Just Going In Spirals
Feb 24, 2004 AM/Train
I love exchanging emails with my Uncle Phil. He's one of those rare people who will read a barely comprehensible email and make a thoughtful reply. This month our conversations have been dominated by talk of paths to enlightenment.
The conversation started with a note from Uncle Phil pointing toward Sri Aurobindo's Yoga on Jan 18th.
Jan 29, 2004
These kind of comments always worry me:
This method is to be found through the ancient psychological discipline and practice of Yoga.
It reduces (in my mind anyway) spiritual pursuits to something that sounds, well, a bit like a Tony Robbins infomercial. Not that there's anything wrong with yoga. Its great. But it brings forth the question, which came first, their view of the spiritual world or the practice of Yoga? Sounds like yoga, with enlightenment adapting.
Like music has adapted over the years to the audience. From the parlors of very rich patrons, to early recording equipment, to the bars and speak-easys and finally to that which sounds good over the drone of an automobile engine. Has the view of the path to spiritual enlightenment adapted itself to an exercises, a structure and time? You've got to say yes, absolutely. The document you sent was filled with historical allusions from ancient Egyptian (one God) to 19th century Darwin. All of which makes me wonder all the more.
Which begs a different kind of funny question. Will the move to some form of electric car, which has its own background noise facilitate a change in musical tastes? I'm guessing, but I bet the movement of techno-ambient music has come out of people working at computers for hours at a time, and wanting to listen to something. Something that doesn't tread to deeply.
The nearest I've come to enlightenment (and not very near at that) was when I was 15-16. I would spend a week each summer walking the Long Trail in Vermont. We walked about 4 to 6 hours a day, and ate sparingly with little fat and sugar available. My mind was never so clear. Focus. Clarity. It got stronger as the week progressed. But of course, on the way home our desires got the better of us and we gorged on McDonalds Big Macs and Coke at the nearest rest stop. And the focus and clarity slipped away. So if I had to guess, I'd say those monks in Japan who spend years walking mountain paths? They might know something.
Feb 3, 2004
[Uncle Phil] Yoga (and meditation, contemplation, and the arts) are tools to help us open ourselves up to possibilities other than those that exist in our everyday waking reality (where's my bacon,eggs, toast and coffee latte?). They are vehicles for the expansion of consciousness, for going beyond conventional engagement of the world. They are an invitation to engage a larger reality. A lot of this shit is going on right down the road from you at Stanford.
Yoga happens to come from a very old wisdom tradition that originated in India. There are many other wisdom traditions both from the East and the West that offer access to altered consciousness. With the exception of a few Christian mystics and Jewish Kaballists who kept these traditions alive, much like the Irish monks who kept Christianity alive through the Dark Ages, the growth of liberalism in the West with its emphasis on individual human rights, and the scientific revolution with its emphasis on emperical proof, the West pretty much ignored, the inner life.
Not too many years ago headlines in TIME magazine read, "God is Dead". Towards the end of the 19th century as a result of cross cultural pollenization from colonialism, many of the older Eastern wisdom traditions started to flow to the West. That transformative process continues today at an even more rapid pace because of globalization. Of course distortions occur, and the messages get garbled or misinterpreted or exploited, but that does not take away from the essential value of the original message. And with the re-introduction of these wisdoms comes an expanded understanding of our own Western wisdoms (and here I am not talking about born-again fundamentalism on the right, or new-age spirituality on the left, which are confused responses to rapidly changing and seemingly out of control realities); a recognition that we are more than just a neuro-chemical bundle acting through a mass of matter; and the development of a totally new healthier response to the world that is more integral and less dualist.
Your description of attaining a state of clarity through diet and walking is is recognized as a valid method. A Vietnamese monk has Ashrams all over the world including Vermont dedicated to "walking meditation" as a means to attain inner peace and promote peaceful co-existence in the political world.
I don't know how Sri Aurobindo would feel about having his name and Tony Robbins name used in the same breath. My guess is that he wouldn't care. But because a salesman employs the same language of spiritual masters doesn't make his product any less shallow or the master's any less profound. It's an unfortunate result of commercialization in our consumer age.
The path to spiritual enlightenment has not changed, the presentation has adapted to make it accessible to people at different levels of evolution, states of consciousness, and moral and ethical centers of gravity. Why else do we have so many religions in the world that seem so different on the surface but all deliver the same message at their cores if not to try to deliver the message in an understandable way? Music hasn't adapted over the years, it has merely changed forms in the hands of its creators.
Feb 4, 2004
When people talk about "western" thought, its very typical for the scientific method to get dragged out of the closet. I'm keying off your statement about:
the scientific revolution with its emphasis on emperical proof, the West pretty much ignored, the inner life.
The problem is that the proof part is really only half the picture. The other "half" is the hypothetical half and for some reason, its almost never mentioned. Spirituality and western thought are much more compatible than is generally credited, and its the hypothetical half where these two should be mingling, dancing, and exchanging ideas with one another.
Its perfectly allowable, and even encouraged (perhaps not quite enough) in western thought to formulate any hypotheses you like. The more creative the better. Believe in it passionately. Stake your life, your reputation, everything on it. But there's a catch, and there's always a catch. One must be ready to let go of some, or all of your belief in the face of a logic chain (a proof) that leads to a falsehood. Most religions seem to have a tough time with this one.
And I don't know if one would call that an emphasis or not on proof (the yielding to falsehood). The thing about proof in science, is simply, it seems to be a lot easier to prove something false than it is to prove something true. Virtually all of science is sitting on an amassed pile of evidence *strongly* hinting that something is true, but has not been proven true. There's room here to drive a truck if you follow my meaning. We believe that mass attracts mass. We call it gravity. We don't know how this works exactly, but we think we understand it well enough (which is to say it fits most of the observable evidence) to get to the moon. I say most because there are observations that gravity in fact doesn't fit (enter "dark matter", worm holes and all sorts of crazy stuff which may or may not invalidate or change our understanding of gravity).
The funny thing is that this kind of thing happens throughout history. In ancient Greece, logic and reason slammed head long into ancient Persian (was it Persian?) spirituality. In their form, the moon, the stars, the planets were Gods. And that the position of the planets dictated the fates of those on the ground. In other words an ancient form of astrology. It was the combination of the two that many scholars believe formed Geometry.
In short, dismissing spirituality, or for that matter dismissing logic and reason, is to miss out on the truly wonderful. I think most people, myself included are surprised by the number of references Albert Einstein makes to God. And why should we be? And more importantly, would a less spiritual Einstein, who didn't believe in the intrinsic beauty of the universe be able delve as deeply? I'm not sure he would have made it out of the patent office.
I've got another email in me I think. But it'll have to wait until I get back from class and the kids give me an hour or so :) Last time I said the closest I've come to enlightenment was when I was 16 and hiking the woods. This, as it turns out was a half truth I think. I realized I've recently bumped into another face of enlightenment. Perhaps. Probably not, but who knows. Its better to believe.
Feb 11, 2004
[Uncle Phil] I stress Reality with a capital R. Beauty is a little version of the Ultimate Reality. When you talk about faith and doubt you are talking about a mental state that is supported by duality. Ultimate Reality is nondual and and can only be experienced directly. Check out the quote below:
"Physical aesthetic beauty is simply one of the ways that Spirit shines in and through the world. And for many people--this was Thomas Mann's point-- for many people, seeing something physically beautiful is the closest they will ever get to the Beauty of the Divine. It's a little miniature version, a little reduced version, of the infinite Beauty that is the radiant Face of G-d. Reduced, yes, but still a ray of the Divine. Plato's Symposium, of course, is a reminder that we can start with this ray of physical beauty and use it to climb back to a vision of the Good, the ultimate Beauty itself."
From One Taste by Ken Wilber.
If this makes any sense to you, you might be interested in reading Wilber's book called SCIENCE AND RELIGION. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but anything by him is worth reading. BTW, he lives in Boulder, which may or may not push one of your buttons.
Feb 9, 2004 PM/Home
This article couldn't have been better timed. Things Fall Apart [The Economist]Like I said, its awfully hard to prove something true.
Feb 11, 2004 AM/Home
Reality is perceived, each first time it would seem, as beauty. Mathematical beauty, but no less a rose. This is where theoretical physicists get all mushy-gushy and start sounding like artists. Or dare I say it, yoga gurus.
Note I said theoretical physicists. Emphasis on the word "theoretical". Interestingly, there are two armed camps in physics, theoretical and experimental. The theoretical physicists looks at the existing experimental evidence and attempts to extrapolate a hypothesis on which they believe the universe works. The experimental physicist looks critically at a theoretical hypothesis and attempts to make a critical physical observation which will bring the whole house of cards down (or conversely, strengthen it). Well, something like that anyway :)
But really, you've got to listen to a few theoretical physicists to understand why I say "not at all" to your comment about doubt. There's a great line in the Nova program about String Theory where these two professors are sitting there working out the mathematical underpinnings, and had just proven that it was self-consistent while a thunderstorm raged outside the windows. You could see it all over his face as he told this story. He made some comment about doubt out of humility, but oh yes, he believed. Not only did he believe but he as much as says some higher power is speaking to him. Perhaps I'm stretching a bit, but if you feel so inclined, the whole program is online and judge for yourself.
There are also some great quotes by Einstein when he was developing the theory of special relativity. The beauty behind the elegance of the equations spoke to Einstein. He believed.
I went hunting the the quote via Google, but found a really good one attributed to Paul Dirac (another very famous Physicist), taken from here: :
After early difficulties with theories of the atom, he said, "I found that my own basic belief was wrong and I had to go over to quite a new line of thinking. I had to have some more general basis for my work, and the only reliable basis I could think of, the only basis which was sufficiently general so as to secure me from making the same mistake again, was to set up a principle of mathematical beauty: to say that we don't really know what the basic equations of physics are, but they have to have great mathematical beauty...
"In fact one can feel so strongly about these things, that when an experimental result turns up which is not in agreement with one's beliefs, one may perhaps make the prediction that the experimental result is wrong and that the experimenters will correct it after a while. Of course one must not be too obstinate over these matters, but still one must be bold."
There's also a great quote by Alan Turing that I wish I could find as well. But I think you've get the idea.
Us doubters, we are all in the experimental camp. We don't have to worry so much about coming up with anything *new*, just perhaps something very clever. So we don't bump against our beliefs as much (I wonder which is the cause and which is the effect). But there are still those theoreticals out there.
