Reincarnation and the Problem of Evil: The Shadow WIthin Human Nature

Life within the conditional worlds, whether physical or subtle in nature, is founded up0n the basic dualism of the observer and the observed. The ego experiences itself as an observer, and the rest of the world, and all others, becomes the observed. As Nisargadatta points out, this introduces the principle of exclusion and projection: in reality there is only one universal consciousness, but whatever we do not identify with becomes projected outward as the universe of objects. What we exclude from ourselves becomes "other" to us, and lives as if independent of us, seemingly separate, and filled with its own awareness, desires, and impulses, which often seem to exclude us in turn.

Life within any particular world operates according to this principle, and this is what makes life in any world difficult and bewildering. However, the ordinary forms of life within the physical or spirit worlds is relatively uncomplicated in comparison to those of reincarnating spirits who live as a hybrid organism spanning both. Ordinary living things do not develop either a concept of evil, or habits that we could call evil. They certainly strive to survive, but they are not burdened with the extra complications of reincarnation, and thus they are not driven with the extra stress and ignorance inherent to that life to overcome its existential demands. They certainly desire to be free of the troubles of life and to commune with their own nature, but they do this, as Adi Da pointed out, in a very natural way. They simply find a place of safety and rest, and they "drop out". They relax deeply and fall into a natural forms of meditation without conceptual ideations, in part because they haven't got a high level of conceptual ability, but also for the even greater reason that they haven't got a functioning spiritual "soul" that feels uncomfortable and restless within the physical worlds.

Human beings have a very difficult time relaxing, compared with any other animal. Those who have pets such as dogs or cats know this well. We envy the ability of these animals we live with to simply relax and let go, to purr or sleep, while we remain tortured by thoughts and ambitions, fears and anxieties, concerns of all kinds, which keep us tense and overly active even when there is no apparent need to be. Animals become tense and anxious when they are threatened, or when they need to hunt for survival. Otherwise, they simply relax and stand "at ease". Humans, on the other hand, are always suffering some degree of tension and anxiety that seems part of our nature, and yet it's difficult to see how humans, as animals, could have evolved this disposition on their own, naturally. The explanations science has come up with for this have to do with our evolved brains and its higher capacities for intelligent, conceptual thought and imagination. However, this explanation does not seem entirely plausible. If we look at the animal world, those creatures which are the most intelligent do not seem to be more anxious than others who are less evolved. Bears, wolves, pigs, whales, dolphins, parrots, and so on, are not more anxious than less intelligent creatures like mice, pigeons, snakes or lizards. There does not appear to be anything in the natural evolutionary process which sacrifices psychological well-being in favor of some imaginative process that increases survival. To the contrary, in fact.

If human beings had evolved in a purely natural fashion, meaning without the factor of reincarnation modifying the results, we probably would have taken much longer to develop the kinds of conceptual capabilities we possess, but we would also be much more soundly adapted to them psychologically. It's not merely that there is something artificial about human reincarnation, and that it has put burdens on the physical organism that are unnatural to it -although that's definitely a factor - it's that the existential structure of reincarnation magnifies the dualisms already in place in physical and spiritual organisms, creating a much more deeply "divided" sense of consciousness. This division creates existential problems within our lives all the way up and down the line, and one of the primary divisions it creates is what is referred to in the psychological literature as "the shadow".

Freud's description of the unconscious created a concept by which we can understand that much of our own consciousness and its operating processes occur below the threshold of our conscious minds. We each have subconscious and unconscious processes in our psyches which we are not directly aware of, that nevertheless can control us to a significant degree. Freud's own theory of the unconscious postulated that these various hidden processes and functions were in reality rooted in the physiology of the body, the brain, and the nervous system, but that our understanding of these was too primitive to grasp the underlying biology of it all, and thus it could only be studied as it appeared in the psyche. Jung developed this concept of the unconscious in a different direction, postulating that many of the features of the psyche were not merely rooted in the individual's body-mind, but in an underlying structure of consciousness that he called the "collective unconsciousness". This collective unconsciousness manifested in our psyche in the form of universal archetypes, which functioned almost as autonomous self-conscious entities within us, competing for dominance and influence, which we as the ego, or the central conscious awareness, were constantly having to keep in check and make use of in an intelligent way. If we let these archetypal forces within us get out of control, they can wreck havoc in our psyche, cause all kinds of problems, and control our behaviors in ways that are often detrimental to us.

One of the central archetypes in Jung's system is the Shadow, which is a representation of the repressed and suppressed elements of the psyche which we cannot properly incorporate or integrate into our sense of self, and thus it operates as an unconscious entity within us, influencing and even controlling us from a place we cannot see. It is our "blind spot", and tends to cause us all kinds of troubles until we become conscious of it and are able to integrate it into ourselves properly. Until we do it, we tend to project this Shadow outward onto others, onto the world, even onto aspects of ourselves and our self-image that we are alienated from. We develop a sense of self and others that is "dark", even evil, and yet we are unaware of the origins of this sense of evil. Instead, it becomes a deep mystery to us, and we end up pointing the finger at others, as if it comes from them, although a part of us fears that we, too, have evil in us.

A proper understanding of the process of reincarnation sheds a great deal of life on the human problem of evil, using and explaining both the Freudian and Jungian views. Freud's notion that these psychological processes are rooted in physiology are quite true, and yet the real structure of our own physiology is largely unknown to us, since it is rooted in the spirit dimension of our psyche, which is where we actually live and function from. The human body and nervous system are simply one aspect of a larger organic system that is subtle in nature, but which we are not commonly consciously aware of. This unconsciousness of our own spiritual nature is what creates the primary forms of the Shadow in our psyche. And likewise, the fundamental nature of spirit is collective, inter-connected, and universal, which the physical organism is not, at least not in anything like the way that spirit is. Thus, our "collective unconsciousness" as Jung called it is actually a physiological feature of our greater organic body-complex, linked to our physical body through the network of subtle connections that make up our deeper self.

This larger network creates a far greater sense of tension and separation within the human psyche than any merely physical or spirit entity would experience. As mentioned, even spirit or physical beings experience an existential sense of separation, of a difference between the observing consciousness and the observed world. And yet for such creatures this difference is relatively simple, and coping with it occurs rather naturally. Such creatures are, when not feeling directly threatened, largely able to simply relax and feel something of their deeper nature, the very nature of nature, without complication. However, there are limitations to this easeful simplicity: these creatures are not easily able to see themselves, since they are not able to gain a perspective outside themselves that allows for that kind of discriminative view to develop. They simply feel themselves to be what they appear to be, whether it is physical or spiritual in nature. Which is why some spirits choose the process of reincarnation. They find that in becoming human, in identifying with a material organism in a material world, that a great capacity for self-knowledge, self-reflection, and self-understanding develops. The drawback to this is the tension and anxiety and very difficult psychic life this implies for the reincarnational entity.

Human life, therefore, is very much a "play within a play", the purpose of which is to "catch the conscience of the King", as Hamlet described it. In this sense our conscience is greater than a mere moral sense of right and wrong, it is a deeper spiritual sense of self-awareness, stimulated in us by the conscious choices we make as spiritual beings in human form (Hamlet's father, the Ghost, is the spirit-self speaking to Hamlet, trying to motivate him to greater self-awareness and self-understanding). The structure of reincarnation creates a play within the physical worlds that seems all to real to us, and yet it is bounded on all sides by the unknowable boundaries of outer birth and death, and within us of our own shadows and archetypal structures of the psyche. Within that structure of awareness, our sense of not knowing ourselves is magnified, since not only to we suffer from the basic unknowability of the observing consciousness, and of what we observe, but of even our own spiritual selves, which we feel to be apart form the physical world because it actually is. This creates "shadows within the shadows" of our own psyche, so to speak. And it is these shadows with the shadows that give rise to the problem of evil that we identify within ourselves and project upon the world.

This problem is not merely a conceptual or psychic one, we must keep in mind, but has its roots in the organic processes involved in reincarnation itself. There are three aspects to this, one being the difficulty in developing a full and healthy interconnected interface between the spirit and the physical bodies, the second being that of responsibly taking control of that connection from the spiritual side of our being, and the third part is one of becoming directly conscious of this entire process without creating illusory reflections within our own minds and bodies. If we look at the common examples of what is generally called "evil" in our world, they fit into one or more of these categories.

The most common and in some ways the simplest forms of evil we encounter are the result of "disorientation", one might call it. An individual simply fails to orient themselves properly in their psycho-spiritual life. They fail to grow the full set of healthy connections to the physical body that would enable them to relate to it properly. These individuals are simply "undeveloped" in the most basic sense, and the sometimes act in terrible ways as a result. These include many of the mentally ill, sociopaths, common criminals, and people of limited psychological capacity who simply "get out of control". They are out of control simply because they have not yet developed the full neural spiritual connections that would enable them to control the physical body and brain. It eludes them, and they struggle with fairly basic human problems as a result. In some cases, this means that the physical organism literally begins to act on its own, doing things that make no sense, because it is not receiving the proper controlling influences from the spirit realms, and it develops strange unconscious drives that it cannot comprehend or deal with. The organism would normally never be confronted with such drives if it were not a reincarnational vehicle, but even worse, the evolutionary adaptations that have developed in the physical vehicle to make reincarnation possible also leave it unable to function normally without the responsible input form our spiritual selves, and without that input, it can fall into extremes of dysfunction. In some cases, the "faulty wiring" between the spirit and the physical bodies can create truly disturbed and even "diabolical" results. We find the worst examples of such failings in depraved killers, rapists, criminals, sociopaths, drug users, alcoholics, etc. These people simply allow the physical body to get out of control, and when it does so, the burdens of reincarnation create aberated psychic patterns that would not normally exist in these organisms. Not having conscious control of the body, it becomes taken over by our shadow, the dark dimension behind the reflected self that is created in the process of reincarnation.

A second kind of evil comes into being in people who are more organized and developed in their psychic connections, but are deeply controlled by the existential anxiety of the reincarnational self, and rather than be responsibly aware if this anxiety on an internal level, they constantly project it onto others, and the world, and create a universe in which they are constantly battling with others, competing with others, in an attempt to solve the existential problem of the reincarnational self and its shadow, its lack of awareness of its own spiritual self. Such people even develop immense cosmological notions about the universe as a battle between the force of "good and evil", and of course see themselves as the good, and project the evil onto their enemies. This is probably the most persistant and problematic manifestation of the reincarnational shadow, as most of the organized strife in the world centers upon this problem. Warfare, economic exploitation, environmental degradation, even much of our chronic disease comes from this form of "evil", which is really just the result of a failure to internalize and becoming aware of our shadow.

Most of the psychological therapies people engage in are forms of what is sometimes called "shadow work", which involves becoming aware of one's shadow, and not projecting it onto others, but instead working with it internally. This has many very valid aspects to it, but unless it results in a spiritual understanding of our reincarnational situation, it can't fully succeed. Reincarnation creates an internal shadow in our awareness that is not resolved unless light is brought to the entire reincarnational process, which means that we have to become aware of our own basic situation as spirits attached to physical bodies. If we don't, we can't fully conquer the potentials for evil in us.

A third kind of "evil" can thus be created in more developed individuals who are unable to recognize this shadow of the existential reincarnational self as being a part of our shared collective unconscious. This kind of evil is something we are more commonly aware of in ourselves, and it is also far more pernicious when it takes us over, because it is not nearly as crude and obvious in most cases. This is our common, psychological shadow, that even relatively healthy, intelligent "good" people project onto the ordinary world around them. It creates and organizes a moral universe around the self, and yet it does not recognize that universe as a reflection of its own structure of mind, but sees it as in independent structure of forces and entities that must be analyzed, understood, and controlled from the perspective of the born individual - meaning, the body and mind as physical mechanisms. This is the "scientific" and secular viewpoint of the modern world, including that of modern psychology, and while it represents an attempt to be responsible within our world as it appears, it has its own shadow that it cannot evade or escape, which is the spiritual self itself. That spiritual self, when relegated to the shadows, emerges as a counterforce that creates endless conflict and dissension within not just ourselves, but our entire world of relationships here on earth. It also creates disturbances and weaknesses in our links to the physical world, and interodruces chronic patterns of behavior and conceptual illusions that are very hard to undo, but end up reinforcing themselves. One of those illusions is the existence of metaphysical evil itself, as well as all kinds of metaphysical ideations that have no genuine correspondence to metaphysical reality, but are the products of our own "shadow". The apparent fact of evil in the world only reinforces the notion that metaphysical evil exists "out there". However, even getting past this by ridding oneself of all metaphysical notions doesn't solve the problem, but only exacerbates it, because it continues to suppress the basic facts of our reincarnational existence, thus further adding to the shadow we experience in our lives.

Past-life therapies such as those offered by Newton and Weiss work in large part merely by helping people to become aware of the structure and source of their unconscious patterns and conflicts. This kind of knowledge does not necessarily solve these problems in themselves, it merely enables us to work with them consciously, aware of their basic nature, and this more than anything relieves us of much of the existential difficulty that arises in the course of our lives. Greater awareness of our own nature helps us restructure our psyche in ways that are both healthy and realistic, no longer oriented towards metaphysical illusions, or requiring us to reject metaphysics entirely, but recognizing our actual situation in this world and the unique challenges we face as human beings. The simple fact is that greater awareness is the single most important aspect of psychic and psychological healing, and if we are not getting better, it is often because we are not aware of the reality of our own lives. There's a school of secular psychology and philosophy which prides itself on being highly "knowing" of oneself, and yet deeply unhappy still, as if greater knowing about ourselves will lead to a greater sense of suffering. This simply isn't true, but is a symptom once again of the Shadow created by both the reincarnational self and our ignorance of it. If we gain direct knowledge of our self by the direct observation of ourselves, this kind of existential conflict without our "dark side" begins to evaporate.

The problem of evil, therefore, is metaphysical only in the sense that it is a reflection of the metaphysical connection between the spirit and the physical body. This is not inevitable, but is merely a stage in our growth as human spirits. It occurs as a result of ignorance of our deeper structure, and it is eliminated as we become more deeply aware of that structure. Evil is therefore a spiritual problem, to be solved by spiritual means, not secular ones. As we develop as spirits, we begin to see that evil is simply a form of undeveloped self-awareness, limited and suppressed by the existential constraints of the reincarnating self. This is not even a "mistake" in any greater sense of the word, in that this is part and parcel of the reason we incarnate as humans in the first place - to face these kinds of extreme challenges that aren't present outside the context of reincarnation. These extreme challenges take the ordinary dualities of conditional existence and magnify them even further, creating dualities within duality, almost ad infinitum, and thus forcing us to face the problem of duality itself and all of its ramifications in spiritual and existential terms. The purpose of that is not to create and tension-free human life of paradaisical nature. It is to create a dynamic school for spirits to gain greater self-knowledge about themselves through dramatic confrontation with the kinds of shadows which incarnation brings about, until they are resolved in our psyche.

The Purpose of Reincarnation

Continuing with our reincarnation thread, I keep meaning to discuss in greater depth the actual experience of consciousness after death, or as Michael Newton calls it in the title of his book, "Life Between Lives". As I said earlier, the only serious problem with the picture Newton describes of the afterlife is the result, I believe, of his method: hypnotic regression. This method is quite sound for the purpose Newton originally used it, which is to find the past-life patterns that appear in an individual's present life seemingly without causal foundation in this life, and which result in unconscious stress and pain that can be relieved to some degree, or at least put on the plane of conscious awareness that allows us to deal with it directly, by bringing certain memories of past lives, or the period between lives, into our awareness.

The problem comes in not realizing that this method tends to compress and edit our memories through the same medium that suppressed them originally - our bodily brain and nervous system. We can't take too literally the testimony of Newton's patients, therefore (not that we can take literally the testimony of religious people, even traditional mystics, in describing the experiences we might have after this life). We have to keep in mind that we naturally suppress memories of past lives and subtle afterlife experience for good reasons - to start each life anew, with the opportunity for new experience that is free of the burdens of conscious memories and patterning. Hypnotic regression bypasses some layers of this natural repression, but it does not, and cannot, bypass all of them. Thus, when Newton's patients describe the death process and the afterlife, a good deal of important detail is still left out, especially those parts which can be traumatic and difficult or just plain incomprehensible from the material perspective.

For example, Newton's patients often describe that after death, or even just before it, they quickly pass out of the body and go into the subtle realms of after-death life, without any serious difficulty or "rites of passage" so to speak. This simply isn't true in virtually anyone's case, but I can see how memories of the death process could easily be edited down to the bare bones, compressing the process into a simple transition to the subtle worlds that seems just like walking through a door to another room. In reality, separating from the physical body simply doesn't happen in an instant, it requires a process of slow disentanglement as the connections to the body are released. That process involves the processing of a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings and emotions, as the body begins to decay and our subtle layerings of mind are stripped down to their bare essentials. Likewise, the "journey" back to the subtle worlds, in which attention moves from the material universe back to its subtle origins, involves a fair amount of traumatic processing and realignment. It doesn't happen in an instant. It may happen in a day, more commonly a few days, although from the perspective of the spirit transitioning out of the body all such temporal references may become entangled as well. The confusions in hypnotically recalled memories of this death process are the result of the patient's mind compressing that whole experience into a single, summary "event", as if we really did just pop out of the body and land in a subtle world, when in reality it was much more complex than that, and often much more of an ordeal.

A similar problem occurs in the memories recalled by Newton's patients of the subtle worlds themselves. There's a great deal of compression, and the substitution of symbolic metaphors for literal experience. For example, Newton's patients almost universally describe the afterlife worlds as a kind of "school", with actual classes, classrooms, teachers, guides, lectures, lesson plans, a structured hierarchy, grades, levels of maturity, graduations, seminars, reviews, libraries, and so forth. This isn't even untrue, to be sure, in a certain basic sense. However, much of this recollected structure is in fact the result of modern westerners trying to fit these subtle memories into a form that's immediately comprehensible to their own brain's experience of this world, not the subtle worlds. Virtually all of us have the experience of going to school for years on end, and thus we tend to translate subtle experience into that extended metaphor because it's familiar to us. The mind tends to interpret the past based on its present conception of reality, and thus many of these recalled memories are not as direct as they seem to be, but are in fact still processed through our present structure of mind, which interprets them through symbols and experience we are familiar with.

On the other hand, the symbolic metaphor of the afterlife as a "school system" isn't a bad one at all, and probably serves us quite well in trying to understand what that world is like. The truth is that the subtle worlds simply aren't much like the material worlds at all. They don't even have the same fundamental structure of time and space. Our experience of them is simply not like our experience of this physical realm, and our senses in the subtle world don't obey the same kinds of laws as they do in the physical world. Nor do our subtle minds structure experience in the same way that our brains structure the experience of the material world. Much of the confusion is natural, in that while alive our subtle minds submit themselves to the physical brain's experiential structure to a significant degree. Thus, the picture in our mind that develops of the material world is largely governed by the brain itself, and its particular functioning. But that doesn't mean that our minds are actually, at root, structured this way. In fact, it's an unnatural experience for the mind to be confined to the experiential dimensions of the physical brain and its relationship to the material world. A lot of our anxiety and difficulty in functioning psychologically is due to this sense of confinement and disorientation that reincarnation brings about, and can't altogether be undone without profound growth in spiritual awareness - and even then, it's hardly a done deal.

That said, Newton's patients do seem to recall a good deal of valid data about the afterlife, as long as we keep in mind the notion that it's a loose translation of symbolic information rather than a direct memory. For example, they describe various processes of reviewing the most recent life in some detail, going over the details of how we lived, the decisions we made, and trying to learn from this experience. That's all quite valid, even something of a cliche because so many people have said similar things it's almost redundant. Likewise, the notion that we re-unite with the souls of people we were close to in this and other past lives is also true, and again, something of a universal cliche, yet for good reasons. So is the description of what could be called "karmic groups", souls that generally associate with one another both in this life and the afterlife, and who engage in a series of pre-planned encounters in this life which enable them to retain some sense of familiarity and continuity even within the chaos of the material world.

The basic lessons drawn from this are also quite valid, the first being that our lives here, no matter how miserable or traumatic, have real meaning and value to us as souls. The second would be that we literally chose the life we have led, and even the basic outlines of the events that occur within it, even when they might seem random or accidental. The purpose of this life is not to be found within its own structure, however. We are not here to literal attain worldly success, but to hone ourselves as spirits through the various trials and tribulations and challenges offered by material life.

One of the best points made in Newton's books is that from the point of view of our own spiritual selves, the material world is simply not our home, the subtle world is. This is of course a natural bias for spirits, and yet that is just who we are as living beings. We are not material bodies, even in the functional sense. We are always spirits who are connecting to material bodies for a purpose that serves us spiritually, regardless of how it seems to turn out within the material world. A man might be quite the failure in worldly terms, and yet be learning tremendously from this life, and benefiting spiritually in great ways, and this is what matters to us most, bottom line. Likewise, those enjoying material success may not be doing so well in their spiritual growth and understanding. One funny comment Newton's patients often make is that there are a number of "young souls" who just like to have fun lifetimes, incarnating as pretty people with lots of money, and they don't really grow much or gain any wisdom, but just move from life to life like the party-goers they are. Even this, of course, serves them, just more slowly, as they gradually begin to realize the futility of this, and eventually start to get serious about making use of the potential in the reincarnation process for much more profoundly expanded spiritual experience and understanding. At that point they will actually choose lives of great difficulty or even tragedy, because of how it actually benefits them.

That aspect of our lives is very easy to forget, for the same reason that we forget our past lives and subtle experience when we incarnate. In the first place, incarnation means attaching ourselves to physical bodies and physical brains, and the physical body has no past lives. It is simply built from the constituent material of the physical world. It's only "past" is its genetic inheritance through evolutionary processes, Darwinian and otherwise. As long as our subtle awareness is subsumed in the experience of the physical body, that seems to be the defining structure of our minds and life. And seeing the experiences of this world purely from the perspective of the physical body makes much of it incomprehensible, meaningless, and even downright cruel and hopeless.

The problem of theodicy, of why God would have created a world with such obvious suffering in it, haunts those who only look at the world from the physical perspective, and imagine God as some creator who put us here whether we liked it or not. This simply isn't the case in any respect at all. First, we are not here because anyone put us here but ourselves. The decision to incarnate in the physical worlds is ours alone, and no one else is to blame. Second, the sufferings of this world are precisely "designed", you might even say, to trigger deep spiritual crises in us that offer us the ability to grow deeply in the midst of them. Tragic deaths, sufferings of all kinds, separations, fearful situations, sorrowful losses, angry frustrations, all of this serves a real spiritual purpose in us, as spirits. And yes, knowing this does in fact make it a bit easier to deal with these nightmares. It allows us to position ourselves properly in the midst of whatever is going on in our lives as a spiritual witness to these events, as someone who is learning to expand their primal feeling-capacity through both pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, love and hate.

Ramana Maharshi once said that the biggest mistake most people make in their lives is to thank God when good things happen in their lives, but not to thank him when seemingly bad things happen. He said that true wisdom is to thank God regardless of what happens, to treat both the good and the bad as expressions of God's love for us, and to value them equally. By valuing all experience equally, we are able to go beyond experience itself to the very heart of our own spiritual awareness.

It needs to be mentioned that spirits are also simply struggling to come to the point of understanding themselves and know their real nature and origin. We might tend to think that recognizing ourselves as spirits and knowing that we come from the spirit realms to incarnate here is some kind of great accomplishment, but it simply isn't. Being a spirit in the afterlife worlds is still an experience of conditional bewilderment of a kind, just not as complicated for us as reincarnational bewilderment. Spirits themselves don't fully comprehend their own nature or spiritual origin, and have trouble feeling the depths of their own being. That's precisely why they choose to incarnate, because the experience of incarnation helps expand and deepen their spiritual sense of themselves. So of course it's good to recognize ourselves as spirits, but it's merely the beginning of learning how to grow as spirits here, not itself some final goal.

There's a mistake many make who get involved in spiritual paths that our purpose is to get out of here, to ascend into the subtle worlds and put our attention on the various yogic processes which might seem to offer some kind of relief here. Many of these paths have it exactly backwards. The whole point of incarnating is to incarnate, not to disassociate from the physical, but to experience the physical spiritually. this means making use of physical experience as a means of spiritual deepening, which primarily means learning to feel to the depths of our being. The physical itself is not the depth of our being, it's fairly superficial, but the spiritual capacity to feel the physical has great potential to deepen us. Thus, the human experience of sensuality has profound spiritual value to us. It's not something to turn away from because the physical is not, itself, spiritual. It's certainly true, however, that sensual experience is not, in itself, meaningful to us spiritually. But it does offer a way of being spiritually awake that would not be available in the spirit realms themselves. However, this doesn't mean that the pursuit of exaggerated sensual experiences are terribly valuable. We are having a sensual experience at this very moment, and the point of that is to recognize it and experience it spiritually, since that is what we are in this moment. There is no need for exaggerated experience. In fact, that can often be a distraction from the spiritual purpose of sensuality and physicality. Often, it's the sign of someone who is simply unable to find the spiritual significance of our ordinary sensual experience. They try to experience great or overwhelming sensual pleasure, or pain, in the attempt to feel more deeply. In many cases, some of that is even necessary or useful. But maturity comes with the recognition that the most ordinary of sensual experiences, of simply being alive through a physical body, relaxed and at ease with itself, is actually the most profound. We are able to grow most dramatically through a lack of drama, we are able to learn the greatest lessons through the smallest of lessons, and we are able to experience the most moving pleasures through the simplest of pleasures. And the same is true of pain itself, which teaches us just as much as pleasure does.

The point of all such experiences is to be turned back upon our own real source and nature, in consciousness, not in experience itself. When we do so, experience begins to unfold and reveal itself to us in a different mode entirely. We begin to see and appreciate everything around us as a manifestation of our highest spiritual influences, as God working through the world, rather than the world as some foreign place we have fallen into through sin. Our experience of the world transforms, and we see the universe itself as conspiring to make us happy - not to fulfill us materially, but to make us happy spiritually. Existential suffering, it slowly dawns upon us, is a matter of perspective, and a simple flip in our perspective can completely transform and undo the chronic patterns of misery which we have seemed bound to. The purpose of our spiritual journey is to gain this perspective, which liberates us from suffering in many important ways even if barely touched and glimpsed. If embraced and surrendered to, it turns our very being inside out, and the entire universe also, on every level we surrender to this process.

The Subtle Locus of Attention

Getting back to the reincarnation thread, I wanted to toss in a reference I found in an article via Integral Options Cafe, called "Five kinds of self/self-knowledge" at The Mouse Trap, an excellent psychology and neuroscience blog. The article is on a complex human developmental stage theory that describes childhood development and the issue of "optical flow", which is how children organize their concept of the world around visual cues:

One surprising bit of evidence for the importance of optical flow for the ecological self comes from a phenomenon investigated by Flavell, Shipstead & Croft (1980). The phenomenon is amusing in its own right and has often been described: young children cover their eyes with their hands and say “You can’t see me!” Prior to the work of Flavell et al. (1980), this behavior was typically interpreted in Piagetian terms: since the child cannot see anything, s/he assumes that you can’t see anything either. Indeed, when these experimenters asked their eyes-covered subjects “Can I see you?”, most 2- and 3-year-olds answered No. Surprisingly, however, the same subjects answered Yes to many other questions about what the experimenter could see. “Can I see Snoopy (a doll located nearby)?” Yes. “Can I see your leg?” Yes. “Can I see your head?” Yes. These results show that “You can’t see me” does not reflect any egocentric misapprehension about other people’s seeing; rather, it is a clue to the speaker’s own conception of self. The child’s ‘me’—the entity to which the adult’s question “Can I see you?” refers—is evidently somewhere near the eyes. To be sure, that localisation is not precise: Flavell et al. got mixed results when they had their subjects cover only one eye, or stand behind a barrier with a hole in it so that nothing but an eye was visible. Nevertheless the implication seems clear: children locate the self at the point of observation, as specified by the optical flow field.

Putting psychology aside for a moment, this is interesting because it helps locate the "point" of self within the human experience as this place just behind the eyes, from which humans tend to observe their experience. This point happens to correspond to what in the yogic systems of India is called the "Ajna Door", a yogic center behind the eyes, often associated with the pineal gland at the center of the brain. This center has numerous mystical meanings, but its primary one is as the seat of the "antahkarana", which is perhaps best translated in western psychological terms as "attention", or simply the functional ego.

The antahkarana is the subject of a lot of western and theosophical mystical teachings, some valid, some not so much. If one does a little research, one finds it described in the teachings of Alice Bailey (whom I've never read), among others, as this article by Benjamin Creme describes. The general idea in these approaches is that the antahkarana is the "bridge" between the lower and the higher self, and that activating this bridge is an important step in the spiritual growth of the individual, helping aid the transition from being a rather helpless character lost in the process of incarnation, to one who is beginning to recognize and consciously make use of this connection.

That process is much simpler than a lot of these people would make it out to be. One need not be a mystical yogi to take advantage of this "bridge", since it is present in everyone, whether they are conscious of it or not. In many respects it's not even mystical at all, since it is the most obvious aspect of our conscious lives. The antahkarana, after all, is simply attention itself, as we experience it in every moment of our ordinary lives, not just in some heightened state of mystical awareness. It's the basic mode of awareness itself, regardless of the "state" we are in. It's just that we tend not to recognize that our ordinary awareness is rooted in a subtle "place" of observation, which is this "Ajna Door" behind the eyes.

In the modern, scientific materialist age we tend to see this phenomena of attention as a purely neurological function of our optical senses helping to form this basic sense of "self". And we tend not to actually examine this feeling of self, or where it is located, via our own direct experience. Instead, we tend to think of our self in conceptual or psychological terms, without being attentive to the actual observational pattern of our consciousness. In other words, we tend to think, big deal, so we feel ourselves to be located behind the eyes, looking out? And so what if we develop the habit of thinking of ourselves as located in this place behind the eyes, even when not using our eyes to see?

Well, I'd suggest that it's a bigger deal than we generally recognize, and much more important to our functioning in life than we usually make use of. Even the child recognizes that this basic sense of self arises as attention, located behind the eyes. If we simply observed this phenomena more closely, we would begin to notice that this "Ajna Door" is really just that - a doorway that opens onto the world we observe and live in. Not a doorway out of this world, to subtle worlds, and away from the physical body - though some may view it that way. In reality, it's the door for entering into this world, and into the body. It's the pathway the subtle self takes to connect to the nervous system of the body and brain, and the principle vehicle for assembling physical experience into something the subtle mind can comprehend and make use of and intelligently interact with.

One of the things that makes our brain function different from non-reincarnating animals is the degree to which it processes both sensory and cognitive information in a way that can be transmitted and made comprehensible by the subtle mind of our spirit-selves. That kind of processing power is meaningless to a non-reincarnating biological organism, and hence it doesn't exist in such creatures. For us it does, and the developmental capacity of these functions is a leading part of our evolutionary development, even being selected for in strictly Darwinian terms. Other organisms don't organize their cognitive or sensory processing as we do, because they don't need to connect to the spirit-world. This makes our brains function in a very different way than material nature alone would shape them. Instead, we are shaped from our own spirit self as well, even if we don't consciously recognize that this is what is going on.

If we do begin to recognize what is going on, we can take advantage of this capacity to a much greater degree than we might otherwise make use of. That is the point of understanding this conscious "bridge" behind the eyes, and where we are actually observing this life from, and what mechanisms we use to connect to the physical. The primary connection is a conscious one, of awareness itself penetrating into the physical through this "Ajna Door". That subtle connection is a key part of the process of incarnation for all of us, and it can be accentuated merely by being attentive to it.

Ramakrishna used to say that the difference between a spiritual approach to the world and a worldly approach is like the difference between a mother taking care of a child at play, and the child himself. The child is absorbed in the toy he is playing with, but the mother is not watching the toy, she is watching the child. The child is only attentive to the world of objects, but the mother is attentive to the child who is absorbed in objects. Similarly, the ordinary bodily character tends to be absorbed in the various "things" of this world. In some sense that is natural, because the physical body and its senses are a thing of this world. But the spiritual approach to the body is to be attentive not merely to the body, but to the mind which is attentive to the body. By observing the mind, we take on the role of the "parent", the responsible self who understands what is important in life, and who can take care of us properly. The child doesn't have that capacity to be responsible, because it is absorbed its toys, and it gets upset when the toys are taken away. But the parent can help the child see that there is something more going on that the toys, there is a bigger world, and a more enjoyable world, that centers on the loving relationship between mother and child.

That "parental self" is not merely the psychological superego, as Freudian psychology would describe it. It is actually our higher, reincarnational self functioning as the subtle mind, the spirit-attention which drives our real participation in this life. So the basic development of a "spiritual self" simply involves being attentive to our own minds, our "antahkarana", the bridge of attention between mind and body, between spirit and material, and functioning with the awareness of this process in the midst of the ordinary play of life, like the mother watching her child rather than the toys the child plays with. This is the route to human responsibility and happiness. It helps ween us of our obsessive attachment to "toys" of all kinds. Not that we have to do without toys, but we need to recognize that our attachment to them can blind us to the real nature of our life here, which is a spiritual one, not one of material objects alone.

If one could point to the source of most of humanity's recurrent problems, it is this matter of being "childish", of being obsessed with our toys the degree that we are unconscious of own own minds and what the mind really represents - of being unwilling to consciously assume the "adult" position of being attentive to the child in us, but instead all too often letting the child overwhelm us with his desires, frustrations, and tantrums. The child has to be cared for lovingly, which does not mean being indulged, it just means being observed attentively. If we were to be more attentive to ourselves in this manner, a great deal of foolishness could be circumvented, or more accurately grown past. That process involves awakening this "Ajna Door", and letting more consciousness into our life from the subtle world, which means letting our deeper self have more of a role in our lives, rather than just the relatively childish physical self have its way.

In the Indian tradition, it is often recommended that spiritual aspirants meditate on this point between the eyes, the Ajna Door. However, taking this advice literally is not terribly helpful. Screwing up one's eyes trying to gaze upon our "third eye" hasn't got much real spiritual value, and won't produce much results other than eyestrain. Instead, what is meant by this kind of meditative practice is merely to be aware of this subtle place from which the observing self enters into this bodily life. It means to merely be attentive to the mind that observes this bodily self and world, which is located at the Ajna Door, to be sure, but which cannot be seen by any conventional method of mind. It must simply be felt more and more in a natural way, without necessarily trying to locate it physically as a place behind the eyes. It will simply emerge naturally in that position as we become more attentive to ourselves and our minds.

This point behind the eyes is not to be confused with the locating of the Self in the heart on the right, as one finds in Ramana Maharshi's teachings. We are not describing the Self in that highest sense, only the ordinary subtle self in the strictly egoic terms of functional attention. Of course, a number of mystical yogic traditions do in fact equate the Ajna Door with the ultimate Self, and most of them are mistaken, in that they equate true Self-Realization with a full and complete emergence of the higher, subtle self. Such realization, while great and wonderful, is not the same as the kind of Realization Ramana and the highest kinds of jnanis speak of. Nonetheless, it's an important practical understanding that certainly does help make us more receptive to such jnana.

Nisargadatta used to say that it's not a good idea to teach non-dualism to children, because they are not ready for it and it might even stunt their development. In a similar fashion, it's important to note that non-dualism is not for spiritual "children" either, by which I mean those who are not aware of their own minds, but who are instead busily absorbed in their "toys". Such people can't expect to understand non-dualism, or make proper use of its teachigns, and they can easily become deluded if they try, and even spiritually stunted in their growth. First, they have to become simply and steadily attentive to their own minds, and allow this spiritual connection to the world to grow through the portal of the Ajna Door. The beginning phases of self-enquiry can serve this purpose if taken on rightly, as a process of simple observation rather than obsessive seeking for one's "self" as an object. Other forms of spiritual practice can likewise serve this same purpose, from the use of a mantra to meditative practices of various kinds, so long as the primary role of the mind is one of self-reflection, rather than obsessive concentration upon an object. To find out "who we are" requires that the one who enquires or meditates has established a conscious link to the sources of his own mind, which means being consciously aware of the link between the subtle mind and the physical body, and actually developing this, by growing the necessary psycho-neural pathways to the subtle mind. Once that is done, it's possible to explore the deeper links between the subtle mind and the universal Self, but without that, it's virtually a hopeless search that merely ties oneself in knots, and does not result in any meaningful spiritual result, but instead a kind of tamasic dullness.

Getting back to the antahkarana, this center behind the eyes, the "doorway" of perception, is what we normally refer to as the ego, the self, the "person" within our body-mind, the personality as it were. We refer to this very often in our desire to look into one another's eyes to find one another's souls. Of course there's no such "thing" in the eyes, or in the physical body. The pineal gland has no such biological function. But the stark experience of being a "self" certainly does have this feeling, the root of which is beyond the physical for the simple reason that we are beyond the physical, even in our most basic sense of self. The ajna doorway is the root this self takes to enter into the body, and thus in some mystical paths it's the root recommended for going beyond the body. However, the admonition to meditate on the ajna door is not properly a method for going beyond the body, since we are already beyond the body. Rather, it is a method for coming into the body more powerfully and effectively. The method of incarnation is one of our attention coming into the body through this ajna door behind the eyes, and to do so consciously, rather than merely subliminally - actively, rather than passively, as is the case for many.

To enter into the body through the ajna door as attention creates a powerful dynamic in the reincarnate personality. It allows us to be more than just a physical self going passively along with whatever the physical body and world offer to us in the way of experience. Instead of merely letting this body and world deliver up its quotient of karma, of causes and effects, the reincarnate character is able to infuse them with an intelligence that extends beyond the body, deep into the subtle worlds. The full range of one's subtle experience begins to become accessible to us, not necessarily in the form of memory or perception, but as conscious capability and interior strength. This includes the full range of intelligence and capability built up through our own past lives, and also those we gain by mere connection to the vast complex of the subtle worlds themselves, in which no individuals are entirely separate, but exist within a matrix of deeply connected patterns in consciousness, such that no one is actually a truly separate individual, but all share one another's capacities at various levels. The more one explores the subtle reality of our deeper selves, the more it becomes apparent that we are not a series of separate individuals, but a vastly complex Self with infinite shades and faces, and that we are each merely a single viewpoint within an infinitely varied multi-dimensional mind.

Attention itself has no personal identity, and even the subtle worlds' many spirits are not truly separate from one another. It is only in the material worlds that separation seems wholly real to many of us, and that only because of the unique confusion introduced by the reincarnational juxtapositioning of a subtle self with a material body. Material, biological bodies without reincarnational complications simply don't share this confused state of mind with us, in which we assume ourselves to be genuinely separate. Most animals, insects, plants, microbes, and other creatures don't make that assumption. They recognize themselves intuitively, without having to think about it (since most don't think at all in our sense of the word) as essentially non-separate, as simply interconnected pieces of a whole - in their case, a material whole, an ecosystem as it were. But humans don't naturally identify with the ecosystem, which is why they participate in it so differently, and so exploitively at times. They see themselves as strangely separate from the physical world's ecosysem, and also separate from the subtle spirit realms as well, thus leaving us tragically alone in the midst of this world, something not existentially experienced with much frequency by other spirits, or other physical organisms. We have a unique sense of alienation, therefore, in which the primal sense of separation is intensified in us to a point of often self-destructive conflict.

These conflicts account for much of what can only be called the insanity of mankind. Human beings suffer from the kinds of delusions that would simply not be possible were it not for our reincarnational nature, which means for us an existential structural conflict between mind and body. This is not really a conflict between body and brain, in the sense that without our reincarnational structure there simply would not be much in the way of a serious conflict between the bodily self and the mental, brain-based self. The physical brain is a part of the physical body, and without the reincarnational linkage to our subtle minds, our brain's thinking process would be very much in accord with the body's own process. Instead, we have to work very hard to achieve any kind of "attunement" to our own bodies, which is very strange indeed, but unfortunately true. The "mind-body" split we experience and struggle with is real enough, not a product of the imagination. And yet, of course, the experience of this as a disturbing conflict is a sign that our own process of connecting to the body and brain is incomplete, lacking in the fully grown neural connections from the subtle mind to the physical body we need. This lack manifests itself as a kind of unconsciousness in us, a lack of awareness of who we are, where we are, what we are doing here, and a kind of partial shutdown of the Ajna Doorway, among other structural defects.

Mental illness and psychological disorientation often have a powerful spiritual component in this sense, in that these represent an incomplete neural connectivity to the subtle mind. Of course, there are many purely biological problems that occur in human beings' brains and bodies which can result in a susceptibility to mental illnesses, even some that can make it virtually inevitable, and yet this can be greatly exacerbated, or relieved, by the quality of one's spiritual connection to the mind and body. This means growing stronger and more powerful psychic neural connections to the body and brain, through the nadis, which is not merely a metaphorical process of growth, but a literal one. This even affects the biology of the brain and nervous system, which responds in kind to the deeper patterning of our own spiritual connections to the brain.

Of course, it's also the case that the prevalence of mental illnesses in human beings - particularly in our modern age, in which over half the population seems to be on some kind of medication or other, legal or otherwise - is the result of the complications introduced into our systems by the reincarnational structure of our lives. The kinds of mental illnesses we humans suffer from are not unique, but they are exaggerated in us by the stresses we face in the process of incarnation, and also by the necessary transformations our brain has had to adapt to in the evolutionary process, relatively recent in our history, that has come about due to reincarnational forcings in our own evolutionary path. Our brains are not yet fully adapted in evolutionary terms to our own spiritual structure, and are in fact changing at accelerating rates due to the influx of spiritual energy through the connections to our physical brains. This results in stresses and strains that are not explicable by purely material analysis, and thus no purely material or pharmacological solution exists for them.

This process of neural evolution and biological growth is of course not even considered by science, and it wouldn't even know how to begin to study the process if it wanted to. Science operates by the assumption that our brains are formed by purely material evolutionary processes, and they presume its physiology can be accounted for entirely by such means. While it's understandable that science can't function in relation to forces it cannot observe, we make a terrible mistake in operating from scientific assumptions that presume a reductionist material reality to our own living experience. Our experience simply is not material in nature, and anyone examining their own mind can confirm this. Nor can we ignore the reality that our spiritual nature influences the physical brain and its development, for better and worse. Not all our physical problems are rooted in the spiritual dimension, but most of our psychological problems are. And even our ability to creatively deal with physical problems is rooted in the spiritual dimension directly. Even science takes advantage of the unique creative intelligence that is available to us through our spiritual natures, and even though scientists tend to deny the reality of the subtle mind, they make use of it in any case, in the course of their concentrated study of the physical world from the perspective of the analytical mind.

As mentioned before, the ecological crises we face today are also largely a result of our struggles with incarnation, and of our own challenges in developing a truly healthy connection to the physical world, meaning first of all to our own physical bodies. This requires a spiritual solution, not a political one, except to the degree that our politics are rooted in spirit. And most of all, this requires the development of a healthy antahkarana, a healthy sense of our own spiritual ego, and its ability to function as a proper, conscious bridge from the spirit realm to the physical world. This simply means assuming an active, conscious relationship to one's own mind, rather than a passive, object-oriented and thus subliminal relationship to our minds. Practical solutions can only come about through spiritual means, because our relationship to our own ecosystem is fundamentally a spiritual one, and not a material one. We are not a part of the material ecosystem, if truth be told. We are above and beyond it. We are entering into this earthly ecosystem as foreigners, and not just as any foreigner, but as extremely powerful conquering invaders. We are the alien invaders who have "taken over" this planet. That does not make us bad guys, it's just how it works here for us. The world was created for that purpose in the first place, so it's not as if we should feel ashamed. We just need to learn how to do it right, because if we do, we can be of tremendous benefit to this world and even this entire material universe, as it can be of benefit to us, even especially to our own spiritual growth. Getting it right is therefore extremely important to the spiritual purposes of our birth and ongoing process. And fortunately, getting it right isn't really as hard as it may appear on the material plane itself. It's actually a fairly simple spiritual process that only requires a great deal of patience, persistence, and love. Being attentive to our own mind's nature is the only thing it really requires, and from that flows a natural process of human responsibility. People are starting to get that point, in many big and small ways. This little blog of mine is just one of the many voices pointing this out, and describing the process as it unfolds. The details in everyone's case may always be different, but the essential process is universally coincident, because in reality we really are the same multi-faceted consciousness working through the same set of challenges.

Lakshmana Swamy and Muthra Sir Sarada

I've posted before about Lakshmana Swami and and his devotee Muthra Sri Sarada. Laskshmana Swami realized the Self in Ramana Maharishi's presence on October 1, 1949, at the age of 24, less than a year before Ramana's death. Muthra Sri Sarada realized the Self in Lakshmana's presence on December 18, 1978, at the age of 20. They are the only unbroken line of realization, that I know of, that survives from Ramana Maharshi.


Lakshmana is almost 84, and Saradamma is almost 50. They have lived very private lives, and have never taught publicly, or made themselves available to the public except on special occasions. They only teach select students and have no interest in being part of the Guru circuit. They allow people to meditate, with permission, at the gate of their small ashram in Tiruvanamalai, and may occasionally give Darshan there. The only scheduled Darshan they give is twice a year, on Swamy Lakshmana's birthday, December 25, and on Deepam, which I believe is a festival that occurs in October/November.

There's an excellent little book about them by David Godman, who is a devotee of Lakshmana Swami, called No Mind, I Am The Self, which gives biographical information on both of them, and exerts from their teachings. Unfortunately, there's very little information available about them otherwise, and no other publications with their teachings in it, not I'm sure because David hasn't tried to get them to publish something more.

From the first time I read their book, I felt a powerful attraction to them, particular to Saradamma. I was quite surprised at my response to them, in that having left Adidam some years before with no particular intention of becoming attracted to another Guru figure again, I found myself spontaneously meditating upon her whenever I looked at her photo. And the same become true for Lakshmana Swami. Of course, considering that they don't generally accept devotees from a distance, and the fact that I'm pretty tied up with my family life and work here in the States, it didn't seem like a likely match. Nonetheless, I've remained very attracted to them ever since. Several times I actually tried to write letters to Saradamma, but I could never bring myself to mail them, in part because I was never satisfied with anything I'd written, and in part because I just didn't know how such things would be received on their end. Even so, each time I wrote them I felt as if my questions were answered in my mind without even having mailed the letters.

Recently, I visited their website once again, and was once more so drawn into contemplation by their photos that I felt I just had to write something to them in gratitude. I finally managed to get a letter off a few weeks ago. I haven't gotten any written response, and I don't know if I can even expect something like that, but I did have a very interesting dream about ten days after mailing the letter, which is about how long it might take for it to be delivered and read in India. In the letter I explained that part of my own complicated spiritual history was that I had a long-term relationship with a Guru who I later left. I mentioned this, because at their own website they mentioned that they were not interested in seeing people who already had Gurus.

In this dream, I was at my parents' home back in Connecticut, where I grew up. Adi Da was giving Darshan in the family room, and I was sitting before him in the almost empty room. Shortly after the Darshan began, I got up and left. I went to a secret meditation room in the house that didn't actually exist when I lived there. I sat down in this room, and prayed for a Guru. I prayed with all my heart and soul, and as I did so, I say the blue bindu-light of the ajna door before me. It enlarged into a purplish-blue wave of pure liquid light that expanded and washed all over me in waves of bliss. I can't describe how vivid and powerful this experience was. I felt that I was contacting the true Guru, or really, that the Guru was contacting me, and making a profound connection of some sort on a subtle level. When I woke up from this dream it was still with me, the bliss was so tangible, and the feeling of some profound connection in my heart kept reverberating inside me.

I don't want to draw any kind of unfounded conclusions, but my impression is that this was the result of Saradamma and Lakshmana receiving my letter. I'm going to wait a bit before sending a second letter, but within the next few weeks I probably will, even if I haven't heard anything by snail-mail back from them. It may well be they just don't use conventional methods for sending letters.

Saradamma's sadhana is interesting in that it was entirely devotional in nature, without any resort to self-enquiry, as Lakshmana tried in vain to instruct her in that practice. Instead, she evolved a practice of meditation on his form which carried her all the way to full Self-Realization, in spite of her lack of interest in that goal. Here's an exert from her book describing her sadhana, and her recommendation to devotees:

"I realized the Self by meditating on Swamy's form. In the beginning I used to do japa of 'Hare Lakshmana' but later I stopped and concentrated on his form alone. After some time I was able to sustain Swamy's image in my mind continuously with no other thoughts intruding. As my practice progressed I was even able to visualize him outside the body. Eventually a point was reached when no matter where I looked I saw only Swamy. This practice was good, but the best results came from meditating on him in the Heart.

If you want to meditate on me or Swami it is not good to think of us as objects separate from you. Meditate on us in the Heart for we are really inside you, not outside you. In the later stages of my sadhana I always used to meditate on Swamy in the Heart. Sometimes he would fill my being so completely that I could actually feel that I was Swamy. My face would feel as if it had taken on the shape of Swamy's face and there was a feeling that Swamy had entered or taken over my whole body. By meditating on Swamy in this way I could feel that Swamy and I were one and not separate.

Swamy and I are in your Heart: meditate on us in the Heart and you will discover that we are not apart from you. When you look at our bodies you are only looking at an image created by your mind. Meditate on us in the Heart and you will discover that we are your own Self.

Question: When you say 'meditate on us in the Heart', do you mean that I should visualize an image in the Heart-centre in the same way that you used to do before you realized the Self?

Saradamma: No, that is not real Heart meditation; it is just an exercise in concentration. Meditating in the Heart really means that you should make the mind go back into the Heart so that you can experience the bliss of the Self there. If you are thinking about anything, even mine or Swamy's form, then the mind is still active. If you can give up all thoughts and make the mind completely silent and still, then it will automatically sink into the Heart. Meditation in the Heart really begins when the mind rests quietly in the Heart, absorbed in the bliss of the Self."

This is the kind of sadhana I want to cultivate in my own practice. Thinking is over-rated. Mindless contemplation is what it's all about. That's what real self-enquiry is about as well.

Strangers in a Strange Land

I want to get back to the thread on reincarnation, and discuss life after death, or really, life between lives. But first let's review some of the sources I might refer to on this subject.

There's a lot of literature about reincarnation and spirit realms I can refer people to which might be helpful. In the modern psychological literature, there's the works of Michael Newton (Journey of Souls; Destiny of Souls; Life Between Lives, etc.) and Brian Weiss, M.D. (Same Soul, Many Bodies; Many Lives, Many Masters; Only Love is Real, etc.), both of whom are practicing psychologists who stumbled into past-life regression therapy during their therapeutic practice by accident, in the course of using hypnotherapy to treat people with psychological disorders. Most people did not come to them originally for past-life regressions, and he only used the technique when the patient's teleology indicated it would be useful, but the results were striking nonetheless. In a great many cases, it was observed that the various patterns and traumas that some patients were experiencing did not have clear origins in this lifetime, even in early childhood, but were rooted in the experiences of previous lifetimes. In the course of uncovering these unconscious memories of past lives, they found that patients often benefited significantly simply from having these memories become conscious, and thus providing a larger context for understanding the various problems they were experiencing in this life, even with people in this life who they had a long history of conflict with in past lives.

Michael Newton's books are particularly interesting to me, in that he made an effort to elicit information from his patients not just about their past lives, but about the period of times spent in the spirit world between lives. He found this useful for his patients, but also for his own curiosity about the general structure and "culture" of the world we live in between earthly lives. Much of his findings are quite remarkable, and I would say generally accurate, although there are some limitations to his methods, and to his study population, consisting as they did of therapy patients from the industrial world. Nonetheless, what he found was a striking uniformity in experience, regardless of the person's religious background or beliefs, or even the lack of these. Nonetheless, the primary limitation to his method is that very few of his patients were what one might call "advanced" spiritually, with prior conscious experience of subtler spiritual phenomena. And none, that they spoke of at least, representing the kind of spiritual maturity one finds in the more renowned spiritual figures who at times have directly experienced or taught about these matters.

Nonetheless, there's reason to think that their hypnotic methods might actually elicit more reliable information, if at a less comprehensive level, about reincarnation and the spirit worlds. I've found there's a lot of things in these books which are actually superior to traditional teachings about reincarnation and the subtle realms, in that there is less subconscious projection and filtering going on that is often the case when people have spontaneous spiritual experiences about these things.

One of the problems with the spiritual traditions, is the degree to which their viewpoint about subtle experience, subtle worlds, afterlife phenomena, karma, and spirit beings represents a distorted projection of their own faulty connections to the body and minds they have incarnated through, and by which they give and receive information about these matters. These traditions have often reinforced various illusions, and even a number of pathologies, that make a clear understanding of these matters more difficult than if one had no knowledge of this kind at all. These more "scientific" investigators of the subtle realms have actually found ways to be more accurate and provide more realistic descriptions of some aspects of the spirit reality than many time-honored traditional sources. Not that they are complete or full or even entirely accurate, but they are at least aware of their own limitations and try to simply report their findings without forcing it into pre-ordained categories and interpretations.

Another category of literature is the whole recent body of channeled spiritual teachings. This represents one of the most challenging categories, since it is dominated by so many foolish and dubious characters and a startling degree of naivete and unconscious projection. One has to be extremely discriminating when looking at the teachings that come from these sources. Nevertheless, a surprising - to me at least - amount of information from the better examples of this breed is relatively accurate, and even relatively wise. One does not find the most profound kind of wisdom in this group - there are no Buddhas, Ramana Maharshi's, Nisargadatta's, etc. - but one does find some relatively good descriptions of life in subtle worlds, and the mechanics of earthly incarnation. I've never deeply studied this category, since much of it is just too obnoxious to even read, but there's a few figures I'd point to as being worth considering, such as the Seth Material, channeled by Jane Roberts; Kryon, channeled by Lee Carroll;and Michael, channeled by a number of people. There's also some amusing books by Dolores Cannon, James Monroe, and Moody.

As for the more scientific literature, there's Ian Stevenson's classic study, "Twenty Cases of Reincarnation", and his protege Jim B. Tucker's "Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Childhood Memories of Previous Lives". There's no final and conclusive evidence or proof of reincarnation to be found in these books, but there are some striking studies and evidence that should give pause for thought to any but the most doctrinaire materialists. The more one reads of this kind of material, the harder it become to deny the likelihood of reincarnation as a simple fact or our lives.

My own viewpoint is neither scientific nor therapeutic. I'm not interesting in proving reincarnation objectively, and I'm not terribly interested in the therapeutic value of recalling past life memories. Both are valuable enterprises, and I applaud those who have undertaken them. It's just not what I'm personally interested in pursuing. For me, all of these studies merely point to an understanding of the process of incarnation in this and every present moment that matters in a very practical manner, in the here and now. This understanding leads to a conscious grasp of what is actually going on here, with each of us both internally and inter-personally. This means being attentive to our own mind and life, and allowing ourselves to simply observe what we really are, what we are really doing, and what the nature of our conscious existence is, from a larger perspective. In the course of doing that, it has simply become more and more clear to me that we are all spirits here, and that we are relating to these physical bodies and this physical worlds from a spiritual dimension that is simply not of this world.

We are, as Moses says in Exodus, "strangers in a strange land". The sooner we accept that, the better equipped we will be to deal with the actual difficulties we encounter in this life, a great many of which are the result of our simple personal struggle to incarnate in a world that is not ours to begin with. That alone should come as something of a relief to us. The universal existential experience of feeling separate from this world, of classical dualism - of being a mind separate from the body - is on the practical level simply true. We are separate from this material world, in a very ordinary respect. We are not from this world, we are strangers here, who don't feel altogether at home simply because this is not our home. It's a place we visit through a complex process of incarnation, which is really just a form of subtle immersion in the mental experience of the physical, not actually "becoming physical bodies". Our spirits do not literally become physical entities, and they don't even "enter" the physical body. They simply grow a subtle connection to the physical that provides a powerful immersive experience from birth until death.

While alive in the body, we tend to think that we are supposed to be here, that we actually are here, and we point to our bodies as evidence that we are here. And yet our minds don't actually experience ourselves as "being here". Our mind feels removed from the experience of the physical world. This simple fact has of course led to a huge proliferation of religious ideas and philosophies throughout human history that there's such a thing as "life after death". These ideas don't all agree with one another, in fact there are serious disagreements on many levels, but the basis for these ideas isn't far-fetched at all - it's built into the literal mechanism of our own conscious experience. There are certainly some who will argue that this mind-body split is merely a result of various illusions created in the physical brain and nervous system itself, but I will continue to suggest that the root of it is real, and that even those phenomena in the nervous system are the result of the process of incarnation, and would not exist otherwise. What's certainly true is that all the various experiences and ideas about the cosmos that appear in the mind and brain represent incomplete and even wildly distorted perceptions of the actual process, and that we can't merely take them at surface value.

It often appears that it is the method of inquiry which determines the results one will find. Those who use various forms of traditional meditation and inquiry into the subtle experience of the afterlife will often obtain results consistent with that tradition. And those who use non-traditional methods, such as hypnosis, will also find consistent results of their own, even when the subjects of that method come from different traditional backgrounds. Newton and Weiss report that both traditional Christians and staunch atheists report remarkably similar recollections of the afterlife, which in both cases strongly contradict the views they have outside of hypnosis. And yet, one is left wondering if the method of hypnosis itself produces its own form of bias. Not that I think these methods are false, self-generated, or examples of "implanted" memories. But one cannot assume that subtler forms of bias don't exist due to the method itself.

That said, I'd like to put forward my own basic understanding of our spiritual "selves", the part of us that does not live here in this world, but simply connects to this world for purposes of our own. I won't pretend that these subtle "selves" are the real nature of our being. They are not. They are merely part of the total mechanism that we identify with within the sphere of dualism. It's no mere coincidence that this produces a dualistic sense of identity on so many levels. Deconstructing dualism thus means more than merely making assertions of non-dual unity, it also means observing ourselves and understanding the simple mechanisms by which dualism recreates itself in deepening layers of illusion. We experience dreams within our dreams within our dreams. It's important to be able to discriminate between them and understand how we seem to have gotten here.

THE SUBTLE WORLDS

The first thing to be mentioned about the subtle worlds is that most spirits who live there do not incarnate in physical worlds like ours. It is a relatively rare phenomena. Most spirits live in spirit worlds of varying qualities and ranges of experience, and they don't take part in any process resembling "reincarnation". Most of the spirits who incarnate in the human world come from a relatively "low" level subtle world. This is in many respects simply a practical matter. You can't easily incarnate into a physical world from a highly subtle world - the connectionss are much more difficult to grow and maintain. For most spirits, the process of reincarnation in physical worlds is considered something of a "beginners" exercise. Others consider it dangerous or unnecessary. But often it is looked upon with a certain kind of awe, in the sense that it takes a lot of courage to brave the struggle with physical worlds. It offers the possibility of more rapid spiritual growth. Even so, most reincarnating spirits only take on physical incarnation for a fairly limited period of time, and once they've gotten relatively good at it, they move on to higher worlds and subtler experiences.

This points to certain differences in outlooks among spirits. Like people here on earth, spirits have a wide variety of viewpoints, values, motives and goals, and hence they look upon earthly incarnation from differing viewpoints. For many, it's simply a place to indulge in various sensual, physical desires which are very powerful in the physical world, and which don't quite have an equivalent in the subtler worlds. Physical bodies are deeply engrossing and offer very powerful immersive experiences. Subtle bodies are much more diffuse, indefinable, and plastic. So many spirits become addicted, one might say, to the experiences of the physical world, and learning to master those addictions and desires offers them a very important lesson in their spiritual growth. However, having learned those lessons, they often simply "graduate" to more advanced spiritual worlds where they can find a different kind of pleasure that they can master.

Other spirits recognize that pleasures themselves are not terribly fulfilling, and they have more socially oriented goals, aimed at loving relationships with others. They find the emotional challenges in the physical highly valuable. The difficulties one encounters trying to love others in the physical world are immensely harder to overcome than those in the subtle realms, where love feels more natural and easy. If one examines the physical world, even animals and living things here, one will see that they don't have an easy time loving one another. It's not absent in them, but it's not terribly common either. A lot of things get in the way of love, particularly the drive for survival and pleasure. So a good number of spirits come here to "hone" their skills in loving one another. And once again, when these spirits accomplish those goals and attain a certain degree of skill in loving others, they too move on to higher realms, where those skills become much more powerful tools for spiritual growth.

There's also that relatively small number of spirits who recognize that earth offers an excellent ground for transcendental spiritual realization of the non-dual reality. These are spirits who may come from any number of backgrounds and past histories, who have a deep interest in actually taking the "direct path" to spiritual realization, rather than the "long path" of simply evolving along the lines of the universe itself, which will one day return to God completely because that is its very nature. These spirits use earthly incarnation for the purposes of realizing God, recognizing that its deeply frustrating nature, and the obviousness of suffering in the physical realms, helps to impress upon the soul the fruitlessness of conditional seeking in either gross or subtle realms. Many of these souls have already felt the ultimate fruitlessness of the paths of spiritual evolution that the spirit realms are essentially oriented towards, and they choose to incarnate in physical worlds precisely to exaggerate and make inescapable the basic facts of suffering, which in the subtle realms are actually harder to keep in mind, simply because the subtle realms have less obvious confict and suffering associated with them.

The subtle realms lack many of the limitations we are so accustomed to here. Even time and space are experienced differently, and are not so fixed and definable. This of course gives those realms some obvious advantages, particularly from the viewpoint of people who feel claustrophobically confined by the sheer bareness of our spatial and temporal dimensions, but also some not so obvious (to us) drawbacks. It's relative easy to just "float by" in the subtle realms, and never have to actually grow as spirits, or simply take one's sweet time at it. In the physical realm, one doesn't have those luxuries, and one is therefore much more motivated to grow in order to more effectively deal with its limitations. In a very real sense, just being born in the physical worlds is a form of "asceticism", and those who practice spiritual asceticism here are in some respects merely replicating their purpose in coming here at all - and in some cases, to an unnecessary degree, since the fundamental spiritual asceticism of human birth is often enough, and further self-imposed practices are redundant and even inhibiting.

People in the physical worlds often talk or fantasize about a "dream life", in which all their desires are fulfilled. Often this is an expression of a kind of regret about incarnation, the casual forgetfulness of the reasons we came here. But it's also a nostalgic memory of the subtle worlds themselves, where it's possible to create things with mind alone. Those created things, as in dreams, are fascinating and meaningful, but they lack the power of physical objects. They are subtle objects, which are quite different in nature from physical things. So we often try to create things in the physical world by this same method, and it doesn't really work that way. Such paths as "The Secret", which suggest that you can simply manifest things in this world by the power of thought alone, have their roots in this kind of subtle memories of the spirit realms. The physical realms are in some respect responsive to the power of thought, but not in the sense that these paths like to think. The connection between the mind and the physical world is much more indirect and tenuous, even in respect to our own bodies. The physical world simply doesn't respond or react to mental desiring in this fashion.

The physical world does respond to mental intention, even what we might call "prayer", but it does so indirectly, through an energizing process whereby our own physical bodies become "activated" with spiritual energy from our own spiritual selves in the subtle worlds, through the neural-spiritual connections we have grown. That can create a kind of harmony in the physical world which can make harmonious "results" occur, but not necessarily some precise correspondence to the "things" we might have prayed for. In general, "things" are not what prayer is even about. Instead, it is about achieving a spiritual harmony in relation to the physical body, by bringing the spiritual energy of the subtle world into the physical body, and from there into the world of physical relations.

This occurs because of the subtle dynamics of even the physical world, which is not merely made of material matter, but has its own subtle, underlying structure. In the spiritual traditions, this underlying subtle energy is known as "prana", "chi", "etheric energy", or "mana". It is a subtle corresponding form of matter, similar to physical matter in most respects, even mirroring physical matter in many ways, and directly "attached" to it, but invisible to most forms of material observation. It is relatively easy for the subtle mind to observe this energy, however, if one becomes spiritually aware, because it is directly related to the subtle spirit. It is the intermediary between the spirit realm and our spirit bodies and the physical realm and our physical bodies. The neural-spiritual connections we grow to the material body are actually connections to the pranic body first, which is then connected to the physical body.

It's important to recognize that all physical things, and all living physical bodies, have a pranic dimension to them, but they do not all have subtle spirits who connect to their pranic bodies as humans do. Such creatures may be aware of the pranic energy of this world, and their own participation in it, but not of the subtle realms themselves, since they don't have a neural connection to it as we do. They don't quite understand what human beings are up to in that sense. We are not just strange to most animals, but categorically different. However, those animals which do recognize us and relate to us with any sense of empathy or commonality are those which have, indeed, evolved through a reincarnational connection. Naturally, most of those animals are domesticated animals or pets, which have natural relationships to human beings. Some are highly intelligent animals in the wild, such as whales. But even these animals recognize that humans are "different", representing a highly sophisticated form of reincarnational connection to the physical.

That human reincarnational connection through the pranic body is not necessarily more easeful than is the case in others species who may have spiritual connections through reincarnation. The human body represents in some respects a leap to a higher vibratory consciousness, but in making that leap all kinds of unique challenges come into being that in some respects make us less sensitive to the pranic world. Because we are not "of this world", we are not even terribly attuned to the pranic energies of this world, unless we fully develop our subtle connection to the pranic body, and from there to the physical body. If we do, however, we gain some remarkable capacities that aren't directly observable from the perspective of the body itself. One of these is the capacity to bring subtle spiritual energy into this world, not just in the form of mental ability, but in all kinds of creative capacities, including a unique spiritual capacity to "conduct" spiritual energies into the pranic body, and thereby to create an opening to the physical body that has all kinds of implications for us not just spiritually, but physically. In this sense we have an advantage in not "being here". We can bring something into this world that simply doesn't exist here, and the capacity that gives us is simply remarkable.

The common description of humanity's unique ability is that of "tool-making". This misconceives that difference between us and animals, because it only looks at the more obvious physical abilities we have. Even such mental abilities as "reasoning" or "imagination" don't quite get to point. The real difference is that our minds are able to bring deep subtle energy, attention, and intelligence to bear upon the physical world, and to make the physical world conform to our intentions in that respect. It's not that we merely think a thought and it appears here, it's that we establish connections to the physical world which enable us to "import" all kinds of intelligences and capacities that simply don't exist within this world on their own, and which don't evolve naturally at anything like the rate at which we can develop them. Natural, evolutionary processes are extremely slow and gradual, whereas human beings, since we developed a reincarnational connection to the spirit realms, have evolved in ways which simply cannot be easily explained by these slow, natural evolutionary processes. If we had the capacity to see extraterrestrial civilizations which have evolved by purely natural evolutionary processes, we would see how slowly they have accomplished this feat, and how differently it has come about than it has in our world. Our growth has been extremely fast and moves in leaps and bounds that represent the importation of what one might call "extraterrestrial intelligence" from our own subtle bodies in the subtle worlds, which represents a store of experience and awareness which dwarfs the natural capacities of the material worlds themselves. In that sense, we are way ahead of even civilizations which are technologically much more advanced that ours, and on a pace to outdo them even in those respects.

Of course, the purposes of human incarnation can't genuinely be described in terms of purely material capacities and technological innovation. That is just a sign of what is going on beneath the surface with us. The greater "innovation" is that of spirituality itself, and our capacity to enjoy a spiritual relationship to the physical, which in turn helps us develop an even more profound relationship to our own spiritual natures. The spirit is indeed made more self-aware and intelligent by lieu of its relationship to the physical world. The challenge of learning to be spiritually self-aware and loving in the midst of human incarnation with all its complications is a profound one, and when it is even moderately successful to consequences are extraordinary for us, and not just as individuals, but for the whole of humanity, and for the spirit worlds themselves, where individuality is not a form of separation, but of connection.

(Note: to keep this post from getting too large, I'll post it now, and continue on with this train of thought later, within a few days I hope).

Academic "Pilot Study" of Fomer Adidam Members Reviewed

I recently came across a recently published “study”, if one can call it that, titled “Adidam, Controversy, and Former Members”, by James R. Lewis, presented at a recent CESNUR (Center For the Study of New Religion) conference in Salt Lake City. Lewis' study consists of a questionaire which ask a mere eleven questions of some thirty-three former members of Adidam aimed at establishing a reasonable estimate of the attitudes of these former members towards Adidam and Adi Da. Lewis' analysis of the results of this question is quite sweeping:

“If the attitudes of this sample can be extrapolated to the population of all former members, what this data indicates is that vocal ex-members who attack Adidam on the Internet are not representative of most former participants. This does not mean their criticisms should be rejected as entirely lacking in merit. Rather, it means that the impression created by this handful of individuals – that most former members feel that they were abused and are angry with Adi Da and Adidam – should be rejected as lacking in merit.”

Much of the study seems aimed at countering various stereotypical notions about groups that have been labeled as cults, which is a apparently a long-term focus of Lewis' work. I can certainly applaud a lot of that, as stereotypes are a universally pernicious obstacle to serious understanding of any and all social or religious phenomena. Nonetheless, a major flaw in Lewis' approach is that he frequently reduces the criticism of former members of these groups to stereotypical tropes himself, thus negating much of the value he might have gained by his initial efforts. He complains at times that his work has been attacked by anti-cult groups as amounting to “apologetics” for the abuses of cults – and yet it's hard not to see this particular study as amounting, essentially, to just that. I can't say that it's intentional on Lewis' part, but the serious flaws in his study essentially make its conclusions meaningless and yes, little more than a form of weak apologetics for the negative impression much of the public has garnered about Adidam from former members, and of course it doesn't address at all the negative impression the public has developed in relation to Adidam from Adidam's own current members, missionary works, books and publications, and various other public contacts.  

One must keep in mind that the influence of critical former members of any religious group is often of only minor significance in the evolution of a religious group's public image. For example, I'd suggest that most people who have formed a negative view of the Hare Krishna group have done so simply by observing it's most visible and enthusiastic members chanting on the streets or soliciting donations at airports, and not from reading news reports of various scandalous accusations by former members.  

The same is true of Adidam. I know, because I was involved in Adidam for some twenty-eight years, and during that time was often quite active in working with the public, and observing the public's reaction to Adi Da's life and teachings, even when we tried to present him in the most favorable possible light. Generally, the reaction was negative, or at least included many negative impressions sufficient to marginalize us as an aspiring religious movement. This is not terribly surprising, considering how foreign so many of Adidam's beliefs and teachings are to most people. Furthermore, Adidam makes a number of explicitly extreme claims that tend to drive away all except those who, for whatever reasons, are inclined to entertain and embrace extreme ideas. All of this accounts for the overwhelmingly poor response to Adidam's missionary efforts over the years.  

One should recall that even before the first wave of public scandals broke out in 1985, Adidam's growth had been very slow and unremarkable. Having gone public in 1972, the Adidam religious organization had grown to only some 1200 members by 1985, in spite of having published many books and engaged in strenuous efforts to build membership not only nationwide, but around the world. This is a tiny result compared to that achieved by many other new religious movements, and it cannot be attributed to the rantings of former members on the internet, since the worldwide web did not even yet exist.  

In fact, many of the negative impressions about Adi Da (then known as Bubba Free John, and later Da Free John) and his organization were the result of Adi Da's own publications and public pesentations. In particular, the book “Garbage and the Goddess”, describing the events and teachings from late-1973 through the summer of 1974, and a theatrical documentary film of the same name covering this period , and in particular one weekend in July of 1974, that was released shortly thereafter and given frequent showings for several years, openly described a series of controversial, some might say scandalous, teachings given during this time. These teachings included the dissolution of devotees' marriages and sexual relationships, the initiation of a highly experimental period in which wild sexual activity, use of alcohol, cigarettes, and meat, and Adi Da's own open exploitation of all these things, including openly having sex with a great number of his female students, even forming a circle of “wives” with whom he engaged in open sexual relations. At one point in the movie, Adi Da is shown drinking from an open bottle of champagne, and laughingly declaring “my reputation is now ruined”m which was of course the truth, and no one's fault but his own. He is also shown spiritually “initiating” people admist horrifying screams of terror and physical pain by devotees, in scenes of dramatic but, to many people, frightening examples of Adi Da's spiritual power over people. In voice over, he described the spiritual process he offers people as one of “spiritual invasion”, in which their bodies and minds are taken over by him, and people are actually “lived” by him.  This hardly assauges any fears some might have that Adidam involves some kind of "mind control" or brainwashing. 

Given this kind of public relations program, one cannot rationally attribute the negative attitudes many in the public have developed about Adidam to the complaints of former members. I would invite Lewis to read the Garbage and the Goddess book, and see the original uncut version of the movie, and conclude that it is former members who are responsible for various negative impressions and stereotypes becoming fixed in the public's impression of this group. One can certainly suggest that people got the wrong impression from these sources, but one cannot blame anyone but Adidam itself for them, and Adi Da himself for choosing to “teach” in the manner he did.

Since that time, Adidam has tried to clean up that tarnished image numerous times, including by trying to destroy all extent copies of the book, and not releasing the movie for further viewing, and by putting out the story that this was some kind of unique period of experimentation, never to be repeated. And yet, as many know, the partying and self-indulgence around Adi Da went through various phases of stopping and starting, but essentially continued for decades until he himself was simply too old and weak to go on with it any further. This kind of information was frequently kept suppressed within Adidam, but such efforts were generally unsuccessful, and filtered out into the public. Even when they did not, there were any number of rather obvious indications that strange things were going on within Adidam, including the changing names and nature of the published teachings of Adi Da, the unprecedented use of capitalizations in his writings, the increasing claims of unique and unprecedented spiritual greatness and power on his part, a general mood of arrogance and self-absorption, and the seeking for more and more glamorous, expensive, and grandiose living circumstances and services from devotees and the public, including major efforts to recruit celebrities and the “rich and famous”. These were openly pursued missionary policies of Adidam, not scandalous charges made by former members, and they did a great deal to poison the public's view of Adidam - at least that small portion of the public that was actually paying attention to him.

So, in the midst of all this, we have the rather specious charge that former members posting on the internet are primarily responsible for Adidam's frayed and damaged public image, and the existence of various cult stereotypes about Adidam. I'd like to give Lewis the benefit of the doubt, and think that's he just hasn't done his homework, that he's never followed the actual public activities of Adidam, and that he naively assumes that Adidam is suffering some egregious wrong at the hands of a handful of disgruntled former devotees.  

Whatever the case may be, let's just look at the actual study he's done, this questionaire he sent to 33 former members of Adidam, and see what value and meaning it might have.  

THE SAMPLE GROUP

The first thing we have to ask is, how did he find this supposedly representative sampling of former members? It turns out, he simply asked current members of Adidam to give him the names of people they know who had left Adidam. I'm not kidding. Is there any remotely intelligent person who would consider this an unbiased sampling? I mean, honestly, not only do members of Adidam each have a sacred responsibility to protect and preserve Adidam's publc image, they actually are required to do missionary work themselves. The chances that any current member in good standing is going to refer Lewis to someone they know to be a disgruntled former member who has a negative opinion of Adidam is virtually nil. In light of that, what's surprising about Lewis' study is that he finds any disgruntled former members at all. That he does suggest that some of these respondents are people who tend, when dealing with current members of Adidam, to hide their negative views, but are willing to voice them to an outsider's questionaire. In either case, this method of creating a sample population is completely unacceptable to even a half-assed standard of truthfulness.  

THE QUESTIONAIRE

I could stop right here, but there's the matter of the questionaire itself. The first question asks about the educational level of the former member, which it turns out is very high on average compared to every other spiritual group Lewis has data on. In general, I'm not surprised, in that Adidam certainly seemed to me to attract a high number of intellectually oriented members. However, he again fails to address the issue selection bias, in that Adidam members who are selecting the best examples of former members would tend to select people of rather high societal standing and accomplishment, rather than just average (or below) former members. And thus, we end up with the strange implication that people with a high degree of education tend to become former members – in other words, the smart people leave Adidam. I'm not sure if that's much of an endorsement, but given the uncertainties regarding the sample (and the lack of any data about current member's educational status), even this has no certainties from which any conclusions can be drawn.  

The second question is about how the former member first made contact with Adidam. Lewis is surprised that some 54% of respondents' first contact was through a book, rather than through personal friends, as he has found to be the case with most other new religious movements. Again, this reveals Lewis' lack of familiarity with Adidam, which has stressed from its inception using its publications as the primary missionary tool. To be fair, this simply takes advantage of Adidam's traditional strength, which for much of its history has been the writings of Adi Da himself, who is a highly talented, even brilliant writer (until the more abstract an unapproachable books of recent years)/. However, this question also reveals the relative weakness of Adidam's efforts to gain new members through personal contacts. (only 24% first came to Adidam through friends). Books, being by nature relatively impersonal and carefully edited, can more easily mask the problems Adidam has on the personal level.

STRAW MEN AND SCARE WORDS

The third question finally gets down to asking about the former member's attitudes about Adidam. Unfortunately, the question itself is a red herring: “Have you ever used the term “brainwashed” to describe your involvement in Adidam?” 94% of respondents reply never or rarely, which again is hardly surprising. How many people, even members of the worst kinds of cults, would describe themselves as having been “brainwashed”? I'd suggest, very few. It's a scare word that is guaranteed to distance people from whatever issues it might be intended to address. It's a meaningless question, in that the term is not even defined, and whether someone uses it or not has little to do with whether people think their views about Adidam, while they were involved, were untrue and the result of peer-pressure or various forms of indoctrination.  

The simple truth is that when “brainwashing” actually works within a cult setting, it's not even noticed to be brainwashing. The term implies some kind of forceable imposition of views and belief from outside the individual, whereas the reality of most “brainwashing” is that it involves a willing suspension of disbelief and acceptance of views, similar to the deeply misunderstood reality behind the phenomena called “hypnotism”. In one very real sense, there is no such thing as hypnotism, in that the phenomena is actually a willing exercise of people who seize upon the opportunity to do and see and think things that they would normally have their guard up against. And yet in another sense it's perfectly real, in that people really do fall into these states of unguarded acceptance of the hypnotist's input. It's simply that it's a participatory submission, not a forceable one. Of course, even in the extreme examples of “brainwashing”, such as Nazism or Charles Manson's cult, most of the participants were both enthusiastically willing and did not consider themselves to have been brainwashed. So this kind of self-reporting question doesn't really tell us anything about whether Adidam uses or esploits techniques that could be reasonably called “brainwashing”, since if it actually was any good at this, they wouldn't be consciously aware of it in the first place.  

The fourth question repeats the problems with the third, asking “Have you ever used the word “cult” to describe Adidam?: Again, “cult” is a scare word, and few people will use it to describe something they themselves have been involved in. Like brainwashing, it's a term most of us will only use to describe something other people become involved in. Nonetheless, if asked to describe a group that was exactly like Adidam, but given a different name and populated by a different group of people, I'd be willing to be they would be more inclined to call it a cult. So this question is, again, meaningless. It does not define the term “cult” in any meaningful way, and it relies entirely on a subjective usage of the term that encourages self-deference.  

And this is of course a major problem with this questionaire. It does not ask a single factual question aimed at discerning any actual practice in Adidam that might objectively be described by outside observers as cultic in nature, or forms of brainwashing, or examples of abuse, or manipulation, or exploitation, or even coercion. Instead, it relies entirely on some subjective sense of an internalized self-definition which we cannot rely upon us to tell us much anything meaningful about the former member's experience or views about Adidam, other than, you guessed it, the most stereotypical of generalizations. By taking these stereotypes as meaningful elements of the criticism of former members, Lewis not only reduces those criticism to stereotypes, he also defines the attitudes of his respondents by those stereotypes, which are then easily rejected. This is a classic example of constructing a straw man to prove a point. But in so doing, Lewis proves precisely nothing, other than that he's not really serious about delving past the stereotypes into the real nature of former members' attitudes about Adidam.

VAGUENESS AND LEADING QUESTIONS

The fifth question is also deeply unsatisfying. It asks, “Which best describes Adi Da? Great Religious Teacher, Average Teacher, or Not a Genuine Teacher?” Some 90% choose “Great”. Again, given the choices and the vagueness of the question, what is to be gained from this question? I mean, if you were to ask whether Hitler was a great political figure, an average one, or not a genuine political figure at all, I think more than 90% would have to say “great”, if they were at all honest. It's a meaningless question, except to show that most people do recognize that Adi Da was a very powerful spiritual figure in their lives. I certainly do. But there's no meaningful definition of “great” offered, much less “average”, or “genuine”. The question obscures rather than illumines former members' actual views about Adi Da as both a teacher of others and a spiritual source. And of course, the lack of options leaves little opportunity for people's real views to be expressed. At the very least, one could be asked on a scale of one to ten to rate Adi Da in this and other categories, with one and ten actually being defined by clear examples, or precise concepts rather than subjective adjectives like “great”.  

The sixth question also suffers from vagueness. It is “How would you describe your attitude to Adi Da since ending your membership?” The answers are “Positive; More positive than negative; Neither positive nor negative ; More negative than positive; Negative.” In this case, at least some gray areas are given in the possible answers, but once again, the options are so vague as to defy meaningful interpretation. If I were asked this question, I would have to answer “More positive than negative” myelf, and I'm one of Adidam's harshest internet critics. I'd answer that question that way not because it represents some kind of objective assessment of what I think the value of Adi Da's teaching is, or whether Adidam is a destructive cult of not, but simply because that's my own internal subjective feeling. I'm just not a hater. I used to love Adi Da deeply and for a very long time, and in many respects I still do. My general attitude towards life, and just about everything is positive. On the other hand, this answer, worded to draw out my internal subjective feelings, doesn't do any justice to the criticism I or others have made of Adi Da and his religious movement. Nor can it be expected to do that for others.  

These kinds of questions simply demonstrate how inadequate a simplistic questionaire like this is in trying to evaluate as complex a relationship as most former members have had with Adi Da and Adidam. If there's anything that can't be reduced to a simplistic answer, it's the question of what kind of attitude former members have with Ad Da – any more than one could about anyone else who had been deeply involved in anything that didn't work out for them, including a marriage, a job, a religious conversion, going off to fight in a war, immigrating to a foreign country, or any other example of a powerful and significant life-choice.  

Question seven repeats these problems, asking “How would you describe your attitude to Adi Da since ending your membership?” Again, the response is largely positive, and again, I'd have to say that my attitude towards Adi Da, despite all his faults and problems, is pretty positive as well. I don't hold anything against him on a personal level, and I consider us to be at peace with one another. And the same goes for most of the Adidam community. That doesn't mean that I don't have some deep criticisms, or that I would even consider being involved ever again, or recommend it to anyone who wasn't powerfully drawn to it themselves.  

These kinds of questions simply don't get anywhere near to the criticism made by many former members such as myself and those who I've encountered on the internet. Remember, I was involved in every online discussion of Adi Da of any significance for over ten years, during the first five of which I was the most aggressive defender of Adi Da posting as a current and active member of the organization, and I encountered every kind of critic in the process, many with a serious bone to pick, and I tried to counter all their arguments as best I could. Likewise, after listening to those criticism for years, and finally coming to the realization that they were true and stronger than any defense I could must, I was for the following several years probably the most prolific critic of Adidam on the internet, feeling a sense of moral obligation to re-evaluate what I'd previous said and done, and to some degree atone for my defenses of things that were, I finally concluded, indefensible.  

The real criticisms that Adidam has faced on the internet are, for the most part, highly specific and practical criticisms of things actually done or not done, abuses committed, lives damaged and psyches harmed. It isn't about anyone's subjective attitudes about Adidam, positive or negative. These criticisms are simply not addressed in this questionaire. There are no questions, for example, about whether the persona ever saw money being abused or raised improperly, under the influence of alcohol or immense peer-pressure, say. There's no questions about drug and alcohol use, no questions about sexual activity with the Guru or others, no questions about whether people still believe Adi Da is who he claims to be, or if any of the teachings he gave are valid or true. No questions about whether they would recommend Adidam to others. There's no questions like “How much money have you donated to Adidam over the years”, or even, “How long were you in Adidam, and how long ago did you leave?” I could go on, but I hope you see the picture. Instead, we just get these weasily subjective questions.

Question eight is a fair enough question: “When you ended your membership in Adidam, were you able to do this freely, without interference from the community of Adidam?” However, since this isn't one of the criticisms Adidam's critics have generally made of it, it's not terribly meaningful;. However, I gather the question is a way of comparing Adidam to other groups, some of which do indeed make it difficult for people to leave. In that respect Adidam has a pretty good though not perfect record. Even so, it doesn't address the issue of whether people who leave Adidam encountered strongly conflicting internal pressures about not leaving, or guilt and various negative feelings encountered in the process of leaving and its aftermath.  

Question nine, “How would you describe your relationship to the Community of Adidam since ending your membership?” is pretty much a variant of the previous questions about Adi Da himself. Again, it's a subjective question that doesn't address any actual criticisms or evaluations of Adidam.  

Question ten, “Has your involvement with Adi Da and Adidam influenced your life for better or for worse?” is also hard for anyone to answer in a way that actually reflects on Adidam. I mean, people who survive terrible disasters will often say that it influenced their lives for the better. This doesn't mean that disasters are good things we should cultivate. It means that a person who is determined to profit from their experience can take lemons and make lemonade from them. The general pattern of these question is a passive one, as if we are being asked to evaluate Adidam like a fruit salad rather than something we all actually participated in. I, too, would say that Adidam's influence in my life was positive overall. That doesn't mean that I'd consider it a wise choice on my part, or something I'd recommend to most people. And I'm not sure that most former members would feel much different.  

Question eleven, “Why Respondent Left Adidam”, has a range of five responses: “Guru; Organization/Community; Sadhana; “Simply stopped”; Grew away, “life got in the way” . This is a good question, but it doesn't tell us much without followup, or allow people to list more than one answer, since in most cases there is not a single reason for leaving, but several. The two most popular answers, “Simply stopped”, and “Grew away” are hardly very meaningful, and indicate either a subconscious decision-making process that the individual can't describe very well even to himself, or a simple reluctance to describe the real reasons for leaving. Half the listed responses fell into this category, which suggests that in this pool of respondents, at least half the people were motivated by some kind of subconscious or unspoken reason for leaving Adidam, and that they still aren't entirely sure what it was. This is something I have seen in a lot of people who leave Adidam, and in many respects its a healthy way of avoiding the internal and external conflicts that make many people reactive and unhappy as they leave. However, it avoids self-awareness for the sake of that peace.  

CONCLUSIONS

Lewis' conclusion, “that vocal ex-members who attack Adidam on the Internet are not representative of most former participants,” is simply not warranted by the evidence described in this study. In the first place, there is no documentation given describing what “vocal ex-members who attack Adidam on the internet” actually think. They were not given this same or another other questionaire to compare their answers to. Lewis simply assumes that they would be negative up and down the line about Adidam and Adi Da. But he doesn't seem to have spoken to a single one of them to form a basis for any comparison to this sample group. At least he doesn't report any efforts to find out what these people think. So there's no way to find out how their views compare to the study group.  

And, of course, there's the problem of how this sample group was obtained in the first place, and the lack of response even within this biased sample. 80 questionaires were originally sent out, and Lewis received only 33 responses. This suggests a further sampling bias, in that most people who have negative views about Adidam (and other cult groups) are generally disinclined to speak about them openly, especially when they might not know or trust the person doing the study. In that respect, Lewis is quite right to say that vocal ex-members are not representative of the whole, since most people by nature are simply not vocal. Further, when one considers that the total population of ex-members of Adidam probably numbers between 15-25,000 over the years, a sampling of only 33 can hardly be considered representative of anything, particularly when it is not a random sampling at all, but biased towards those with favorable view towards Adidam on at least two screening levels.  

On the other hand, it isn't altogether nutty to suggest that vocal critics on the internet, regardless of the subject matter, are unrepresentative of just about any similar group. It's one of the best known facts of the internet itself, that it tends to attract vocal characters with an ax to grind on one or another issue. That doesn't mean such people aren't accurate in their criticisms, however. To answer that question, one would have to do more than send out dubious questionaires asking people for subjective evaluations of their attitudes. One would have to actually investigate the criticisms made to determine whether they are valid or not. Or, one would at the very least have to ask factual questions that can return genuine evidence about Adidam and people's participation in it. Lewis has done nothing of the kind, nor does he even seem interested in those kinds of inquiries.  

The problem with Lewis' approach is that it seems from the outset determined to prove something that everyone already knows, which is that vocal critics of Adidam on the internet are likely to be more negative in their attitudes towards Adidam than others who have left. And yet, he's failed to demonstrate even that. Which is quite an accomplishment, when you think about it. 

The conclusion that Lewis finally comes to, “that the impression created by this handful of individuals – that most former members feel that they were abused and are angry with Adi Da and Adidam – should be rejected as lacking in merit.” itself lacks merit. Lewis has not even demonstrated that this “impression” exists in the first place. He's not demonstrated that ex-members on the internet are more or less angry than a random sampling of ex-members, in part because he never did anything remotely resembling a random sampling, and second, because he never made a survey of any kind of ex-members who are internet critics of Adidam. Not to mention the weak and subjective nature of the questionaire itself. In other words, to put it simply, this is hack work.  

I'm not sure what a genuine study of ex-members would reveal about them and Adidam itself, but I do know that this study doesn't even come close to answering any important questions that might be out there. It seems, on both first glance and after careful analysis, to be aimed at discrediting and marginalizing the critics of Adidam, and by extension, the contents of their criticisms, without actually addressing any of those criticisms in any meaningful way. One can be an ex-Catholic who still harbors some positive feelings about the Church, but who cannot abide being part of a group that allowed the sexual abuse of children to go on for decades without protecting them from predatory priests. A questionaire which merely asks this person about the general attitude towards the Pope and the Church, does nothing to address the issue of whether these abuses occurred, or even whether the respondent themselves was abused in any way – because no such questions were even asked. Using this study to rationalize away the criticisms of Adidam as being the work of an angry, unrepresentative group of apostates simply diverts attention from the actual criticisms that have been made, which represent real actions on the part of Adi Da and his organization, not merely subjective and general attitudes.

I'd be among the first to say that Adidam is far from the worst of cults and new or old religions. I'd also be among the last to deny that it has been guilty of serious breaches of trust, propriety, and good faith, or that it has committed many abuses over the years, and that it has tried mightily to cover them up. Lewis seems to be an unwitting participant in that coverup, but the poor quality of his work and the lack of justification for his conclusions suggests that he has either been complicit in that coverup, or is simply not even trying to be objective about it.  

Lewis has a general attitude that new religious movements such as Adidam are unfairly stereotyped and treated with greater suspicion than other, more commonly accepted groups with beliefs that might objectively be considered equally baseless or preposterous or an offense to reason.. In this he is probably correct. The word “cult” is often thrown around with abandon at small, non-mainstream groups, and is almost never used to describe the abuses of mainstream groups, such as the Catholic Church, Evangelicals, Judaism, Mormons, or any number of others that have fought to achieve some kind of mainstream status. This is an unfortunate fact of life. However, this does not mean that many of these small groups aren't cults, or that they do not abuse their members, or engage in practices that amount to brainwashing and mind-control. One cannot excuse the activities of groups like Adidam or teachers like Adi Da simply because others have done similar things and gotten away with it. Nor can one point to the Charles Mansons, the Hale-Bopps, and the Rajneeshis of the world and suggest that because Adidam isn't as bad as they are, that its critics are somehow overreacting.  

Many cults exist in this world, in all kinds of forms, with varying degrees of abuse and exploitation on any number of levels. Adidam is just one on a continuum of such groups. The pertinent question is not what its ex-members subjectively feel about their experience in Adidam, but what actually went on, what abuses did or did not occur, what claims it made and what the truth of those claims actually is, and whether those who in the future wish to become involved in Adidam are getting all the facts and an accurate picture of what it means to be a member of Adidam.  

Personally, I have no objection to people who advocate Adidam, as long as they are honest and open about Adidam's real history and inner workings, on every level. The truth, unfortunately, is that it has hardly ever been either honest or open, and I have no serious expectation that it ever will be. That's hardly a unique phenomena in the history of religion. One can look to other modern examples, such as Scientology, to see a similar pattern. It's no accident, I think, that Adi Da himself was a former high-ranking member of Scientology, nor that he imported a number of its organizational principles into Adidam when he formed it, just a few short years after leaving Scientology. Both, in my views, are cults, but they differ in a number of important ways, including in size and extent. In either case, the set of facts that describe them and their various positive and negative aspects differ, and it is that set of facts that should be the subject of any inquiry, academic or otherwise. Mere subjective attitudes are pointless areas of inquiry, and it's disappointing to see supposedly serious studies devoted to such useless matters. If James Lewis wishes to be taken seriously, he should start asking serious questions.  

Postscript:

A brief look at James R. Lewis' resume shows that he has a Ph.d in Religious Studies from the University of Wales, Lampeter.

According to Wikipedia, this is not the first time Lewis has become involved in defending new religious groups from criticism. Previously, he was a vocal defender of Aum Shinrikyo, which was accused in 1995 of launching a deadly Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway which killed twelve and injured hundreds: 

In May 1995, after the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, he and fellow scholar Gordon Melton flew to Japan to hold a pair of press conferences in which they announced that the chief suspect in the murders, religious group Aum Shinrikyo, could not have produced the sarin that the attacks had been committed with. They had determined this, Lewis said, from photos and documents provided by the group.[2] Police reports describe that they had discovered at Aum's main compound in March a sophisticated chemical weapons laboratory that was capable of producing thousands of kilograms a year of the poison.[3] Later investigation showed that Aum not only created the sarin used in the subway attacks, but had committed previous chemical and biological weapons attacks, including a previous attack with sarin that had killed seven and injured 144 persons.[4] During the Aum Shinrikyo incident Lewis and Melton's bills for travel, lodging and accommodations were paid for by Aum, according to The Washington Post.[5][6]

With a Wikipedia entry like that, it's no wonder Lewis is hostile to internet critics. The question naturally arises, as to whether Lewis was paid by Adidam to conduct this study, or if any of his expenses were paid for by them. If so, that would constitute a serious breach of ethics, especially since he does not disclose this in the study itself. 

The Skeptical Science on Climate Change - A Partial Snapshot

Our friend maia-gaia replied in comments once more, reprinted here in full:

“Oh that link! Realize its always dangerous to try satire with a topic with such volatility but that was my intention with the Euthanasia Society link- ill advised it turns out.  

Actually most of my pages deal with highly charged and controversial subjects and I do often throw in some links to the ever-present extreme pro and con views so readers can consider the broadest perspective. It was unfortunate that combining "cancer" and"euthanasia" created a perfect storm for offending everyone.

The only pro activism I advocate for individuals to help save Earth's nature is to join and perhaps volunteer in environmental and wildlife organizations. Neither ecospiritual social networking nor the postmodern movement for self realization have anything near the potential that the collective will and means orgs have to grow political support for the Gaia imperative- essential for actuating sustainable conservation.  

I'm afraid my analogy between Aurobindo and Ramana - and engagement and detachment, got lost when the term "tradition" replaced "detachment". The conversation went tangential from environmentalism to all about whether Ramana was a Neo Vedantan. Refocusing: I think there is simply too much data to sustain the old hats of- Oh- threats are overblown; things really aren't that bad; Gaia isn't fragile and is resilient and there have always been extinctions yet nature recovers, etc. Such equivocations become rationalizations for adopting a detached Maya paradigm- leaving Gaia to fend for herself. This seems to deny the essence of the realization to which we aspire-to apperceive our wholeness. How better to anticipate our awakening than to become loving allies in defending against her/our defile.”

First, let's be clear that no one, least of all me, is accusing Maia-Gaia of literally believing the extreme point of view of the “humanity as a cancer” crowd. It's clear from his website that he entertains all kinds of viewpoints, and while having some sympathy with many of them, I doubt he actually believes any of them fully, lest of all this kind of extremism. I assume that he has his own unique viewpoint that is only described in his own words, not those of others.

Of course, it's certainly true that I picked up this extremist position from reading his website and commented on it accordingly. And it's also true that some version of this theme has gotten traction within the eco-spiritual movement, and even within parts of the general public. Humanity has a lot of misgivings about modernism, modern technology, and the whole scary Frankenstein-monster sense that we are breaking some kind of Divine taboo about tampering with the powers of life that is endangering our Eden-like world, and thus we are flirting with Divine punishment, expulsion from the Garden, and that we must resist these demonic temptations.

These fears are deeply embedded in our culture, going back thousands of years. Whenever the facts of modern science seem to point in their direction, we immediately tend to seize upon those facts to support this kind of emotional sense of doom. And yet, in so doing, we also tend to distort the facts to fit the narrative we have already been given by our culture, and we like to think of those who resist this narrative as “deniers”, which is how those who are skeptical of environmentalists sounding the alarm about the imminent dangers of global warming tend to be characterized. (Not by Maia-gaia, let's be clear, but by many out there in the public conversation about this issue).

For a moment I'll simply address these scientific facts, since they go to the root issue of whether the data really does point towards climate change alarmism being justified, or whether it is overblown. I don't want to overly complicate this website with an endless scientific debate on the evidence - there are plenty of places on the web already devoted to that, and I'd recommend interested parties read the arguments on both sides - but let me just print a few simple charts that I think at least begin to illustrate an important aspect of the skeptic's argument - that the kinds of climate changes we've been going through are most likely mostly natural in origin, and not due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The above chart maps two fluctuating sets of data over the last 20,000 years - Greenland's temperature, and world-wide sea-level rise. I use Greenland's temperature chart for a number of reasons, primarily that it's the most accurate of all the temperature proxies used by scientists. It's derived from ice core samples that can trace the ratios of Oxygen isotopes going back several  hundred thousand years, creating one of the most reliable records of temperature in the world. Likewise, Greenland is at one of the "sensitive" locations in the climate debate, being within the arctic region that tends to respond most powerfully to climate change, and it is likewise the ice cap which is most threatened by melting, and thus a source of global sea rise, in the global warming models used by climatologists to predict future effects of any man-made warming.

It's important to note that one temperature proxy from one location is not enough to draw definitive conclusion about world-wide temperature patterns. Some have questioned whether the patterns in Greenland are simply local variations due to changes in the local climate. Others have questioned whether such warm periods as the "Medieval Warm Period" existed outside of Europe. The problem with those arguments is that they tend to rely on much more questionable temperature proxies, such tree rings growth patterns, which respond to all kinds of environmental changes, not just temperature, and it is thus much more difficult to discern a definitive temperature signal from other facts such as precipitation and available sunlight, which are much stronger drivers of tree growth. Further, there's been some scientific scandals related to those proxies revealing that they rely on extremely small samplings of trees which often seem to exclude data that undermines the researcher's theories. Likewise, further studies from around the world, such as in MesoAmerica and Indonesia, seem to support the notion that these previous warming periods did in indeed exist, and were even greater than our present warming trend.

That said, I invite you to simply examine the Greenland ice core temperature record. It indicates, of course, that Greenland has gone through extreme swings in temperature over the last 20,000 years ago, when the last ice age was near its nadir, and temperatures in Greenland were some 15C colder than they are now. Greenland went through a number of fairly sudden warming and cooling periods, some of them spanning mere decades. Some 14,500 years ago we had a sudden warming spell, and then almost just as abruptly, a sudden cooling that actually sent Greenland into another brief cold spell even colder than most of the previous ice age. About 12,00o years ago Greenland abruptly warmed again, stabilizing at about 10,000 years ago in a relatively warm holocene period, during which virtually all of human civilization developed., in large part due to these warm and stable conditions.

If we look closely at the temperature record in Greenland over the last 10,000 years, we see that while it's more stable than the previous 10,000 years, it certainly contains some significant fluctuations. One thing we can note is that most of these last 10,000 years, the temperature in Greenland has actually been warmer than it is at present. In fact, a number of periods have been considerably warmer than the present time, peaking on at least three occasions at some 3C warmer than the present. And yet one can also see that world-wide sea levels have remained very stable during this time, and have in fact often been higher than they are at present. 

What's also evident from this data record is that the Medieval Warm Period,. peaking about 1,000 years ago, was warmer than the present period. It's certainly true that temperatures have been rising from those experienced during the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1350-1850, but they have yet to come close to those of the previous peak, much less early peaks several thousand years ago. In fact, it's evident that the Little Ice Age represented some of the coldest temperatures of the last 10,000 years, and that the general climate trend for most of that period has actually been a downward trend, without our current warming period being a very small upward tick in the midst of a long downward cycle, one that is very likely leading us to another worldwide plummet in temperatures as we head into the next full blown Ice Age. 

For the last 800,000 years at the very least, the world has been experiencing regular Ice Ages lasting some 100,000 years, interrupted by brief warming spells of about 10,000 years, more or less, but never much more. None of these temperature changes have been driven by Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. The evidence strongly indicates that these cycles are driven by natural variations in the earth's orbit, as well as by changing ocean current patterns that are perhaps related to the closing of the Isthmus of Panama over the last three millions years (when the pattern first began to emerge). Clearly, the climate reaches tipping points after which changes can come suddenly, but it's also clear that these are driven by variations in the solar radiation received by the earth, not by greenhouse gases.

Likewise, even the climate rises and falls experienced within the last 10,000 years, during the holocene, have not been driven by CO2 levels, which have in fact slightly increased during this time (by natural causes) from about 270ppm to 280ppm in pre-industrial modern times. Whatever has driven these climate changes, it has not been man's activities.

So what is the basis for believing that any portion of the warming we have been experiencing for the last 150 years or so is man-made, and due to the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere? Well, it's a highly speculative theory that presumes that the warming effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have the capacity to drive world temperatures to extreme that go beyond any natural variation. The arguments of the global warming theorists have basically been that we don't know of any natural drivers which could account for the recent warming - therefore, it must be the rise in CO2. However, this presume a kind of arrogance about our knowledge of climate that just isn't justified. We simply don't know how our climate actually works, and what forcings account for the climate fluctuations during our holocene warming. Therefore, it's highly presumptuous to suggest that only some unnatural source of warming could account for what has occurred in the 20th century.

The science of climate prediction has relied to an extreme degree on computer-programmed climate models which have been shown time and again to be inadequate at actually predicting or describing the details of how climate changes. It has also relied on assumptions about the sensitivity of climate to minor forcings such as those which it is agreed upon can be brought about by increasing levels of CO2. For example, the basic physics of these gases tells us that they alone can increase world-wide temperatures by no more than about 1C for every doubling of CO from the pre-industrial level of 280ppm. The computer climate models use various scenarios of "high sensitivity" to suggest that this warming will trigger other elements within our climate to magnify this modest rise into something that could be catastrophic, an increase in temperature of anywhere from 3-9C. The problem of course with this kind of thinking is that of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). In other words, if the assumptions behind these models are false, so too will be their results. 

One of the most hotly contested aspects of these models is the numbers they use to calibrate climate "sensitivity". At present, most models use a very high value for this number, without actually being able to justify it on the basis of the data. Richard Lindzen, a climatology professor from MIT and one of the most respected figures in the field, has for years argued that an analysis of the data indicates that a much lower figure for climate sensitivity than is used by the models is justified, and that it could even turn out to be negative - that whatever increases in temperature are driven by CO2, are actually negated by other factors in the climate, such as increased clouds albedo. The problem with the models, he points out, is that climate is too little understood and that attempts to recreate it using computers will not do anything but reinforce existing illusions of certainty that are not justified by the actual data. 

The computer climate models, contrary to what has been said in the media, simply don't match up well with the actual climate data, except to the degree that they vary so much in their predictions that some of them are bound to fall within the margins of error. One thing they all agree upon, however, is that CO2 emissions did not begin to result in warmer temperatures until about 1970. This means that a large amount of the warming since the end of the little Ice Age, from about 1850-1970, amounting to about 0.6C, was not driven by man-made causes. What was it driven by? We don't know. So how can we say that the warming experienced since 1970, which has been about 0.4C, is man-made? A good question. The global warming theorists have answers, to be sure, but let's be honest, whatever those answers might be, that's a fairly small temperature increase over a very brief period, climatically speaking, to draw such huge and threatening conclusions from. 

Here's an example of one of the most famous series of climate model predictions, presented by James Hansen of NASA to congress in 1988:

As you can see, Hansen's primary model scenario has been over-estimating warming since it was released. Hansen did give two other scenarios which would result in lesser degrees of warming, but he emphasized the above scenario as the most likely. However, even the lower of the other two scenarios has departed from the trends of recent years. In short, there's little reason to think they are reliable, especially in that warming has fallen flat for the last 8-12 years, and is actually on a statistically downward trajectory, although it's too soon to tell if that will last. Hansen tries to explain the gaps in his predictions by suggesting that some unknown climate factor has been masking the CO2 warming trends for the last decade, and that when this unknown factor goes away, warming will resume "with a vengeance". However, even he admits that that if it doesn't happen soon, there will have to be some "rethinking" of the models. Indeed. 

You will have to pardon me if all this leaves me more than a bit skeptical. There are all kinds of models that can be constructed to agree with past climate data, but very few that can actually make accurate predictions, or justify the notion that our climate is now primarily driven by GHG warming. For example, virtually all the climate models that rely on GHG warming to explain recent trends make specific predictions about the internal details in the atmospheric warming to be expected, a kind of "signature" or "fingerprint" which gives us reason to think, if that pattern is found, that the warming we are experiencing is due to GHGs rather than other causes. This creates, n the climate graphs, a kind of "hot spot" in the atmospheric temperature patterns. And yet, in all the data that has been accumulated over the last thirty years, this "hot spot" is missing. If it were to appear, then the climate models could claim some kind of vindication, but it hasn't, and this shed further doubts on their understanding of how climate actually works. 

As a side note, I'll post here a graph of an alternative peer-reviewed climate model published in 1996, which is based mostly on cycles in our ocean currents, and leaves out entirely any forcings due to GHGs.

As you can see, this more simplistic model manages to capture quite well both the trend prior to 1996, and those that have come since. According to this model, we are actually just past the peak of the recent temperature rise, and are coming down once again. This model is not at all unique, however. In fact, a number of climatologists who actually are in the alarmist camp are now saying that worldwide temperatures may be flat or continue to decline for the next 20-30 years, and yet they still maintain that after that, temperatures will resume their rise, and this time much more steeply due to the accumulations of GHGs in the interim. Again, this strains credulity, and seems like the behavior of people who are clinging to a failing hypothesis. 

One thing I'll say about those at the forefront of the global warming movement: they have good intentions. They may be wrong, they may even be somewhat deluded, but they have good intentions. They genuinely believe that the world is in danger, and they are acting according to that belief to try to save it. If I believed in the underlying facts, I would join them, regardless of the faults in their emotional approach at times. I don't like the polarization that has occurred in this debate, and the sense that some people are the good guys fighting the bad guys who are callously destroying the earth for profit. It's certainly true that there are people out there who are callously wrecking environmental havoc for profit. And it's certainly true that the oil and gas industries would oppose the climate change movement regardless of the facts to protect their profits. But that doesn't change the actual facts. If tobacco really didn't cause cancer, the tobacco companies would be right to resist warnings and restrictions on smoking, if it were just some subjective notion of morality that was behind the crusaders.

The point being that even well-intentioned people can be wrong. And further, well-intentioned people can create unhealthly polarizations on the issues to paint their side as the "good" people and the other side as the "bad" people. My reading of the movement is that this is indeed what has occurred with the climate change movement, and it has taken a wrong turn it will severely come to regret in the coming years. 

One must recognize that whether the fossil fuels industry has been driven by greed or not, it has been of tremendous benefit to mankind, overall. This, despite the clear damage it has brought about in all kinds of ways, even if one entirely excludes the issue of greenhouse gases. Humanity surely does need to mitigate and reverse that damage over time, but one can't ignore its clear benefits. Fossil fuel use in China, for example, has certainly polluted its air and bled over into neighboring countries, yet it has also not only greatly improved but saved the lives of many millions of people there. The same is true around the globe. One cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's certainly true that fossil fuels are dirty, and if they really were on the verge of destroying our ecosytem with greatly higher temperature, then yes, we'd have to pay the cost of dramatically curtailing their use. But that is simply not the case, and the argument that it is, is based on very weak science. 

The trends in science, I think, are very clearly positive. There are remarkable breakthroughs every year in every aspect of alternative energy production and use. They are not as rapid as some of the scariest of climate change warnings say we need to change over to alternative fuels, but I think they are completely compatible with the actual trends in climate and other forms of environmental degradation they cause. Over the next 20-30 years these alternative energy sources will come more and into use, and eventually dominate our energy markets. The efficiencies of solar, wind, nuclear, ocean current, geothermal, and other energy technologies are increasing on an exponential scale, as is their installed base. There is every reason to believe that they will eventually become even cheaper than most fossil fuels, especially oil, which is likely to decline in production relatively soon and rise in price even further. Even so, there's no reason to rush the gun and get in the way of the economic developments which are raising so many billions out of poverty, and are driving the alternative energy market in developed countries. There will be plenty of time to switch over to these cleaner and safer fuels, and to even patch up the damage we've done.

That doesn't mean that the future is entirely rosy. There are significant problems with the destruction of natural habitats, especially rain forests, and the supply of basic needs such as clean water. One cannot expect those problems to go away overnight, but the good news is that population growth is slowing dramatically and looks to turn net negative within the next 50 years. Overall, I would say that things look rather positive, despite the clear challenges ahead. 

And spiritually, I think we are also turning some important corners. The overall movements in consciousness that underly all these vast social, political, scientific, technological, economic, and environmental changes are significantly positive, despite their often chaotic appearance. One need not fear the future, or lapse into doubt about humanity's essential role in the planet's spiritual evolution. Faith is not unjustified either as an attitude or a method in dealing with any of these problems. 

A Love Supreme

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I'm really trying to keep this blog going, but yesterday happened to the 26th anniversary of meeting, on a blind date, my wife Victoria, love of my life and the best thing that's ever happened to me by far. I owe her my human sanity and happiness, and a great deal of whatever spiritual wisdom has fallen upon me by the Grace of the Goddess . Being more in love now than ever before in our twenty-six years together is an amazing gift, and a testament to her patience and obvious saintliness. I don't know who else could have put up with me for this long, which includes patiently letting me post my crazy ideas on the internet without (much) objection to the time and energy I've expended here over the years.

I'm reminded of my favorite quote from Nisargadatta, who when asked by a student if there was anything that was real in this world, replied (I don't have the exact quote, I'm just paraphrasing - if anyone knows the exact quote I'd be very happy if they let me know - I'm pretty sure it's from "I Am That"):

"Yes, the love we feel for one another in this world is real. Everything else we experience here, all objects we see, even the world itself, is unreal, is an illusion of the mind. But the love we feel for one another is real. It is a sign of the Supreme Reality that is our true nature."

To me, that's perhaps the most profound single teaching I've ever read anywhere, from any spiritual teacher. I come back to that teaching time and time again, day after day, as a guiding principle of my life to help me separate my own bullshit from what is real. This world is a strange place, and all of us in it are strange characters, struggling with illusions and reactions to illusions left and right, like children lost in a carnival hall of mirrors. In the midst of all that, however, one thing remains real - the love we find for one another in the midst of it. Sometimes that love is rare and hard to find, and even harder to hold onto, but it's the one thing we have, the one light in the darkness that can lead us out of this maze of mirrors. 

I'm a very lucky man to have found some real love in this world, and I intend to hold that light as high as I can to make my way through this world to the reality it points to. The rest may be an illusion, even my own body and the bodies of those I love, but the love itself is always real, and we should never doubt that.

A Love Supreme

One more note on Maia-Gaia's comments. He made the following remarks in an attempt to describe two possible extremes of “activism” and “traditionalism”:

“I happen to be reading about a Neo-Vedantic philosopher- Swami Vivekananda at your fellow blogger- kelamuni - Like Aurobindo, the swami was a Hindu nationalist and spiritual reformer repudiating things like the caste system. Their activist approach can be contrasted with Ramana who during the same period showed no interest in worldly politics beyond that which affected the title to his ashram property or had any concern about oppressive religious discrimination. His satsang gatherings were dutifully arranged according to caste with a curtain separating Brahmin. Your  environmental essay contrasting our ego (where guilt over our evil potential arises) with our spiritual essence seems inspired by Ramana's emphasis on the Self and his detachment in contrast to the engagement of Aurobindo and ultimately is a reflection of the ontological maya-gaia dialectic.”

I think a few things need to be corrected about this. First, Ramana is not actually a good example of a traditional Hindu teacher. In fact, Ramana often denied being a Hindu at all, and often said that he just went along with the culture of his time and place, largely because he was indifferent to such things. So he allowed an ashram to grow up around him, but he considered himself “atiashrama”, which means, “outside the ashram”. He looked favorably upon many aspects of Hindu culture and teachings, at least those aspects which seemed in accord with his own realization and mode of living, but he did not feel any particular need to conform to them. As far as the caste system goes, he had no interest in it whatsoever, and didn't live according to caste rules or obey the general strictures of caste association. Among his own devotees he made no distinction between castes, and frequently commented that such things were absurd, and even upbraided his closer devotees when they tried to institute such things around him.  

On the other hand, Ramana was very considerate of others, even to the caste traditions others followed. When visitors came to the ashram, Ramana would try to accommodate them as much as he could. Sometimes when visitors came who followed strict caste rules, Ramana would have the ashram follow them, particularly in diet and seating. So yes, there were occasions when Ramana divided devotees sitting before him by caste, so as not to make the visiting traditionalists uncomfortable. When they left, he would take the screens away, and resume his normal mode of life.  Such things were never a normal part of his ashram life.

In general, Ramana's ashram was not a good example of a traditional Hindu ashram, and his teaching was not a good example of traditional Advaita. One can certainly say there is enough looseness within the Hindu religion to accommodate people like Ramana, and even to herald them as great realizers, and that Ramana's teachings are in accord with the principles of Advaita, but they deviate from them in important ways. So one should really not use Ramana as an example of a traditional Hindu teacher, as opposed to Vivekananda's crusading reformism. In fact, in the general stream of these movements, Ramana is usually put in the same general camp as Vivekananda, as a “neo-Advaitin”, rather than a traditional Advaitin. His life and teachings represent a powerful reforming and modernizing influence within Advaita, in some respects even more influential than Vivekananda at this point in history.  

If one were to look for an example of a Hindu traditionalist who ranks among the century's spiritual luminaries, one should probably look to someone like The Shankaracharya of Kanchi, also known as the Sage of Kanchi. He was a strong defender of the caste system through and through, and of most aspects of traditional Hindu culture. Of course one has to realize that even Vivekananda did not call for the total abolition of the caste system. He knew quite well that it was too deeply entrenched within Indian religious and political culture to entirely eliminate. So he too was an accomodationist to a serious degree.

One can certainly say that Ramana was not an activist crusader, on this or any other issues. Vivekananda clearly was. One thing to remember is that Vivekananda was not a Selfrealizer, at least not until his death. As Ramankrishna told him, realization would be withheld in his case until he had completed his life's work, and once he had realized he would give up the body, which is precisely how it happened. So Vivekananda is not a good example of how a realizer works in relation to the world.

Ramana, on the other hand, was a realizer from the age of sixteen on. His life demonstrates the truth that silent realization can be a more powerful influence on the world than any amount of activism. People would sometimes ask Ramana why he wasn't actively working to change the world for the better, and his reply was always “How do you know I'm not?” From his point of view, the real sources of spiritual transformation in the world are not in the realm of action, but in the realm of silence and stillness. One of my favorite quotes from Ramana is a response to these kinds of questions, when he said “An old women who finds the peace of God in her prayers does more to change the world than all the intellectuals combined”. It's not as if activism plays no positive role in these matters, but it's value is often exaggerated. Real change occurs through genuine heart-opening.  

There's a kind of activism which can combine aspects of both. An example is found in this video: 

An invitation

As a side note, it's worth mentioning that Gandhi often expressed a desire to visit Ramana Maharshi at his ashram, and this almost happened a number of times. However, his close aide Rajagopal gave strict orders that under no circumstances should Gandhi be allowed to see Ramana, because he feared that if they met, Gandhi would renounce his mission and retire to Ramana's ashram. So every time a meeting seemed possible, Rajagopal would find some excuse to rush Gandhi away to some emergency somewhere far away. This was all a little hilarious, and probably unnecessary, but you never know.  

Humanity as Gaia's Teenage Nervous System

An old intent buddy, Maya-Gaia, who has a great internet site you should all check out, wrote in respone to me recent essay, “Climate Change, Environmentalism, and the Problem of Human Evil” some interesting comments worth responding to, including a practical matter to clear up:

“Gee willergigs - Conrad!....I respectfully must protest that in my 100-page website, nowhere is there any essay about "Humans as Cancer". There IS the following comment: "If we accept the Gaia Theory, what is inescapable, is that human civilization is analogous to Earth's cancer. The personal challenge then, for each of us, is to evolve from a virulent to a benign strain, by raising our environmental consciousness." This is from my page about the Gaia paradigm and is a fervent call to practical action- to support and participate in environmental and wildlife conservation projects. Eco-spirituality doesn't have anything to do with our ego's atavistic guilt about humanity's intrinsic evil but is an intuitive response (occasionally evoked from  direct revelation) to the real-world devastation being wrought on Gaia and her beautiful, innocent, disappearing nature. Our species is not evil but is endowed with the means and will to survive and overpopulate at all cost to nature. Raising ten children, in a rightous act to feed his growing family, a single poacher, homesteading on the borders of Udege Legend National Park in Far-Eastern Siberia- harvests gall bladders to sell to the Chinese apothacary trade. He- singlehandedly- can easily wipe out the Himalayan black bear to extinction. The ecospiritual approach- pacificenvironment.org/article.php?id=2993 - is to set up infrastructure to train him to become a wildlife ranger for ecotourism and provide birth control for his community.”

Okay, first things first, on this page at the Maia-Gaia website, under the heading "Our Greatest Challenge..." one can find the above quote, and one can clearly see that the words "earth's cancer" are highlighted as a link to a webpage, where the essay "Humans as Cancer" by A. Kent MacDougall can be found. So yes, this essays is linked, I assume with some degree of approval, on the Maia-Gaia website. Perhaps Maia-Gaia forgot he had done so, but there it is for all to see. Of course, I'm not suggesting that he entirely approves of this message or its point of view, but he does seem to find it a logical and perhaps even necessary part of the Gaia hypothesis. I can't say I entirely blame him, since this viewpoint is quite common in the spiritual-ecological movement, and even James Lovelock seems to give it serious consideration.

But this is just the problem I'm pointing to. In the first place, I would strongly suggest that the Gaia hypothesis, that the earth is a living organism which regulates its own ecosphere, does not indicate that the human species is a cancer growing within that organism. Nor is it a virus, a parasite, or a pathology of some kind. This suggests a distorted and deeply biased understanding of how organisms grow and prosper, and the stages of development they pass through.

It's important first to ask oneself what kind of organism the Earth is, and what role human beings play in it. Obviously, there's something rather special about human beings, or we would not be discussing their place in the ecosphere in the first place. Human being are the only highly sentient technologically civilized speices on the planet. If we were a cancer, we would be a simplistic organism that merely made very large tumors, such as giant ants might build massive anthills over the face of the earth. Obviously we are the most highly sophisticated organism on the planet, at the very head of the food chain, and capable of altering the earth on an unprecedented scale. There are many analogies to this in biology, and cancer is simply not one of them.

The best analogy I can think of is the evolutionary and developmental example of the human nervous system within our own bodies. Our brains and nervous system consumes a great deal of energy and resources in our body. For it's tiny weight, it consumes a highly disproportionate amount of protein, glucose, oxygen, and all kinds of vital nutrients. Most of our body is dedicated to keeping our brain alive at whatever cost to the rest of our system. When resouurces are scarce, the body directs an even greater portion of them to our brains, even at the expense of other vital components of our body. This is actually good for the body. In evolutionary terms, our bodies have also paid a great price for developing our brains. It has required us to grow large heads, which increases mortality at birth, and produces a very long extended childhood, which makes us very vulnerable for a long period of time and requires a massive investment from parents for many years to protect and raise us. The total investment of resources in these large brains of ours hardly seems worth it if the survival of the body is the sole measure of our worth and purpose.

But of course survival alone is not the sole measure of our body's worth and purpose on this planet, nor is that the case for the planet itself. Just as our bodies are subservient to the development of our brains and nervous systems - because these in the end benefit us the most - so are the earth's resources subserviant to the development of the human species, it's culture, and most of all, it's intelligent consciousness. Mother earth certainly loves all its creatures, but she values human beings above all other creatures in the same way that the body values the brain over all other organs and parts. This does not mean there are no limits to be set for human beings. Like any mother, she knows that we need discipline as well as nurturing. But there is no sense in which she ever sees us as a cancer, or anything remotely resembling a pathogen. A mother does not see her child as an evil invader who must be cut from her body, but only, perhaps, as an unruly adolescent who needs to be grounded or disciplined. Human beings are essential to the very purpose of this planet, and our consciousness is more akin to the nervous system of our world. 

One of the facts of life for human bodies is that our nervous systems grow in haphazard fashion. At several stages in our development, our nervous systems vastly overgrow themselves and have to be pruned back. Adolescence is one of those periods. The human brain embarks on a massive growth spirit in the early years of adolescence, growing synapses and connections at a massive rate, consuming massive bodily resources and even spinning out of control. This is one of the reasons adolescence is such a difficult time mentally and emotionally. The brain is literally overcharged and overgrown. At a certain point, the brain actually stops growing these connections, and switches over to killing them off. It has made too many connections, and over the next ten years, up to the age of about twenty-five, the brain actually engages in a massive pruning operation, cutting out and killing off about 20% of our dentrites and synapses, trying to get rid of the ones that don't work properly. This is an entirely necessary exercise, and has nothing to do with some notion that parts of our brains are a "cancer" upon us. They are not, they are just part of the natural growth process, as is pruning them back,

I would suggest that what the human species, and our planet, is going through right now is akin to adolescent brain development. We have been rather haphazardly and even chaotically overgrowing ourselves, establishing all kinds of wild and new connections, and to some degree, creating ones that don't entirely work. In the process we've been using up resources like a teenager at the dinner table, eating as much as possible of anything and everything, and not always with much discrimination. We eat healthy food and junk food and anything that isn't nailed down. Our Mother may not like everything we are doing, but she still encourages us to eat, because that's what we are supposed to do at this stage in our growth. And likewise, we are supposed to be acting a bit crazy and undisciplined, we are supposed to be letting our brains grow wild and establish all kinds of new connections, even though some of them aren't going to turn out to be useful, because we will be pruning them back over time as well, until we settle down into adulthood. Teenagers are not a pathology. But the idea that teenagers are some kind of cancer on the family is a disturbed, neurotic, and dysfunctional pathology which needs to be cut out as quickly as possible. It's hard enough being a teenager without being made to feel guilty about it, as if teenagers are some alien invader into the peaceful home of our planet who should be suppressed and made to feel as if they are bad, when all they are is being teenagers. 

So yes, I think this notion that human beings are cancers in the earth's body is a completely dysfunctional and pathological interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis. It's completely off-base and without any spiritual foundation. The people who put forth these kinds of ideas really need to examine the plank in their own eye first. 

As I said before, it also great over-exaggerates the damage human beings are doing to the planet. Certainly we are throwing a wild party, but any lasting damage is really pretty minimal. I'm pretty confident that the global warming hysteria is just that - people overreacting. In some sense, the overreaction is itself just another example of teenagers going crazy, this time in the other direction, blaming themselves and forming negative self-images, trying to control and regulate each other and so forth.  This too is part of what teenagers must go through as their brains go through these massive growth and pruning periods. Emotionally it is very difficult to form a properly discriminating perspective on these things. From the viewpoint of a mature spirituality, it's not to be taken terribly seriously one way or another, but allowances have to be made for what teenagers need to go through in the process. There certainly are violent and destructive impulses that need to be curbed, but one should not confuse the ordinary patterns of adolescence with such things. 

There certainly are good and mature people taking steps to introduce discipline to the unruly teenagers on our planet. Maia-gaia cites some good examples of that. I approve of a great many things being done by the ecological movement. The Global Warming scare is a mistake, I think, but it will pass too, like most such things, and we will even learn something from it. Humanity will eventually emerge from its adolescence with a heightened sense of purpose and discipline -  the signs of that are already present. We must simply be patient, and let the kids grow up in a natural fashion. Eventually if we are patient and loving towards one another there will be a long period of mature growth ahead. The earth is not being destroyed. We must have faith in the process of our own development, and in the powers of our Mother to guide us properly. We are all greatly loved and cherished, even the more boisterous among us. There is no evil among us here. Teenagers are easily spooked by scary stories and horror movies, but it's just a stage of mental development for most, not a reality we need to take seriously. The few individuals who really are sick and pathological will be taken care of by our immune systems. We should not characterize the whole by the failings of a few. 

Let the thieves live together and let the few really free people spread all over the world.

To break for a moment from the thread of my previous posts, I happened on a couple of outakes from the Integral Movement. The first is what can only be described as a chest-thumping mass-marketing sales email from Ken Wilber, the other an article from an old acquaintance from my Adidam days, Terry Patten, who is now apparently hawking his skills as an "Integral Life Coach", public speaker, seminar giver, and all-around integral philosopher/renaissance man - you all probably know the drill. 

The Terry Patten article strikes me as the most revealing, I suppose in part simply because I knew the guy back in Adidam. My first, gut-level reaction: wow, what an asshole. This guy is a spiritual teacher now? Second, reflecting reaction: hey, that's not fair, give the guy a break, that was years ago, and a lot of people in Adidam acted like assholes. Maybe he's changed since he left (which was years before I did). Third, self-revealing reaction: yeah, but he was particularly assholish towards me, and even after he left Adidam. I mean every time I bumped into the guy he'd make condescending snearing, passive-aggressive remarks couched in spiritualese, revealing himself time and again as a classic new age douche.  Fourth, self-reflecting reaction: get over yourself, Conrad, past is past and who cares who was a douche to you fifteen years ago and counting? Were you any better? Fifth, self-estimating reaction: yeah, I probably was. But if you want to stay that way, stop holding onto these old emotional reactions to people like this. It doesn't help me or them. And anyway, the guy was clearly deeply insecure and somehow felt threatend by me for God knows what reason. Sixth and final reaction: read what the dude has to say and see if it shows any value in itself, or signs of overcoming all that Adidam assholishness we all were immersed in for so long. 

That out of the way, there's the article itself, which brings out a very strange point of view about the spiritual process, or what these guys like to call "integration". Terry offers up this odd question to frame his thoughts:

1. How will we creatively manage the tensions between "purity" and "openness" in the world of leading-edge spirituality?

The question is raised as a lead-in to discuss the ethical qualms many have raised about teachers and leaders in the Integral Movement, and calls that have made to avoid certain teachers whose ethics seem questionable, or to create some kind of self-policing standards within the movement about these matters. Terry seems a bit upset about this issue, I don't know why, or what specific things he's responding to, I don't really follow the Integral Community very much, but I am on mailing lists and I get various things sent to me now and then, and I like reading the Integral Options Cafe website because it has so many good articles there (jeez, they even used to quote and link to some of my posts when I was actively blogging).

The point Terry comes to is a plea for understanding, which is spelled out here:

Both purity and openness are values worth respecting. Either too much openness or too much purity can do damage. So both principles need to be respected, within reason. Staying true to one's principles is essential, and yet refusing to associate with people can erode the spirit of generosity and collegiality so essential to building a movement.

What to say about the false dichotomy presented here? It's an example of the kind of distorted thinking that emerges from a “movement”. In the first place, there is no “tension” between purity and openness, nor need it be “creatively managed”. This is all just plain wrong. There is no conflict between purity and openness, and no need to trade off one for another, to strike some “balance” between the two. To paraphrase Keats, “purity is openness, and openness is purity, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

The dilemma Terry is actually referring to is brought on by false notions of both purity and openness. In the false world of the delusional ego, too much purity can somehow be a “bad” thing. Terry equates the two to “inhalation and exhalation”, saying both “are necessary, but each would be lethal if it were practiced to the exclusion of the other.” As if somehow purity requires being closed down and repressed, and openness requires that we forgo our purity. This is only the case if one's mind has some very deep illusions about what genuine purity and openness are. And unfortunately, in the modern Integral “movement”, these kinds of illusions seem rampant.

Why? Well, one reason is that so many in the integral field, including both Terry and Ken Wilber, are trying to market their ideas and practices commercially, in order to make a living. They have turned their “movement” into a business and commercial enterprise, and not only do they not see the obvious consequences of that, they are intellectually devoted to the idea that this is not only a good thing, but a necessary, “integral” thing. You see, they are just “integrating” business and spirituality, and there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with that, could there?

Well, there really could be. There's a reason why Jesus threw the money-changers out of the Temple, why Ramana and Nisargadatta and other teachers of genuine realization refused to allow people to solicit donations, or commercialize their offerings. Papaji famously said that any teacher who charged money for their satsang was a fraud, and the title of the post was his reply to the question of what he thought about spiritual communities:

“Let the thieves live together and let the few really free people spread all over the world.”

There really are some genuine conflicts in life, and real trade-offs between opposing values. Purity and openness just isn't one of them. But spirituality and commercialism is. This isn't merely some kind of ideological notion that we can toss aside because we live in a new era. It's a long tested truth. Money really does corrupt. Desire really does corrupt. There is a place for money and desire in our lives, we certainly couldn't get by without them, but we always have to be aware of their proper place, and guard what we hold sacred from their corrupting influence. It's not possible to be completely free of their influence, but at the very least it can be greatly minimized. Spiritual teachings, even Ramana's and Papaji's, are best communicated to a wide audience through books, tapes, DVDs, etc., and these cost money and must be sold for money. If one has to rent a hall to give a talk in, it has to be paid for. But that doesn't mean one has to charge admission, one can find patrons who will pay for such things, if they really are of value.

So there's a level of financial need that any set of teachings must fulfill. And yet, everyone who has something genuine to say about spirituality, even lowly bloggers like me, has an obligation to minimize as much as possible the financial dimension of all that. That obligation isn't just to those being taught, but to themselves, because they too will become corrupt if they don't minimize it as much as possible. One need only look at the record of Adidam to see how corrupting money can be to a spiritual teacher, his devotees, and the “movement” they are a part of, to confirm this principle.  

Unfortunately, not everyone who left Adidam learned this lesson. Saniel Bonder is another example of someone who left the finanical corruptions of Adidam only to create his own corrupt spiritual organization and “movement”, charging hundreds and thousands of dollars for dubious teachings about “waking down” enlightenment. These kinds of teachings only debase the genuine process of spiritual life, and turn it into a corrupt and deluding business enterprise. Terry Patten of course had a long history in Adidam, and Ken Wilber was involved with Adi Da from a distance for many years. Both either left or cut their ties at some point, and tried to separate from the corruptions of that organization, but both also seem to have bought into a false notion of what it means to be “inclusive”, or “integral”. Both seem to think that this means merging religion and business together into one :”seamless whole”, as if that would be a good thing for all, and make us more “holistic”.  

Well, news flash, it doesn't work that way. This is a false notion of what it means to be inclusive, integral, and “whole”. I have nothing against business, I've run various kinds of small businesses for much of my life, and there is nothing wrong with that. Business pursuits and the life of a householder are completely compatible with spiritual life, and always has been. But one must always remember that they are distinct domains of life, and simply are not to be mixed, and to the degree that they have to .be combined, it's always best to minimize that as much as possible. Keeping each pure and whole is not a way of creating a false conflict, it's a way of preserving the true nature of each. Nor is it at odds with openness to keep them distinct. Instead, it preserves their integrity, which is the real meaning of the word “integral”. Whatever conceptual notions one might have about the world, even if one tries to go by Wilber's AQAL four-quadrant system, it's simply a false and deluding notion to think that the principle of integralism means literal mixing together of all things into a giant soup. Integralism means respecting the integrity of all the areas of life, and not mixing incompatible elements.  

What I see when I look at these windows onto the Integral Movement, such as Wilber's marketing letter, is a corruption of not only the principles and concepts of integration, but of the individuals involved. Wilber's letter is a dithering document to the destructive power of commercialism, as are most of his recent writings. One can attribute these faults to more than just commercialism, and I don't want to try to figure out whether the chicken or the egg is to blame, but one can clearly see that they work against one another's interests. Wilber's own thinking has long been in decline, and almost in exact inverse proportion to his attempts to turn his philosophy into a commercial enterprise.  

Genuine openness is not a form of naivete. It does not embrace everything without discrimination. Instead, it uses discrimination to keep separate the incompatible elements of life, those which might corrupt or corrode or work against each other. The very word “discrimination” means to separate. And that is not incompatible with “integration”, because it is essential to keep various elements of life separate from one another in order to integrate them properly. It's fine to integrate business and spirituality into one's life, but one does so by keeping them separate, by discriminating between them, and keeping each pure.  

And by the way, it's just as destructive to business pursuits when notions of spirituality are mixed in with them. I have a good friend from Adidam who experienced that first hand, when his multi-million dollar business was destroyed by those in Adidam who tried to take it over and run it according to “spiritual” principles, which it turned out were likewise corrupted in the process. It took him years to recover and restructure his business from scratch, and it's now doing gangbusters.  

I would say to the people who are trying to turn the Integral Movement into a business, why not just start an actual business, if you have those kinds of skills and inclinations, and leave your spiritual pursuits to themselves? Use the money you make in business to sponsor spiritual matters, so that they don't have to be corrupted by commercialization. Don't mix the two, but feel free to patronize your spiritual interests with your successful business enterprises. That's the way it has traditionally been done, and it works very well.  

Of course, the desire to cash in on one's spiritual seeking is often too great for many people to resist, both as purveyers and consumers of this kind of commercial tripe. And so, as Papaji said, the thieves all congregate together, which makes it somewhat easier to avoid. For anyone not involved in these sorts of endeavors, I'd recommend keeping a careful distance. For those who are involved, beware, and reflect on what is going on around you and within you.  

The Metaphysics of Evil

Bottom line, there is no such thing as metaphysical evil. The human struggle with evil, though very real within the context of earthly life, is simply not a reflection of any higher or metaphysical reality. In this I am in complete agreement with modern psychology, science, and even atheistic views. Much of what religion has taught us is simply false. There is no Devil, nor even any demons. There are no evil spirits, and no soul-damning karmic consequences to the various acts human commit that we might call evil. There is no hell where evil people are sent, and no demons trying to lure us there. All of that - literally all of it - is a projection within the context of human beings struggling to come to terms with the various mechanical and psychic problems of incarnation. 

The worst examples of evil we can think of, a Hilter say, or a serial killer, are not of demonic origin, and have not "gone over to the dark side", simply because there is no dark side. The "dark side" is a product of human ignorance, literally, about the process of incarnation. The primary problem we all tend to face in this matter of being born here is that we have very little conscious understanding of what is going on, where we are, where we came from, how we got here, what we are doing , and what we are supposed to be doing. We are not generally aware that we are actually incarnating here at all - most people simply take things at surface appearances, and we assume we are just born here as bodies in a material world that poses a lot of challenges and threats.

As mentioned in previous posts, we don't often consider the possibility that this world is an illusion of sorts, an appearance within our conscious experience, but even if we do, we don't tend to understand the mechanics of that. Even those who intuitively believe in reincarnation don't quite understand what it means. We tend to think that we just drop into this world, live for a time, and then leave it, not grasping that there are a great many biological and mechanical issues involved in the process which profoundly affect the quality of our experience here. Nor do we realize that when that process is disrupted, or not understood properly, and when it becomes aberated in some respect, this creates even more illusions within our minds about all of these matters. Trying to straighten out those illusions can be very difficult and take a lot of time, and as a human species we still have much to comprehend about this process.

Our traditional religious cultures have attempted to understand this process, but in most cases this has only made the confusion worse, in large part because the people leading the way in many of these cultures were disturbed and deluded themselves about the process that were trying to comprehend, and their maladaptation to it created projeccted notions about the state of the world and the universe and God that are simply reflections of their problems with incarnation, rather than a pure vision of what that process involves. Chief among those maladaptations are the various notions of demonic forces and evil beings who are thought to be opposed to human happiness and Divine enjoyment of our existence. We all know these examples almost by heart, depending on the culture we were raised in. Their universality, unfortunately, only tends to lend credence to the notion that such things are real.

My own experience in Adidam, for example, included being taught that such demonic spirits were a serious factor in human life, and that the great spiritual Adepts really did engage in spiritual warfare of a kind with these demons. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is said to be engaged in a battle with the demonic asuras, and his admonition to Arjuna is to righteously fight these demons. It is of course acknowledged at some level within Hinduism that these asuras are metaphorical, that they really represent our various desires and urges which keep us bound to the world-illusion, but the widespread belief throughout Hindusim nonetheless is that these kinds of spirits are indeed real, and that we have to be wary of them, and engage in endless kinds of purifying rituals and practices in order to keep them at bay. The Hindu priesthood still makes a pretty penny from offering their ritual services for this purpose, as they have since ancient times. 

I remember a sad but funny incident in my later days in Adidam that illustrates this point. I was at the Mountain of Attention Sanctuary for a celebration, which consisted of a long puja and chanting at Seventh Gate, which opened onto the gorunds of Adi Da's personal house. He was there at the time, and near the end of the Puja I was tapped on the shoulder and asked to help with a special service. Some of the ladies from the kitchen (which was in a building just to one side) need a man to carry a large crate of very expensive dishware to be used to serve Adi Da's celebration meal that day - the kind of thing only brought out on special occasions. I had to carry this crate along a narrow footpath, on one side of which was a fairly steep cliff. The ladies were very wary of this cliff, and one of them warned me in a deeply worried voice that I should be extremely careful, because if I dropped these dishes down the cliff, I would be facing terrible karmas for lifetimes to come. I nearly burst out laughing, but then realized these ladies were deadly serious. They actually believed in some kind of spiritual reward/punishment system. It was no wonder of course. In his later years Adi Da spoke at great length about the terrible consequences that could come when devotees messed up something or other of seemingly minor significance. He also spoke endlessly about demonic spirits, and his own struggle fighting these spirits who were opposing his work and doing great harm in the world. In fact, that kind of talk was one of the key matters that made me begin to suspect that Adi Da was not a genuinely free realizer, but one who was himself bound to a number of simple illusions about the world, and spiritual life altogether. In that of course Adidam is not much different than a whole host of other religious traditions, and it can certainly point to those traditions for support of its own beliefs about these things. I'm merely suggesting that all of those traditions harbor the same faults, rooted in a problem with spiritual incarnation that creates projections of evil onto both the material world and the spiritual realms. In Da's case, it's not hard to see that his own problems manifested a delusional cosmology that perpetuated some fearful notions about evil, ones that fostered fear and unhealthy supestitions in his devotees. The same pattern holds true for a great many other religious figures and traditions, of course, I only single Da out because that's where my own experience of these kinds of religious themes comes from. Catholics and Hindus and others can I'm sure relate from their own repetoire of religious demonology.

The earliest religions we know of were all shamanic in nature, and generally believed in evil spirits which had to be battled with by humans, with the aid of priests and medicine men, and of course by appeal to friendly Gods and spirits who could help us. The results of human life were generally thought to be the fruits of this battle between good and evil spirits. WHen good things happened, it was because our appeals were well recieved and our Gods were able to defeat the evil spirits, and when things went poorly it was either because our appeals were insufficient, not properly conducted by the right ritual, or that the Gods we prayed to were simply not powerful enough, and we needed better Gods. Those who lost wars to other tribes or nations often assumed that this was because their conquerer's Gods were stronger, and so the conquered people would happily convert to their conquerer's Gods. 

We are a bit more sophisticated than that now, and tend not to believe that the Gods and spirits function in quite that way, but we do still tend to believe in a similar kind of superstition, whether religious or secular in nature. Even the scientific atheists or agnostics among  us believe in the superstitions of chemistry, looking for the right combination of anti-depressants and pharmaceuticals to ward off the bad diseases and chronic conditions of human unhappiness. I'm not even suggesting that all of that is wrong, only that it lacks a realistic understanding of the genuine sources of our disturbed state of mind and body. The real problem we face is that of incarnation, of finding a way to merge our spirit-awareness with our bodily experience. 

The reasons people believe in Gods and spirits so readily is easy enough to understand. It's because we are spirits ourselves, and as spirits we are intuitively aware that our true source is spiritual in nature, the product of an immense and overwhelming love by the very Force and Power that creates and give life to all things, both material and spiritual. There's a scientific effort to explain our belief in Gods and spirits through evolutionary neurobiology, which entertains the notion that our brains and nervious systems contain the capacity for an imaginative error to see things which are not there, and to impose the sense of an entity upon these interior neurological sensations. I have to say, this scientific explanation is actually close to the truth, but no cigar. There is in fact a neurological origin to this belief in Gods and spirits, but it is based in the reality that Gods and spirits actually exist, that we ourselves are spirits, and that our connection to this world through our own bodies is that of a spirt entering into symbiotic conjunction with a physical body. As problems arise within that neurological connection, it's easy to become confused and disturbed, and to imagine that some kind of "spirit" is causing the problem, even that there are evil spirits causing all kinds of problems for us, and that the nature of the cosmos is some kind of struggle between good spirits and evil spirits, with us poor humans stuck in the middle between heaven and earth, or even heaven and hell. 

The reality is that there are no spirits trying to interfere with or negatively influence the process of our life - except, of course, the spirits of other humans who are likewise trying to incarnate in this world, and who become confused and frustrated in the process. That frustration can lead to many very poor choices, as we can see all around us. Some of those choices are violent and cruel, and what we often call evil. And yet, frustration and difficulty are simply a natural part of the long struggle to incarnate in the physical worlds, which we engage in over many lifetimes, with many patterns built up in our spiritual psyches which have to be overcome over time. These patterns are what the Hindus call "karmas", or vasanas, the tendencies of attention. It's a mistake to think of karmas some kind of list of good and bad acts we have done in our past lives. There is no such scorecard, no Santa Claus keeping track of our deeds. Instead, there is simply a complex pattern in our own spiritual bodies, a literal built in set of connections we have tried to grow over time that enable us to function through human physical bodies, and which reflect the past disturbances we have created in previous attempts to incarnate. This governs how and why we will incarnate in various sets of bodies, sometimes as a way of accentuating the patterns in our spirit, at other times to overcome problems we have developed over many lives. The overall goal is simply to create a clean and pure spirit who can connect cleanly and purely to a human body without introducing aberated patterns of mind and body to either side of the equation. Clearly, this is much more diffficult than we can probably imagine.. It does indeed require purification of old patterns, even what we might call "evil" patterns, but this is no different in kind from taking a bath or a colonic to wash the dirt and filth from our souls and bodies. 

In other words, there is no sense of "punishment" going on in the universe. Karma is not about giving bad people bad experiences and good people good experiences. Good people may require bad experiences to grow, and bad people may require good experiences to grow. The Hitlers and serial killers of the world do not go to hell to burn for eternity, or even a long time. They go through purifications to be sure, but so do we all. Their future lives are not ones of guaranteed torment until they pay for their sins, their future lives are not terribly different from our own, they get what they need to learn their appropriate lessons and grow the proper spiritual capacities to connect rightly to their future bodies. 

One must recognize that the physical world is an innocent place. Even though all things die here, or even get eaten by other creatures, there is nothing evil at work. The Ebola Virus, which human beings might consider evil, is merely an organism trying to survive like every other. It has no evil origin or intent. It just happens that human beings have almost no immunity to it. Nothing about that is evil. Smallpox isn't evil either. Evil is something that can only be associated with human beings because of their aberated spiritual relationship to the body and the world. As I've said, we are not really here, this is not our home, and so human beings feel an intense sense of alienation and disturbance in the mere existential dilemma of being alive. This is something that animals don't generally experience, and I would expect that many alien races of intelligent beings don't feel either. It's not natural for the human bodily organism to feel that way, and it wouldn't if it weren't for the fact that our bodies entertain these unique reincarnational spirits through their minds from birth to death. We don't feel ourselves to be a part of nature because we are not, we are "aliens" of a kind here. That is why we divide the world into "natural" and "man-made". It's intuitively obvious to us that we humans are not of this world, are not a natural part of the material world,. and that we are something quite different in nature from most everything here. And yet, of course, we can't actually see anything around us, or in our bodies, which confirms this feeling, which makes us feel even more disturbed. We imagine we must be crazy sometimes, that we are just imagining all these problems and should simply stop looking for metaphysical explanations, that it's all just a matter of evolutionary glitches in our brains. Or we imagine that some God put us here to fulfill a plan we can't even begin to comprehend, which isn't far from the truth, but the actual truth eludes us, because we don't know where to look for the answers. 

It's a wonder that human beings get anything done at all. It would be much easier for us, I think, if we could comprehend just the simple basics of what how this life of ours is structured, rather than operating upon some half-assed sense of ourselves that never quite comes together as a genuine vision of life. Even the atheistic secular vision, which in many respects is a justified reaction to all our internal delusions, a way of rejecting them all and settling for what it hopes will be a healthy attitude of "don't know" or "don't care" about metaphysical issues - even that can't genuinely provide a healthy vision of life, simply because it also rejects the simple, basic fact of our being spirits incarnating through bodies. One doesn't actually have to believe much of anything about religion to simply acknowledge this. One need only pay attention to one's own mind and awareness for any significant period of time, and one will begin to see where we are coming from. The existential fact of our spiritual awareness doesn't go away simply because we stop believing in heavens and hells and angels and demons. The realities of our lives demand that we address this central experience, because it defines us as both spirits and as human beings. Unless we do create a conscious life around this spiritual vision of ourselves, we are bound to live it unconsciously, and thus create more troubles than we resolve. 

One good thing that I think is beginning to develop in our culture is the rudimentary capacity to actually be conscious of ourselves as spiritual beings, as a spiritual awareness that we are bringing into this world by the mere facts of our birth. There is a growing capacity to actually become aware of ourselves as we are, and to answer many of the most basic questions about human existence, things which have plagued humanity for thousands of years at the very least. I am not even talking about the esoteric understanding of non-dual reality, I am merely speaking of the basic understanding of spiritual reality, which is a necessary foundation for anything further. I'll be getting to that higher, non-dual understanding further down the line, but for right now I just one to emphasize the very basic matters of human life that are so often overlooked or not taking seriously, both by ordinary religious and secular people, and even by many non-dualists themselves. 

Tomorrow I think I'll write about the question of death, and what comes after we have left this material world. That should be fun.

Dreams of Karma and Kali

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about these notions of reincarnation and the problem of evil, and it was on my mind last night as I went to sleep. I had a strange dream that somehow seems connected to these ideas.

In the dream, I was part of a group of young men in a town who had gone off to fight in a war. Several of us had been killed in the bloody fighting, and as survivors we as a group were now still struggling with the aftermath. We were trying to live our normal lives back in town, but not all of us were able to do so without the psychological scars of combat plaguing us. One young man in our group in particular was haunted by the fact that his life had been saved by another fellow in our group, but he couldn't even remember who it was who had saved him, because of the traumas of the combat. He came to me,  because I had been one of the group leaders I suppose, a non-commissioned officer or something of the sort, and begged me to help him find the man who had saved him so he could thank him. He was wracked with survivor's guilt about this incident, and because he had been knocked unconscious in the course of the action, he had no idea who it was who had saved his life. I realized I had to help this guy, that he just wasn't going to be able to go on without knowing who had saved him.

So I began asking around among the rest of the guys in our group, trying to piece together the action of that night, to find out who it was who had performed this heroic act. It took a while, but finally I came up with the name of the hero beyond any doubt, and it was a complete surprise. The guy who it turned out had saved the first fellow was known to us all as the most messed up, psychologically disturbed guy in the whole unit. He had never been very stable mentally, and since we had gotten back from battle, he was clearly off his rocker, and wandered around town with a haunted, deranged thousand-yard stare, looking as if he'd never get back to normal, and maybe never had been normal to begin with. I couldn't figure out how this guy could have performed such a heroic act, so I tried to track him down to ask him about the details of that fateful night which seemed to have left him in such a disturbed state.

I tracked our friend down finally out on the streets. He was wandering about, going in and out of bars and gambling haunts, looking as if he wasn't even halfway there, not quite knowing what he was doing or where he was going. His face was haggard and worn, looking much older than his years, and his eyes revealed a man in a state of shock and despair that had driven him much more than half-insane. I tried to talk with him, but at first all he could do was mumble and wander about, and it seemed as if my presence and questions were aggravating him even more. Even so, I stayed with him, until finally he began to settle down a little bit and respond to my questions about that night, yet still restless and walking about quickly as I tried to keep up with him. But eventually he looked at me with a kind of strange recognition, and began recounting what he'd seen.

The man's story was simply terrifying. He described how in the course of battle, with guns blazing all around, and bombs going off in every direction, he had begun having strange visions of Kali. And as he was describing these visions to me, somehow I began to see them also. It was as if his story began unfolding in my own mind as he told it. As the battle had raged, somehow he began to see Kali, the Hindu Goddess of War and Destruction, hovering over the field of battle, meting out destruction to those karmically deserving of it. It was an immensely terrifying vision. Kali would send fiery death in one form after another to members of our group whose karmas called for it. One after another, I saw this fellow running through this burning town, with Kali flying in the air above him, seemingly directing the enemy's fire to target each of those members of our unit whose karmic destiny called for their death and destruction. The experience of war was bad enough as it is, but this poor fellow had been burdened even further by these visions of Divinity at work meting out the laws of karmic justice. And now I was reliving the experience with him, watching as Kali sent bullets and bombs and artillery and helicopters and missiles at this person and that person. All of this came alive to me in his telling, and we both watched as bodies exploded around us in unimaginably horrible ways, with Kali's fierce gaze directing it all, invisible to everyone but us.

I couldn't believe that I was able to see this man's visions, and I said something to that effect to him, and he suddenly stop in his tracks and stared at me. "But you were there," he said. And then it hit me - I really had been there. We had been together in this battle, fighting side by side, and that is why I was having these "visions" as my friend spoke. It wasn't that I was seeing his visions in my own mind, it was that he was simply re-awakening my own memories of the battle, that I had suppressed and forgotten. We had run side by side through the town, protecting each other as best we could, and we had both seen Kali at work. To the left and right, Kali sent these giant bolts of death at one soldier after another, and then suddenly Kali sent a giant metal shell at my friend, right at my side, the fellow now telling me his story. And I recalled how in an instant I had stepped forward and miraculously caught this giant shell, some two and a half feet in diameter, in my arms, just before it would have struck him. I did it without even thinking about the impossibility of what I'd done. It was an instant reaction. One moment this shell was fired with tremendous speed at my friend, the next I was grabbing it out of the air, not knowing how I'd done such a thing. Nor could my friend believe it. We were both struck by the sheer unbelievableness of it all. How could anyone stop Kali's acts? Even physically this was an impossible fact, this shell was traveling so fast it should have killed my friend, or anyone who go in its way, instantly. And yet I had plucked it out of the air with ease, without any struggle at all. I realized in that moment that I was not what I thought I was at all. The Gods, even Kali, recognized that I had, because of some deep purity in my soul, the capacity to intervene and alter these karmic patterns, to intercept this shell and put it aside, thus saving my fellow combatant. 

And yet, my friend was as much unnerved by this act as if by death itself, for he had seen death come at him and then seen it taken away. This shook him to the bone. Somehow , he went on with the battle, and in the course of action he was inspired to save the lives of others, including the young man in our unit who had first come to me wanting to know who had saved him. And yet, the experience itself had left him in a state of derangement that he could not come out of. He kept re-living that experience, trying to absorb it. And now I too was having to relive it, and recall my own role in that play. It was hard to accept that I had done something miraculous, that some kind of purity existed in me which even the Gods such as Kali would honor and respect. It was not how I saw myself at all. And yet, clearly it was the case. I had no idea how to handle this information, and so I had blocked it out of my own mind too. Finally I thanked my friend and left him to wander the streets, and eventually found the original soldier who had been saved by the second fellow, who had been alive to do so because I had saved him, and I told him who it was who saved him, but I couldn't find a way to tell him the whole story. It was better, I thought, to leave my part in the story out. I was left to contemplate who exactly I was in the midst of all these karmas, that I could act in the manner I had. 

Spiritual Evolution

Looking back at yesterday's post, I have to admit it's a strange collection of thoughts. Going from climate change to environmentalism to religious prophecy to reincarnation to the problem of evil in one fell swoop is perhaps a bit overambitious. But I guess not writing for a while here makes a lot of thoughts fall out at once, and I hope not so entirely disconnected as to be insensible. So maybe I'll try to break it down.

The basic notion I'd like to get across is that the viewpoint from which we approach most of the world's problems is essentially a materialistic one rooted in the notion that we are physical beings grappling with a world that is essentially material in nature, and that if we are to speak of "spiritual" matters, it's as some kind of add-on that only matters in some sort of peripheral way. I'd like to point out that this viewpoint is simply false, that it doesn't properly understand even on a basic level the actual situation we are in, even in the practical dimension of our own mind's struggle to understand and deal with the various material problems of this world.

Spirituality has been conceived of by most of the world, and even by most spiritual movements, as something we might aspire to, but which is not fundamental to our basic existential born condition. I'd like to point out how false this notion is, and how trying to build a workable model for even the most practical political and social solutions to our various forms of suffering and struggle here without recognizing the real nature of our existential situation is futile and self-defeating. 

As I've pointed out, the basic existential reality for human beings is that we are not of this world. We are not, primarily, physical beings. We are spirit-beings who live in a spirit realm, who develop a symbiotic experiential relationship with a physical body in the physical world, without actual leaving our spirit realm. We do not "incarnate" in the sense of actually entering into a physical body, somehow actually becoming physical bodies in the process. There's the classic image in movies of how we are somehow like spirit-ghosts who actually enter into physical bodies and then walk around in them. This is simply a false image that misleads us into thinking we are actually "here", when we are not.

The true mechanism of incarnation is much more "electronic" in nature. It resembles the notion of a virtual reality machine, in which we plug ourselves into an electronic network and experience the world through a simulated experience of an electronic "body" in an electronic "world". This physical world is of that nature, it is a complex electronic phenomena, made to appear solid and real, as if we are actually "in" it, when in fact we are not. Our connection to this world is simply a series of wires and neural implants that create a simulated experience for us to undergo. This experience is overwhelmingly "real" to us, and it consumes our attention almost entirely, such that we are hardly aware of where our spirit-reality is, but all the while we are never actually in the world we experience, we are in a spirit realm undergoing this virtual reality experience that is complex beyond description. 

The physical world is a "creation" in the same sense that a virtual reality world is a created world. Those who play online role-playing games understand this principle quite well. We can already create crude forms of virtual reality that are deeply consuming, and that continue on even when we leave the game, because thousands of other people are still playing along, and when we return, the game is still going strong. When we sleep at night, the world seems to have gone away, but when we wake in the morning, it is still going strong, so we imagine this makes it "real". It doesn't. It just means that it's a larger game than our individual ego's experience might lead us to think. 

I'm not a fan of Teilhard de Chardin, but he once said something very profound about the nature of spiritual experiences. He pointed out that "we are not human beings having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences." And this summarizes the human existential situation. We are spiritual beings, first and foremost, not material entities, as much as science and the modern world would like us to think we are. The sooner we come to accept that reality, the sooner we will begin to handle the business of this world responsibly and intelligently. 

It's important to realize this about our experience of the world: we are not here. You might well ask, what evidence is there that we are somewhere else, and where exactly would that be? To answer that question, I'd suggest that we merely have to turn our attention to our own minds, because it is our mind, our attention, that dwells in the spirit realms. If we pay attention to our minds, we will see that our own minds are not "in" this world. We observe this world from a distance, from a subtle space of awareness that is not of this physical world. Yes, the body and brain are of this world, and we use these as connection points to it, but our basic awareness is not physical in nature, and it is not rooted in the physical world. 

Science might tell us that our brain "thinks", and that the entire process of thinking and observing is something that occurs in the bio-chemistry of brain function. I have no doubt that if you were able to analyze the brain, you might be able to decipher every thought we have. But this is of no more consequence than analyzing the electronic signals passing through a television set, and concluding that the picture was created inside the TV. We all know, of course, that TVs do not originate the images they display, they merely receive transmissions from remote locations and then process those signals and display them on the screen. In the same way, our bodies are like complex two-way television sets, sending and receiving signals from a remote location. 

Of course, even that analogy is not quite accurate, because our physical bodies are actually alive in their own right. They could, at least theoretically, live perfectly well on their own, without any connection to us spirits. At one point in their evolutionary process they did, just as most living things on this planet still do. But in the course of time, our lineage of apes became subject to a spiritual "invasion" so to speak. We began to form symbiotic spiritual relationships with these intelligent apes, growing literal spiritual connections from the astral to the etheric bodies of these apes, and thereby becoming able to experience what these apes experience, and even slowly learning to control and "operate" these bodies. In some sense, then, we are the original "body snatchers". It's not an evil act, of course, it's a perfectly natural thing. In fact, it's what this world was created for in the first place. This entire physical universe was created specifically to develop intelligent species suitable for this kind of reincarnational exercise. And let's be clear - the ape in us quite enjoys it. It's been a good deal all around. They get intelligent spiritual guidance, and we get sensual, material enjoyment and experiences that teaches us many things that as spirits we would have a much harder time learning.

Even so, it's important for us to recognize our situation and not become confused about our purposes here. We are not here for the things of this world, we are here to develop a spiritual understanding that can transcend even the limitations of this world. This means, broken down to its most basic form, learning to love even in this deeply limited material realm. 

It's relatively easy to love in the spirit realms. The spirit realms don't have the kind of limitations we experience here. Love is much more obvious, and much more attainable. The material realms, however, represent a much more challenging experience. Creatures here don't know much about love, they are so involved in the basic quest for survival. They do know how to commune with their own nature to some degree, but that is not a deeply conscious affair for them, and they lack the ability to make it meaningful in the context of life itself. As Adi Da used to point out, animals commune with their spiritual nature by "dropping out", by putting themselves in a state of deep relaxation such that they can let go of the world around them. However, when they are not "dropping out", they lose this spiritual awareness, and become consumed with the necessities of physical survival. 

This is due in part to the simple fact that most animals lack souls. By souls I mean spirits who reincarnate in association with their physical bodies. Most animals are certainly conscious and alive and to some degree aware of the deeper consciousness that is the world's source and nature, but almost unconsciously so, in an almost sleepy manner. Human beings, on the other hand, have a much greater spiritual consciousness simply because we are spirits already, coming from the subtler spirit realms, and are not merely physical creatures on our own here. If we were, our awareness would be entirely different than it now is. We would not think about life after death, for example, and we would not form religious views about God, spirits, other worlds, heavens, hells, etc. 

Scientific atheists are not wrong to suggest that nature, all by itself, through the biology of evolution and natural selection, could product intelligent creatures and technologically advanced societies. In fact, I'd suggest that it has done just that in many worlds in our universe. There are a great number of intelligent species in the universe who do not have reincarnating souls, and they don't have a concept of God or the afterlife as we do. Our own species has certainly got an evolutionary lineage that has nothing to do with souls and spirits, but the fact is, for some time now even our bodies have evolved in conjunction with these spirits that reincarnate through them, and it is the spirits who are in charge, so to speak, not the animal body-brains. Even our nervous system has evolved in a manner which makes soul-incarnation and all its subtle connections to the spirit world more and more efficient and powerful. So the process of human evolution is much more complex and powerful than it would be in the course of purely "natural" selection. 

Our spiritual nature therefore gives us a different relationship to the natural world than is to be found in nature itself. We are "external" to the natural material world and its creatures. In some sense, the material world, like our material bodies, is actually intended to be subserviant to us.. It was created not for its own sake, but to serve us, just as an online role-playing world is not created for its own sake, but for the players who connect to it and play within it. The difference, of course, is that even the physical world and everything in it is grounded in consciousness, in the sacred space of its Divine Source. And our purpose here is not merely to play some meaningless game for entertainment's sake, but to take up the challenge of bringing real love into this world, and transforming it through our own spiritual intervention here. By bringing real love into this world, by loving not only one another, but the physical world itself in all its manifestations, living and otherwise, we fulfill our spiritual purpose here.

Of course, bringing real love into this world has been a difficult struggle, as human history well shows. It has involved overcoming a great many very gross limitations in the biology of our own bodies and brains, and evolving mechanisms in these which can facilitate our growth. If we are to speak of "raising consciousness", this has been a gradual process over time of growing more and more stable conduits for our spirit-selves to enter into association with this world, through our own bodies and brains. Not all of those mechanisms are evident in the material physical body and world, of course. Much of it occurs in dimensions of our experience that are not physically observable, but which require introspection and spiritual awareness. Our "sciences" are simply not advanced enough to comprehend them, but our awareness is. Therefore, it's important to let our awareness take the lead in these matters, rather than be subservient to materialist science - just it's important to let our awareness guide our own material bodies, rather than the other way around. If we let the material body and world guide us, we are in for a great deal of trouble. There is an order of hierarchy which must be followed, or disaster may result. The material world is simply not sophisticated or intelligent enough to guide the spirit, and if we allow it to, we are abdicating our own responsibility.

So where does this leave the environmental movement? Well, first off, it restores the proper role for human beings in our world to our natural position at the top of the hierarchy. I don't just mean at the top of the food chain, but at the position of greatest responsibility for this world. It also rather demolishes the notion that human beings are some kind of "cancer" here, or that we have no greater rights than any other species on this planet. The simple fact is that we do have greater rights, but with those rights come greater responsibilities. On the practical level, of course we need to find ways to be less destructive of this world. But we also need to recognize that the way to do this is to put our spirit in charge of ourselves, and thus of the world, not to diminish our leading role in it. The problems we as human beings face in this world are the result of not enough recognition of ourselves as the spiritual beings who are meant to rule this world through love. Instead, we have allowed our purely material selves to have too much say in what we do here, and those material selves are, like all animals, obsessed with survival and consumption and territorial dominance and competition with others. When that obsession is in charge of our living, and is also combined with our own unique conceptual gifts and sensual desire for experience, it can lead to ruin. But we should not exaggerate the degree to which we are near such a point.

The world is a remarkably resilient place, and it is here to serve us. That should both empower and humble us. We have certainly abused it, but it is the kind of abuse that children take out on their mothers when they are young and stupid. The loving mother forgives them, and lovingly tries to teach us better. Gaia is not an angry, vengeful mother out to punish us. She does not see us as a virus or a cancer, but as her beloved children, and she is trying to raise us right. Considering how difficult we are to raise, she has done a very good job, and we are indeed growing up finally. Humanity is learning its lessons, and is, I think, on the verge of embarking on a new stage of its growth, a more mature stage, one that is not without its own challenges and struggles, but which has the capacity to put behind us some of our more immature habits and delusions, and the  strong capacity to actually activate and embrace our spiritual purposes in a much more conscious, intentional, and loving way. These things don't happen overnight, but the signs are there already, and rather than dwelling upon the negative possibilities, it is time for those who care about such transformations to contemplate and encourage the spirit in us, rather than the shadows which can take over in its absence. 

Climate Change, Environmentalism, and the Problem of Human Evil

One of the political-spiritual issues that has been on my mind a lot lately is the worldwide effort to warn people about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change. We all know what this is about - the notion that human beings, through their growth and rapid industrialization, are not only wrecking various forms of ecological havoc upon the world, but are actually changing its climate, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels and the raising of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere to the point where they threaten to raise worldwide temperatures far beyond the normal range of our present ecosystem. A great many spiritual and environmental thinkers have used this situation to criticize humanity as a pathogenic life form that needs to be greatly curbed and prevented from destroying our planet. I've been investigating this idea for quite some time now, particularly in recent years, and have come to the tentative conclusion that this entire notion is deeply flawed, not just spiritually but literally and materially, and that it represents a self-destructive tendency within humanity to see itself as a sinful force that must be repressed and suppressed rather than allowed to evolve in its own unique fashion.

First, let's address the practical, material matters. I don't want to get too deeply into the actual science involved in the study of climate for (for now at least),  but let me simply say that from my own personal studies, it seems quite clear to me that most of the warming the world has been experiencing during the last 150 years has been of natural origin, and not from a dangerously explosive rise in greenhouse gases such as CO2. This is certainly a minority viewpoint within the scientific community, but it is not an extreme or marginal view. This viewpoint is growing among climate scientists and others following the debate, and the evidence keeps coming in supporting these views, to the degree I think that we are near a "tipping point" in the debate itself.

In part, this is simply because the climate models which have predicted dangerous temperature rises have simply not been borne out by the climate itself. The divergence between these model's predictions and the actual temperatures has been growing, to the point that it has been sowing serious doubts among many studying climate, including even the general public, who have simply not noticed any significantly warmer weather. (For example, a little known fact is that over the last century temperatures in the United States have simply not gone up). If this divergence continues, many more scientists will have to re-think their theories about climate and its sensitivity to human-created changes in the atmosphere's greenhouse gas content, and the entire worldwide political apparatus dedicated to controlling the world's economies to reduce GHG emissions will collapse.

This is good news, of course. Unfortunately, there's a great many well-intentioned people who are committed to "saving the planet" from mankind's depredations, and this cause has become their rallying cry, around which a great deal of baggage has been hung. Consequently, there is a great deal of attachment to this cause, and to perpetuating the notion that the world is in some kind of literal peril from man-made warming, to the point where opponents and skeptics of this cause are often treated as demonic toads in league with the devil, "deniers" of the truth. The worldwide progressive political community, which in most respects I would consider myself a part of,  has embraced this cause with great fervor, and seems dedicated to persuading the world's politicians to make deep cuts in their consumption of fossil fuels in order to prevent a new deluge.  This reveals, to my mind, one of the problems that has plagued the progressive movement from its inception, and which needs to be purged from its mindset, which is a deeply negative self-image of humanity. 

In many respects, the progressive movement has tried to divorce itself from many negative aspects of the world's history. It has opposed the exploitation and degradation of humanity and of the ecosphere, it has stood firmly for a new order of freedom and prosperity, it has denounced age-old traditions of suppression, repression, and a social order based on tyrannical control of human instincts and enjoyments. In terms of religion, it has tried to reject the notion that humanity is the product of "original sin", and has put forth the positive notion of a future in which humanity can rise above its baser instincts and selfish desires, and produce a loving and peaceful world. And yet, to a serious degree, it has also engaged in a self-destructive projection game, in which those negative patterns have been assigned to a great and powerful multi-tentacled "other", who are the sources of economic, political, and social injustice and suffering, to the point where it all too often ends up duplicating the very notion of a "fallen humanity" that it originally sought to eradicate and heal. 

The global warming thesis has played all too well into this theme of humanity as a pathogenic plague upon the earth, but it is not alone in this regard. There is an element within our political culture which tends to view all of the modern world, and even humanity itself, as a negative, unnatural presence which must be removed and destroyed. An almost comical example of this can be found in a widely read essay "Humans as Cancer" posted at the Church of Euthansia website, whose slogan is "Save the Planet: Kill Yourself". Despite the fact that the author seems not to have taken his own advice, this theme has in many respects invaded the popular culture, and made it possible to believe in all kinds of negative ideas about the world, and humanity's presence in it, that have helped created a deeply distorted self-image for us all to contend with on a daily basis, as we hear the "news" of impending self-created doom at our door on a regular basis. 

This is of course not new. Doomsaying has been a popular pastime since the beginning of recorded time. Prophecies of the end of the world have always been with us, whether by plague, famine, war, natural disaster, or various "acts of God". These prophecies have always been tied to religious ideas of the sinful nature of mankind, to the idea that humanity has committed some kind of blasphemy against God, and that we need to be punished and purified of our sinful nature through catastrophe, and that the only way to avoid this fate is through repentence from our sins, which usually means enduring self-induced privations, fasting, the rejection of pleasure and enjoyment, and the embrace of asceticism and voluntary deprivation.

That the modern political world is largely secular and functionally agnostic does not change the fundamentally religious pattern of all doomsayers, even of the modern progressive environmentalist stripe. The climate doomsayers are no different. Their message is in line with all ancient prophets: humanity has sinned, and it is bringing disaster upon us all through its self-indulgent reckless pleasuring, and to avoid this we must repent by embracing a more ascetical lifestyle that ceases to poison the world with our toxic hedonism. A variation of this is the "Tower of Babel" myth, which likens our modern world to the ultimate blasphemy of aspiring to "become like the Gods", by acquiring technological powers which are reserved only for Deities, for which we must be punished by some worldwide natural disaster, a new "deluge" that will divide the world and keep us apart. This notion that humanity is cursed, and embodies some kind of ancient evil, is so universal that it permeates even those sectors of our society which are the least religious, or think of themselves as representing a "new" form of religion.

This thinking is present in much of the New Age community, for example.  I found the "Humans as Cancer" essay at my friend Maia-Gaia's website, and I've encountered this kind of attitude at many places devoted to bringing a new form of consciousness to the world. While I admire the good intentions, it needs to be said that this kind of consciousness is not new at all, it's one of the oldest traps humanity has always fallen into, and it doesn't represent a "new age", but a regression to an old pattern that keeps us all in the same "sinful" rut. 

There is indeed a "conspiracy" out there, but it is merely a projection of our own internal conspiracy, called the ego, which continually sends us false messages about ourselves and the world we live in. It's primary message is that we are bad, that we are limited, sinful creatures who are separate from God, that we have destroyed our connection to God, that we are lost, sick, self-destructive and capable of great evil, who can only repent by limiting ourselves even further, by embracing an ascetical rejection of ourselves and any thoughts of living in a Godlike fashion, as free, unbound masters of our own universe. Much of what makes humanity miserable, however, is precisely this message, repeated endlessly in all kinds of forms and media and tradition, even the modern secular warnings of doom we hear from the daily news. 

We tend to gravitate towards anything which might reinforce this message of the ego. This is why in large measure people gravitate towards bad news, rather than good news. We like, in a perverse way, to hear bad things about ourselves, about the state of the world, the state of humanity, because it makes us feel confirmed in our knowledge of sin, our conviction of being sinners, and our need to feel guilty and bad about it all. At least, a part of us likes this. If there is a genuine struggle in humanity at this stage in our history, it is between these two parts of ourselves, the part that wishes to see ourselves as sinful creatures who are self-destructively undermining our own happiness, and that part which is able to see beyond this, to our Divine Nature, the free and happy state of ease and pleasure that is our very Self. This theme plays itself out in a thousand different ways, in our personal life and in our world politics, and the climate change debate is one of those areas in which it is tending to dominate our collective lives in increasingly tangible ways.

I don't wish to minimize the degree to which humanity is capable of hurting itself, and the degree to which environmental damage is real and represents a genuine area that humanity needs to take responsibility for. It simply cannot do this while it is in the grip of this negative pattern of delusional self-imagery that exaggerates and turns every challenge we face into  a form of self-flagellation. Fortunately, I think that on the practical level humanity will soon come to see that the climate crisis was a false one,  an embarrassing misinterpretation of natural and human patterns that are not intrinsically negative, but in fact are actually quite positive. 

A slightly warmer climate is, after all, generally a good thing. For several hundred years the world endured a "Little Ice Age", from about 1350 to roughly 1850, and the warming since that time has been of significant benefit to the world. Of course a dramatically higher warming trend could be highly disruptive and even destructive, but fortunately I believe that is simply not in store for us, both scientifically and spiritually. In general, there are many positive developments in the spiritual growth of the world, and one of them will come as we begin to see through and reject the negative view of humanity as a "cancer" upon this earth.

The spiritual basis for this negative view of the world is, I believe, rooted in the unique spiritual  evolutionary problems that humanity faces as it contends with its own relationship to the human body itself, and the world our bodies live in. One of the themes I'd like to continue to address (I think I've mentioned it in earlier period of posting) is that a great deal of human suffering is simply due to our difficulty in interfacing, as spiritual beings, with our own bodies. 

This of course requires a tacit understanding that human beings are not merely physical creatures living in a physical world, but spiritual beings who "incarnate" time and time again on this planet (and others, perhaps), each time facing the difficult spiritual challenge of integrating their spirit with the physical mechanisms of the human body and brain. This is not generally the case with most other creatures on this planet. Other than some higher mammals and birds in this world, virtually all living forms in this world have no individual "soul". They do not reincarnate. They do not have a higher spirit which descends into the physical realm, attaching itself and growing in symbiotic relationship to a physical body. They are simply natural organisms within this physical realm, who are of course in their depth the same universal consciousness modified and multiplied through endless forms and features as we are, but of a much simpler nature. They do not have past lives or future lives. They come into living form in the natural order of physical life, which is miraculous in its own right, and they are beautiful expressions of the consciousness that is source and foundation of existence itself, but they are not of the same nature as we are. This is why we consider there to be, fundamentally, two different realms in this world - the human realm, and the natural realm. 

This world is certainly a Divine Creation, but we must understand that human beings do indeed play a unique role in it, spiritually speaking. In fact, it is more accurate to say, as many ancient religious texts do, that the world was created for the sake of human beings, rather than that we are the product of this world. The purpose of this world, spiritually speaking, is as a place for human beings to incarnate in, grow in their understanding, and realize their true nature. It was created for that purpose, and every living thing in this world is intended to serve that purpose, not merely because it is of benefit to humanity, but humanity's spiritual growth is of benefit to the entire world, and even the entire universe. This does not mean that humans are supposed to treat the world with indifference and simply exploit it thoughtlessly and for their own base pleasure. Even so, that isn't entirely far from the truth. It is generally a good thing that this earth's resources are put to use in the service of human beings. It's also true that the world is far more resilient and strong than it is often given credit for. We humans certainly do have the capacity to destroy it, but the world has a very powerful capacity to not only preserve and heal itself, but to make sure that human beings don't overexploit it. It has feedback mechanisms, both in the physical and in the psychic dimension, which are able to keep things in check, and ensure that human beings don't inadvertently destroy this very useful world. 

Most of the problems human beings have relating to the world are rooted in the problems they have spiritual, as spirits, in relating to and connecting with their own bodies. I am not merely speaking of the usual "mind/body split", but of the actual mechanism by which the subtle spiritual being that is our higher, re-incarnating self (to be distinguished from the universal Self of non-dual teachings) connects to and integrates itself with the human physical body. This process occurs on both a psychic and a spiritual level, since it is the connection between the two which defines our human "struggle" here. We, as conscious beings, are primarily situated in the inner, psychic dimension, not in the physical world. When we incarnate, we don't actual enter into human bodies, we simply grow and establish living links to the physical body and nervous system. This is done primarily through the breath, through the etheric energy and matter dimension of our physical bodies which our breath links us to most directly, and from that "pranic" energy dimension, to the subtle or "astral" planes in which the reincarnating higher self lives.

The human mechanism of bodily attention is thus a hybrid of subtle and physical beings. The physical body is in fact a living, conscious evolutionary mechanism which naturally developed in this created world through many of the biological mechanisms studied by scientists. However, at a certain point in its evolution it began to be co-opted by us as vehicles by which we could incarnate into the physical realm. In so doing, the physical mechanism underwent its own genetic and evolutionary transformation, both through "design" of a kind, and through natural selection, which gave it greater and greater flexibility and capacity for spiritual integration and growth. This allowed us as spirits to become more and more deeply connected to and able to function as physical beings. And yet, the basic challenges of life on earth for us still essentially boil down to our struggle to proper "interface" with these physical bodies, which remain a work in progress for our spirits, and also as evolutionary mechanisms in themselves.

Most of our personal difficulties in life reflect these difficulties we have in interfacing as spirits with our own bodies. In fact, the practical aspect of spiritual growth is almost entirely a simple matter of nurturing the healthy growth of the various literal nerve-connections between our spiritual selves and our physical bodies. And because the two are so deeply intertwined, even our physical growth as bodies in the world depends to a large degree on this spiritual connection being properly cultivated and allowed to grow and flourish. When it does not, various mental neuroses and physical diseases and disabilities present themselves. If we treat these as merely physical illnesses, we are not grasping the true nature of their origin. Of course it's simply true that the physical body is vulnerable to all kinds of microbes and accidents and improper development all on its own, but the added complication of our spirit-self integrating with the body makes the situation far more complex. It not only introduces a factor that is not "natural" to the natural world, of which the body is a part, but it can lead to all kinds of delusions in the mind that are not "natural" to the psychic and subtle worlds.

Contrary to what many religions have taught, the psychic dimension does not contain what we might call "evil". In reality, there are no demons, devils, monsters of the dark realms, or evil spirits. The spirit realms are remarkably free of that kind of "infestation" which we have been taught by many religions to believe in as a matter of course. Nor, might I add, is the physical world an evil, "fallen" place. The natural course of the physical world is of course one of birth and death, but this is, from the persepective of physical beings, simply the way things are, and the creatures of the physical world do not rebel against this or fight in any in great way. Physical creatures don't want to die and experience their physical consciousness dissolve back into the universal pattern of conscious energy that pervades the universe, but they accept it with an attitude of simple surrender. Human beings, on the other hand, represent a wierd mixture of both the subtle and physical realms that is still trying to find its own healthy equilibrium. 

Human beings, in their half-finished way, have a strange perspective on the physical world. On the one hand, they tend to feel alienated and out of place here, as if this isn't their real home. And in a very real sense this is true, this world is not our home. We are primarily spiritual beings, to the degree that even our own deeper minds, through which we experience the physical body and world, exists in another realm entirely, in the subtle or astral realm. Nonetheless, this spiritual self is wedded through various mechanisms to a physical body in a physical realm that operates by very different rules and patterns of manifestation than we are used to as spirits. In the process of trying to function and experience the physical world through the physical body, and even trying to control or master the physical body, we tend to become strained, aberated, and frustrated. In many ways, we are justified in feeling frustrated. In the first place, this is simply a very difficult balancing act to undertake. Very simple things become very complicated for us merely because we are operating, to some extent, "by remote control". The more accustomed we become to operating as reincarnational spirits, the more at ease we become in life, but we are always facing new challenges, new levels of mastery we need to develop over the various mechanisms of the body and its connections to spirit, and new frustrations that inevitably pop up.

Some of those frustrations, I perhaps need to mention, are profound, and even profoundly disorienting. What we call "human evil" is simply the product of this sometimes disorientied, dis-integrated, disordered connectivity between the reincarnating spirit and the physical mechanism of our own bodies. However, it's important to realize that this "evil" does not actually exist in either the physical world or in the higher spiritual planes in which we live. It's merely a kind of "echo" effect created by an incomplete and disturbed "disconnect" between the spiritual and the physical dimensions. Neither the human body nor the human spirit, on its own, would ever engage in the kinds of things we often call "evil". Likewise, when we conceive of some kind of metaphysical form of evil in this world, or in the spirit world, we are merely projecting this disconnect upon those otherwise pure realms. 

What we are generally left with then, is a lingering sense that somehow "evil" is all our fault, that it is something that we have artificially brought into this world, and that we are somehow the source of it, the "bad guy", the cancer that is infecting this otherwise pristine world with our own evil intentions. This is an example of projecting what is simply a mechanical problem onto ourselves, as if it defines us in some metaphysical way. The notion of sin evolves from this mechanically based perception of ourselves as spiritually incomplete and defective. And there's certainly some truth to the notion that our spiritual connection to this world is often incomplete and at times shows the signs of things going terribly wrong, as in the case of sociopaths, violent criminals, the mentally ill, and the general miseries of mankind. But to define ourselves by such things is a terrible mistake. It only reinforces the very thing we are trying to overcome by our efforts to incarnate here in a healthy fashion. Evil does not exist in any metaphysical sense, it exists only in that strange intersection of the physical and the metaphysical, in the frustrations of incomplete and distorted connectivity that often results when the process of incarnation fails to achieve a healthy link to the spiritual dimension.

The practical benefits of most spiritual practices are simply that they foster the growth of healthy connections between our spirit and our bodies. They literally help the threads or "nadis", the energy currents that connect the physical with the spirit, to grow and deepen. In many respects, not a lot is required to make this occur. It's a fairly natural process, requiring intention to be sure, but most of the growth occurs naturally, simply by not interfering, and instead simply giving oneself the quiet and undisturbed peace in which these connections can grow on their own. Like a garden, they require sunlight, water, and proper nutrients, but the growth itself is virtually effortless. It isn't really our doing, any more than growing our own bodies is something we "do". So the simpler and less complicated our spiritual practices are, the better. Likewise, the simpler and less complicated our minds are, the better. Quiet is often best. 

These same patterns manifest themselves not just in our personal lives, but in our collective politics. Most of humanity is not even directly cognizant of the spiritual reality in which we dwell, and from which we connect to the world. Because of that, we tend to live in an almost wholly projected cognitive state, thinking of ourselves as embroiled in a struggle of good versus evil within the various "selves" of this world. Much unnecessary confusion and conflict ensues as a result of this. We tend to play out the various struggles with our own spiritual process of incarnation as if it were actually a struggle with real forces in the world at large, and part of some larger cosmic battle that even the Gods are engaged in. All of this is simply a delusion, however, with no basis in reality, other than as a summary of our own individual difficulties in creating healthy incarnational connections to our own physical bodies. 

One might ask, then, what the purpose of this entire reincarnational exercise is? Well, in the first place, it helps us to grow as spirits by exposing us to the stark experience of the physical realm. In so doing, we are confronted very dramatically with the dualistic nature of all conditional worlds, not just the physical world, but the subtle realms as well. This is not something that is terribly self-evident to those living in only one or the other. Beings living in the subtle realms tend not to reflect on the dualistic nature of their experience, because it is generally so "nice", and not confronted by death or dissillusionment or intense suffering. Likewise, physical creatures are not prone to reflect on the dualistic nature of their life because they know nothing but the physical and its processes, and they don't know anything greater exists. it is human beings, being split between heaven and earth, who are forced to confront the dualism of experience, and to reflect upon that to the point where they begin to see that this is the central illusion to be overcome. And thus, the spiritual struggle of incarnation deepens over time into a spiritual struggle with dualism itself, to the point of radical awakening from dualism itself, and all experiences in all worlds. 

It is in that sense that even the present world crises we are going through are largely positive in nature. The purpose of this realm is not to create some kind of perfect harmony, but to be turned back upon our own nature, to question the reality of our dualistic experience, and to overcome the false self-magery of the ego. The various practical struggles of growth and incarnation in this world can actually be a goad to that awakening, if we do not turn it into an unconscious process of projection of our difficulties onto ourselves and others, not recognizing the true nature of our struggle, but assuming instead that it reflects something evil either in ourselves or in our relationship to the world, or "out there" in the mass of human beings and Gods and demons we have made real by our lack of full self-awareness. 

Broken Silence

A few friends have emailed me in recent weeks asking if I'm going to write here anymore. It's good to hear from people who think I have something to say worth reading, and it helps revive something I think about from time to time: whether blogging here is really a good idea, both for me and for anyone else. The issue usually boils down to just how much I want to encourage my own wandering mind and attention. There's also the simple matter of putting ideas out in the public that might come off as those of someone creating an aura of authority about themselves. While I clearly lack any credentials or maturity that might justify authority, and I hope that's always evident to everyone out there, merely speaking out tends to create its own internal sense of authority and righteousness, something I don't need to be tempted into assuming for myself. 

That said, the simple fact is that even when I don't blog here, I tend to get involved in all kinds of internet commenting at various sites, often just on issues of ordinary politics. My mind just doesn't shut down entirely into states of silent contemplation all day long. So I end up writing on matters that are actually of relatively peripheral interest to me. So the best argument I can come up with for blogging here more often is that at least I am able to choose to blog on subjects that are of a greater interest to me, things of a spiritual nature, or at least related to the spiritual issues that are at the heart of my own life these days. 

I'm not sure that I can reasonably confine myself, as I at one time intended, to merely blog about self-enquiry. One thing that led me to fall silent here was that my practice of self-enquiry simply led me to have very little to say about it. And when I did have something to say about it, I usually ended up getting in a conversation about it over at David Godman's blog, which is devoted to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. If anyone is interested in following those conversations, I'd advise reading through the comments sections of any number of David's posts there. In fact, I'd recommend reading all of David's blog, since he has written a whole series of highly informative posts about Ramana and his devotees, and the quality of readers and comments there, with a few exceptions, is simply excellent. 

In any case, the fact that I'm writing this post seems to indicate that I am indeed resuming my blogging here. I've got a whole host of issues to blog about, from the esoteric to the political, and I'm thinking, simply because it's an issue that's been on my mind lately, of blogging about the whole controversy of global warming and climate change. I'd like to address not just he scientific and political issues, but the spiritual ones, such as they are. We shall see how well it goes. I'm not sure if anyone out there will even know that I'm resuming blogging, but if there are people who care, let them know.

Putting All Tools Aside

Originally I intended to take a break from all posting and writing last January. I wanted to concentrate on meditation and work, and let my verbal mind have a rest. After a while, however, I got an itch and started to hunt around the internet for a different kind of conversation than I'd been used to. I've always been more science-minded than most people interested in spiritual matters, and in school I was actually much stronger in science than the liberal arts. I keep a list of science websites that I regularly look at to see what's up in those fields, and became interested in the debates they often have about religion and science, particulary the current enthusiasm for atheism and the issue of intelligent design. Having once been an atheist, from the ages of about ten to twelve, I had some sympathy with those who reject religious views in favor of science, so I decided to revisit that world with a little more depth and see what was up.

I ended up entering into a few ad hoc debates at two websites in particular: EvolutionBlog, and RichardDawkins.net. My first experiences, at EvolutionBlog, were simply awful. I had expected some hostility to spiritual views, but not quite so intensely reactionary and just plain rude. As is my way, rather than backing away I just dug in deeper, seeing how far I could go in trying to present anything remotely like a spiritual perspective to hardcore atheists. The answer turned out to be: nada. I mean, I'm used to being called a fool once in a while, but this was an unrelenting onslaught that turned into a total rejection not just of my ideas, but of me personally. That was quite refreshing in its own way, and I highly recommend the experience. There's nothing quite like being told you are a complete idiot to take away any veneer of pride you once might have had in yourself. On the other hand, it also gave me some direct experience and insight into what at least a certain sector of the scientific atheist community sees as the irrefutable truth of the scientific approach to truth.

What I got to see first hand is that scientific atheism is, for many of its adherents, simply another religious cult that tries to promote itself as the one and only path to reality and truth. Pointing this out won me few friends within that community, but I guess that wasn't what I was really after, though it would have been nice. I don't have a problem with science as a discipline, as a limited tool for finding out certain material facts about the physical universe. In that respect, it's very useful, as long as we are aware of its limitations, which are contained in the discipline itself of examining only physically “objective” material phenomena. The problem comes when scientists insist that this one tool is the only valid tool anyone can use, and advocates that we throw out everything else in the toolbox. Soon the situation becomes almost psychotic: if the only tool you have is a hammer, over time every problem begins to look like a nail, and one becomes interested only in those problems which a hammer can solve, and those it can't solve, one smashes down until they aren't noticed anymore. The problem with science is that for some people it has become the only standard by which to understand all of life, to the point where they conclude that if science can't understand it, it's not worth examining. To say the least, this is not a productive approach to any but the most simple and mechanical of life's problems. Even worse, it inculcates the notion that solving problems is what life is really about in the first place.

On a more positive note, I found over at Richard Dawkin's site a much more polite and open-minded group of characters, who at least seemed appreciative that someone was willing to engage them from the religious side of the debate with some persistence and honesty. Even if they didn't agree with my ideas, they at least didn't ridicule them, and even seemed to enjoy the process of examining what I had to say. After several long forays into their forums, I left with at least some sense of satisfaction, and an open invitation to return and have at it once again. By then, however, I felt that I'd pretty much exhausted what I could say there. If anything, the experience was even more conclusive to me that science is simply not a spiritual discipline, any way you want to put it. Not that scientists can't be spiritual people, or that people can't approach science from a spiritual perspective, but the actual approach of science itself is no more spiritual than automotive mechanics, though certainly not less so.

What was the point of all that for me? Well, it certainly wasn't preparation to become a public debator on issues of science and religion. Quite the opposite. It felt like a purifying episode in which I have had the opportunity to examine the lingering scientific materialism within my own mind, and go past it. The purpose wasn't really to convince anyone else about the folly of the scientific approach to religion, it was to convince myself of that, and to see that if I really wanted to know the truths of spirituality, I was going to have to let go of my own scientific mindset, or whatever lingering notions and doubts remained within me about these matters. As I mentioned in my last post, I came away realizing not only that I don't know anything, but that the path of becoming a “knower of things” just isn't what I'm interested in. I don't want to know things, I want to love them.

Science is a big force in our world, and an increasily dominant part of it. But it remains a tool, not a truth, and it's a fairly limited tool at that. Richard Dawkins is famous for remarking that the existence of God is a scientific proposition, and it should therefor be investigated and answered scientifically, which is to say in the negative, since there is little scientific evidence for God. This presumes that God can be known by the use of tools, and that science is the tool we ought to use. It doesn't take into account the notion that there may be no “right” tool for knowing God, and that any tool one uses to know God will only end up describing the tool itself, and its capabilities, and not God. Why? Because God is not a “thing” in the world that any tool can touch, see, or decipher. God is at the source of the very consciousness that would make use of a tool, whether it is a material tool or a psychic one. God simply mirrors back to us our own efforts to know Him, and thus the tool we use when we try to know God will give us a description of God that mirros the tool itself, and not God Himself. 

What kind of God does science come up with? Well, one could say that it is a God of mathematics, of pure mental, conceptual abstractions. It's not a theistic deity, so it calls itself atheistic, but this is not really so. It simply makes GOd into a mathematical process it tries to assume is material in nature, but cannot actually be pinned down as such. After all, what material existence do numbers actually have? None. There are no numbers in nature. They exist only in the human mind. So is there really such a God out there, a material machine that produces a mathematical universe? Of course not. This is just the mind looking at the world, using its own concepts as tools, and reporting back the image it sees in the mind of itself. Naturally the ulimate reality it uncovers is a pure conceptual abstraction of mathematical laws. It just makes the mistake of assuming that this is what "the world" really is, rather than what the tool being used to investigate and describe it is.

This problem is not unique to science, but it has its corrollaries in spirituality as well. If we use spiritual tools to see God, we also end up describing God by those tools, rather than knowing God directly. A friend of mine is quite deeply involved in studying his own dreams. He's done this for years, and has a remarkable repertoire of spiritual dreams that occur on a regular basis to him, which he records, interprets, and sees God through. The problem is, using this tool of his psyche also taints the subject of his study. God is not a dream, and yet dreams will indeed reveal God through their own instrumentality, convincing us that God is what we see in our dreams and visions. Well, not exactly. It's certainly a better tool than mere materialistic science, but it's still a tool, rather than a form of direct knowledge. Again, the psyche is merely a collection of reflections of itself, without any formal basis. As the Buddhists say, it is empty. What it uncovers boils down to a mirror that reflects back the method and tools employed in the effort to find its own truth. The psyche must be seen as empty in order to see God.

I'm not suggesting we not use these tools. Science is a marvelous tool, as are visions and dreams. But their primary value is practical, as a way of reflecting certain dimensions of ourselves back to us. Science reflects the material dimension, and dreams reflect the subtle dimension. But God is neither material nor subtle. God is in the dimension where we already stand, which we cannot see because it is not apart from us. It is us. We know God without a thought or perception involved, which is almost too simple for us to comprehend. We know God through love, which is the embrace of what we already are, what everyone and everything already is.

I recall a story about Ramakrishna, when a woman came to him in despair of ever knowing God. She had tried all kinds of practices and beliefs, but she couldn't find God in any of them. Instead of recommending some new method she hadn't yet tried, Ramakrishna simply asked her if there was anyone in the world she loved. She thought for a while, and then replied, well, I love my son. Ramakrishna said, there is God. Wherever one finds love in the world, there is God. In the beginning, we love the objects, the others we encounter most intimately, like the woman's son. But God is not truly in the object of one's love, God is in the love itself. Learning to see love as a force that transcends its own objects is probably the most difficult part of spiritual life, but the only truly important part. This is what science and psychism fails to understand, because they are concentrated on objects and the tools we can use to know and manipulate the objects around us. Even if science and psychism are done with loving care, they still cannot know love itself without relinquishing their own tools, laying them down and knowing without the mind, which is the root of all tools. Mind itself is only a tool, but we tend to let it rule us and define us, and we try to solve all the world's problems with the mind, even the problems of the spirit. But the mind, even the deep psyche, is just a tool we have developed for practical purposes, and we must put them down to enter the temple of the Lord. What is Holy is not manipulable, is not decipherable, is not knowable. It is known through loving embrace with open hands in the darkness of love's mindless embrace.

Be A Refuge Unto Yourself

It looks to be almost six months since I abruptly stopped posting to this blog. At the time, I felt as if I'd lost confidence in my ability to speak meaningfully about spiritual matters, or at least lost any sense that it was useful for me to do so. Quite a few commentators pointed this out, and I felt they probably knew better than I did. Since then, I've fairly well confirmed both those points. It was pretty much an open secret that I had no idea what I'm talking about most of the time. Since then it's become clear to me that I simply don't know anything at all about anything at all. I do wish this were some kind of Socratic confession of philosophical brilliance, or an Advaitic confession of No-Mind. Instead, it's just a simple fact. If I were to try to put a positive spin on it, I'd call it humility. If I were to put a negative spin on it, I'd just keep my mouth shut. As it is, it's just the simple facts of the rather ridiculous life I lead.

As it stands, my life, my spiritual life, is one long series of embarressments. Perhaps I should not dwell upon this, it's something of a self-indulgent trope, but there it is. To confess this is not in itself an answer, but perhaps it is at least an opening. I have read from Ramana that possibly the most important qualification for spiritual life is humility. Many people have scoffed at this over the years, myself included, particularly in the Adidam community, in which Adi Da himself famously said that humility is just an ego making itself small. But I think this misses an important point. Humility is not about having a low assessment of oneself, it is instead a way of making room for something greater than onself to enter into the picture. When we are full of our own pride and thinking, we make no room for Grace to enter into our minds and teach us something we don't already know. The problem with the mind is precisely that – it thinks it already knows all the answers, or can learn all the answers by thinking, by acting, by perceiving, by exercising itself and becoming stronger and stronger. The opposite may actually be the truth. We learn more by not thinking, by not exercising the mind, but by letting it stand aside, and letting something greater than the mind into our sphere of attention and guide us. The mind perhaps needs to rest, and let what is not mind have a go at teaching us for a while. At least enough to inform the mind from a position beyond the mind, such that mind is no longer the sole province of our intelligence. This is what humility means: stepping aside, even a few small inches, to allow something other than ourselves to show us the way.

For some reason that might at first seem opposite to this whole notion, I have been guided of late by one of the last admonitions of the Buddha: be a refuge unto yourself. Strangely, this and humility seem to go hand in hand. Perhaps it is because who and what I really am is not what my mind tell me I am at all. To be a refuge unto myself means letting go of everything I think about myself, and simply being myself, in a state of unknowing humility. Since I know nothing of myself, this seems relatively easy. Since I don't know how to think about myself, or the world, I might as well take refuge in myself, whatever that might mean. I don't really know what it means, but I like the resigned feel of it. Refuge implies a sense of being battered and in need of shelter, and this is surely how I feel in general about this life I have led. I have arrived at the age of 50 in a rather shambled state, without much to show for myself, and with few prospects for a future. My years are numbered, my youth is behind me, and though there are certainly plenty of good years left, the damage has been done and is not likely to be undone except by death, which is perhaps too far off to take consolation in. I have lost most of my youthful enthusiasm for the potentials of life. Some have been realized, some not, but all of them clearly fade and dissolve, and that process is already well under way. The truths of impermanence weigh and sag upon the flesh. Not only does the body fade, but so does the mind. My insights have also come and gone, and I cannot take refuge in them. They don't even last long enough to console me for an evening any more. Where can I turn but to myself in my naked and aging mindless being? If that is not very much, it is all that I have. Surely there is room for Grace in that refuge, if Grace comes from deep within oneself. If not, I have no other place to go in any case.

A refuge is a place of safety, but there is no room in myself for anything but a naked self. That will have to be enough, and perhaps it is. Perhaps this is what the Buddha meant by renunciation. What can we take with us into ourselves? Not even this body, this mind, these thoughts. They don't seem to fit. We must shed what is not able to pass through the portal of the self. We make room by letting go of what crowds us in. This too is self-enquiry.

Feeling of Pain, Feeling of Self

I've had some interesting responses to this whole matter of practicing self-enquiry. I got a very wonderful email from someone who practices self-enquiry, and describes the process as intensely frustrating, and even painful. I would print the email, but the writer wishes to remain anonymous. But here's one small sample of her experience, if she doesn't mind my quoting her:

“Another thing that happens sometimes is as soon as I turn inward instead of looking outward, I feel pain. A kind of burning sensation in the heart area that immediately makes my eyes fill with tears. This is a strong disincentive ... I can hear my mind urging: oh this bad feeling will go away if you stop this enquiry business. I do my best not to give in to this and to feel through the pain to the sense of "I am" -- even if the pain does not go away -- though it does if I stick with this long enough.”

I don't commonly have these experiences of pain when I practice self-enquiry, but it reminds me of a basic principle in deep-tissue massage, which is that you have to learn to relax and surrender into the pain. My son has been learning deep-tissue massage techniques, and tried them out on me recently when I visited him in Santa Cruz. He's become quite the expert at finding the areas in the body where I hold tension and am, essentially, “fighting” myself, not relaxed and surrendered. When he pushes on those points, I can't tell you how painful it is. My first reaction is to tense up and fight his pushing, clenching my muscles, which also numbs them to the pain. But then I realize I have to let go and surrender to the pain, and let the whole fitful tensing process relax. A lot of the time I was able to do this, and though it hurt, it was good, and I could let go of some of that tension-effort. But some spots were just so fricking painful I just had to plead with him to stop (he let up, but not by much).

I think there's a general principle here in relation to any experience in life, but particularly the wisdom which comes from even a little bit of self-enquiry. Which is to simply observe and feel whatever is coming up in the body or mind, and not react to it, not try to fight it, but simply relax the grip we have on ourselves that we reinforce through every kind of experience, even painful ones. I think self-enquiry brings these things up, because it goes deeper than the body, deeper than the mind, and thus whatever we are holding onto in body and mind will make itself none, and sometimes painfully so. What this woman experiences in self-enquiry is probably unique to her in the specifics, but universal in the basic pattern. I think Ramana said that virtually everyone who takes up self-enquiry will go through a lot of trials and difficulties, internal and/or external. I gather it gets subtler over time, and maybe even the content gets “subtle”, but the process seems pretty much the same in principle all the way through. Everything that we experience has to be let go of, because holding onto our experience is in some sense the very essence of our suffering. The devil of course is in the details.

I suppose this is what I mean by there not being much guidance out there for what literally goes on in the practice of those embarking on self-enquiry, and I don't know if it really changes all that much even for those who are very mature in it. From the accounts of Muruganar and Ammamalai, for example, this seems to be the case. They of course had the direct guidance of Ramana. Most people out here in the west have little to none, and much of what does pass for “guidance” falls well short of the mark. In fact, even the more prominent pseudo-Advaita gurus out there don't seem to talk about self-enquiry much, probably because they don't know much about it.

I recall when I first began to re-read Ramana about three years ago (for the first time since I was a teenager) and flirted with self-enquiry for the first time, I sensed that I was in for big trouble. Sure enough, I went through the most difficult time of my life rather suddenly. Something I read in Ramana really stuck with me and came alive to help me through this, when he said that the biggest mistake most people make is that they thank God when good things happen, and never when bad things happen. I just started repeating this over and over and thanking God every day for all the difficulties I was going through, and you know what? It really helped. And in the end, things did work themselves out fairly well. And I had a chance to see what was really important in life, which is why I began, eventually, to take self-enquiry more seriously. So maybe that's another thing to do. When the shit really hits the fan while doing self-enquiry, thank God, or the Self, or Ramana, or whatever you want to call it, for it, and don't just thank him for the blissful experiences that sometimes come.

We also got a comment from Kang, who sometimes gets a little over-excited, but we appreciate his passion. He writes:

“You know, I don't care what you or anyone else or even Ramana might say about this, self-enquiry is not a "practice." To call it that is just to make a self-conscious, narcissistic, egoistically fetishistic affair out of what is patently, in that case, NOT self-enquiry.”

Come on, Kang, don't be shy, tell us how your really feel.

Okay, this isn't really so hard. As the other dude says, this is just words. I understand the whole “no practice” teaching of Papaji, and I love his way of putting it, and I also know that he teaches self-enquiry, but says that self-enquiry isn't a practice. I guess you are arguing along those lines? Well, good. There's a serious truth there. Self-enquiry isn't a “practice” like doing mantra japa or meditating on Tibetan visualizations of Tara. It is, as you say, merely finding out who we are. But let's face it, semantics aside, if you have to do it more than once, it's a practice. Those who only did it once and succeeded can be counted on the fingers of one hand, that I know of. Ramana, Papaji, and Lakshmana. Obviously all three were hugely prepared to make self-enquiry effective. The rest of us who have tried at least once and not realized the Self, well, if we want to keep trying, we might as well just call it a practice.

Is the practice of self-enquiry a self-conscious, narcissistic, egoistically fetishistic affair? Yes, I think so, if we are honest with ourselves. I mean, what's more narcissistic than putting all our attention on ourselves? What's more egotistical than focusing on the “I”-thought? It's hard for me to think of anything. It's egotism pure and simple, which I think is really what makes the whole thing work. Rather than beating around the bush, or running away from the ego, or trying to purify and transform the ego, self-enquiry just looks at the ego head on, no fuss, no muss. As Ramana said, in self-enquiry we look for the guy who is claiming to be the boss of this whole affair, and when we make the enquiry thorough and still can't find him, the whole charade is up. That's the end of the ego, and yet the process means putting all attention on this imaginary ego, until we see through ourselves.

My own experience with self-enquiry is erratic, but a lot does come up that I have to surrender. Lots of emotions come up, lots of happiness comes up, lots of tears, lots of devotion, lots of doubt, lots of mediocrity, etc. For me, it's all about simply feeling the “feeling of self”, which I don't even know quite how to describe. That's kind of how I got into self-enquiry in the first place. I was still in Adidam, and I'd pretty much given up on most of it, but something about the whole description of the “self-contraction” in Adidam had always intrigued me, and so I had gotten into “feeling the self-contraction” not in the usual way people talked about in Adidam, as a cramp in the gut or the mind, but in the basic self-position. When I left Adidam shortly thereafter that's about the only thing I took with me, spiritually speaking – not that I practiced it much, or did anything about it really. But when I began reading Ramana again the practice of Self-enquiry now seemed to make sense to me, which it hadn't long ago when I first knew of Ramana. The feeling of self seemed like a good starting place for moving into self-enquiry, and it seems to obviate something of the more headache-inducing notions about self-enquiry such as “awareness watching awareness”.

Although I must admit the AWA teachings, based of course on great quotes from Ramana and Nisargadatta, are excellent ways of looking at self-enquiry, but they try to distill it too far from its source, and make a fetishistic obsession of it that is divorced from its living reality, by which I mean the whole living reality of spirituality altogether. I've definitely benefited from such views, but I always find that the reality of Ramana is much wider than that narrow understanding and reductionism of self-enquiry.

I suppose that's why I react a bit to some of those who pass on the great teachings of Ramana, even very astute and high-minded guys like David Godman. There's a tendency, I think, to reduce Ramana's teaching to a “practice”, rather than a living relationship to a profoundly overwhelming Transcendental Being residing in our Heart. Ramana himself didn't do self-enquiry till the last minute. Before then, he was hanging out at the local temple, staring at the statue of the Goddess there with tears running down his cheeks. Now, could we say that practice was a form of self-enquiry? Maybe we could, if we understood self-enquiry in a way that's a little “out of the box”. Because I think self-enquiry includes a lot more than just the most literal exercise of asking “who am I?” for a half hour each morning and evening, and randomly throughout the day. It involves more than merely putting attention on awareness itself. I don't know that I want to define what it really is, but I do know that it's more than any of the book definitions let on.

Of course, maybe there's a reason why this doesn't get talked about much. Maybe it's not supposed to be talked about. I'm not sure why that would be, but it could be the case. And maybe it's a mistake for me to even broach the subject, much less have a blog like this. I gotta say, every week I wonder if I should just let this go. Who knows, maybe God will strike me dead. I should be so lucky.

Anyway, that's where I get off, this feeling of self. Meditating on that feeling is quite relaxing, really, even if it is just ego. Somehow, by meditating on the feeling of self, I feel something beyond self. Meditating on the “I', not as an abstraction, but as a feeling, makes the process seem real to me in ways that many conceptual approaches simply don't. The feeling of self isn't limited to just some sense of interior personae, but is the feeling of the body, and the feeling of the mind, as a sense of self. So when I practice self-enquiry, and feel this sense of self, it isn't apart from the body really. It's coincident with the body, just not limited to the body. It's coincident with the breath, with awareness, with feeling altogether. Somehow, that makes it work for me. And it's easy to see that this “I” is a feeling that runs through the whole of our being, all of our bodies, all the sheaths, to whatever degree we are aware of them. Everywhere we experience anything, there is a feeling of self at the core of that experience, and we experience that feeling all the time.

So, that's just my beginner's experience. It hasn't made me into some kind of enlightened dude who can now pontificate about the ultimates. Or rather, it hasn't stopped me from being a pompous dude who likes to pontificate about ultimates whether he knows what he's talking about or not. But it does feel damn good, and as Janis says, that can't be bad.