Question: What are the different stages or levels of the mind that one passes through before realising the Self?
Sri Lakshmana Swami: Mind is only thoughts. The more easily you can be without thoughts, the nearer you are to a direct experience of the Self. To make the mind die you must deprive it of thoughts. The effortless thought-free state is the highest level of practice.
There are no states or degrees of realization, there are only stages of spiritual practice. The final stage of sadhana is this effortless thought-free state. If this state can be maintained, then the "I" will sink into the Self and it will experience the bliss of the Self. These experiences are only temporary; the "I" will continue to reassert itself until the moment of realization. Realization can only happen in this effortless thought-free state, for it is only in this state that the Self can destroy the "I"-thought. The "I"-thought, which is the mind, must die completely before Self-Realization occurs.
Question: How is one to make the mind die?
Sri Lakshmana Swami: The mind can never eliminate itself without the grace of the Self. The mind is afraid of its own death; it will not do anything to endanger its own existence. It is like the theif who poses as a policement in order to catch himself because he ultimately wants to escape. SImilarly with the mind. The mind will engage in sadhana, thinking it wants to destroy itself, but as soon as the mind starts to sink into the Heart, a great fear arises which prevents the mind from completely subsiding. This fear is part of the mind's self-defence mechanism, and you will never overcome it by effort alone. It is because of this that you need the grace of the Guru. When you concentrate on the name and form of the Guru, or try to be without thoughts, the grace of the Guru calms the mind and helps it to overcome the fear which would otherwise prevent it from completely subsiding.
Question: Whyis it necessary for the mind to die?
Sri Lakshmana Swami: The mind must die, there is no other way to realize the Self. Some people say that complete equanimity of mind is Self-Realization, but this is not true. Thius is only a stage one passes through on the way to Self-Realizaiton. Other people say that seeing the Self or God everywhere is Self-Realization, but this is not true either. To see the Self everywhere there must be an "I" who sees, and while that "I" exists the mind will also exist. The jnani does not see anything because the seeing entity in him has died. In the Self, there is no seeing, only being. When the mind still exists one can reach a stage where one can see the whole world as a manifestation of the Self, but when the mind dies, there is no one who sees and no world to be seen.
If you have a mind then the earth, the sky, and the stars will exist, and you will be able to see them. When the mind dies there will be no earth, no sky, no stars, and no world. The world of objects, names, and forms is only the mind, and when the mind dies, the world dies with it. Only the Self then remains.
Seeing everything as the Self gives the impression that the Self is equally distributed everywhere. This is also an idea in the mind. When the mind finally dies you realize that there is no distribution and no everywhere.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
The Non-Dual Viewpoint on mind, levels, vision
The following is a quote from Sri Lakshmana Swami, a realized devotee of Ramana Maharshi, from "No Mind - I Am The Self; The Lives and Teachings of Sri Lakshmana Swamy and Mathru Sri Sarada", (p.102-3) by David Godman. It seems relavent to many of the discussions here, particularly about the viewpoint of the non-dual realizer.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Syncrhoncity and levels
Marko posed some interesting questions in relation to my posts on synchronicity:
Thanks for all the good questions, Marko. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.
In regard to viewpoints and levels, I tend to see them as synonymous. But that only means that I consider “viewpoint” to be more than just a superficial attitude. In other words, the physical world is a viewpoint, not a “place”. It's a limited viewpoint, and within that viewpoint everything observed is on the same “level”. Physical experience thus obeys a causal pattern of relationship, whereas relations between levels do not, but obey a synchronous patterning relationship.
In the tree example, it's true one can certainly list many qualities of the tree, such as color, black and white, infrared images. But all these are physical qualities, and hence they are all on the same level. One can point to the physical causes as to why the tree looks a certain way under infrared light, and another way under sunlight. But why do some people love trees, and others chop them down for lumber? This is not “caused” by the tree. One can try to find causes, but it's very complicated, because one is then dealing with a different order of experience, this matter of love, emotion, attraction, brutality, etc. There are some causal issues mixed in there, but many which have no causal explanation. Many of them have no direct physical cause. Something about the pattern of trees attracts some people, aesthetically, while to others it is merely an object to be used for a purpose, such as firewood or furniture. It would be out of place to try to determine a purely physical cause for this difference.
But even that example is still ambiguous, because physical attraction, while having emotional qualities, is still very much related to the physical viewpoint itself. What about a more distantly related example? How about the classic concept of karma. The concept of karma attempts to explain physical phenomena, such as having a terrible car accident, as being “caused” by one's past actions. But this, if examined closely, would seem to require some force that would cause events to happen, that God or someone or something is somehow making this accident occur in accord with one's past actions, or at the very least that one has a “store” of accumulated tendencies on some subtle plane that makes things happen on the physical plane. If that were the case, one would expect to find this force operative on the physical plane. One should be able to detect it acting upon physical objects. And yet nothing of the kind has ever been found? Why? Because there is no such force acting from the subtle dimension upon the physical dimension. It is merely that events happen in patterns synchronous with one's subtle energy body, and vice-versa. The link between the subtle and the physical is not causal, but synchronous. They are each a reflection of one another. One can “read” something about one's physical life by examing the subtle, but neither actually causes one another to be a certain way. They simply reflect the same basic pattern.
Your example of the leaf, the bloom and its smell also are all physical matters that have a causal relationship. But how about this. You are thinking of someone you loved, and who died, and you then you smell their favorite perfume. Now, maybe one could find out that someone just walked by wearing that perfume, and that could account for why you smelled it. But it doesn't explain why you thought about that woman before you smelled her perfume. Did your thought “cause” the woman to walk by wearing the same perfume? No, of course not. The two merely coincided.
Wilber gives the example in Grace and Grit of a great wind striking up when his wife died. Now, did his wife's death cause the wind to blow? No, of course not. If one analyzed the wind, I'm sure one would find a perfectly fine meteorological explanation. The relationship between the two events is not causal, but physical. Ghosts would also be an example of a similar phenomena. They do no exist or act in the physical world, they simply coincide with it. Psychisms of all kinds are not really what people think. Precognition, mind-reading, etc, all these are not causal events, but examples of synchronicity. Science may be able to study the phenomena, but they won't be able to find the causal relationship they are looking for, because there is none. The mind is merely able to “coincide” with phenomena of other levels of experience, and resonate in their pattern.
I think this is in some respects a test to differentiate levels. If there is a causal connection between two things, they are on the same level. If their connection is only one of similar pattern, of synchronous coincidence, then they are on two different levels.
An example would be the physical brain. Wilber finds neuroscience to be devastating to much of mysticism and metaphysics, because he thinks that brain chemistry explains so much of how we think and what we do. In a sense, he's correct. But its not as simple as that. While the brain does indeed create a chemistry that corresponds to our inner thoughts and subjective experience, it isn't clear which comes first. Do we think a thought, and this causes the brain to produce a chemical reaction, or does the chemical reaction come first, and the thought is just a product of the chemistry? This question is not resolvable in a causal fashion, and this indicates that mind and brain are on different levels. The best we can say is that thought coincides with brain chemistry. But we cannot say that thought exists only as a brain phenomena. Some interesting NDE out-of-body experiences during induced hypothermia, where there is no brain activity, demonstrate that thinking and observing processes can occur without the brain being involved. So the brain isn't necessary to all thought and perception, but when active it does coincide with thought and mind.
Now as for the mind relaxing when the wind blows and nice smells come into the room is a mixture of the two. We conventionally say that the mind relaxed because it smelled something nice. But this is only because it liked that particular pattern. It chose to relax on cue. It uses that pattern as an excuse to relax. The wind didn't literally cause the mind to relax. It simply gave the mind an excuse to relax. The mind relaxed all on its own, really. It could have relaxed just by remembering that smell. It could have relaxed without any cause at all. Emotional responses are not generally “caused” in the same way that physical events are caused, because we can generate them without cause. Tiny “causes” can set some people off, and yet major trauma may not. Linking all these things to hormones and other brain chemistry issues is trying to mask synchronicity with causality, and often with disastrous results, in that people always like to “blame” their emotional reactions on some cause, and now the excuse is brain chemistry, when in fact these things exist on distinct planes, and hence cannot be treated simply as causal events. The effect of drugs on the brain and the mind is not a wholly causal one, because these only effect one side of the equation.
I have been reading your theory on synchronicity, attention and pattern wiith great interest. There seems to be some amount of thruth in in and I am still looking at it to determine how much. May be your answer will help me with this.
You say that within viewpoints or levels there is causality but in between different levels and viewpoints there is synchronicity. This stays somewhat unclear for me because of a couple of reasons. First I find there is a difference between a viewpoint and a level. So what is your definition of a viewpoint? You had the different pictures of the tree example, but there can be different levels within each viewpoint like having black and white, colour or infra-red pictures. So I would make an important difference between them.
We can also see this when the tree would be moving because of the wind. I could see the movement, hear the sound of the leafs and smell the odour of the blossom. These are all different levels within one viewpoint, won't you agree? Or are they all different viewpoints in your book? The fact is that there is causality from the wind to the smell of the blossom, sounds of the leafs and sight of movement.
And when I take it one step further, f.i. because of the nice smell and the sounds of the leafs my mind relaxes. Is this a different level or no? From your previous posts I would say yes? So you would say the relaxing of the mind is synchronicity although the wind seems to be the cause of the mind relaxing?
I would like to see some precise definitions on viewpoints and levels and some clarity on where causality ends and synchronicity begins to determine how much truth your theory contains.
Thanks,
Marko
Thanks for all the good questions, Marko. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.
In regard to viewpoints and levels, I tend to see them as synonymous. But that only means that I consider “viewpoint” to be more than just a superficial attitude. In other words, the physical world is a viewpoint, not a “place”. It's a limited viewpoint, and within that viewpoint everything observed is on the same “level”. Physical experience thus obeys a causal pattern of relationship, whereas relations between levels do not, but obey a synchronous patterning relationship.
In the tree example, it's true one can certainly list many qualities of the tree, such as color, black and white, infrared images. But all these are physical qualities, and hence they are all on the same level. One can point to the physical causes as to why the tree looks a certain way under infrared light, and another way under sunlight. But why do some people love trees, and others chop them down for lumber? This is not “caused” by the tree. One can try to find causes, but it's very complicated, because one is then dealing with a different order of experience, this matter of love, emotion, attraction, brutality, etc. There are some causal issues mixed in there, but many which have no causal explanation. Many of them have no direct physical cause. Something about the pattern of trees attracts some people, aesthetically, while to others it is merely an object to be used for a purpose, such as firewood or furniture. It would be out of place to try to determine a purely physical cause for this difference.
But even that example is still ambiguous, because physical attraction, while having emotional qualities, is still very much related to the physical viewpoint itself. What about a more distantly related example? How about the classic concept of karma. The concept of karma attempts to explain physical phenomena, such as having a terrible car accident, as being “caused” by one's past actions. But this, if examined closely, would seem to require some force that would cause events to happen, that God or someone or something is somehow making this accident occur in accord with one's past actions, or at the very least that one has a “store” of accumulated tendencies on some subtle plane that makes things happen on the physical plane. If that were the case, one would expect to find this force operative on the physical plane. One should be able to detect it acting upon physical objects. And yet nothing of the kind has ever been found? Why? Because there is no such force acting from the subtle dimension upon the physical dimension. It is merely that events happen in patterns synchronous with one's subtle energy body, and vice-versa. The link between the subtle and the physical is not causal, but synchronous. They are each a reflection of one another. One can “read” something about one's physical life by examing the subtle, but neither actually causes one another to be a certain way. They simply reflect the same basic pattern.
Your example of the leaf, the bloom and its smell also are all physical matters that have a causal relationship. But how about this. You are thinking of someone you loved, and who died, and you then you smell their favorite perfume. Now, maybe one could find out that someone just walked by wearing that perfume, and that could account for why you smelled it. But it doesn't explain why you thought about that woman before you smelled her perfume. Did your thought “cause” the woman to walk by wearing the same perfume? No, of course not. The two merely coincided.
Wilber gives the example in Grace and Grit of a great wind striking up when his wife died. Now, did his wife's death cause the wind to blow? No, of course not. If one analyzed the wind, I'm sure one would find a perfectly fine meteorological explanation. The relationship between the two events is not causal, but physical. Ghosts would also be an example of a similar phenomena. They do no exist or act in the physical world, they simply coincide with it. Psychisms of all kinds are not really what people think. Precognition, mind-reading, etc, all these are not causal events, but examples of synchronicity. Science may be able to study the phenomena, but they won't be able to find the causal relationship they are looking for, because there is none. The mind is merely able to “coincide” with phenomena of other levels of experience, and resonate in their pattern.
I think this is in some respects a test to differentiate levels. If there is a causal connection between two things, they are on the same level. If their connection is only one of similar pattern, of synchronous coincidence, then they are on two different levels.
An example would be the physical brain. Wilber finds neuroscience to be devastating to much of mysticism and metaphysics, because he thinks that brain chemistry explains so much of how we think and what we do. In a sense, he's correct. But its not as simple as that. While the brain does indeed create a chemistry that corresponds to our inner thoughts and subjective experience, it isn't clear which comes first. Do we think a thought, and this causes the brain to produce a chemical reaction, or does the chemical reaction come first, and the thought is just a product of the chemistry? This question is not resolvable in a causal fashion, and this indicates that mind and brain are on different levels. The best we can say is that thought coincides with brain chemistry. But we cannot say that thought exists only as a brain phenomena. Some interesting NDE out-of-body experiences during induced hypothermia, where there is no brain activity, demonstrate that thinking and observing processes can occur without the brain being involved. So the brain isn't necessary to all thought and perception, but when active it does coincide with thought and mind.
Now as for the mind relaxing when the wind blows and nice smells come into the room is a mixture of the two. We conventionally say that the mind relaxed because it smelled something nice. But this is only because it liked that particular pattern. It chose to relax on cue. It uses that pattern as an excuse to relax. The wind didn't literally cause the mind to relax. It simply gave the mind an excuse to relax. The mind relaxed all on its own, really. It could have relaxed just by remembering that smell. It could have relaxed without any cause at all. Emotional responses are not generally “caused” in the same way that physical events are caused, because we can generate them without cause. Tiny “causes” can set some people off, and yet major trauma may not. Linking all these things to hormones and other brain chemistry issues is trying to mask synchronicity with causality, and often with disastrous results, in that people always like to “blame” their emotional reactions on some cause, and now the excuse is brain chemistry, when in fact these things exist on distinct planes, and hence cannot be treated simply as causal events. The effect of drugs on the brain and the mind is not a wholly causal one, because these only effect one side of the equation.
Wilber's Newer Model and Transcendentalism
A reader named timbomb wrote:
I wasn't familiar with this lattice, and so went to the link provided to Wilber's intro essay "What is Integral Spirituality", published in 2005, so it represents very recent Wilber views. In it he says:
"Even transcendental knowledge is a four-quadrant affair: the quadranbts don't just go all the way up, they go all they way down as well. It's turtles all the down, and turtles all the way up."
That's clearly a dualistic viewpoint about transcendentalism, and it gives the impression that even non-dualism is not only dualistic, but quadristic in nature.
Wilber seems to be under the sway of both modernism and post-modernism. Atheism, if you will. He sees these disciplines as having swept the rug out from under even the greatest of spiritual traditions:
"We start with the simple observation that the "metaphysics" of the spiritual traditions have been thoroughly trashed by both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies, and there has as yet arisen nothing as compelling to take their place."
So this tells us where Wibler is coming from. He thinks that the great non-dual traditions need to by reworked to make them safe and acceptable to post-modernist minds. I disagree. I think post-modernism needs to get that poker out of its ass and bow its head to the floor, and recognize the greater meanings of the non-dual traditions. But that's as silly as saying that Kings and Princes and Presidents and Dictators need to bow down to non-dualism. It's not exactly going to happen.
Wilber also thinks that the postmodernists have come up with devastating critiques of non-dualism and transcendentalism that can't survive without his AQAL. That too is false. His AQAL does a disservice to both. I have nothing against postmodernism. Some of it is downright silly, but some of it is not. The problem is that it has very little application to non-dualist teachings. It doesn't arise from them, it doesn't address them, and only Wilber seems to think it must. Now, Wilber has tried to mix the two, he's done his best, but frankly it doesn't work. He treats non-dualism as if it is just one among many views. It isn't. It's a singular way of looking at reality, not a multiplex of philsophies. In WIlber's view, that's what makes it partial and in need of modification by other views, bringing it into the tent so to speak, trying to get it to talk to the other views. But this dog just won't hunt. Non-dualism isn't just another view. If non-dualism is true, then only non-dualism is true. If non-dualism is false, then why bring it into the tent at all? The non-dual truth states that all viewpoints are illusory, all philosophies are mere mind, all objects and experience are unnecessary apparitions in transcendental consciousness, and only the Singular Self is real.
The problem there is that by Wilber's AQAL model, this Self-Realization is just an extreme exclusivity of the UL quadrant. And I think that is how WIlber sees non-dualism, as "imbalanced" and in need of balance by the other quadrants. By non-dualism's teachings, the whole of AQAL ia an illusion, including the UL quadrant. I don't see how they are compatible. Putting transcendentalism into Wilber's model means changing it, modifying it using dualistic postmodern tools that make it into something that isn't non-dualism. Not that non-dual realizers much care what Wilber does, but Wilber ought to care what they teach if he is going to try to build a model that aims at non-dual realization. Which is what Wilber seems to be trying to do, ultimately, and also personally. I don't see that it works for either.
As I've said, Wilber is trying to have his cake and eat it. He believes passionately in both developmentalism and non-dualism, and the two simply don't mix, certainly not in the manner he has tried to conceive of. It might be worth a try to find commonality without changing either one in the process, but Wilber knows that won't work, so he thinks he can just change non-dualis into a new, improved, all-inclusive version and actually make things better. Sorry, this just screws up both sides of the equation.
It would be better for Wilber to keep his two passions separate. Its fine to pursue developmental growth. It's also fine to pursue non-dual realization. One won't reach the ultimate advances in either one this way, but one will at least not be greatly deluded about things. Those who become great realizers dont' do both, they just pursue non-dual realizaiton. And those who achieve great feats of development don't usually pay much heed to non-dual notions. They go for the dualistic achievements. Nothing wrong with that. We all do what we gotta do. But it's a formula for frustration to try to combine both.
Now maybe I'm missing some of the nuances of Wilber's new views. Maybe the piece I referred to was just not very complete. If anyone knows more about Wilber's views on non-dualism, let me know. For now though I can't really say I see any great change.
Hey BY, you're aware that Wilber makes a similar critique about his early work himself now, right? I think your criticism of the earlier stuff has a lot to it.
Wilber's recent stuff (last 8 years or so) doesn't put any of the spiritual states at the end of the developmental sequence. These days (since at least Boomeritis) he tends to arrange the structural stages and the states on this picture he refers to as the "Wilber-Combs Lattice"
I wasn't familiar with this lattice, and so went to the link provided to Wilber's intro essay "What is Integral Spirituality", published in 2005, so it represents very recent Wilber views. In it he says:
"Even transcendental knowledge is a four-quadrant affair: the quadranbts don't just go all the way up, they go all they way down as well. It's turtles all the down, and turtles all the way up."
That's clearly a dualistic viewpoint about transcendentalism, and it gives the impression that even non-dualism is not only dualistic, but quadristic in nature.
Wilber seems to be under the sway of both modernism and post-modernism. Atheism, if you will. He sees these disciplines as having swept the rug out from under even the greatest of spiritual traditions:
"We start with the simple observation that the "metaphysics" of the spiritual traditions have been thoroughly trashed by both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies, and there has as yet arisen nothing as compelling to take their place."
So this tells us where Wibler is coming from. He thinks that the great non-dual traditions need to by reworked to make them safe and acceptable to post-modernist minds. I disagree. I think post-modernism needs to get that poker out of its ass and bow its head to the floor, and recognize the greater meanings of the non-dual traditions. But that's as silly as saying that Kings and Princes and Presidents and Dictators need to bow down to non-dualism. It's not exactly going to happen.
Wilber also thinks that the postmodernists have come up with devastating critiques of non-dualism and transcendentalism that can't survive without his AQAL. That too is false. His AQAL does a disservice to both. I have nothing against postmodernism. Some of it is downright silly, but some of it is not. The problem is that it has very little application to non-dualist teachings. It doesn't arise from them, it doesn't address them, and only Wilber seems to think it must. Now, Wilber has tried to mix the two, he's done his best, but frankly it doesn't work. He treats non-dualism as if it is just one among many views. It isn't. It's a singular way of looking at reality, not a multiplex of philsophies. In WIlber's view, that's what makes it partial and in need of modification by other views, bringing it into the tent so to speak, trying to get it to talk to the other views. But this dog just won't hunt. Non-dualism isn't just another view. If non-dualism is true, then only non-dualism is true. If non-dualism is false, then why bring it into the tent at all? The non-dual truth states that all viewpoints are illusory, all philosophies are mere mind, all objects and experience are unnecessary apparitions in transcendental consciousness, and only the Singular Self is real.
The problem there is that by Wilber's AQAL model, this Self-Realization is just an extreme exclusivity of the UL quadrant. And I think that is how WIlber sees non-dualism, as "imbalanced" and in need of balance by the other quadrants. By non-dualism's teachings, the whole of AQAL ia an illusion, including the UL quadrant. I don't see how they are compatible. Putting transcendentalism into Wilber's model means changing it, modifying it using dualistic postmodern tools that make it into something that isn't non-dualism. Not that non-dual realizers much care what Wilber does, but Wilber ought to care what they teach if he is going to try to build a model that aims at non-dual realization. Which is what Wilber seems to be trying to do, ultimately, and also personally. I don't see that it works for either.
As I've said, Wilber is trying to have his cake and eat it. He believes passionately in both developmentalism and non-dualism, and the two simply don't mix, certainly not in the manner he has tried to conceive of. It might be worth a try to find commonality without changing either one in the process, but Wilber knows that won't work, so he thinks he can just change non-dualis into a new, improved, all-inclusive version and actually make things better. Sorry, this just screws up both sides of the equation.
It would be better for Wilber to keep his two passions separate. Its fine to pursue developmental growth. It's also fine to pursue non-dual realization. One won't reach the ultimate advances in either one this way, but one will at least not be greatly deluded about things. Those who become great realizers dont' do both, they just pursue non-dual realizaiton. And those who achieve great feats of development don't usually pay much heed to non-dual notions. They go for the dualistic achievements. Nothing wrong with that. We all do what we gotta do. But it's a formula for frustration to try to combine both.
Now maybe I'm missing some of the nuances of Wilber's new views. Maybe the piece I referred to was just not very complete. If anyone knows more about Wilber's views on non-dualism, let me know. For now though I can't really say I see any great change.
More on Wilber and Developmentalism
I got another comment on my criticism of Ken Wilber that I thought should come to the front, from Michael:
Dear Michael,
I have no problem with anyone being a fan of Wilber's work. If it fits with your notion of things, fine. If AQAL makes sense to you, fine. My criticism of Wilber is not based on a rejection of the existence or value of development. You said:
I think you have glossed over my own caveats to some degree. My primary criticism wasn't that there is no such thing as development. Obviously as you say we all develop and grow. My primary objection is that development is only one side of the cycle of nature. We also decay and die. You say that grown men don't suddenly become six year olds. But grown men do become corpses. And corpses disintegrate. Now maybe if one excepts reincarnation - and I don't think Wilber has any real objections to that – then old men do in fact become six year olds.
My other big objection is Wilber's attempt to put non-dual enlightenment on the map, as the final stage of developmental growth. My point is that non-dual enlightenment is not achieved through developmental growth, nor is it on any map of developmental growth. Wilber seems to have a deep respect for the non-dual traditions of enlightenment, and I think that's great. Most developmentalists don't give much credence to such things. It's good that Wilber does. But he gets non-dualism wrong, in my view, by seeing it as a developmental stage of growth, even the ultimate developmental stage.
One of the primary motivations to non-dual enlightenment is the recognition that the developmental process simply doesn't lead there – or if it does in some sense, it takes eons of kalpas of time. So the non-dual traditions constantly point to the reality of death, to the message death has for us all, that all our growth and progress and attainments are vain and illusory, that death and decays wipes them all out, and that therefore we should awaken from the dream of egoity now, and not look for ways to develop ourselves. This is not an anti-developmental view, it's just a realistic rather than an idealistic view of development. When Wilber says that once a level is attained, we don't ever fall back, he is simply false. Everything that rises up also falls back. Seeing this makes us take up a transcendental view of life.
Now, Wilber does account for transcendental views, but he wrongly places them within the developmental model itself. He puts them in the “trans-rational” category of development. This is a way of constantly re-injecting the developmental system back into the picture, even when it has been essentially renounced and transcended. His “transcend and include” principle is simply a way of reifying the developmental process regardless of whether one has moved away from it or not. In some sense, this is just an intellectual trick, it has no meaning in the context of a truly transcendental approach, because the transcendental approach is precisely to “get off the wheel”. The point being that one can get off the wheel at any time, at any point in one's developmental process. Ramana got off at age 16. He didn't wait until he had fully developed some kind of centauric outlook on life. The Buddha practiced conventional spiritual developmental approaches until he saw them as unreal and pointless. He didn't continue to include them in his radical enlightenment.
As I said, the non-dual approach is essentially a negative one, not a developmental one. One relinquishes everything, rather than including everything. It is fine in my book to create developmental models of human growth. They are natural and sensible. Wilber has done no actual research himself in this area, but he has read the results of many different researcher's works, and tried to come up with a comprehensive model himself. Nothing wrong with that in general. But I do have a problem with the model he has come up with. The fact that it tries to include all models doesn't make it right, you understand. Nor does it mean that those researchers who Wilber has included in his model approve of the way he has tried to fit everything together. I seriously doubt that non-dual realizers, for example, would point to Wilber's AQAL as “the real nature of conditional life”. Nor do I think developmental experts ( of which Wilber is not, I need to remind you) would see it that way either.
Wilber has picked and chosen the developmental models that seem right to him, and fitted them into a scheme that makes sense to him. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no guarantee that his scheme is anything close to “the real nature of conditional life”. You may disagree, but where are all the experts in these fields? Are they in Wilber's camp? I think not. I'm not saying there's no value in Wilber's scheme. Clearly there is. It's just not the ultimate map. One could examine all the data Wilber has and select from it differently and come up with a very different scheme. I know that I would. Whether my scheme would be more accurate than Wilber's is hard to say. The point is that one should simply view Wilber's work as a reflection of his own views about things, and his views may not be accurate. They are certainly debatable on many fronts.
Now obviously you like Wilber's model. My guess is that you like it because it seems to promise “ever higher (and deeper) stages and levels (across lines, and including states and types)”. You don't seem to pick up on the idealism of this view of development. As said, all growth is followed by genuine decay, and there is a return to shallowness after experiencing depth. Everything in conditional nature moves in vast cycles that essentially even out in the long run. Development doesn't really go anywhere, but repeats itself, and as it repeats itself, it doesn't really get any better (or worse). The non-dualist teachings aren't about ultimate development, they are about getting off the developmental wheel. If you want to stay on the developmental wheel, fine, just be realistic about where it goes and what its limits are. Wilber makes the error of seeing development as having unlimited potential. Wiser people have always taught the opposite, that all growth is countered by decay and death, that conditional existence is about limits, not the unlimited, and that all our efforts and attainments are ultimately in vain, and return to dust. This is a sobering and tragic message not found in Wilber's writings. I suggest you consider it more deeply if you truly do want to understand the nature of conditional life.”
I enjoy your take on this. It provides me with some real food for thought. I am a Wilber fan, to be sure, but I am not particularly skilled in debating his work in any great detail. I am not gifted with that sort of intellectual kung fu, so please bear with me.
But I do feel compelled to "represent" on some level. Ken's work is based on research, as you know. Lots of it. From empiricists. It's not a pet theory, but rather the reasoned results of decades of working with tensions among various worldviews, research results, testimony of adepts, etc. I think you somewhat misrepresent this basis, kind of tacitly implying that Ken is making stuff up.
I think a more accurate way of summarizing where Ken is coming from would be along the lines of saying "development is a Kosmic habit" or something along those lines. Denying development would include denying that we grow from infants, to toddlers, to children, to teenagers, to adults, etc. No? This "Kosmic habit" of individual growth is also apparent in human history. And realizing this and working with it is not equivalent to believing this is the end all-be all. It does not discount the fact that there could be much more massive kalpas, eons, and other huge cycles of time and growth.
And (to Kang's question about SDi) Ken doesn't limit himself to spirals. He talks of spirals, circles, mandalas, waves, and all sorts of patterns and ways that systems and people develop. SDi is just a nice, easy-to-understand way of introducing people to these ideas. Those very familiar with SDi are becoming more aware of its pitfalls and shortcomings, even in light of its overall usefulness.
Ken is always making comments in the context of his simplifications that its way more dynamic, convoluted, and mutlidimensional than we can easily express, but for the sake of discourse, we need to work with simpler concepts. People often gloss over these caveats when they criticize.
You say:
"Wilber doesn't seem to have gotten to that point, and part of the reason is that his system is masking the real nature of conditional life, which is cycles of repetition rather than ongoing development in ever higher stages and levels."
To me, it would be more accurate to say that Ken's system (AQAL) represents the real nature of conditional life, and includes in its framework cycles of repetition AND ongoing development in ever higher (and deeper) stages and levels (across lines, and including states and types).
If its just "cycles of repetition" that make up condition existence, why don't we see old men becoming 6 year olds? Why don't we see society suddenly becoming medieval again? Because there *is* development and its completely obvious. And Ken's work is just an attempt to make as complete a map as possible of this conditional, developing world full of conditioned, developing beings. All the while keeping in mind that its essentially unreal and empty of permanent nature.
Dear Michael,
I have no problem with anyone being a fan of Wilber's work. If it fits with your notion of things, fine. If AQAL makes sense to you, fine. My criticism of Wilber is not based on a rejection of the existence or value of development. You said:
“People often gloss over these caveats when they criticize.”
I think you have glossed over my own caveats to some degree. My primary criticism wasn't that there is no such thing as development. Obviously as you say we all develop and grow. My primary objection is that development is only one side of the cycle of nature. We also decay and die. You say that grown men don't suddenly become six year olds. But grown men do become corpses. And corpses disintegrate. Now maybe if one excepts reincarnation - and I don't think Wilber has any real objections to that – then old men do in fact become six year olds.
My other big objection is Wilber's attempt to put non-dual enlightenment on the map, as the final stage of developmental growth. My point is that non-dual enlightenment is not achieved through developmental growth, nor is it on any map of developmental growth. Wilber seems to have a deep respect for the non-dual traditions of enlightenment, and I think that's great. Most developmentalists don't give much credence to such things. It's good that Wilber does. But he gets non-dualism wrong, in my view, by seeing it as a developmental stage of growth, even the ultimate developmental stage.
One of the primary motivations to non-dual enlightenment is the recognition that the developmental process simply doesn't lead there – or if it does in some sense, it takes eons of kalpas of time. So the non-dual traditions constantly point to the reality of death, to the message death has for us all, that all our growth and progress and attainments are vain and illusory, that death and decays wipes them all out, and that therefore we should awaken from the dream of egoity now, and not look for ways to develop ourselves. This is not an anti-developmental view, it's just a realistic rather than an idealistic view of development. When Wilber says that once a level is attained, we don't ever fall back, he is simply false. Everything that rises up also falls back. Seeing this makes us take up a transcendental view of life.
Now, Wilber does account for transcendental views, but he wrongly places them within the developmental model itself. He puts them in the “trans-rational” category of development. This is a way of constantly re-injecting the developmental system back into the picture, even when it has been essentially renounced and transcended. His “transcend and include” principle is simply a way of reifying the developmental process regardless of whether one has moved away from it or not. In some sense, this is just an intellectual trick, it has no meaning in the context of a truly transcendental approach, because the transcendental approach is precisely to “get off the wheel”. The point being that one can get off the wheel at any time, at any point in one's developmental process. Ramana got off at age 16. He didn't wait until he had fully developed some kind of centauric outlook on life. The Buddha practiced conventional spiritual developmental approaches until he saw them as unreal and pointless. He didn't continue to include them in his radical enlightenment.
As I said, the non-dual approach is essentially a negative one, not a developmental one. One relinquishes everything, rather than including everything. It is fine in my book to create developmental models of human growth. They are natural and sensible. Wilber has done no actual research himself in this area, but he has read the results of many different researcher's works, and tried to come up with a comprehensive model himself. Nothing wrong with that in general. But I do have a problem with the model he has come up with. The fact that it tries to include all models doesn't make it right, you understand. Nor does it mean that those researchers who Wilber has included in his model approve of the way he has tried to fit everything together. I seriously doubt that non-dual realizers, for example, would point to Wilber's AQAL as “the real nature of conditional life”. Nor do I think developmental experts ( of which Wilber is not, I need to remind you) would see it that way either.
Wilber has picked and chosen the developmental models that seem right to him, and fitted them into a scheme that makes sense to him. Nothing wrong with that, but there's no guarantee that his scheme is anything close to “the real nature of conditional life”. You may disagree, but where are all the experts in these fields? Are they in Wilber's camp? I think not. I'm not saying there's no value in Wilber's scheme. Clearly there is. It's just not the ultimate map. One could examine all the data Wilber has and select from it differently and come up with a very different scheme. I know that I would. Whether my scheme would be more accurate than Wilber's is hard to say. The point is that one should simply view Wilber's work as a reflection of his own views about things, and his views may not be accurate. They are certainly debatable on many fronts.
Now obviously you like Wilber's model. My guess is that you like it because it seems to promise “ever higher (and deeper) stages and levels (across lines, and including states and types)”. You don't seem to pick up on the idealism of this view of development. As said, all growth is followed by genuine decay, and there is a return to shallowness after experiencing depth. Everything in conditional nature moves in vast cycles that essentially even out in the long run. Development doesn't really go anywhere, but repeats itself, and as it repeats itself, it doesn't really get any better (or worse). The non-dualist teachings aren't about ultimate development, they are about getting off the developmental wheel. If you want to stay on the developmental wheel, fine, just be realistic about where it goes and what its limits are. Wilber makes the error of seeing development as having unlimited potential. Wiser people have always taught the opposite, that all growth is countered by decay and death, that conditional existence is about limits, not the unlimited, and that all our efforts and attainments are ultimately in vain, and return to dust. This is a sobering and tragic message not found in Wilber's writings. I suggest you consider it more deeply if you truly do want to understand the nature of conditional life.”
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Essay at Integral World Website in response to some of these conversations
I got an email this morning from Frank Visser, who runs the Integral World website, devoted to critical examination of the work of Ken Wilber and related topics, letting me know that he's just published an excellent new article by Andy Smith entitled "Afternum Per Tempore: How We Develop to the Non-Dual," that responds to some of the threads of criticism I wrote about Wilber and non-dualism recently, both here on this blog and over at the "World of Ken Wilber" Forum at Lightmind.
Andy Smith's essay is very well-written and worth reading. He has a lot of good ideas about developmentalism and non-dualism, many of which I disagree with, but they are worthy of debate. I intend to write a response over the next few days, and post it both here and to the Integral World website, if Frank agrees.
Also, just to let you know, I've gotten some very good comments here from Friend, Kang, Jimsun and Marko that I want to respond to but am a little short of time. So please be patient. Also, Marko wasn't sure how to respond to these posts, so he just sent me an email. Just to let you and others know, you can simply press the little "comments" link at the end of each post, and write a comment in there. I have the software set up here so that all comments get sent to my email, so I won't miss anything even if it is a response to an older posting. It's better that way, so that others can see what I'm responding to. If it's an older topic, I may post my reply in a new posting to bring it up front, with a link to the original post and its comments. Hope that makes things simpler.
Andy Smith's essay is very well-written and worth reading. He has a lot of good ideas about developmentalism and non-dualism, many of which I disagree with, but they are worthy of debate. I intend to write a response over the next few days, and post it both here and to the Integral World website, if Frank agrees.
Also, just to let you know, I've gotten some very good comments here from Friend, Kang, Jimsun and Marko that I want to respond to but am a little short of time. So please be patient. Also, Marko wasn't sure how to respond to these posts, so he just sent me an email. Just to let you and others know, you can simply press the little "comments" link at the end of each post, and write a comment in there. I have the software set up here so that all comments get sent to my email, so I won't miss anything even if it is a response to an older posting. It's better that way, so that others can see what I'm responding to. If it's an older topic, I may post my reply in a new posting to bring it up front, with a link to the original post and its comments. Hope that makes things simpler.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
How meaningful is it to say someone is enlightened or unenlightened?
Thought I'd bring forward this reply to Kang's comments below:
As to whether it makes sense to say one person is enlightened and another isn't, it depends on the utility of the situation. Ultimately, I don't know, but in practical terms I form meaningful opinions about things in order to function. So my meaningful opinion is that Ramana and Niz are enlightened, and Saniel Bonder is not. That may not be meaningful to you, or to anyone else, but to me its just as meaningful an opinion as looking at my gas gauge and thinking I need to fill up the tank before I run out. It's a dualistic opinion, in other words, and I understand that. But living in a dualistic state of mind, I need to keep track of things to some degree. I don't want to run out of gas, and I don't want to follow the teachings of guys like Bonder. I'd like to keep my gas tank full and my mind on the teachings of people I consider genuinely enlightened. My opinions about enlightenment are formed through a trial and error process, similar but obviously more complex than reading a gas gauge, and I really don't see any problem with that.
You seem to think that a non-dual practitioner should apply principles of non-dualism to everything, including dualistic matters. I disagree, Ramana disagrees, and teaches very clearly that one should not mix the two. He said that you don't walk past a rapist assaulting a woman because both of them are non-separate in God. You step in and help out. And he also said that you don't treat the Guru as if he were an ordinary man like yourself or anyone else. You treat him sacredly. Now Ramana personally refused to be treated specially in various ways, such as being given special foods and things, and he didn't even like to be bowed down to, but he certainly did teach that people relate to him as Guru, and not relate to “everything” as one's Guru. He was practical, and pointed out that as long as you have a dualistic mind, and live in a dualistic world, you have to follow its laws and logic, and “give to Caesar what is Caesar's” so to speak. This applies to spiritual matters as well. He felt that it was important to test one's Guru and feel certain that they were enlightened and trustworthy. He didn't ask for indiscriminate surrender to himself, and he didn't even much like calling himself a Guru in the traditional sense. But he acknowledged the necessity of it.
So I think that while we have dualistic minds we have to be humble about that, and not try to apply non-dual principles to our own thinking. Thought is a dualistic square box, and you can't force it into the round hole of non-dualism. And vice-vera. So while you may not like to put people into the box of “enlightened” or “unenlightened” that doesn't stop your dualistic mind from doing its thing. You just put other labels on it, I'm sure. I gather there are some teachers you respect, and others you don't. That too is applying dualistic discrimination to teachers. If you';re going to do that, why not get more precise with it? Discrimination is a dualistic practice, but a very important one to develop. Yes, one lets it go in self-enquiry, but that doesn't mean the person practicing self-enquiry has no discrimination.
Self-enquiry is practiced in relation to the self. You don't practice it in relation to other people, You don't try to bring a non-dual “attitude” towards your relations with others. As longs as you perceive others, you are functioning from the dualistic mind, and you have to bring discrimination to your relations. So I see nothing wrong with judging others intelligently, and saying this one seems enlightened and this one doesn't. It seems even necessary if one is to discriminate between true and false teachings. Yes, true and false are dualistic concepts, but we are living with dualistic minds, and so they are very important concepts for us to get straight. Going beyond dualism doesn't mean abandoning such knowledge. It means that we simply understand that it is merely dualistic, and thus, as you say in that wonderful phrase “lacking significance”. Of course, it only lacks significance in the non-dual sense. We don't become attached to our invented meanings and perceptions, but we don't simply throw them away either. They remain in place even for the enlightened. They know not to put their hands in fire, not to eat dirt instead of vegetables, and not to believe that people are enlightened who clearly aren't.
I think you are quite wrong to say that enlightened people have no concept of unenlightenment, and don't divide people into the two camps. Yes and no. Yes, in that they see all as enlightened, but no in that they can clearly tell who know this and who doesn't. They can see that very few people actually know they are enlightened, and even many of those who say they are enlightened don't know it for real, but only say so, with some deluded notion about enlightenment fogging their minds. Ramana mentioned or acknowledged in passing a few people who had become enlightened , including his mother and several animals. Clearly he could tell this was true of them, and not true of most other people. This didn't mean that Ramana was stuck in dualistic concepts of enlightenment and unenlightenment. It simply meant that he functioned with natural intelligence about such things. He was also very good at chopping vegetables, and managed not to nip off his fingers. It's a fairly similar skill when it gets down to it.
So I think it's fine to form opinions about such things, in order not to nip off one's fingers. It's good to know if you are enlightened, which Ramana clearly knew about himself, and I think its good to know one is not enlightened, which I know about myself. It's also important to know that all this is just dualistic knowledge, and “lacking significance” in reality. But in the dream, it has meanings and value.
What's important to recognize is that while one is dreaming, one can't simply discard dualistic notions, or mix them with non-dual notions, and expect non-dual results to come about. Non-dual practice isn't about doing anything with or to one's dualistic mind. You could have the worst dualistic thoughts in the world and still practice non-dualism. When you say,
“So you are not really a practitioner of self-enquiry if you begin with such things cluttering up your brain,”
I can't help but laugh. Every practitioner of self-enquiry begins with such things cluttering up their brains, and far worse. You don't sit down to practice self-enquiry by first cleaning out your mind. If you do that, you aren't doing self-enquiry, you are putting attention on the dualistic mind. Ramana's recommendation for practice under such conditions is to simply ask, “to whom are these thoughts arising?” That approach can be made regardless of the thoughts in your mind, from the highest to the lowest.
“After all, if you are actually a devoted enquirer, the practice of self-enquiry must be founded in a state of not-knowing. Those who "already know" don't ask. And prior affirmations and/or denials contradict such a state. They have to be dispensed with first...Yes, affirmations and denials exist. Why identify with them?”
Self-enquiry is not founded in any special state at all. It's founded in this state, right now, whatever state you are in. If you are in a state of knowledge of some kind – and chances are that you are – this is the state in which you practice self-enquiry There is no preliminary practice of entering into some special state of not-knowing in order to practice self-enquiry. You practice self-enquiry because you already have presumed to know who you are – this body-mind. The practice is a questioning of that knowledge. You question whether you really are who you think you are. The more you examine yourself, the more it becomes clear that you don't know who you are at all. So this “not-knowing” is one of the results of practicing self-enquiry, it isn't something else one must do beforehand.
Self-enquiry has NO requirements. Everyone can do it, regardless of their preparation or state. That's the whole point. It's an unconditional practice. Ramana recommended it to everyone, not just advanced beings. So all our prior affirmations and denials are part of what are inspected in self-enquiry. One does inspect the presumption of unenlightenment, which is simply the presumption that we are body-minds. But it is really inspected, not shunted aside. We are truly identified with them, and simply saying that we are not our presumptions has no great meaning aside from finding out who we really are, and finding out our real enlightenment. I haven't done that, so by default it simply makes sense to say that I am unenlightened. It's not by identifying with that statement or concept that I become unenlightened, it's by identifying with the whole complex of this body-mind that I become or seem to be unenlightened. So what is important is not getting rid of such superficial concepts, but inspecting ourselves and see what really is true, and questioning all our presumptions. If you do that fully, then you can call yourself enlightened. Until then, it's no more harmful to call yourself unenlightened as it is to say you are not the President of the United States. It's even helpful in my view. One of the most important virtues to develop in this practice is humility, all these realizers talk about that. And part of being humble is knowing that one is lost in samsara, and needs the help of those who are not. That's why I read the works of enlightened beings – because they can help me. One has to be willing to bow down and put one's head on the floor, give up one's pride, and admit that we don't know what we are doing and need help. That kind of humility doesn't hurt one's chances of being enlightened. It might not be “a step up” from thinking of oneself as enlightened, but I'm not looking to step up. If anything, I'm looking to step down, to humble myself before God. God knows I'm arrogant enough already. Can you imagine what I'd be like if I thought I was enlightened? Truly unbearable.
I like what you said about duality, and that's a great take on Da's whole “pinching yourself” teaching, tying it to this view of conditionality as “not substantial”. What Ramana says about the realizer is simply that they have no volition of their own anymore, because no one is at home. They are lived by the Divine Spirit, and their actions are the actions of the Divine. As Papaji says, he has no mind at all, and hence no desires, because without a mind desire has nowhere to take root. He acts spontaneously, with no thinking at all. It turns out that his actions are for the benefit of others, but how else could it be when there is no self or mind to benefit from them?
As to whether it makes sense to say one person is enlightened and another isn't, it depends on the utility of the situation. Ultimately, I don't know, but in practical terms I form meaningful opinions about things in order to function. So my meaningful opinion is that Ramana and Niz are enlightened, and Saniel Bonder is not. That may not be meaningful to you, or to anyone else, but to me its just as meaningful an opinion as looking at my gas gauge and thinking I need to fill up the tank before I run out. It's a dualistic opinion, in other words, and I understand that. But living in a dualistic state of mind, I need to keep track of things to some degree. I don't want to run out of gas, and I don't want to follow the teachings of guys like Bonder. I'd like to keep my gas tank full and my mind on the teachings of people I consider genuinely enlightened. My opinions about enlightenment are formed through a trial and error process, similar but obviously more complex than reading a gas gauge, and I really don't see any problem with that.
You seem to think that a non-dual practitioner should apply principles of non-dualism to everything, including dualistic matters. I disagree, Ramana disagrees, and teaches very clearly that one should not mix the two. He said that you don't walk past a rapist assaulting a woman because both of them are non-separate in God. You step in and help out. And he also said that you don't treat the Guru as if he were an ordinary man like yourself or anyone else. You treat him sacredly. Now Ramana personally refused to be treated specially in various ways, such as being given special foods and things, and he didn't even like to be bowed down to, but he certainly did teach that people relate to him as Guru, and not relate to “everything” as one's Guru. He was practical, and pointed out that as long as you have a dualistic mind, and live in a dualistic world, you have to follow its laws and logic, and “give to Caesar what is Caesar's” so to speak. This applies to spiritual matters as well. He felt that it was important to test one's Guru and feel certain that they were enlightened and trustworthy. He didn't ask for indiscriminate surrender to himself, and he didn't even much like calling himself a Guru in the traditional sense. But he acknowledged the necessity of it.
So I think that while we have dualistic minds we have to be humble about that, and not try to apply non-dual principles to our own thinking. Thought is a dualistic square box, and you can't force it into the round hole of non-dualism. And vice-vera. So while you may not like to put people into the box of “enlightened” or “unenlightened” that doesn't stop your dualistic mind from doing its thing. You just put other labels on it, I'm sure. I gather there are some teachers you respect, and others you don't. That too is applying dualistic discrimination to teachers. If you';re going to do that, why not get more precise with it? Discrimination is a dualistic practice, but a very important one to develop. Yes, one lets it go in self-enquiry, but that doesn't mean the person practicing self-enquiry has no discrimination.
Self-enquiry is practiced in relation to the self. You don't practice it in relation to other people, You don't try to bring a non-dual “attitude” towards your relations with others. As longs as you perceive others, you are functioning from the dualistic mind, and you have to bring discrimination to your relations. So I see nothing wrong with judging others intelligently, and saying this one seems enlightened and this one doesn't. It seems even necessary if one is to discriminate between true and false teachings. Yes, true and false are dualistic concepts, but we are living with dualistic minds, and so they are very important concepts for us to get straight. Going beyond dualism doesn't mean abandoning such knowledge. It means that we simply understand that it is merely dualistic, and thus, as you say in that wonderful phrase “lacking significance”. Of course, it only lacks significance in the non-dual sense. We don't become attached to our invented meanings and perceptions, but we don't simply throw them away either. They remain in place even for the enlightened. They know not to put their hands in fire, not to eat dirt instead of vegetables, and not to believe that people are enlightened who clearly aren't.
I think you are quite wrong to say that enlightened people have no concept of unenlightenment, and don't divide people into the two camps. Yes and no. Yes, in that they see all as enlightened, but no in that they can clearly tell who know this and who doesn't. They can see that very few people actually know they are enlightened, and even many of those who say they are enlightened don't know it for real, but only say so, with some deluded notion about enlightenment fogging their minds. Ramana mentioned or acknowledged in passing a few people who had become enlightened , including his mother and several animals. Clearly he could tell this was true of them, and not true of most other people. This didn't mean that Ramana was stuck in dualistic concepts of enlightenment and unenlightenment. It simply meant that he functioned with natural intelligence about such things. He was also very good at chopping vegetables, and managed not to nip off his fingers. It's a fairly similar skill when it gets down to it.
So I think it's fine to form opinions about such things, in order not to nip off one's fingers. It's good to know if you are enlightened, which Ramana clearly knew about himself, and I think its good to know one is not enlightened, which I know about myself. It's also important to know that all this is just dualistic knowledge, and “lacking significance” in reality. But in the dream, it has meanings and value.
What's important to recognize is that while one is dreaming, one can't simply discard dualistic notions, or mix them with non-dual notions, and expect non-dual results to come about. Non-dual practice isn't about doing anything with or to one's dualistic mind. You could have the worst dualistic thoughts in the world and still practice non-dualism. When you say,
“So you are not really a practitioner of self-enquiry if you begin with such things cluttering up your brain,”
I can't help but laugh. Every practitioner of self-enquiry begins with such things cluttering up their brains, and far worse. You don't sit down to practice self-enquiry by first cleaning out your mind. If you do that, you aren't doing self-enquiry, you are putting attention on the dualistic mind. Ramana's recommendation for practice under such conditions is to simply ask, “to whom are these thoughts arising?” That approach can be made regardless of the thoughts in your mind, from the highest to the lowest.
“After all, if you are actually a devoted enquirer, the practice of self-enquiry must be founded in a state of not-knowing. Those who "already know" don't ask. And prior affirmations and/or denials contradict such a state. They have to be dispensed with first...Yes, affirmations and denials exist. Why identify with them?”
Self-enquiry is not founded in any special state at all. It's founded in this state, right now, whatever state you are in. If you are in a state of knowledge of some kind – and chances are that you are – this is the state in which you practice self-enquiry There is no preliminary practice of entering into some special state of not-knowing in order to practice self-enquiry. You practice self-enquiry because you already have presumed to know who you are – this body-mind. The practice is a questioning of that knowledge. You question whether you really are who you think you are. The more you examine yourself, the more it becomes clear that you don't know who you are at all. So this “not-knowing” is one of the results of practicing self-enquiry, it isn't something else one must do beforehand.
Self-enquiry has NO requirements. Everyone can do it, regardless of their preparation or state. That's the whole point. It's an unconditional practice. Ramana recommended it to everyone, not just advanced beings. So all our prior affirmations and denials are part of what are inspected in self-enquiry. One does inspect the presumption of unenlightenment, which is simply the presumption that we are body-minds. But it is really inspected, not shunted aside. We are truly identified with them, and simply saying that we are not our presumptions has no great meaning aside from finding out who we really are, and finding out our real enlightenment. I haven't done that, so by default it simply makes sense to say that I am unenlightened. It's not by identifying with that statement or concept that I become unenlightened, it's by identifying with the whole complex of this body-mind that I become or seem to be unenlightened. So what is important is not getting rid of such superficial concepts, but inspecting ourselves and see what really is true, and questioning all our presumptions. If you do that fully, then you can call yourself enlightened. Until then, it's no more harmful to call yourself unenlightened as it is to say you are not the President of the United States. It's even helpful in my view. One of the most important virtues to develop in this practice is humility, all these realizers talk about that. And part of being humble is knowing that one is lost in samsara, and needs the help of those who are not. That's why I read the works of enlightened beings – because they can help me. One has to be willing to bow down and put one's head on the floor, give up one's pride, and admit that we don't know what we are doing and need help. That kind of humility doesn't hurt one's chances of being enlightened. It might not be “a step up” from thinking of oneself as enlightened, but I'm not looking to step up. If anything, I'm looking to step down, to humble myself before God. God knows I'm arrogant enough already. Can you imagine what I'd be like if I thought I was enlightened? Truly unbearable.
I like what you said about duality, and that's a great take on Da's whole “pinching yourself” teaching, tying it to this view of conditionality as “not substantial”. What Ramana says about the realizer is simply that they have no volition of their own anymore, because no one is at home. They are lived by the Divine Spirit, and their actions are the actions of the Divine. As Papaji says, he has no mind at all, and hence no desires, because without a mind desire has nowhere to take root. He acts spontaneously, with no thinking at all. It turns out that his actions are for the benefit of others, but how else could it be when there is no self or mind to benefit from them?
Monday, July 10, 2006
Conscious Being as Egoity
If it appears that I haven't been writing in this blog all week, it's only because of the very lengthy dialog I've been having with Friend in the previous posts' comments section, which not everyone may have noticed. Most of the dialog can be found there, though some occurred in the post just preceding it, and in the comments section. Just follow the links in each post. Here's the latest post/reply:
Friend,
I've read your responses to both me and Kang, and I get a better sense for what you are trying to describe. Your description of “conscious being” is fairly clear. Conscious awareness, the consciousness of being, the “intelligent observer”, these are all good descriptions of a basic intelligence that is a good step above ordinary assumptions about ourselves, such as scientific materialism or just basic unquestioning bodily identification. However, contrary to what you have assumed, this is not what Ramana calls the Self, or what Niz and others describe as realization. In fact, it's really not even close. It's just a very basic understanding of ourselves as conscious beings. It certainly solves a basic level of dilemma and search based on doubt of self and irreligious attitudes of atheistic emptiness. But what you describe as the end of your search, is not the end of all seeking, just the end of a particular mode of seeking and disturbance. Obviously you have benefited from not being disturbed and not feeling the need to seek for some greater spiritual understanding of self and world. And I for one don't want to try to persuade you to seek something greater or deeper. I'm not a Guru, after all. I'm not even qualified to offer and opinion in any authoritative sense of things. I'm just responding as a friend and fellow traveler. I could certainly be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. But I also feel fairly certain that I'm at least in the right ballpark.
I like your whole story of your own spiritual search and its conclusion. I don't want to put it down at all. And by saying that it isn't non-dual realization, I hope you know that's not a put-down at all. Lots of people would be very happy to have achieved your understanding. But it isn't a permanent understanding in the sense of being unconditional and transcendental. It's only permanent in the same way that puberty is permanent. Once one's hormones make those changes in our body, they don't go backwards. But the body dies, and when it does, not only will our hormones be gone, but our understanding of ourselves as self-aware conscious being will also go. We will be reborn and go through a similar struggle just to get back to this kind of understanding.
I want to point out that what you are describing is essential for everyone on the spiritual path. Becoming convinced that we are consciousness first, and not the body or material objects, is very important. But it's only the beginning. It's not non-dual awareness. In fact, it is exactly the dualistic awareness that I have been trying to describe to you. Dualism isn't just scientific materialism. In fact, it's hard to see oneself as dualistic while being a scientific materialist, because one doesn't even see experience from the perspective of the conscious observer. One simply assumes that consciousness is a feature of matter, and so in some sense life is “single” and uncomplicated. Adding the conscious observer to the mix makes things more complex, and the materialist doesn't like that. That complexity is essentially the awareness of duality, and all the mirrored features of dualistic mind.
When we become aware of ourselves in this manner, we begin to realize that conscious being is the basic element of life, but this is not the singleness you are trying to describe. Yes, self becomes single, but it is self in the midst of a world of objects. This self that is “conscious being” is the ego. It is the very awareness that must be transcended. But it is also the field of conscious spiritual practice. The most basic form of self-enquiry as taught by Ramana is simple feeling-awareness of the sense of self, of “I”, of awareness feeling awareness. Letting go of identification with this sense of self becomes a natural response over time, but this is not possible until one lets go of all attachments to objects and falls into the source of this sense of “I”. Some people misunderstand Ramana and other teachers, and think that this “I” is the Self, that the “I” and the Self are really the same, because they have heard equations such as “Atman and Brahman are the same”, or that unenlightenment is merely a concept. What Ramana and Papaji both point out is that while this is true, that the truth of the “I” is the Self, that we are already enlightened, this is also just a concept. So both unenlightenment and prior enlightenment are both concepts, until realization itself.
What Ramana makes clear time and again is that the “I”, the conscious sense of being, of awareness, is the false self, the illusion of egoity. His recommendation for practice is not to try to eliminate this, but to settle fully into it, inspect it, and find its source. Where does this feeling of being come from? Ramana points out that this feeling of consicous being is just a thought. He calls it the “I”-thought. He recommends meditation on this “I”-thought, which is the source of all other thoughts. But if one simply accepts this feeling of self as oneself, and lets that assumption simply “be the case” there is no real transcendence of it. We all feel this sense of self. The reason you describe your realization as “no big deal” isn't because true enlightenment is no big deal, it's because knowing oneself as conscicous being really is no big deal.
I know that you don't have some inflated notion of yourself as being a realizer like Ramana and Niz, etc. But you do seem to have made some false assumptions about non-dual practice and realization by simply assuming that what you have come to understand is the same thing. I know it's fashionable to say that enlightenment isn't a big deal, that its simply “ordinary”, and one could certainly in some sense say this is true, but only in a sense. Enlightenment is of course the biggest deal, it is infinitely big, infinite love, infinite being, not just the simple sense of being that comes from recognizing the primacy of consciousness. There's a reason Ramana and Niz are thought of so highly. Such realization is extremely rare, and in a basic sense that makes it a big deal. The understanding you have come to is not very rare at all, and consequently is not such a big deal. It's good, it's highly recommended, but the reason it doesn't feel like such a big deal to you is that it simply isn't.
Now there's a basic sense of understanding in what you describe that is good to keep with you regardless of what exceptional experiences might arise. It's good to keep a basic sense of context here, and not be all that impressed with higher spiritual experiences. But it's not as if higher spiritual experiences have no value either. Still, what you describe could be the basis for non-dual practice if you understood it better. The problem is that some people tend to not know what to do with it. They might even feel that their search is over, that this is the end of the line. That's not true. That's another illusion. I know you probably don't like me saying that, but I do think you ought to look into the matter a little more deeply.
Now I can't go through your post point by point, but when you talk about certain paradoxes, like the genie giving a gift of enlightenment, of course this is all based on misunderstandings about non-dualism. Enlightenment is not given, because enlightenment is already the case. All that occurs in enlightenment is that the contradictions are removed. The primary contradiction that is removed is the “I”-thought, the sense of feeling of conscious being. So rather than asking the genie for a state of enlightenment, or anything at all, one would simply ask that the ego illusion be removed. The genie might then ask, like Bodhidharma, “what ego?”, and if one was ready, that might be sufficient for realization. If not, one would have to investigate, and find out what ego indeed. That would be the course of practice Ramana calls self-enquiry. So the genie's gift is not enlightenment, but the practice of self-enquiry. As Ramana used to say, simple interest in self-enquiry is all the sign one needs that one has been given the Guru's grace, because that is the form it takes.
I don't know if any of that interests you. One of the biggest problems with thinking that one is already there is that one doesn't investigate the nature of the self any further. As you say, your search is over, why look further? I can't answer that. What you have understood might be enough for you, and in that sense it is ultimate as far as you are concerned. But there's a reason why you seem not to understood these non-dual teachings and descriptions of enlightenment very well. You are trying to adapt them to what you know and experience as your own conscious being, and they are not trying to describe that at all. They are describing something that is at best intuited within our sense of conscious being, but the ego always tries to turn that intuition towards its own ends. One of the things it will do is tell us that this is enlightenment. When it does that, the ego feels safe and satisfied. We feel safe and satisfied. That feeling should itself be a warning sign. Spiritual practice should never feel wholly safe and satisfied. Our search should never feel at an end, until infinite love and bliss make it impossible to seek at all. And I do mean infinite. Not just basic and simple and ordinary, but infinite consciousness.
However, almost everyone in the universe is satisfied with far less. It seems that literally only a handful of people are unsatisfied with everything, and won't settle for anything less than infinite love. But we are discussing unconditional realization, meaning infinite in every respect. It can't be equated to the ordinary limited consciousness of simple being that we can all turn to and grow with. The source of our ordinary consciousness is infinite, but without that direct and infinite consciousness of the source of the ego, we are simply being ordinary egos.
Friend,
I've read your responses to both me and Kang, and I get a better sense for what you are trying to describe. Your description of “conscious being” is fairly clear. Conscious awareness, the consciousness of being, the “intelligent observer”, these are all good descriptions of a basic intelligence that is a good step above ordinary assumptions about ourselves, such as scientific materialism or just basic unquestioning bodily identification. However, contrary to what you have assumed, this is not what Ramana calls the Self, or what Niz and others describe as realization. In fact, it's really not even close. It's just a very basic understanding of ourselves as conscious beings. It certainly solves a basic level of dilemma and search based on doubt of self and irreligious attitudes of atheistic emptiness. But what you describe as the end of your search, is not the end of all seeking, just the end of a particular mode of seeking and disturbance. Obviously you have benefited from not being disturbed and not feeling the need to seek for some greater spiritual understanding of self and world. And I for one don't want to try to persuade you to seek something greater or deeper. I'm not a Guru, after all. I'm not even qualified to offer and opinion in any authoritative sense of things. I'm just responding as a friend and fellow traveler. I could certainly be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. But I also feel fairly certain that I'm at least in the right ballpark.
I like your whole story of your own spiritual search and its conclusion. I don't want to put it down at all. And by saying that it isn't non-dual realization, I hope you know that's not a put-down at all. Lots of people would be very happy to have achieved your understanding. But it isn't a permanent understanding in the sense of being unconditional and transcendental. It's only permanent in the same way that puberty is permanent. Once one's hormones make those changes in our body, they don't go backwards. But the body dies, and when it does, not only will our hormones be gone, but our understanding of ourselves as self-aware conscious being will also go. We will be reborn and go through a similar struggle just to get back to this kind of understanding.
I want to point out that what you are describing is essential for everyone on the spiritual path. Becoming convinced that we are consciousness first, and not the body or material objects, is very important. But it's only the beginning. It's not non-dual awareness. In fact, it is exactly the dualistic awareness that I have been trying to describe to you. Dualism isn't just scientific materialism. In fact, it's hard to see oneself as dualistic while being a scientific materialist, because one doesn't even see experience from the perspective of the conscious observer. One simply assumes that consciousness is a feature of matter, and so in some sense life is “single” and uncomplicated. Adding the conscious observer to the mix makes things more complex, and the materialist doesn't like that. That complexity is essentially the awareness of duality, and all the mirrored features of dualistic mind.
When we become aware of ourselves in this manner, we begin to realize that conscious being is the basic element of life, but this is not the singleness you are trying to describe. Yes, self becomes single, but it is self in the midst of a world of objects. This self that is “conscious being” is the ego. It is the very awareness that must be transcended. But it is also the field of conscious spiritual practice. The most basic form of self-enquiry as taught by Ramana is simple feeling-awareness of the sense of self, of “I”, of awareness feeling awareness. Letting go of identification with this sense of self becomes a natural response over time, but this is not possible until one lets go of all attachments to objects and falls into the source of this sense of “I”. Some people misunderstand Ramana and other teachers, and think that this “I” is the Self, that the “I” and the Self are really the same, because they have heard equations such as “Atman and Brahman are the same”, or that unenlightenment is merely a concept. What Ramana and Papaji both point out is that while this is true, that the truth of the “I” is the Self, that we are already enlightened, this is also just a concept. So both unenlightenment and prior enlightenment are both concepts, until realization itself.
What Ramana makes clear time and again is that the “I”, the conscious sense of being, of awareness, is the false self, the illusion of egoity. His recommendation for practice is not to try to eliminate this, but to settle fully into it, inspect it, and find its source. Where does this feeling of being come from? Ramana points out that this feeling of consicous being is just a thought. He calls it the “I”-thought. He recommends meditation on this “I”-thought, which is the source of all other thoughts. But if one simply accepts this feeling of self as oneself, and lets that assumption simply “be the case” there is no real transcendence of it. We all feel this sense of self. The reason you describe your realization as “no big deal” isn't because true enlightenment is no big deal, it's because knowing oneself as conscicous being really is no big deal.
I know that you don't have some inflated notion of yourself as being a realizer like Ramana and Niz, etc. But you do seem to have made some false assumptions about non-dual practice and realization by simply assuming that what you have come to understand is the same thing. I know it's fashionable to say that enlightenment isn't a big deal, that its simply “ordinary”, and one could certainly in some sense say this is true, but only in a sense. Enlightenment is of course the biggest deal, it is infinitely big, infinite love, infinite being, not just the simple sense of being that comes from recognizing the primacy of consciousness. There's a reason Ramana and Niz are thought of so highly. Such realization is extremely rare, and in a basic sense that makes it a big deal. The understanding you have come to is not very rare at all, and consequently is not such a big deal. It's good, it's highly recommended, but the reason it doesn't feel like such a big deal to you is that it simply isn't.
Now there's a basic sense of understanding in what you describe that is good to keep with you regardless of what exceptional experiences might arise. It's good to keep a basic sense of context here, and not be all that impressed with higher spiritual experiences. But it's not as if higher spiritual experiences have no value either. Still, what you describe could be the basis for non-dual practice if you understood it better. The problem is that some people tend to not know what to do with it. They might even feel that their search is over, that this is the end of the line. That's not true. That's another illusion. I know you probably don't like me saying that, but I do think you ought to look into the matter a little more deeply.
Now I can't go through your post point by point, but when you talk about certain paradoxes, like the genie giving a gift of enlightenment, of course this is all based on misunderstandings about non-dualism. Enlightenment is not given, because enlightenment is already the case. All that occurs in enlightenment is that the contradictions are removed. The primary contradiction that is removed is the “I”-thought, the sense of feeling of conscious being. So rather than asking the genie for a state of enlightenment, or anything at all, one would simply ask that the ego illusion be removed. The genie might then ask, like Bodhidharma, “what ego?”, and if one was ready, that might be sufficient for realization. If not, one would have to investigate, and find out what ego indeed. That would be the course of practice Ramana calls self-enquiry. So the genie's gift is not enlightenment, but the practice of self-enquiry. As Ramana used to say, simple interest in self-enquiry is all the sign one needs that one has been given the Guru's grace, because that is the form it takes.
I don't know if any of that interests you. One of the biggest problems with thinking that one is already there is that one doesn't investigate the nature of the self any further. As you say, your search is over, why look further? I can't answer that. What you have understood might be enough for you, and in that sense it is ultimate as far as you are concerned. But there's a reason why you seem not to understood these non-dual teachings and descriptions of enlightenment very well. You are trying to adapt them to what you know and experience as your own conscious being, and they are not trying to describe that at all. They are describing something that is at best intuited within our sense of conscious being, but the ego always tries to turn that intuition towards its own ends. One of the things it will do is tell us that this is enlightenment. When it does that, the ego feels safe and satisfied. We feel safe and satisfied. That feeling should itself be a warning sign. Spiritual practice should never feel wholly safe and satisfied. Our search should never feel at an end, until infinite love and bliss make it impossible to seek at all. And I do mean infinite. Not just basic and simple and ordinary, but infinite consciousness.
However, almost everyone in the universe is satisfied with far less. It seems that literally only a handful of people are unsatisfied with everything, and won't settle for anything less than infinite love. But we are discussing unconditional realization, meaning infinite in every respect. It can't be equated to the ordinary limited consciousness of simple being that we can all turn to and grow with. The source of our ordinary consciousness is infinite, but without that direct and infinite consciousness of the source of the ego, we are simply being ordinary egos.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Excluding Illusions
This is a reply to Friend's comments below from an earlier post:
Friend,
“Doesn't that contradict what you have just claimed was your position in your latest reply regarding synchronicity and unity?”
I can see how it might seem so. Let me explain the nuances. When I say that seeing synchronicity rather than causality is good new because it implies unity between levels, or at the source of levels, I didn't mean to imply that syncrhonicity was the same as unity, or that unity exists as some force within and between existent levels. It's just that if one is coming from the separative position, and sees and experiences the bewildering chaos, arbitrariness, and separation of life and all its levels and worlds, syncrhonicity is a good sign, a sign that implies unity somewhere, somehow. You know what it's like when some kind of bizarre or unlikely syncrhonicty appears in your life? It tends to lighten you up, fill you with wonder and mystery. Scientists who look at everything from a causal point of view will scoff and explain probability theory to you, but syncrhonicity isn't a contradiction to probabilities, it's simply a sign of the interconnectedness of things which is not causal in nature. So that's the good side of synchronicity. The bad side is that synchronicity is still a symptom of separation. Sure, it's the way things really are interconnected between levels, but it is not a sign that levels are themselves unified in some way. It is merely an “echo” of unity, of a unity long gone from this universe.
If you recall the myth of Narcissus, “Echo” is Narcissus' lover, who he ignores after falling in love with his own image. She fades away from neglect, and finally dies, until all that remains of her is the echo of her voice. And that is how it is with our original unity. We have become obsessed with our own image in manifestation, and our original unity has died, so we are left with only the echoes of it. Syncrhonicity is one of those echoes. It's an invisible reflection of something we have neglected and forgotten. So it's good news when we begin to hear the echo. But hearing the echo leads us to see what we have done, and that is not pleasant news. Finding out that we have neglected to the point of death our true love and unity is very hard news to face up to. So syncrhonicity has this negative message also. Of course, that negative message is also a good thing, in that if we face up to it, we can rediscover the unity we have neglected and lost. We can “follow the echoes” back to the source, which in many respects is what self-enquiry really is.
So synchronicity is one of those echoes pointing back to the source, but in the world of echoes, which is what conditionality is, it also directly points to the nature of our conditional existence as separation and fragmentation, which we have to face up to if we want to rediscover our original unity. The point being that synchronicity is not consoling. People tend to take it that way, and get stuck in the feeling of unity that comes with synchrononous recognitions, and mistakes those signs of unity for unity itself, skipping over the negative implications of synchronicity in order to stay positive about conditional existence. People even go around looking for those magical signs of connectivity, little synchronous moments they think “mean” something. It's no wonder that Wilber and so many other sensible people hate astrology and anything smacking of synchronicity. So the point is that syncrhonicity is both a positive sign that unity is the nature of reality, but also that fragmentation and separation is the nature of conditionality.
The problem comes in when people think that non-dualism means that non-separation is the nature of conditionality. It isn't. Conditionality is an illusion. There is no conditional world. What we see and experience as conditionality isn't even there, isn't even happening. The structure of conditionality is based on separation and illusion, and synchronicity is one of the mechanisms of that separation and illusion. It's dualistic, in other words, because it requires separate objects and levels to exist and be synchronous with one another. It points to unity, because that's its source.
“From my point of view, your insistence on the separation of reality and the physical world or the fragmentation of attention is just your particular prejudice at the moment, which of course one is entirely entitled to.”
You're not getting my point, even if you think you are. The world as we experience it IS separate, no question about it. You're telling me you don't feel separate from the world, from others, from your own body, on and one? You're telling me everyone and everything doesn't feel that way, look that way, actually seem by all accounts separate and individuated? People get the idea that non-dualism means that it's just that feeling of separation that's unreal, that we can feel and be “connected” to everything in a non-separate manner. And that's true, we can, at least to some degree. But even the feeling of being connected is a sign of separation. You only connect things that are separate. Going beyond separation means going beyond all things, all conditionality, not just the physical universe, but any object or feeling. And what does “going beyond” mean? Somehow the idea is that conditional things actually exist, and going beyond them either means going beyond their illusory separateness, or going beyond them in an “unbalanced” exclusionary way, which Wilber decries. But what it really means is seeing that there are no things at all, that there is no conditional world, there is only unconditional reality, not just a world of things that are connected, but no world at all, just One without a second. Everything else is just “sentimentality” so to speak.
“The message that "the world is not real" is not something that people don't want to hear at all. In fact, from my own experience I can say that that insight, if I can call it that, was exactly the understanding that initiated my whole disatisfaction with the scientific/atheistic view of things and my whole search for a resolution in the first place and I am sure I was hardly alone in that.”
Well, I didn't mean everyone. It's good that you find it attractive. But people in general like to think there is something real about all this world of ours.
“But, as even franklin famously points out, reality is still not absent, despite all the fragmentation and multiplicity. The denial of that is where I see your fixedness.”
Of course reality is not absent from the conditional worlds. It's the only “thing” that is actually present. But reality is not a quality of the conditional worlds either, one of its attributes. Reality is not found in or as any conditional thing. It's not even the “basis” of conditionality. There is no basis to conditionality. That's what makes it possible to transcend.
“Our usual confusion is just a matter of what we are identifying as reality and what we are identifying this obvious reality with. Once we realize the relatively simple fact that reality is not limited, defined or identified solely by what is fragmented and changeable then one is free to exist in the multiplicity or fragmentation of the physical world, and of attention, in full cognizance of, and relative comfort with both reality itself as well as the unity of the physical world and the unity of reality altogether.”
We are already living in multiplicity and fragmentation, and nothing about that is “free”. When you use the word “solely”, it implies that reality is, indeed, in some sense defined or identified by conditionality. My point is that reality isn't in any way defined or identified with conditionality. True, for us this seems only partly true, as we begin to get a sense for reality, for our uncondiitonal nature. But one of the mistakes we make in that process is to somehow try to see the two as actually being “one” with one another, that illusion is somehow “at one” with reality, that the two bleed together. This only works for a while, and then even that breaks down. One begins to realize there is no coexistence between the two, there is no compromise, there is no two even. There is a choice between reality and illusion, and that is of course a fairly easy choice if understood that way. It's not an easy choice if one is presented with a half-real, half-unreal world that seems to have both “qualities”. The temptation is to try to see this world as a unity, and to look for signs of unity in it. Synchronicity is one of those signs. It's not a false sign, but it's a sign that points beyond the world, not to the world as somehow a unified manifestation. There is no unity in it. Even synchronicity is not “in” it.
“I was simply arguing for the one point regarding the seniority of consciousness over materiality (and it's necessary frole in and influence on the physical world), or depending on one's use of words, the seniority of the witness over attention and its fragmentation, or the seniority of what is real over what is relative, or the seniority of unity over multiplicity.”
I understand the argument of “seniority”, but I have to disagree with it, because it makes unity a dualistic quality, rather than simply the nature of reality. It's not that consciousness is senior to matter, unless you mean conditional consciousness. Conditional consciousness and matter simply co-exist, there is no superiority or seniority involved. Conditional consicousness doesn't tell matter what to be or do. Try telling a table to be a walrus. Doesn't happen. We think we manipulate the world around us, but we don't. Only the body does. We are simply the witness to all of that, even though we think othewise. This is part of the illusion we have to transcend. Transcendental consciousness isn't “senior” to matter either, it's simply the nature of reality. Not the nature of matter, but reality itself, in which there is no matter. Matter only appears in illusory worlds. The nature of mater, or of any conditional thing, is unknowable, because it is illusory. If you really inspect matter, or anything else, what you find is not that it is “consciousness”, but that it is an illusion. Now you could say that the witness is senior to attention, because both are simply conditional parts and levels, but you are really talking about one illusion being senior to another, which is perfectly all right within the framework of conditionality, but it bears no relationship to reality itself. Even the witness is not reality. And unity is not senior to multiplicity. Within the conditional world, there is no unity, only multiplicity. So in the conditional worlds, multiplicity is senior to unity And if you look honestly at the conditional worlds, multiplicity certainly dose rule. It trumps unity at every step of the way. In reality, unity doesn't trump multiplicity, because there is none. There is only unity.
“But that shouldn't lead us to, what is in my view, the mistaken conclusion that the presence of one denies the other, as it seems to me you suggest and what I keep hearing as your fixed bias.”
I think experience proves me right. The presence of multiplicity does indeed deny unity. Unity does not deny multiplicity, except from the point of view of multiplicity. In reality, there simply isn't any multiplicity. What needs to occur within multiplicity is an awakening to these two truths: 1) that multiplicity is an illusion, and 2) that unity is the only reality. TO some extent this does require a denial. One has to just say no to the drug of conditionality. One has to go cold turkey at some point. Trying to have both doesn't work.
“Manifest reality and reality itself are not mutually exclusive as you seem, to me, to be convinced of. The physical world and reality can and do exist together, and they do so without problem as long as we don't confuse them by identifying one exclusively with the other. At least that's the way it seems to me.”
Exactly. That's the way it seems to all of us. And that's the illusion. “Manifest reality” is an oxymoron, if by manifestation one means the appearance of levels, objects, things, etc. Reality does not manifest as any of that. Only the mind creates such things. “Manifest reality” is what appears when exclusion becomes the principle of consciousness, so the question only arises once exclusion has already occurred. Reality does not exclude manifestation, because it doesn't see any manifestation to exclude. Seeing the rope doesn't exclude the snake, because there is no snake. But seeing the snake does exclude the rope. Pretending that one can have both rope and snake in some kind of unity is sheer craziness, a sign of holding onto the snake image even when one has begun to see that there's really a rope there. Maybe for a while that seems sensible, that there's a hybrid creature that's part snake, part rope, but eventually you have to realize that there is no snake there, only a rope. There's no need to balance the snake with the rope and not go to extremes. The extreme view in this case is the true view. And the same is true about non-dualism altogether. It's hard to accept, and believe me, it's hard for me too, but I'm beginning to see the sense to it.
Friend,
“Doesn't that contradict what you have just claimed was your position in your latest reply regarding synchronicity and unity?”
I can see how it might seem so. Let me explain the nuances. When I say that seeing synchronicity rather than causality is good new because it implies unity between levels, or at the source of levels, I didn't mean to imply that syncrhonicity was the same as unity, or that unity exists as some force within and between existent levels. It's just that if one is coming from the separative position, and sees and experiences the bewildering chaos, arbitrariness, and separation of life and all its levels and worlds, syncrhonicity is a good sign, a sign that implies unity somewhere, somehow. You know what it's like when some kind of bizarre or unlikely syncrhonicty appears in your life? It tends to lighten you up, fill you with wonder and mystery. Scientists who look at everything from a causal point of view will scoff and explain probability theory to you, but syncrhonicity isn't a contradiction to probabilities, it's simply a sign of the interconnectedness of things which is not causal in nature. So that's the good side of synchronicity. The bad side is that synchronicity is still a symptom of separation. Sure, it's the way things really are interconnected between levels, but it is not a sign that levels are themselves unified in some way. It is merely an “echo” of unity, of a unity long gone from this universe.
If you recall the myth of Narcissus, “Echo” is Narcissus' lover, who he ignores after falling in love with his own image. She fades away from neglect, and finally dies, until all that remains of her is the echo of her voice. And that is how it is with our original unity. We have become obsessed with our own image in manifestation, and our original unity has died, so we are left with only the echoes of it. Syncrhonicity is one of those echoes. It's an invisible reflection of something we have neglected and forgotten. So it's good news when we begin to hear the echo. But hearing the echo leads us to see what we have done, and that is not pleasant news. Finding out that we have neglected to the point of death our true love and unity is very hard news to face up to. So syncrhonicity has this negative message also. Of course, that negative message is also a good thing, in that if we face up to it, we can rediscover the unity we have neglected and lost. We can “follow the echoes” back to the source, which in many respects is what self-enquiry really is.
So synchronicity is one of those echoes pointing back to the source, but in the world of echoes, which is what conditionality is, it also directly points to the nature of our conditional existence as separation and fragmentation, which we have to face up to if we want to rediscover our original unity. The point being that synchronicity is not consoling. People tend to take it that way, and get stuck in the feeling of unity that comes with synchrononous recognitions, and mistakes those signs of unity for unity itself, skipping over the negative implications of synchronicity in order to stay positive about conditional existence. People even go around looking for those magical signs of connectivity, little synchronous moments they think “mean” something. It's no wonder that Wilber and so many other sensible people hate astrology and anything smacking of synchronicity. So the point is that syncrhonicity is both a positive sign that unity is the nature of reality, but also that fragmentation and separation is the nature of conditionality.
The problem comes in when people think that non-dualism means that non-separation is the nature of conditionality. It isn't. Conditionality is an illusion. There is no conditional world. What we see and experience as conditionality isn't even there, isn't even happening. The structure of conditionality is based on separation and illusion, and synchronicity is one of the mechanisms of that separation and illusion. It's dualistic, in other words, because it requires separate objects and levels to exist and be synchronous with one another. It points to unity, because that's its source.
“From my point of view, your insistence on the separation of reality and the physical world or the fragmentation of attention is just your particular prejudice at the moment, which of course one is entirely entitled to.”
You're not getting my point, even if you think you are. The world as we experience it IS separate, no question about it. You're telling me you don't feel separate from the world, from others, from your own body, on and one? You're telling me everyone and everything doesn't feel that way, look that way, actually seem by all accounts separate and individuated? People get the idea that non-dualism means that it's just that feeling of separation that's unreal, that we can feel and be “connected” to everything in a non-separate manner. And that's true, we can, at least to some degree. But even the feeling of being connected is a sign of separation. You only connect things that are separate. Going beyond separation means going beyond all things, all conditionality, not just the physical universe, but any object or feeling. And what does “going beyond” mean? Somehow the idea is that conditional things actually exist, and going beyond them either means going beyond their illusory separateness, or going beyond them in an “unbalanced” exclusionary way, which Wilber decries. But what it really means is seeing that there are no things at all, that there is no conditional world, there is only unconditional reality, not just a world of things that are connected, but no world at all, just One without a second. Everything else is just “sentimentality” so to speak.
“The message that "the world is not real" is not something that people don't want to hear at all. In fact, from my own experience I can say that that insight, if I can call it that, was exactly the understanding that initiated my whole disatisfaction with the scientific/atheistic view of things and my whole search for a resolution in the first place and I am sure I was hardly alone in that.”
Well, I didn't mean everyone. It's good that you find it attractive. But people in general like to think there is something real about all this world of ours.
“But, as even franklin famously points out, reality is still not absent, despite all the fragmentation and multiplicity. The denial of that is where I see your fixedness.”
Of course reality is not absent from the conditional worlds. It's the only “thing” that is actually present. But reality is not a quality of the conditional worlds either, one of its attributes. Reality is not found in or as any conditional thing. It's not even the “basis” of conditionality. There is no basis to conditionality. That's what makes it possible to transcend.
“Our usual confusion is just a matter of what we are identifying as reality and what we are identifying this obvious reality with. Once we realize the relatively simple fact that reality is not limited, defined or identified solely by what is fragmented and changeable then one is free to exist in the multiplicity or fragmentation of the physical world, and of attention, in full cognizance of, and relative comfort with both reality itself as well as the unity of the physical world and the unity of reality altogether.”
We are already living in multiplicity and fragmentation, and nothing about that is “free”. When you use the word “solely”, it implies that reality is, indeed, in some sense defined or identified by conditionality. My point is that reality isn't in any way defined or identified with conditionality. True, for us this seems only partly true, as we begin to get a sense for reality, for our uncondiitonal nature. But one of the mistakes we make in that process is to somehow try to see the two as actually being “one” with one another, that illusion is somehow “at one” with reality, that the two bleed together. This only works for a while, and then even that breaks down. One begins to realize there is no coexistence between the two, there is no compromise, there is no two even. There is a choice between reality and illusion, and that is of course a fairly easy choice if understood that way. It's not an easy choice if one is presented with a half-real, half-unreal world that seems to have both “qualities”. The temptation is to try to see this world as a unity, and to look for signs of unity in it. Synchronicity is one of those signs. It's not a false sign, but it's a sign that points beyond the world, not to the world as somehow a unified manifestation. There is no unity in it. Even synchronicity is not “in” it.
“I was simply arguing for the one point regarding the seniority of consciousness over materiality (and it's necessary frole in and influence on the physical world), or depending on one's use of words, the seniority of the witness over attention and its fragmentation, or the seniority of what is real over what is relative, or the seniority of unity over multiplicity.”
I understand the argument of “seniority”, but I have to disagree with it, because it makes unity a dualistic quality, rather than simply the nature of reality. It's not that consciousness is senior to matter, unless you mean conditional consciousness. Conditional consciousness and matter simply co-exist, there is no superiority or seniority involved. Conditional consicousness doesn't tell matter what to be or do. Try telling a table to be a walrus. Doesn't happen. We think we manipulate the world around us, but we don't. Only the body does. We are simply the witness to all of that, even though we think othewise. This is part of the illusion we have to transcend. Transcendental consciousness isn't “senior” to matter either, it's simply the nature of reality. Not the nature of matter, but reality itself, in which there is no matter. Matter only appears in illusory worlds. The nature of mater, or of any conditional thing, is unknowable, because it is illusory. If you really inspect matter, or anything else, what you find is not that it is “consciousness”, but that it is an illusion. Now you could say that the witness is senior to attention, because both are simply conditional parts and levels, but you are really talking about one illusion being senior to another, which is perfectly all right within the framework of conditionality, but it bears no relationship to reality itself. Even the witness is not reality. And unity is not senior to multiplicity. Within the conditional world, there is no unity, only multiplicity. So in the conditional worlds, multiplicity is senior to unity And if you look honestly at the conditional worlds, multiplicity certainly dose rule. It trumps unity at every step of the way. In reality, unity doesn't trump multiplicity, because there is none. There is only unity.
“But that shouldn't lead us to, what is in my view, the mistaken conclusion that the presence of one denies the other, as it seems to me you suggest and what I keep hearing as your fixed bias.”
I think experience proves me right. The presence of multiplicity does indeed deny unity. Unity does not deny multiplicity, except from the point of view of multiplicity. In reality, there simply isn't any multiplicity. What needs to occur within multiplicity is an awakening to these two truths: 1) that multiplicity is an illusion, and 2) that unity is the only reality. TO some extent this does require a denial. One has to just say no to the drug of conditionality. One has to go cold turkey at some point. Trying to have both doesn't work.
“Manifest reality and reality itself are not mutually exclusive as you seem, to me, to be convinced of. The physical world and reality can and do exist together, and they do so without problem as long as we don't confuse them by identifying one exclusively with the other. At least that's the way it seems to me.”
Exactly. That's the way it seems to all of us. And that's the illusion. “Manifest reality” is an oxymoron, if by manifestation one means the appearance of levels, objects, things, etc. Reality does not manifest as any of that. Only the mind creates such things. “Manifest reality” is what appears when exclusion becomes the principle of consciousness, so the question only arises once exclusion has already occurred. Reality does not exclude manifestation, because it doesn't see any manifestation to exclude. Seeing the rope doesn't exclude the snake, because there is no snake. But seeing the snake does exclude the rope. Pretending that one can have both rope and snake in some kind of unity is sheer craziness, a sign of holding onto the snake image even when one has begun to see that there's really a rope there. Maybe for a while that seems sensible, that there's a hybrid creature that's part snake, part rope, but eventually you have to realize that there is no snake there, only a rope. There's no need to balance the snake with the rope and not go to extremes. The extreme view in this case is the true view. And the same is true about non-dualism altogether. It's hard to accept, and believe me, it's hard for me too, but I'm beginning to see the sense to it.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
The Pattern of Attention
This was a post on the Wilber Forum in response to some questions there, reposted here for continuity to this whole consideration of acausal patterning and our relationship to the deeper pattern that is the source of observed patterns.
The basic idea is that one's attention is the pattern, is the "karma", is the underlying conditional structure of one's experience. Normally we are not attentive to how our attention moves. We see objects and interact with them, and assume that is our "given". What's not readily seen is that these are not "given", these are chosen by us through primal karmas of attention, meaning simply our habits of attention. When we try to analyze our pattern, we generally analyze these objects, whether they be people, circumstances, activities, body characteristics, thoughts, etc. This kind of analysis goes nowhere, because it is attention itself that is the pattern, not our circumstances. The circumstance merely reflects the underlying patterns of our attention that we are drawn into.
At a certain point, one ends up being attentive to attention itself. This is where it gets interesting. Noticing attention moving out, positioning itself in a world of objects, begins to bring about insight into ourselves, meaning the ability to see attention as our core determining factor in experience. We begin to see that all our movements of attention are simply distractions from what we are, and they create a false sense of self based on the objects they create and become obsessed with. THe patterns of attention become more obvious because we are less caught up in them. And the important factor then becomes self-attention, not attention to objects and worlds.
As for analyzing conditional attention itself, the only real effort I've given to that in any kind of systematic way was with astrology. It gets a bit complicated, and someday I'll write out my ideas and methods there, but it's not really essential at all. Astrology is just one of many ways one could go about it. Simply paying attention to any pattern and its correspondences will yield results. The problem with many patterns, however, is that they have causal relationships with us that make it harder to isolate the deeper pattern. I've used the analogy of a tree before to make that point that if you examine two leaves that are close together, and traces them back to a common root, one doesn't get very "deep" into the tree, just a few branches back. But if you look at leaves that are on opposite sides of the tree, their own commonality is the trunk of the tree. So distant patterns that have little causal relationship are the most useful.
And this in my view is what makes astrology useful as a pattern to compare to our own patterns of life and mind. COntrary to what many astrologers have claimed, it's not because the stars and planets emanate forces and energies that somehow effect human beings. It's because they are so distant that they have almost know effect on human beings, certainly not in any direct way. Because they have so little in common with us, and are stripped of virtually any causal possibilities, whatever correspondences they have with human minds and lives go very deep, closer to the source patterning, than most other patterns we might encounter.
As for hierarchies of attention, certainly one could describe such things. But none are actually higher or lower than the others, even if we say they are. They exist in cycles of attention, getting larger or smaller, dying, becoming extinct, like the eddies of water as the tides come in and out. We might spend millions of years evolving into Gods in the scheme of things, but even this doesn't last, and eventually even the Gods fall to earth. Wilber's hope is that stages are permanent, that once one advances to a certain stage of perspective, a certain wholeness and inclusiveness, this becomes permanent. This isn't so. Attention doesn't stay in one place, or on one course of ascent or descent, forever. We can put our attention wherever we wish, and attain that level of knowledge and expertise, but it remains only as long as our attention stays there. If we wander, we lose it. And we always wander. Wilber is trying to build permanence out of wayward attention, and it doesn't work. True, for a time it does, for a few years, even a few decades, maybe a few lifetimes. But eventually we die, and attention wanders onto something new.
I'm not saying Wilber's stages are right or wrong, only that they only seem right or wrong from a particular perspective. From the uber-perspective, from the position of the Witness, they are just one possible way of describing things. They represent Wilber's own perspective, his own particular pattern of attention, hope, aspiration, fear, desire, and mind. I have my own. There are similarities, to be sure, and if I were to describe my astrological patterning ideas, some of those similarities would come out. I built my system on attention itself, and how attention moves through cycles of development, growth, and decay and death, endlessly searching for itself. Attention is like a dog chasing its own tail. It goes on forever until it begins to recognize itself.
Ultimately that's the pattern that has to be recognized - that we are chasing our own tails, thinking it is an "other". That's the story of narcissus. The way each of us does it determines the world as we know it. If you want to see your own pattern, notice where your attention goes, what it seeks. If you want to see the primal pattern of which even attention is just a modification, you have to look at attention itself, at its root. This is what self-enquiry is about - going beyond the patterns of our mind and attention, and examining the root of attention, its source.
And yes, it is possible to see the root pattern, the uber-pattern, but it requires going to the root of attention and beyond. It is not perceivable through attention, but it can be known prior to attention. The Witness is the sign of it, but not the method. As Kela noted in another thread, Witnessing is not attention, it's not what we do when we put our attention on something, or even when we just sit back and notice what is arising. That's being the observer, not being the Witness. As Kela says, Shankara and the Upanishads define the Witness as That which observes all states and things. Practicing beign the Witness is absurd. We already are witnessing everything. THe problem is, we don't know that we are doing that, that we are the Witness. So self-enquiry is necessary. We can't be the Witness by trying to witness, but we can by finding out who we are. That self-enquiry helps us see that we are the witness. Whereas trying to witness keeps us fixated in attention. And self-enquiry is basically just self-attention, being attentive to self rather than the objects of self.
As for the cosmic level of all this, that only opens up when one stops trying to develop oneself. What is being developed except attention itself? When does that ever end? Yes, one can develop attention through all kinds of stages, but they are endless. Wilber thinks that they end in enlightenment, but one can't ever get to enlightenment through the developmental stages, because enlightenment is merely the knowledge of who you are right now, not what you might become. Attention is the enemy of self, unless it is turned towards self. THe process of turning attention to self doesn't go through the stages Wilber presumes are necessary. THose are stages of attention and perspective. Turning attention to self destroys our perspective, it doesn't "mature" It. This is why in the course of such "development" one knows less and less, not more and more. One's perspective collapses and empties, rather than expands and includes.
If development is the goal, then of course something like Wilber's quadrants are part of the map. But there's so much more out there, and it can be arranged in all kinds of hierarchies. And yet none of that gets anyone to enlightenment. Getting rid of that is what works. Not intentionally, of course, but merely by turning attention to self it will occur naturally. So this is what I would call the liberating relationship to the patterns of one's attention. It's a relationship of renunciation, of turning away from the patterns and towards self-awareness. It's not so much trying to be the Witness as it is being onself, and naturally witnessing because that is how self functions in relation to attention. But it doesn't witness objects themselves, because it sees there are no objects in themselves. There is only attention. Attention is what creates objects, although we don't easily recognize this. So one witnesses attention, not objects. People think being the witness means watching your thoughts, or the objects, in the room, with some kind of dispassionate detachment. Wrong. It means witnessing attention itself, and noticing its patterns. Objects are not paid any attention to, or they will distract one from noticing oneself as a creature of attention.
Okay, enough for now. Maybe I'll get into more of this later, and some of the astrology stuff also. I think i've already starting answer the question Bobby had about non-dual practice, but it certainly needs amplification, and reference to the real teachings of the realizers. Also, I think I'll give a description of my own "vision-logic" view of the ultimate reality. Sounds like fun, eh?
The basic idea is that one's attention is the pattern, is the "karma", is the underlying conditional structure of one's experience. Normally we are not attentive to how our attention moves. We see objects and interact with them, and assume that is our "given". What's not readily seen is that these are not "given", these are chosen by us through primal karmas of attention, meaning simply our habits of attention. When we try to analyze our pattern, we generally analyze these objects, whether they be people, circumstances, activities, body characteristics, thoughts, etc. This kind of analysis goes nowhere, because it is attention itself that is the pattern, not our circumstances. The circumstance merely reflects the underlying patterns of our attention that we are drawn into.
At a certain point, one ends up being attentive to attention itself. This is where it gets interesting. Noticing attention moving out, positioning itself in a world of objects, begins to bring about insight into ourselves, meaning the ability to see attention as our core determining factor in experience. We begin to see that all our movements of attention are simply distractions from what we are, and they create a false sense of self based on the objects they create and become obsessed with. THe patterns of attention become more obvious because we are less caught up in them. And the important factor then becomes self-attention, not attention to objects and worlds.
As for analyzing conditional attention itself, the only real effort I've given to that in any kind of systematic way was with astrology. It gets a bit complicated, and someday I'll write out my ideas and methods there, but it's not really essential at all. Astrology is just one of many ways one could go about it. Simply paying attention to any pattern and its correspondences will yield results. The problem with many patterns, however, is that they have causal relationships with us that make it harder to isolate the deeper pattern. I've used the analogy of a tree before to make that point that if you examine two leaves that are close together, and traces them back to a common root, one doesn't get very "deep" into the tree, just a few branches back. But if you look at leaves that are on opposite sides of the tree, their own commonality is the trunk of the tree. So distant patterns that have little causal relationship are the most useful.
And this in my view is what makes astrology useful as a pattern to compare to our own patterns of life and mind. COntrary to what many astrologers have claimed, it's not because the stars and planets emanate forces and energies that somehow effect human beings. It's because they are so distant that they have almost know effect on human beings, certainly not in any direct way. Because they have so little in common with us, and are stripped of virtually any causal possibilities, whatever correspondences they have with human minds and lives go very deep, closer to the source patterning, than most other patterns we might encounter.
As for hierarchies of attention, certainly one could describe such things. But none are actually higher or lower than the others, even if we say they are. They exist in cycles of attention, getting larger or smaller, dying, becoming extinct, like the eddies of water as the tides come in and out. We might spend millions of years evolving into Gods in the scheme of things, but even this doesn't last, and eventually even the Gods fall to earth. Wilber's hope is that stages are permanent, that once one advances to a certain stage of perspective, a certain wholeness and inclusiveness, this becomes permanent. This isn't so. Attention doesn't stay in one place, or on one course of ascent or descent, forever. We can put our attention wherever we wish, and attain that level of knowledge and expertise, but it remains only as long as our attention stays there. If we wander, we lose it. And we always wander. Wilber is trying to build permanence out of wayward attention, and it doesn't work. True, for a time it does, for a few years, even a few decades, maybe a few lifetimes. But eventually we die, and attention wanders onto something new.
I'm not saying Wilber's stages are right or wrong, only that they only seem right or wrong from a particular perspective. From the uber-perspective, from the position of the Witness, they are just one possible way of describing things. They represent Wilber's own perspective, his own particular pattern of attention, hope, aspiration, fear, desire, and mind. I have my own. There are similarities, to be sure, and if I were to describe my astrological patterning ideas, some of those similarities would come out. I built my system on attention itself, and how attention moves through cycles of development, growth, and decay and death, endlessly searching for itself. Attention is like a dog chasing its own tail. It goes on forever until it begins to recognize itself.
Ultimately that's the pattern that has to be recognized - that we are chasing our own tails, thinking it is an "other". That's the story of narcissus. The way each of us does it determines the world as we know it. If you want to see your own pattern, notice where your attention goes, what it seeks. If you want to see the primal pattern of which even attention is just a modification, you have to look at attention itself, at its root. This is what self-enquiry is about - going beyond the patterns of our mind and attention, and examining the root of attention, its source.
And yes, it is possible to see the root pattern, the uber-pattern, but it requires going to the root of attention and beyond. It is not perceivable through attention, but it can be known prior to attention. The Witness is the sign of it, but not the method. As Kela noted in another thread, Witnessing is not attention, it's not what we do when we put our attention on something, or even when we just sit back and notice what is arising. That's being the observer, not being the Witness. As Kela says, Shankara and the Upanishads define the Witness as That which observes all states and things. Practicing beign the Witness is absurd. We already are witnessing everything. THe problem is, we don't know that we are doing that, that we are the Witness. So self-enquiry is necessary. We can't be the Witness by trying to witness, but we can by finding out who we are. That self-enquiry helps us see that we are the witness. Whereas trying to witness keeps us fixated in attention. And self-enquiry is basically just self-attention, being attentive to self rather than the objects of self.
As for the cosmic level of all this, that only opens up when one stops trying to develop oneself. What is being developed except attention itself? When does that ever end? Yes, one can develop attention through all kinds of stages, but they are endless. Wilber thinks that they end in enlightenment, but one can't ever get to enlightenment through the developmental stages, because enlightenment is merely the knowledge of who you are right now, not what you might become. Attention is the enemy of self, unless it is turned towards self. THe process of turning attention to self doesn't go through the stages Wilber presumes are necessary. THose are stages of attention and perspective. Turning attention to self destroys our perspective, it doesn't "mature" It. This is why in the course of such "development" one knows less and less, not more and more. One's perspective collapses and empties, rather than expands and includes.
If development is the goal, then of course something like Wilber's quadrants are part of the map. But there's so much more out there, and it can be arranged in all kinds of hierarchies. And yet none of that gets anyone to enlightenment. Getting rid of that is what works. Not intentionally, of course, but merely by turning attention to self it will occur naturally. So this is what I would call the liberating relationship to the patterns of one's attention. It's a relationship of renunciation, of turning away from the patterns and towards self-awareness. It's not so much trying to be the Witness as it is being onself, and naturally witnessing because that is how self functions in relation to attention. But it doesn't witness objects themselves, because it sees there are no objects in themselves. There is only attention. Attention is what creates objects, although we don't easily recognize this. So one witnesses attention, not objects. People think being the witness means watching your thoughts, or the objects, in the room, with some kind of dispassionate detachment. Wrong. It means witnessing attention itself, and noticing its patterns. Objects are not paid any attention to, or they will distract one from noticing oneself as a creature of attention.
Okay, enough for now. Maybe I'll get into more of this later, and some of the astrology stuff also. I think i've already starting answer the question Bobby had about non-dual practice, but it certainly needs amplification, and reference to the real teachings of the realizers. Also, I think I'll give a description of my own "vision-logic" view of the ultimate reality. Sounds like fun, eh?
Friday, June 30, 2006
More on the Acausal Universe
Heru from the Wilber Forum writes a good response to the original post on the Acausal Universe, which I posted there and want to repost here for continuity. He asks a lot of worthy question to help clarify this matter:
Yes, you're right that Wilber does acknowledge that holons simultaneously develop across quadrants, but he doesn't carry that principle across the board to levels, types, etc. He might have, but it didn't occur to him how important the principle of synchronicty is. Clearly he doesn't see it taking precedence in such developmental processes as evolution. But you're right, he might be open to it for that reason, though it would take some mahjor re-working of his models to do so. He's changed before however, and maybe he can change again.
This question is best answered in the link above. In brief, it is because levels are actually fragmented viewpoints of the whole, not actually self-existing divisions of consciousness. It is viewpoint that dominates, and the link between fragmented viewpoints is not a causal one, but simultaneousness. To give a concrete example, if I take photographs of a tree from many different angles, none of those photographs could be said to be the “cause” of the others. They each represent a view of the tree that is true from that angle, and each will reveal things about the tree that the others might not, but their link is synchronous, not causal. The only “cause”, one might say, is the choice of perspective from which to view the whole. So materialism is one viewpoint to take a picture from, and poetry would be another. The materialistic view of the tree would reveal many material facts and processes going on in the tree. A poetic investigation of the tree would reveal an entirely different set of “facts” about the tree. Think of Monet's “haystack” series, some 20-30 paintings of a haystack from different views, times, lighting, etc. The poetic view does not “cause” the material processes of the tree to be as they are, nor does the material process cause the poetic view to arise. They represent choices of viewpoint, possible avenues of attention. One can switch between them, but one can't view the tree as both simultaneously, because attention is limited to a single viewpoint at any one time, just as a camera is. You can overlay them on top of one another (as Da does in his photographic work) and create a hybrid image, but this is a conceptual construct divided by time exposure. We exist in time, as part of the fragmentary nature of things. So we compare viewpoints through memory, rather than direct apprehension.
The whole notion of “interaction” between levels, between body and soul, for example, is actually based on the notion that they truly are separate, rather than simply two viewpoints of a unity. Our notion that body must “affect soul, or soul “influence” body, presume that they are different to begin with. The synchronistic view is that they don't influence one another, they are simply viewpoints of a whole, like photographs of the tree from different angles. This makes them much closer to one another than any causal viewpoint could make them. It makes them identical in nature, just altered by viewpoint. As mentioned in the link, causation only appears to be a valid link between objects within a single viewpoint, not between viewpoints. Thus, the shadows in one photograph are caused by the objects in that photograph, and their relation to the light source. But two photographs of the same tree from different viewpoints cannot be analyzed in the same way. The shadows in one are not “caused” by the light source in the other, they are simply simultaneous depictions of the same relationship, seen from different angles. Mixing the two “causes” without compensating for the difference in viewpoint leads to “optical delusions”.
So the point here is that the two levels do not causally influence one another. But by studying their correspondences, one can make inferences about their mutual source, just as by comparing photos of a tree taken from different angles, one could draw inferences about the position of the sun. So it is the overall pattern that is important, not establishing some causal relationship between elements in different viewpoints.
Yes, that's a good analogy. This kind of thinking is not unprecedented in the traditions. The problem is that it was not clearly differentiated from causality, and thus we ended up with mythic explanations for the “creation” of the universe becoming standardized, and even at war with genuinely causal explanations.
I'm not sure its fruitful at all to look for emotional or psychic causes for physical disease. Again, these are just two viewpoints looking at the same condition. You will definitely see some correspondences between physical and spiritual conditions, but they are not causal correspondences. It is just part of the process of getting a “bigger picture” to take into account multiple perspectives. So yes, I would say that if you were looking for strict causes for cancer, you would find them strictly on the physical pain. You would not find emotional or spiritual “causes”. You may find correspondences, to be sure, but I think it is an error to make them the cause of the disease. It's not just witch-doctoring, it's category confusion, viewpoint confusion. One can, say, look for spiritual causes for one's spiritual problems, or physical causes for one's physical problems, but not spiritual causes for physical problems. This is not seeing things right. This is seeing correspondences between physical and spiritual problems, and attributing that correspondence to a causal relationship rather than a synchronistic one.
And no, synchronistic patterning is not a cause. It is a pointer to a source pattern, a clue about the overall pattern, of which these viewpoints are manifestations, but that source pattern is not the cause, it's just the overall big picture, so to speak. The big picture is not of a cause, but of a pattern in attention. God, for example, is not the cause of the universe, but the uber-pattern in which the universe arises, simultaneously at all levels. You will of course find correspondences between levels, because it is a single pattern, but they will look and behave differently, just as the images on a photograph will look different from different angles even when the subject is the same. A picture of a tree at the molecular perspective looks different from the picture of the tree that includes the whole forest in which it lives.
It becomes a chicken-egg thing precisely because causation is a fruitless way of trying to figure out a synchronistic relationship. The chicken-egg paradox only appears when one is trying to find causal relations across viewpoints (levels). It doesn't occur within the level itself. Chicken-egg paradoxes are a sign of a synchronistic relationship, rather than a causal one. For example, looking for physical causes for cancer does not come across chicken-egg paradoxes, because within the physical viepoint there are indeed causal relations that make real sense. Smoking causes cancer. There's no sense in which cancer causes smoking. But the same cannot be said for spiritual problems and cancer. It makes equal sense to say that cancer causes spiritual problems as it does to say that spiritual problems cause cancer, by which it makes no sense in either case. What does make sense is to say that one spiritual problems are reflected in one's cancer, and vice-versa. They are both the sign of a deeper pattern, and understanding that deeper pattern is the purpose of making an evaluation of oneself, not trying to root out the “spiritual cause” of one's cancer.
And that, in a nutshell, is what my approach to astrology was about – not looking for causes, but for correspondences that reveal the deeper pattern of a person's life. That's what made it interesting. But of course people often aren't as interested in that as in wanting to know what the sources of their problems are and how to fix them.
"When I got to the end of the post I was struck by the similarities between your view and Wilber's. For example, take Wilber's four quadrants: the internal-individual ("I"), the internal-collective "We"), the external-individual ("It") and the external-collective ("Its"). Wilber says that these "tetra-evolve," or tetra-emerge...that is, one quadrant doesn't cause the other three, but they emerge/arise/manifest concurrently, as four different aspects of the same occasion or movement--or pattern--of the universe. It is similar to Inayat Khan's statement that "the soul is the invisible part of the body, the body the visible part of the soul."
Yes, you're right that Wilber does acknowledge that holons simultaneously develop across quadrants, but he doesn't carry that principle across the board to levels, types, etc. He might have, but it didn't occur to him how important the principle of synchronicty is. Clearly he doesn't see it taking precedence in such developmental processes as evolution. But you're right, he might be open to it for that reason, though it would take some mahjor re-working of his models to do so. He's changed before however, and maybe he can change again.
“Although this begs the question: how could levels not have a causative relationship to eachother? If the body and soul are two aspects of the same totality, don't they interact beyond resonant patterning? Don't they influence eachother?”
This question is best answered in the link above. In brief, it is because levels are actually fragmented viewpoints of the whole, not actually self-existing divisions of consciousness. It is viewpoint that dominates, and the link between fragmented viewpoints is not a causal one, but simultaneousness. To give a concrete example, if I take photographs of a tree from many different angles, none of those photographs could be said to be the “cause” of the others. They each represent a view of the tree that is true from that angle, and each will reveal things about the tree that the others might not, but their link is synchronous, not causal. The only “cause”, one might say, is the choice of perspective from which to view the whole. So materialism is one viewpoint to take a picture from, and poetry would be another. The materialistic view of the tree would reveal many material facts and processes going on in the tree. A poetic investigation of the tree would reveal an entirely different set of “facts” about the tree. Think of Monet's “haystack” series, some 20-30 paintings of a haystack from different views, times, lighting, etc. The poetic view does not “cause” the material processes of the tree to be as they are, nor does the material process cause the poetic view to arise. They represent choices of viewpoint, possible avenues of attention. One can switch between them, but one can't view the tree as both simultaneously, because attention is limited to a single viewpoint at any one time, just as a camera is. You can overlay them on top of one another (as Da does in his photographic work) and create a hybrid image, but this is a conceptual construct divided by time exposure. We exist in time, as part of the fragmentary nature of things. So we compare viewpoints through memory, rather than direct apprehension.
The whole notion of “interaction” between levels, between body and soul, for example, is actually based on the notion that they truly are separate, rather than simply two viewpoints of a unity. Our notion that body must “affect soul, or soul “influence” body, presume that they are different to begin with. The synchronistic view is that they don't influence one another, they are simply viewpoints of a whole, like photographs of the tree from different angles. This makes them much closer to one another than any causal viewpoint could make them. It makes them identical in nature, just altered by viewpoint. As mentioned in the link, causation only appears to be a valid link between objects within a single viewpoint, not between viewpoints. Thus, the shadows in one photograph are caused by the objects in that photograph, and their relation to the light source. But two photographs of the same tree from different viewpoints cannot be analyzed in the same way. The shadows in one are not “caused” by the light source in the other, they are simply simultaneous depictions of the same relationship, seen from different angles. Mixing the two “causes” without compensating for the difference in viewpoint leads to “optical delusions”.
So the point here is that the two levels do not causally influence one another. But by studying their correspondences, one can make inferences about their mutual source, just as by comparing photos of a tree taken from different angles, one could draw inferences about the position of the sun. So it is the overall pattern that is important, not establishing some causal relationship between elements in different viewpoints.
“First of all I really like your differentiation between causation and synchronicity--and explanation of patterning and astrology in the light of Adi Da's views. It reminded me of the hermetic axiom, "as above so below"--or the Christian idea that we are created in God's image; or Indra's Net for that matter: everything reflects everything else. “
Yes, that's a good analogy. This kind of thinking is not unprecedented in the traditions. The problem is that it was not clearly differentiated from causality, and thus we ended up with mythic explanations for the “creation” of the universe becoming standardized, and even at war with genuinely causal explanations.
“Now I'm curious as to how you would apply your understanding to very conventional, earthly issues like disease. Do you see no causal relationship between, say, spiritual or mental dis-harmony and physical disease? Is cancer solely caused by physical agents? And wouldn't the synchronistic patterning still be a cause of some kind? For example, let's say that one develops physical cancer through environmental toxins and this shows up on different levels through various patternings: mental patterns and a spiritual malaise, if you will. Aren't these caused by the physical cancer? Or vice versa?”
I'm not sure its fruitful at all to look for emotional or psychic causes for physical disease. Again, these are just two viewpoints looking at the same condition. You will definitely see some correspondences between physical and spiritual conditions, but they are not causal correspondences. It is just part of the process of getting a “bigger picture” to take into account multiple perspectives. So yes, I would say that if you were looking for strict causes for cancer, you would find them strictly on the physical pain. You would not find emotional or spiritual “causes”. You may find correspondences, to be sure, but I think it is an error to make them the cause of the disease. It's not just witch-doctoring, it's category confusion, viewpoint confusion. One can, say, look for spiritual causes for one's spiritual problems, or physical causes for one's physical problems, but not spiritual causes for physical problems. This is not seeing things right. This is seeing correspondences between physical and spiritual problems, and attributing that correspondence to a causal relationship rather than a synchronistic one.
And no, synchronistic patterning is not a cause. It is a pointer to a source pattern, a clue about the overall pattern, of which these viewpoints are manifestations, but that source pattern is not the cause, it's just the overall big picture, so to speak. The big picture is not of a cause, but of a pattern in attention. God, for example, is not the cause of the universe, but the uber-pattern in which the universe arises, simultaneously at all levels. You will of course find correspondences between levels, because it is a single pattern, but they will look and behave differently, just as the images on a photograph will look different from different angles even when the subject is the same. A picture of a tree at the molecular perspective looks different from the picture of the tree that includes the whole forest in which it lives.
“It becomes a chicken-egg thing. Let's say someone is overweight and they have low self-esteem. Are they overweight because they are compensating for low self-esteem or do they have low self-esteem because they are overweight? And how can there not be a bi-directional causal relationship?”
It becomes a chicken-egg thing precisely because causation is a fruitless way of trying to figure out a synchronistic relationship. The chicken-egg paradox only appears when one is trying to find causal relations across viewpoints (levels). It doesn't occur within the level itself. Chicken-egg paradoxes are a sign of a synchronistic relationship, rather than a causal one. For example, looking for physical causes for cancer does not come across chicken-egg paradoxes, because within the physical viepoint there are indeed causal relations that make real sense. Smoking causes cancer. There's no sense in which cancer causes smoking. But the same cannot be said for spiritual problems and cancer. It makes equal sense to say that cancer causes spiritual problems as it does to say that spiritual problems cause cancer, by which it makes no sense in either case. What does make sense is to say that one spiritual problems are reflected in one's cancer, and vice-versa. They are both the sign of a deeper pattern, and understanding that deeper pattern is the purpose of making an evaluation of oneself, not trying to root out the “spiritual cause” of one's cancer.
And that, in a nutshell, is what my approach to astrology was about – not looking for causes, but for correspondences that reveal the deeper pattern of a person's life. That's what made it interesting. But of course people often aren't as interested in that as in wanting to know what the sources of their problems are and how to fix them.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Unity Through Synchronicity: The Acausal Universe Rides Again!
I'm getting a little behind on things, so please bear with me if I'm taking a time responding to questions. There's a good question from the Wilber Forum about what exactly is non-dual practice that I want to get into, but it may take the weekend. First, I'm going to respond to a couple of really good comments on my last post on The Acausal Universe. Check them out first if you want the context of my answer.
The first issue to clear up is to define what I refer to as “levels”. My use of the term may be different from Wilber's; I'm not really sure how he defines it. I see it as synonymous with “viewpoint”, or really, fragmented attention. The simplest example is that of the material world. Friend points out that the material world is not separate from the Unity of non-dual reality, and treating it as not causally linked to any other level, as separate and distinct, therefore seems erroneous. But what I am suggesting is that the material world is not a separate world or place or thing, it is a distinctive viewpoint. It is the “material” viewpoint, or the “gross physical” viewpoint. The material world does not actually exist, but only the material viewpoint makes it seem so. And so it is with all viewpoints and worlds.
As beings who somehow seem to be grossly born, we have already assumed this gross physical viewpoint. It's not the only viewpoint we have, but it is a distinctive viewpoint that we can all acknowledge. There are many other possible viewpoints, and we take up those viewpoints one at a time, often in rapid succession, but the problem with conditional birth is exactly that: out of the infinitely possible viewpoints that could be taken, we have taken up a material, physical one as our shared commonality. And while born, we may range through many different viewpoints, not just the gross physical, but we can only take up one at a time, just as we can only take up one body at a time.
When we do science, we are taking up the gross physical viewpoint, and the answers we find in science will be answers from that viewpoint. When we write poetry, we are taking up a different viewpoint, and the answers we get are poetic answers, not scientific ones. This does not make either of them superior to the other, but they address different viewpoints, and can't be mixed, because we can't hold both viewpoints in mind at the same time. Science will not supply you the answers to poetic questions, and poetry will not supply you the answers to scientific questions. Both are important questions, and both viewpoints are valid in their own right, and even complement one another. But people tend to be parochial about their viewpoint, and think one is superior to others, and try to downgrade other viewpoints. Scientists (at least those who are strongly identified with that viewpoint) tend to think that poetry is meaningless because it cannot fulfill our need for concrete answers and solutions to material problems, and poets (who are strongly identified with their own viewpoint) tend to think science is empty because it cannot fulfill our need for artistic meaning and beauty.
Some people can see the value in both viewpoints, and I think Wilber is one of those people. But there's a fallacy that such people are prone to, a synthetic, romantic fallacy, based on their own conviction of nature is a unity (a conviction I sympathize with), but a unity based on the principle of cauality, rather than synchronicity. They think that God or some higher power (an "erotic force", say) is always intervening and causing things to happen, making things work out for us, making evolution follow certain favorable lines of growth, etc. Or they think that angels and higher beings of a metaphysical nature are working to cause things to happen in this world. Or even that devils and demons are creating havoc among us. They thinks that these two differing worlds or viewpoints must be inclusive of one another, that the “higher” viewpoint must direct the lower, and thus the lower must somehow be subject to the laws of the higher.
When Wilber speak of an “eros drive” that is at the core of the evolutionary process, he is speaking in poetic language of a poetical, metaphysical intuition. This is fine and good. In the poetic sense, and even in the higher sense of metaphysics itself, this is a valid principle, one that I can find sympathy with. I don't doubt that the nature of the universe is "Shiva-Shakti" a Unity of male and female cosmic forces, of consciousness and energy. The problem comes when Wilber tries to crossover with this poetical, metaphysical principle into the viewpoint of science, and insist that this “erotic drive” actually somehow must intervene in physical, biological processes that govern mutation and evolution in the material world, actually causing mutations, in a manner that may be more sophisticated than creationists, but not of a different order. When he does so, he is trying to mix two entirely distinct viewpoints, and the result is not meaningful to either. As I say, try as they may, scientists are never going to find an “erotic force” behind evolution, the way there are gross physical forces of DNA mutations and so on that produce evolutionary changes. Why? Because science sees the world from the viewpoint of gross material objects and forces, and within that viewpoint there simply is no “erotic force”, at least not as Wilber speaks of it. The erotic force of attraction exists in the poetic, metaphysical sphere. In the gross world, that force is simply a symbol, a metaphor, a literary allusion, not a scientific principle. But as metaphor, it has correspondences nonetheless, if one knows where to look.
So there can't be a causal link between these two worlds, not because they are truly separate from one another, but because attention and viewpoint makes them so. Unity is not the senior principle of manifest nature, separation is. Why do I say this? Because viewpoint and attention are separated and separative in conditional nature, and they create the illusion of separate beings and separate worlds. You are right that there is no material world in the true, non-dual universe. But there is also no erotic force in the non-dual universe. How could there be? An erotic force would require separation to exist, that some force would seek to bring it together through attraction. Both the material world and Wilber's erotic force are the result of a shattering of attention, a shattering of viewpoint, from a Single and Ultimate Unity, to all these infinitely modified realms of attention and energy. The material world is one such dimension. The poetic metaphysics of Wilber's erotic force is another.
An infinite number of worlds, dimensions, and levels exist, because an infinite number of viewpoints exist. For the sake of simplicity, however, we like to talk about major categories of viewpoint. But the problem with this shattering of viewpoints, as I said earlier, is that we can only “see” the universe from one of them at a time. We can conceptualize them and create systems which include multiple perspectives, but when we do so, even then we are only looking at the universe from one perspective, a conceptual overview perspective. Our inclusiveness is purely on a conceptual level, we are not actually seeing the world from multiple perspective simultaneously. What rules is not inclusiveness then, but the partialness of viewpoint itself. When we say that we are “developed” in higher levels, it means that we are able to move from viewpoint to viewpoint with greater ease, that we have many viewpoints in our repertoire. But it's like having a huge library of books. We can still only read one of them at a time. We can only think one thought at a time too. It's the same problem we have of only being able to be one body at a time, out of all the billions on the planet. Welcome to conditional reality.
It also needs to be said that viewpoint creates the world it views. Viewpoint is a way of splitting the unity beyond attention into fragments, taking the Whole and making it Many, and then focusing in on just one of those pieces. That focusing of attention creates a whole world. It's the viewpoint that is the fragment, and it creates the objects seen in accord with its own qualities. The physical world is the product of just this kind of fragmented viewing of Reality. Our poetic world is likewise a creation of attention focusing in on that fragment, and makes a world out of it. We exist in only One World, but attention makes fragments of it, and we only know one fragment at a time, one thought at a time, one experience at a time, one body at a time, one partial world at a time. Each of these could be said to be a level, a mini-level perhaps. The physical world is not actually a single thing, a single level, a single body, but a collection of fragments, each of them a separate viewpoint we lump together because of a certain commonality. So we call the “physical world” a level because of that basic commonality, but it isn't really a thing sitting out there, but a viewpoint that creates a world based on the qualities of that viewpoint.
So viewpoints and levels are not causally linked to one another. One didn't create the others. Attention did. If there is a hierarchy to attention, it isn't a causal one, it's a synchronous one. Synchronicity is the product of this fragmentation of viewpoints into a multiplicity of simultaneously existing “worlds”. All worlds exist simultaneously as viewpoints of attention, not as truly separate levels or worlds. But viewpoint makes them not only seem so, but to function in that manner. They are not casually linked to one another, because they do not arise from one another. They arise from the Source, the Unity. So their linkage to one another is through synchronicity, through a sharing of pattern, of recognizable complementary form.
An example: Wilber's erotic force may not exist in the physical universe, but fundamental forces of attraction do exist: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, etc. These are not the “erotic force” Wilber speaks of, but they share a similar pattern, that of attraction that brings elements together and ends up producing life, bodies, children, even physical sex. So when I say that in the physical universe we don't need to postulate an “erotic force” to account for evolution, it's because the physical forces that correspond to this “erotic force” already exist, and are able to produce “children” by their own innate capability. Wilber's search for some “other” force that can turn raw dirt into a poetry-writing machine fails to take into account that dirt and its constituent forces is already alive with all the erotic force it needs to do just that.
But Wilber's famous question, “How does dirt get up and write poetry” is a false question based in ignorance. Dirt doesn't ever write poetry. It can't. When we write poetry, we are not operating in the physical world. We are operating in a poetic world. We have entered into another realm of existence. That our bodies seem to physically “write poetry” is akin to the famous metaphor about an infinite number of monkeys writing on infinite typewriters producing all the works of Shakespeare. That metaphor is an excellent one, because it represents us, as physical monkey bodies, randomly producing poetry. The joke is that as bodies, we can't product poetry. Only by entering the world of poetry can we produce poetry. And our bodies only go along for the ride, working in synchronicity with our work in other realms. The fact is, if you break it down mechanically, you can't really figure out how we write anything at all. There is no “order” that my writing mind is giving to my physical body to type these words out. They just appear simultaneously. Speech is similar. Almost everything we do happens like this, as a synchronous event rather than as us trying to command multiple realms and levels to work together in some “inclusive” viewpoint.
When I was growing up I wanted to be nuclear physicist studying the great theories of the universe. I was fascinated by Einstein and the whole GUI debate. I didn't end up going down that line, but if I were to give any suggestions to anyone trying to develop the next great idea in physics, the next leap after Einstein, it would be to develop a theory of synchronicity and patterning that could be inclusive of Einstein just as he was inclusive of Newton, worked out to the same degree of mathematical elegance as the theory of relativity. It occurs to me that one might in the end find a way to eliminate the whole notion of causality altogether, even within the physical universe, and explain all seeming causation as just a special case of synchronicity.
So anyway, what I am saying is that from the point of view of attention, these levels and distinctions do exist, and they have to be respected. You cannot impose poetry on science and vice-versa. No, ultimately they don't exist at all, but then why talk about them? We talk about them because we are creatures of attention who live in fragmented viewpoints we switch between, and we can't understand how they realte to one another. We can't have it both ways. We can't talk about them as creatures of attention and then claim that the levels don't really exist, and so we can presume causation crosses all viewpoints. That's simply not possible. The conditional cosmos is the result of fragmented attention, and thus all that fragmented attention creates worlds, levels, views, all of which are distinct, and between which there is no connection except synchronicity. Within any viewpoint things function through causation, or at least they seem to, because they are all held together by a single viewpoint of attention, but not between viewpoints. My writing mind is not causing my physical body to write these words. It just coincides. My deeper mind coincides with my physical brain, it does not cause the brain to think its thoughts. Analyze my brain as deeply as you can, you will never find some “hole” through which my higher mind sneaks in and tells my brain what thoughts to think. They arise simultaneously.
The point here is that if you are looking for a principle that defines “unity” between levels, synchronicity is that principle, not causation. If you understood this, you would be rejoicing, because synchronicity is much easier to observe and understand than causation. Finding a causal relation between levels is virtually impossible. It requires ridiculous leaps of faith and imagination, as creationists are finding. But noticing synchronicity of pattern between levels is easy as pie, once you know what to look for. So what I'm saying is not bad news that the universe is some kind of materialistic reduction program, that physical evolution proceeds without any other factors involved. It's just that all those other factors arise simultaneously, not causally. We are linked together not by causes, but by simultaneous arising. And thus we don't have to waste time looking for mystical causes for physical events. It doesn't mean there is no mystical dimension that is related to the physical, it only means that it is related by synchronous patterning, not by causal reaction and “guidance” from above. The study of the interrelationship of levels and types and patterns isn't a study of causes, by a study of simultaneous correspondences. It is this simultaneous correspondence that is the true sign of unity. Don't miss it!
One more thing: when I mentioned that the Self doesn't appear in the conditional realms, but functions purely as Witness, I didn't mean that the Self is identified with the Witness as a separative point of view. The Witness is not fragmented attention anyway, it is beyond that. It's only that for us, there is no way to relate to the Self in any other practical way, because we are fixated in points of view. When we conceive of the "point of view" of the Self or God, we can't help but think of a point of view like our own, but more inclusive, or bigger, some position from which we could act and make things right. But that's an inaccurate way of thinking about God or the Self. The closest we can come is seeing Self as the Witness, as motionless being, Witnessing all states, all points of view, all worlds, but identifed with none of them. To live as the Witness, and not to try to cause action, but to allow all action to aise spontaneously, synchronistically, is the enightened way of life. Remember, action and causation are karma. The viewpoint which sees action and causation dominant is the karmic viewpoint. Freedom from karma means freedom from that viewpoint, which means mere witnessing spontaneous simultaneous synchronicity of action, just like letting the words come through without "ordering" them.
Okay, I planned to write so much more on other aspects of the comments from below, but will have to wait a little. Thanks so much for your comments. Don't imagine I find them bothersome or irritating. People who disagree with me often provide the best stimulus to working these ideas out. So thanks to all of you who bother to poke their heads in here.
The first issue to clear up is to define what I refer to as “levels”. My use of the term may be different from Wilber's; I'm not really sure how he defines it. I see it as synonymous with “viewpoint”, or really, fragmented attention. The simplest example is that of the material world. Friend points out that the material world is not separate from the Unity of non-dual reality, and treating it as not causally linked to any other level, as separate and distinct, therefore seems erroneous. But what I am suggesting is that the material world is not a separate world or place or thing, it is a distinctive viewpoint. It is the “material” viewpoint, or the “gross physical” viewpoint. The material world does not actually exist, but only the material viewpoint makes it seem so. And so it is with all viewpoints and worlds.
As beings who somehow seem to be grossly born, we have already assumed this gross physical viewpoint. It's not the only viewpoint we have, but it is a distinctive viewpoint that we can all acknowledge. There are many other possible viewpoints, and we take up those viewpoints one at a time, often in rapid succession, but the problem with conditional birth is exactly that: out of the infinitely possible viewpoints that could be taken, we have taken up a material, physical one as our shared commonality. And while born, we may range through many different viewpoints, not just the gross physical, but we can only take up one at a time, just as we can only take up one body at a time.
When we do science, we are taking up the gross physical viewpoint, and the answers we find in science will be answers from that viewpoint. When we write poetry, we are taking up a different viewpoint, and the answers we get are poetic answers, not scientific ones. This does not make either of them superior to the other, but they address different viewpoints, and can't be mixed, because we can't hold both viewpoints in mind at the same time. Science will not supply you the answers to poetic questions, and poetry will not supply you the answers to scientific questions. Both are important questions, and both viewpoints are valid in their own right, and even complement one another. But people tend to be parochial about their viewpoint, and think one is superior to others, and try to downgrade other viewpoints. Scientists (at least those who are strongly identified with that viewpoint) tend to think that poetry is meaningless because it cannot fulfill our need for concrete answers and solutions to material problems, and poets (who are strongly identified with their own viewpoint) tend to think science is empty because it cannot fulfill our need for artistic meaning and beauty.
Some people can see the value in both viewpoints, and I think Wilber is one of those people. But there's a fallacy that such people are prone to, a synthetic, romantic fallacy, based on their own conviction of nature is a unity (a conviction I sympathize with), but a unity based on the principle of cauality, rather than synchronicity. They think that God or some higher power (an "erotic force", say) is always intervening and causing things to happen, making things work out for us, making evolution follow certain favorable lines of growth, etc. Or they think that angels and higher beings of a metaphysical nature are working to cause things to happen in this world. Or even that devils and demons are creating havoc among us. They thinks that these two differing worlds or viewpoints must be inclusive of one another, that the “higher” viewpoint must direct the lower, and thus the lower must somehow be subject to the laws of the higher.
When Wilber speak of an “eros drive” that is at the core of the evolutionary process, he is speaking in poetic language of a poetical, metaphysical intuition. This is fine and good. In the poetic sense, and even in the higher sense of metaphysics itself, this is a valid principle, one that I can find sympathy with. I don't doubt that the nature of the universe is "Shiva-Shakti" a Unity of male and female cosmic forces, of consciousness and energy. The problem comes when Wilber tries to crossover with this poetical, metaphysical principle into the viewpoint of science, and insist that this “erotic drive” actually somehow must intervene in physical, biological processes that govern mutation and evolution in the material world, actually causing mutations, in a manner that may be more sophisticated than creationists, but not of a different order. When he does so, he is trying to mix two entirely distinct viewpoints, and the result is not meaningful to either. As I say, try as they may, scientists are never going to find an “erotic force” behind evolution, the way there are gross physical forces of DNA mutations and so on that produce evolutionary changes. Why? Because science sees the world from the viewpoint of gross material objects and forces, and within that viewpoint there simply is no “erotic force”, at least not as Wilber speaks of it. The erotic force of attraction exists in the poetic, metaphysical sphere. In the gross world, that force is simply a symbol, a metaphor, a literary allusion, not a scientific principle. But as metaphor, it has correspondences nonetheless, if one knows where to look.
So there can't be a causal link between these two worlds, not because they are truly separate from one another, but because attention and viewpoint makes them so. Unity is not the senior principle of manifest nature, separation is. Why do I say this? Because viewpoint and attention are separated and separative in conditional nature, and they create the illusion of separate beings and separate worlds. You are right that there is no material world in the true, non-dual universe. But there is also no erotic force in the non-dual universe. How could there be? An erotic force would require separation to exist, that some force would seek to bring it together through attraction. Both the material world and Wilber's erotic force are the result of a shattering of attention, a shattering of viewpoint, from a Single and Ultimate Unity, to all these infinitely modified realms of attention and energy. The material world is one such dimension. The poetic metaphysics of Wilber's erotic force is another.
An infinite number of worlds, dimensions, and levels exist, because an infinite number of viewpoints exist. For the sake of simplicity, however, we like to talk about major categories of viewpoint. But the problem with this shattering of viewpoints, as I said earlier, is that we can only “see” the universe from one of them at a time. We can conceptualize them and create systems which include multiple perspectives, but when we do so, even then we are only looking at the universe from one perspective, a conceptual overview perspective. Our inclusiveness is purely on a conceptual level, we are not actually seeing the world from multiple perspective simultaneously. What rules is not inclusiveness then, but the partialness of viewpoint itself. When we say that we are “developed” in higher levels, it means that we are able to move from viewpoint to viewpoint with greater ease, that we have many viewpoints in our repertoire. But it's like having a huge library of books. We can still only read one of them at a time. We can only think one thought at a time too. It's the same problem we have of only being able to be one body at a time, out of all the billions on the planet. Welcome to conditional reality.
It also needs to be said that viewpoint creates the world it views. Viewpoint is a way of splitting the unity beyond attention into fragments, taking the Whole and making it Many, and then focusing in on just one of those pieces. That focusing of attention creates a whole world. It's the viewpoint that is the fragment, and it creates the objects seen in accord with its own qualities. The physical world is the product of just this kind of fragmented viewing of Reality. Our poetic world is likewise a creation of attention focusing in on that fragment, and makes a world out of it. We exist in only One World, but attention makes fragments of it, and we only know one fragment at a time, one thought at a time, one experience at a time, one body at a time, one partial world at a time. Each of these could be said to be a level, a mini-level perhaps. The physical world is not actually a single thing, a single level, a single body, but a collection of fragments, each of them a separate viewpoint we lump together because of a certain commonality. So we call the “physical world” a level because of that basic commonality, but it isn't really a thing sitting out there, but a viewpoint that creates a world based on the qualities of that viewpoint.
So viewpoints and levels are not causally linked to one another. One didn't create the others. Attention did. If there is a hierarchy to attention, it isn't a causal one, it's a synchronous one. Synchronicity is the product of this fragmentation of viewpoints into a multiplicity of simultaneously existing “worlds”. All worlds exist simultaneously as viewpoints of attention, not as truly separate levels or worlds. But viewpoint makes them not only seem so, but to function in that manner. They are not casually linked to one another, because they do not arise from one another. They arise from the Source, the Unity. So their linkage to one another is through synchronicity, through a sharing of pattern, of recognizable complementary form.
An example: Wilber's erotic force may not exist in the physical universe, but fundamental forces of attraction do exist: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, etc. These are not the “erotic force” Wilber speaks of, but they share a similar pattern, that of attraction that brings elements together and ends up producing life, bodies, children, even physical sex. So when I say that in the physical universe we don't need to postulate an “erotic force” to account for evolution, it's because the physical forces that correspond to this “erotic force” already exist, and are able to produce “children” by their own innate capability. Wilber's search for some “other” force that can turn raw dirt into a poetry-writing machine fails to take into account that dirt and its constituent forces is already alive with all the erotic force it needs to do just that.
But Wilber's famous question, “How does dirt get up and write poetry” is a false question based in ignorance. Dirt doesn't ever write poetry. It can't. When we write poetry, we are not operating in the physical world. We are operating in a poetic world. We have entered into another realm of existence. That our bodies seem to physically “write poetry” is akin to the famous metaphor about an infinite number of monkeys writing on infinite typewriters producing all the works of Shakespeare. That metaphor is an excellent one, because it represents us, as physical monkey bodies, randomly producing poetry. The joke is that as bodies, we can't product poetry. Only by entering the world of poetry can we produce poetry. And our bodies only go along for the ride, working in synchronicity with our work in other realms. The fact is, if you break it down mechanically, you can't really figure out how we write anything at all. There is no “order” that my writing mind is giving to my physical body to type these words out. They just appear simultaneously. Speech is similar. Almost everything we do happens like this, as a synchronous event rather than as us trying to command multiple realms and levels to work together in some “inclusive” viewpoint.
When I was growing up I wanted to be nuclear physicist studying the great theories of the universe. I was fascinated by Einstein and the whole GUI debate. I didn't end up going down that line, but if I were to give any suggestions to anyone trying to develop the next great idea in physics, the next leap after Einstein, it would be to develop a theory of synchronicity and patterning that could be inclusive of Einstein just as he was inclusive of Newton, worked out to the same degree of mathematical elegance as the theory of relativity. It occurs to me that one might in the end find a way to eliminate the whole notion of causality altogether, even within the physical universe, and explain all seeming causation as just a special case of synchronicity.
So anyway, what I am saying is that from the point of view of attention, these levels and distinctions do exist, and they have to be respected. You cannot impose poetry on science and vice-versa. No, ultimately they don't exist at all, but then why talk about them? We talk about them because we are creatures of attention who live in fragmented viewpoints we switch between, and we can't understand how they realte to one another. We can't have it both ways. We can't talk about them as creatures of attention and then claim that the levels don't really exist, and so we can presume causation crosses all viewpoints. That's simply not possible. The conditional cosmos is the result of fragmented attention, and thus all that fragmented attention creates worlds, levels, views, all of which are distinct, and between which there is no connection except synchronicity. Within any viewpoint things function through causation, or at least they seem to, because they are all held together by a single viewpoint of attention, but not between viewpoints. My writing mind is not causing my physical body to write these words. It just coincides. My deeper mind coincides with my physical brain, it does not cause the brain to think its thoughts. Analyze my brain as deeply as you can, you will never find some “hole” through which my higher mind sneaks in and tells my brain what thoughts to think. They arise simultaneously.
The point here is that if you are looking for a principle that defines “unity” between levels, synchronicity is that principle, not causation. If you understood this, you would be rejoicing, because synchronicity is much easier to observe and understand than causation. Finding a causal relation between levels is virtually impossible. It requires ridiculous leaps of faith and imagination, as creationists are finding. But noticing synchronicity of pattern between levels is easy as pie, once you know what to look for. So what I'm saying is not bad news that the universe is some kind of materialistic reduction program, that physical evolution proceeds without any other factors involved. It's just that all those other factors arise simultaneously, not causally. We are linked together not by causes, but by simultaneous arising. And thus we don't have to waste time looking for mystical causes for physical events. It doesn't mean there is no mystical dimension that is related to the physical, it only means that it is related by synchronous patterning, not by causal reaction and “guidance” from above. The study of the interrelationship of levels and types and patterns isn't a study of causes, by a study of simultaneous correspondences. It is this simultaneous correspondence that is the true sign of unity. Don't miss it!
One more thing: when I mentioned that the Self doesn't appear in the conditional realms, but functions purely as Witness, I didn't mean that the Self is identified with the Witness as a separative point of view. The Witness is not fragmented attention anyway, it is beyond that. It's only that for us, there is no way to relate to the Self in any other practical way, because we are fixated in points of view. When we conceive of the "point of view" of the Self or God, we can't help but think of a point of view like our own, but more inclusive, or bigger, some position from which we could act and make things right. But that's an inaccurate way of thinking about God or the Self. The closest we can come is seeing Self as the Witness, as motionless being, Witnessing all states, all points of view, all worlds, but identifed with none of them. To live as the Witness, and not to try to cause action, but to allow all action to aise spontaneously, synchronistically, is the enightened way of life. Remember, action and causation are karma. The viewpoint which sees action and causation dominant is the karmic viewpoint. Freedom from karma means freedom from that viewpoint, which means mere witnessing spontaneous simultaneous synchronicity of action, just like letting the words come through without "ordering" them.
Okay, I planned to write so much more on other aspects of the comments from below, but will have to wait a little. Thanks so much for your comments. Don't imagine I find them bothersome or irritating. People who disagree with me often provide the best stimulus to working these ideas out. So thanks to all of you who bother to poke their heads in here.
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