets, and philosophers celebrated this temporal beauty. Celebration of sakura in the early days of April is a perfect excuse for an outdoor gathering with family and friends. There is nothing better than a short escape from the monotony of everyday city life. You may even wonder whether it is the scent of sakura or too much sake under the sakura tree that makes people appear so carefree in a normally emotionally reserved society.

The beauty of sakura trees invites one to an intense contemplation. One not only takes time to appreciate the beauty of nature, but also learns to understand that all joys of life are temporary. As much as one would love to hold on to this tantalizing experience, one must let go. But there is no regret. One finds comfort in the very fact that nature follows its own cycle...

By Dominique Allmon

 
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Critical Thinking

How can we survive in an increasingly complex world?

Critical thinking is essential if we are to get to the root of our problems and develop reasonable solutions. After all, the quality of everything we do is determined by the quality of our thinking.

Whereas society commonly promotes values laden with superficial, immediate "benefits," critical thinking cultivates substance and true intellectual discipline. It entails rigorous self-reflection and open mindedness - the keys to significant changes. Critical thinking requires the cultivation of core intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility, perseverance, integrity, and responsibility. Nothing of real value comes easily.

The world is swiftly changing and with each day the pace quickens. The pressure to respond intensifies. New global realities are rapidly working their way into the deepest structures of our lives: economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental realities - realities with profound implications for thinking and learning, business and politics, human rights and human conflicts. These realities are becoming increasingly complex; many represent significant dangers and threats. And they all turn on the powerful dynamic of accelerating change.

We cannot deal with incessant and accelerating change and complexity without revolutionizing our thinking. Traditionally our thinking has been designed for routine, for habit, for automation and fixed procedure. We learned how to do our job once, and then we used what we learned over and over. But the problems we now face, and will increasingly face, require a radically different form of thinking, thinking that is more complex, more adaptable, more sensitive to divergent points of view. The world in which we now live requires that we continually relearn, that we routinely rethink our decisions, that we regularly reevaluate the way we work and live. In short, there is a new world facing us, one in which the power of the mind to command itself, to regularly engage in self-analysis, will increasingly determine the quality of our work, the quality of our lives, and perhaps even, our very survival.

The question of how to survive in the world is a question continually transforming itself. Accelerating change, increasing complexity, and intensifying danger sound the death knell for traditional methods of learning. How can we adapt to reality when reality won’t give us time to master it before it changes itself, again and again, in ways we can but partially anticipate? Unfortunately, the crucial need for ever-new modes of thought to adapt to new problems and situations in new and humane ways is ignored by most cultures and most schools today. Short-term thinking leading to quick-fix solutions still rule the day. Critical thinking is not a social value in any society. Yet critical thinking is essential to dealing effectively with the problems we face and will increasingly face into the future.

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Universal Consciousness

Infinite worlds appear and disappear in the vast expanse of my own consciousness, like motes of dust dancing in a beam of light. - Yoga Vasishtha

Each of us exists as a ripple in the field of conscious intelligence that gives rise to everything in the universe - our bodies, our planet, the stars, the galaxies...

Since we are an inseparable part of this underlying field of intelligence, we are also the source of all reality. In every moment of our existence we are co-creating our world with and in the universe. Everything we will ever know is a result of this creative process that takes place in our minds.



Both, the ancient wisdom traditions and modern science, tell us that our bodies, our minds, and the physical world around us, are projections of our consciousness. Only consciousness is real. Everything else is its projection. For better or for worse.

It is only the veil of illusion, or rather, and more properly, the veil of delusion - known in the ancient yogic tradition  as maya - that keeps us from seeing that everything is pure consciousness. We delude ourselves constantly. We mis-take our own experience for the reality out there. We experience ourselves as separate from all that is.

However, when we pierce this veil, when we begin to finally see through it, we discover that universal consciousness permeates everything. Only then, we will be able to access our own unlimited creative potential.

By Dominique Allmon

Dominique Allmon©2012

Beyond Science, Beyond Spirituality

By Peter Russell

Science and spirituality have never made easy bedfellows. Their views on the nature of things often seem to clash. And the more our scientific understanding of the world has grown, the deeper that clash appears to have become. 

Modern science, having explored deep into the realms of space, time and matter, often appears to have done away with God. Astronomers have looked out into deep space, to the edges of the known universe; cosmologists have looked back into what they call "deep time", to the beginning of creation; while physicists have looked down into the "deep structure" of matter, to the fundamental constituents of the cosmos. From quarks to quasars, they find no evidence of God. Nor do they find any need for God. The Universe seems to work perfectly well without any divine assistance.

The God that science has thus eliminated is called "the God of the gaps" - the God that was needed to explain the gaps in human knowledge. Over the centuries, science has progressively filled these gaps. Before Newton, people thought God moved the sun and moon through the heavens; now we understand their motion in terms of gravity. Before Darwin, it was believed that God created the many different species of life; now we account for them in terms of genetic evolution. Similarly with earthquakes, the aurora borealis and the immune response, today plate tectonics, solar ions and molecular biology explain them quite satisfactorily. 

Steadily and mercilessly, science has filled the gaps. For a while it looked as if the most significant gap of all - the creation of the cosmos itself - would not be filled. But quantum mechanics is now explaining how even the Big Bang could have started all by itself. The God of the gaps has finally, it seems, been made redundant. 

There is, however, more to religion than explaining the gaps in our knowledge. Most traditions also speak of the profound personal experiences that come from following a spiritual path. They may talk of them in terms of rebirth, liberation, awakening, enlightenment, transcendence, rapture or holy union. Yet whatever the interpretation, there is a general consensus that these experiences have a profound impact on one's life. 

Science has very little to say about spiritual experiences. They are not occurring in the world of space, time and matter that science charts so well, but in the world within. To understand them fully we would need to venture into the realm of "deep mind" - a realm that Western science has yet to explore.

An Inner Science

Science may not have explored deep mind, but others have. They are the mystics, ascetics, shamans and spiritual adepts of every culture. These people have used practices such as meditation to delve beneath the surface levels of the mind. They have observed the arising and passing of thought. And they have looked beyond, to the source of their experience, to the essence of their own consciousness. There they have discovered a profound connection with the ground of all being.

Western science does not usually pay much attention to such subjective approaches. It certainly does not consider them "scientific". Scientists are concerned with objective truths, with verifiable facts that are not dependent upon one's state of mind. They are looking for effects that can be measured, not internal subjective changes. 

But is this subjective approach really so unscientific? The essence of science is to gain knowledge through careful observation of the natural world. Since scientists want to be able to trust this knowledge, a process has evolved to make it is as reliable as possible - what is often referred to as the "scientific method".

An essential part of this method is isolating the object of study. If, for example, you were investigating the electrical activity of the human brain during meditation, you might put the subject in an electromagnetically shielded room to reduce electrical noise ("noise" in the technical sense of unwanted information). Then, in order to get as much desired information as possible, you would ensure the electrodes made a good electrical contact with scalp. You might also set up a "control group", studying non-meditators in the same circumstances, to be certain that the effects you measured were specific to meditation, not simply the result of relaxation. Having gathered your data, you would study it, draw conclusions, and then make your conclusions available to others to see if they agreed. If they did, you would have established some reliable knowledge about meditation and the brain.

Similar principles apply to someone using meditation to explore the mind first hand. First, they would seek to remove themselves from external noise. This is usually achieved by choosing a quiet place, free from disturbance. Since one wants to observe the mind clearly, it is important to remain awake and attentive, so people generally sit in a relaxed but alert posture. Then closing the eyes, which reduces visual distractions, one turns the attention within and begins to observe.

The first thing people notice when they observe their own mind, is the almost incessant flow of thoughts and inner dialogue. This internal noise continually distracts the attention from the subject of investigation - the nature of the mind itself. Here meditation comes into play. It can be thought of as an experimental technique employed to reduce the internal chatter, allowing subtler aspects of the mind to come into focus. 

Countless people, throughout history, have entered the laboratory of the mind and performed such inner experiments. These "inner scientists" have published the results of their investigations in spiritual and mystical texts - The Upanishads, The Tao Te Ching, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, The Cloud of Unknowing. Their conclusions show a remarkable consistency across culture and time, suggesting that this subjective approach does indeed lead to reliable knowledge about the nature of mind.

Beyond Thought

What have they discovered? Almost everyone notices that as the mind settles down there comes a growing sense of peace. The self-talk that normally occupies much of our awareness tends to increase arousal and tension. We may be worrying about things we have or have not done, feeling anxious about what might or might not happen, planning a future action, solving a problem or going over a conversation. As this activity subsides, the mind naturally becomes more peaceful. 

Reducing mental activity further, one can arrive at a point where all verbal thinking ceases. At this level of consciousness, one discovers a much deeper, all-pervasive peace. Some call it bliss, others joy or serenity; but all agree that the pleasures of everyday life pale in comparison to this profound feeling of inner well-being.

Another quality that is found in this inner quiet is love. This is not the love we know in our daily lives, a love that is usually focused on a particular person or circumstance. It is pure love, love without an object. It is "being in love" in a new sense; one’s whole being is bathed in love. 

Perhaps the most significant effect of stilling the mind is transcendence of the ego. When all the thoughts, feelings and memories by which we usually define ourselves have fallen away, the sense of a separate self dissolves. There is no longer a sense of "I am experiencing this thought or this sensation". Instead there is an identity with the essence of being. I am the consciousness in which all experience takes place.

A Personal God

Although the descriptions of deep mind are remarkably consistent across cultures, the ways in which people have interpreted them vary widely.

Within the monotheistic worldview that dominated Western culture for nearly two thousand years, mystical experiences were usually interpreted in terms of a personal God. Such states of consciousness are so far removed from daily life that it is easy to see how they could be taken to be a direct connection with divinity - particularly when aspects of the experience correspond so closely to traditional descriptions of God.

A state of profound peace could indeed seem to be "the peace of God that passeth all understanding". An upwelling of the heart that bursts forth in an all-pervading love might well be interpreted as the love of God miraculously entering one’s being. The compassion that dawned could be confirmation of a caring, forgiving God. And the sense of deep fulfillment and inner freedom that comes with such states could easily be taken to be the salvation promised by a merciful Deity.

The experience of the pure "I am" did not, however, fit into the monotheistic worldview quite as easily. Many identified this unbounded sense of self with God. Some went so far as to say that "I am God." To traditional religion, this rings of blasphemy. How can any lowly human being claim that he or she is God, the almighty, supreme being? When the fourteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart preached that "God and I are One", he was brought before Pope John XXII and forced to "recant everything that he had falsely taught". Others suffered a worse fate. The tenth-century Islamic mystic al-Hallãj was crucified for using language that claimed an identity with God. 

Yet when mystics say "I am God," or other words to that effect, they are talking neither about the individual person nor about a supernatural deity. Their inner investigations have revealed the true nature of the self. This they have experienced as a connection with the ground of all being. And it is this that they have named God.

The Eastern View

Explaining such experiences as a direct contact with God could be seen as yet another example of the God of the gaps – albeit in a more subtle form. In this case, the gap is in our understanding of deep mind. Western traditions, both religious and scientific, have left this realm largely unexplored. To find a coherent body of knowledge about the inner world, we must look to the East, where spiritual adepts have been exploring the mind for thousands of years. 

Of the Eastern traditions, Buddhism has probably gone the farthest in charting the mind. Buddhism has no concept of God; it is an atheistic religion - paradoxical as that may sound to Western ears. For Buddhists, peace, ease, joy, and compassion come from knowing the essential nature of mind. They are inherent qualities of pure awareness - an awareness that is unsullied by the agitation of everyday thoughts and concerns. 

A similar approach is taken by other eastern traditions. Some of them may talk of deities and devas, but in most instances these are interpreted as aspects of the mind - the inner challenges we face and the inner allies that can help us on our journey. 

Although these traditions do not need to invoke a supreme deity to account for mystical experiences, this does not make these states of mind any less awesome, meaningful or life changing. On the contrary, by interpreting them in terms of one’s essential nature, the eastern traditions can offer practical ways to make them more accessible. 

Western religions have much to offer on theology, morality and the potential for spiritual advancement, but less on techniques that facilitate spiritual experiences. Eastern teachings, however, provide detailed analyses of how our awareness becomes trapped in habits and attachments, and various techniques and practices–we might call them inner technologies – to relieve the mind of its dysfunctional patterns. The goal is self-liberation, freeing the mind to experience its essential nature, and reaping the rewards that come from such an awakening. Here spirituality is science, the science of the mind. 

God in the Brain

A third way of interpreting spiritual states is that of Western science, which believes that the real world is that of space, time and matter, and all phenomena are reducible to events in that world. It seeks to account for transcendental experiences, neither as a union with some supernatural deity nor as a reflection of the mind’s essential nature, but in terms of brain function.

Some recent research, which has aroused quite a debate in this area, investigated changes in the brains of advanced Tibetan Buddhist meditators. When the subjects reported that their everyday sense of self was beginning to dissolve, the researchers took a brain scan. By observing the flow of blood through the brain, they were able to identify changes in brain activity. They found that as the sense of a separate self dissolved, activity in the parietal lobe, an area towards the top of the brain, decreased. This is precisely the area that neuro-psychologists believe is responsible for the distinction between self and other. 

The conclusion that many draw from such studies is that spiritual experiences can now be explained in terms of brain function, and that science has once again triumphed over religion. But there is really nothing very surprising about these findings. It is generally accepted that brain activity and subjective experience bear a close relationship (even if we cannot say whether one causes the other, or how). We should expect, therefore, that changes in consciousness as profound as the cessation of verbal thought, the dissolution of a separate sense of self, and a feeling of deep peace would show corresponding changes in the brain. 

That we are beginning to chart these changes does not explain away spiritual states. If anything, it validates them. It shows that meditators probably do experience what they claim. So we could think of these discoveries as Western science beginning to confirm the conclusions of the inner sciences. 

Meditators also claim that such states of consciousness have beneficial effects on their lives – a tendency to be more open, generous, caring and forgiving. There seems little reason to doubt that this too is true. If so, rather than concluding that spiritual experience has been satisfactorily accounted for, the scientific community might ask: how can we use our growing understanding of brain function to enhance the occurrence of these deep states of consciousness. For they would appear to be just what the world sorely needs.

Salvation

In the past, spiritual awakening was seen as essential for one’s personal salvation – to save us from hell, whether God delivered or self-created. Today it has become an imperative for our collective salvation.

Humanity is clearly in crisis. If we continue consuming and polluting as we have done, with little regard for the long-term health of our environment, we will almost certainly trigger some or other ecological catastrophe. We may even render ourselves extinct. 

Looking to the underlying causes of this crisis we find, time and again, the human factor - human decisions based on human desires, needs and priorities, often driven by human fear, greed and self-centeredness. It is clear that the crisis is, at its root, a crisis of consciousness. 

If we are to navigate our way safely through these challenging times, we need to see some significant shifts in attitudes and values. We need to recognize that inner peace does not depend on what we own, our social status, the roles we play, or how wealthy we are. We need to wake up to a deeper sense of self that is not at the mercy of external circumstances, and that does not need to be continually defended and maintained. We need a degree of care and compassion that extends beyond our immediate circle of family and friends to embrace strangers and people of different race and background - and also the many other species with whom we share this planet. We need to know in our hearts that their well-being is our well-being. 

What is the most effective way of promoting such shifts in consciousness? The evidence points to spiritual experience. Rather than distracting us from the course of scientific progress, spirituality could be our saving grace. 

Our burgeoning scientific knowledge has led to technologies that have enabled us to control and manipulate our world. The underlying goal has been to free us from unnecessary suffering and increase human well-being. Spiritual teachings have likewise sought to liberate people from suffering, but their path has been inward. They have sought to understand the mind and to develop inner technologies that enable us to find happiness and freedom within ourselves. 

It is now becoming obvious that the material approach has not achieved all that people hoped. Despite our abundant luxuries and freedoms there is little evidence that people today are any happier with their lot than people were fifty years ago. On the other hand, we have only to look at the peace and wisdom emanating from someone such as the Dalai Lama to see that the spiritual approach does seem to bear fruit.

When it comes to understanding the cosmos, science and spirituality are describing two complementary aspects of reality – one the nature of the material world we observe around us, the other the nature of the mind observing this world. When we consider how these understandings can be applied to the betterment of humanity, we see that science and spirituality are again complementary. To create a truly sustainable world, we need both - the knowledge of science integrated with the wisdom of spirituality. 

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