• VITHAL C NADKARNI
AFTER decades of languishing in the shadow of conditions such as depression and anxiety, happiness research has now emerged as a sun-rise industry. Academia was quick to set the mood, what with ‘Psychology 1504’ becoming the most popular course at Harvard followed by dozens of happiness institutes lighting up the world map like so many smile buttons. Even a man whose name rhymes with whiner and who’s a self-confessed curmudgeon can now write a slight book called The Geography of Bliss, which promptly goes on to become a best-seller! The writer says this only shows that everybody and their uncle want to learn about how to hit that royal road to happiness, preferably with a special short-cut personally endorsed by a born-again Anandanaut with a celeb in tow. (Nor should that word compounded from Ananda, Sanskrit for bliss, melded with a nautical noun seem too inappropriate, because scientists have already used the Sanskrit term to name a happiness molecule found in the human body.) Incidentally, Weiner told his audience at a bookstore that Republicans were happier than Democrats and that matrimony was a better state than being single as far as happiness was concerned. People with children were said to be no happier than childless couples, and people with college degrees were found to be happier than those without, again with the rider that folks with advanced degrees were less happy than those with just a Bachelors’. Notwithstanding all that it’s a no-brainer to say that people with an active sex life are happier than those without. Women and men are equally happy, though women have a wider emotional range. People are least happy when they’re commuting to work. Busy people are happier than those with too little to do. Wealthier people are happier than poor people, but only slightly, Weiner, a Washington-based foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, explained. But getting a reliable measure of happiness remains a major challenge mainly because it involves hard-to-quantify subjective elements. Researchers have also found that married people who have the happiest relationships get most of their needs met most of the time. In order to have your needs met, however, you must also realise what they are and be able to assert them. But be balanced. Don’t depend too much on others for meeting your
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Stop Asking What Is Life’s Purpose
Satsang: Sadhguru
What is the purpose of life? On a day when you are bursting with happiness, did you ask this question? No. Only when life gets a little sedate and depressing you ask. You need a purpose to life only when being alive is not sufficient. Right now, the biggest thing in your life is that you are alive. The stock market going up or down is not the biggest thing, you being alive right now is. Everything else is secondary. But most people are not aware of it. Something did not happen or did happen — these are the biggest issues for them. The mind is always looking for a purpose because people have not experienced life in full. If your experience of life becomes deeper, your question will disappear. When the process of life becomes absolutely exuberant, it needs no purpose. You go to work, your purpose may be to make this much money or to take care of this or that. But if you go to a party, what is the purpose? No purpose — you just like to be there. If life became like one big party you would not wonder what the hell its purpose is. You just like to be there. Life does not need a purpose; it is a purpose unto itself. It need not lead you on to something else. Just being exuberantly alive is sufficient unto itself. Life does not need a purpose of reaching somewhere. That is the beauty of Creation. Right now, you have a keyhole vision of life through your sense organs. The sensory perception of different creatures is working in different ways as it is necessary for survival. After some time you wonder what the purpose of life is because you do not see anything in full; this is the nature of sense perception. If i show you this side of my hand, you cannot see the other side of it. This is so about everything. You always see everything in parts. Even if you look at a grain of sand you will look at only one part of it. All the information that is in your head right now has entered through the five sense organs in bits and pieces. It cannot perceive even a grain of sand in its totality. It perceives everything in parts. If you add the bits you will not get a whole. You will only have bits. No matter how many bits you gather they will never become a whole. This is why Shiva has always been represented as one with three eyes. When we say “the third eye”, we are not talking about your forehead opening up. It is about seeing beyond the sensory eyes. It means that the ability to see has transcended the limitations of sense perception. Sense perception is such that if i just cover these eyes with my hands, they cannot see beyond them. And in the physical world, there is always something or the other which is blocking perception. So when we say ‘‘third eye’’, it means knowing life in its full depth and dimension. Though life is made in such a way that it does not need a purpose, to encourage people to explore life a little more, we can say that the purpose of life is to know it in its full depth and dimension; otherwise, you will not understand that life does not need a purpose. Once you grasp that you don’t need a purpose, just to be alive is great.
What is the purpose of life? On a day when you are bursting with happiness, did you ask this question? No. Only when life gets a little sedate and depressing you ask. You need a purpose to life only when being alive is not sufficient. Right now, the biggest thing in your life is that you are alive. The stock market going up or down is not the biggest thing, you being alive right now is. Everything else is secondary. But most people are not aware of it. Something did not happen or did happen — these are the biggest issues for them. The mind is always looking for a purpose because people have not experienced life in full. If your experience of life becomes deeper, your question will disappear. When the process of life becomes absolutely exuberant, it needs no purpose. You go to work, your purpose may be to make this much money or to take care of this or that. But if you go to a party, what is the purpose? No purpose — you just like to be there. If life became like one big party you would not wonder what the hell its purpose is. You just like to be there. Life does not need a purpose; it is a purpose unto itself. It need not lead you on to something else. Just being exuberantly alive is sufficient unto itself. Life does not need a purpose of reaching somewhere. That is the beauty of Creation. Right now, you have a keyhole vision of life through your sense organs. The sensory perception of different creatures is working in different ways as it is necessary for survival. After some time you wonder what the purpose of life is because you do not see anything in full; this is the nature of sense perception. If i show you this side of my hand, you cannot see the other side of it. This is so about everything. You always see everything in parts. Even if you look at a grain of sand you will look at only one part of it. All the information that is in your head right now has entered through the five sense organs in bits and pieces. It cannot perceive even a grain of sand in its totality. It perceives everything in parts. If you add the bits you will not get a whole. You will only have bits. No matter how many bits you gather they will never become a whole. This is why Shiva has always been represented as one with three eyes. When we say “the third eye”, we are not talking about your forehead opening up. It is about seeing beyond the sensory eyes. It means that the ability to see has transcended the limitations of sense perception. Sense perception is such that if i just cover these eyes with my hands, they cannot see beyond them. And in the physical world, there is always something or the other which is blocking perception. So when we say ‘‘third eye’’, it means knowing life in its full depth and dimension. Though life is made in such a way that it does not need a purpose, to encourage people to explore life a little more, we can say that the purpose of life is to know it in its full depth and dimension; otherwise, you will not understand that life does not need a purpose. Once you grasp that you don’t need a purpose, just to be alive is great.
Deepak Chopra
To really understand the nature of reality, we must look through the eyes of the soul.
THERE IS NO life without consciousness - consciousness and life are one and the same. Life is synonymous with what we call spirit, consciousness, awareness and existence. For the last 300 years people have thought that consciousness was an epiphenomenon of physical matter. This 'reductionist' worldview says that if we can understand the behaviour of molecules then we will also understand that consciousness is an emergent property; that once molecules attain a certain degree of complexity in behaviour then from that, somehow, consciousness emerges.
This reductionist worldview can be explained in a very simple biological way: your pancreas makes pancreatic juice, your gallbladder makes bile, your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid, and your brain secretes consciousness. So your brain somehow manufactures consciousness in the same way that your stomach manufactures hydrochloric acid or your pancreas manufactures pancreatic juice. This reductionist model is used in science and medicine, but it is a very incomplete model. It is a flawed map of reality.
There are three methods by which we can understand reality. The first is through our senses: sound, touch, taste, sight and smell. We experience reality through the instruments of observation: the 'eyes of the flesh'. The second way that we understand reality is through the instrument that we call the mind: the 'eyes of the mind', metaphorically speaking. If I want to understand the theory of relativity I have to participate at least to some extent with the experiments that occurred in the mind of Einstein. If I want to understand quantum physics then also I have to have some idea of the mathematical concepts that occurred in the minds of scientists in the last century. If you look at the major revolution of the last century it is quantum physics and quantum mechanics and if you study the history of the emergence of that science you will see that this revolution actually occurred in people's minds. The observations came much later.
With that revolution came new technology. I have this amazing little gadget: it's a telephone with email and internet access. I could record a lecture on it, take photos or video on it, and send the information anywhere in the world. The information will go through walls, it will go through trees, it will bounce off a satellite in space, it will go through traffic jams, it will go through human bodies, and somebody anywhere in the world, in China or in India, can receive this information or watch the video.
This technology is based on a very fundamental premise in science: that the essential nature of the material world is that it is not material. Otherwise we wouldn't have this technology. We are able to surf the information highway on the internet because what we call the material world is really not material. This technology is a result of what we call the quantum revolution. It is the second way of examining reality.
There is a third way of examining reality that goes even deeper. Our sensory apparatus takes us to a very superficial level: this is a chair, that is a flower, that is a human being; and the quantum level takes us deeper into the mind of nature, making the world much more miraculous. So the eyes of the mind take us to a level which is a more wondrous than that seen through the eyes of the flesh. The third way of knowing reality is through the 'eyes of the soul', which take us much, much deeper into the nature of existence.
THERE IS A beautiful poem by the English visionary poet Blake:
We are led to believe a lieWhen we see with, and not through the eyeWhich was born in a night to perish in a night,When the soul slept in beams of light.
It's beautiful; but what is Blake saying? Why are we led to believe a lie when we see with the eye? What Blake is saying is what any student of perception will tell you today: we cannot rely on sensory observation alone to know the essential nature of reality. For the last 300 years, the whole basis of science has relied on our observational senses; but our senses are the least reliable test of what we call reality. My senses tell me that the ground I am sitting on is stationary and yet we know it is spinning at a dizzying speed, hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. My senses tell me that, from where I am standing, the Earth is flat. Nobody believes that any more. Even when I look at an object like a flower and perceive its colour or texture, this is not its essential quality. The eye cells of a honeybee do not perceive the same wavelengths of light that you and I perceive and so a bee will have a completely different range of experience of the flower, and will 'see' it in ultraviolet wavelengths. A bat will experience the flower as the echo of ultrasound. A chameleon's eyeballs swivel on two different axes so we can't even remotely imagine what a flower looks like to a chameleon!
So what is the essential nature of this flower? The answer depends on who is looking; it also depends on the instruments of observation. Our nervous systems are our main instruments of observation, and at a simplistic level our brains respond to neuron activity that translates into a binary code of electrical charges across cell membranes. So if I could look inside your brain and see what's happening I would see this vibrating electrical charge shifting from the outside to the inside of the cell membrane. How that becomes a flower, nobody knows.
Sir Arthur Eddington, a great scientists of the last century, said, "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." The more we start to understand perception, the more we don't understand it. Actually, this flower exists only in consciousness, and it exists in a place that is beyond space and time, and it exists 'as potential' before you observe it. There is no external world as such.
Everything that we call the universe, trees and stars and galaxies - everything that we observe as the external world - is a translation of bodily processes into binary codes of photons across cell membranes in neurons. That's why in the Ayurvedic tradition we say we are not in the world; the world is in us. We don't exist in the world; the world exists in us. We don't exist in the body; the body exists in us. We don't exist in the mind; the mind exists in us. We curve back within ourselves and create the mind, the body and the physical world. We manifest it. We are manufacturing everything: the mind, the body and the total universe. I am not speaking philosophically or talking about Eastern metaphysics - this is science.
LET'S LOOK AT our senses. My senses tell me first of all that my body is physical, anatomical and static. But in reality, the body seems anatomical to us through our senses; the body is like a flowing river, constantly changing. The physical body that you are using to sit on a chair and read this magazine is not the same physical body that you came into the room with a little while ago. When you take one deep breath you inhale 1022 atoms from the universe. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. It's an astronomical amount of raw material that comes into your body every time you breathe in. Every time you breathe out, you breathe out 1022 atoms that have their origin in every cell of your body. So, we are all intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time. I am breathing everything that's inside you and you are breathing everything that's inside me. We are actually exchanging atoms all the time.
It is possible today to compute the total number of atoms in the atmosphere on planet Earth. It's possible to compute what you are inhaling and exhaling in one breath. With a little more calculation, we can show beyond a shadow of doubt that right this moment you have in your physical body at least a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, or the Buddha, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden, or George Bush. You have a million atoms right now that have been in the body of every single being that has existed since the dawn of creation. In just the last three weeks a quadrillion atoms (quadrillion means ten followed by fifteen zeros) have gone through your body and they have gone through the body of every other living species on this planet. So think of anything in the ecosystem right now - think of a tree in Africa, think of a squirrel in Siberia, think of a peasant in China, think of a taxi-driver in Calcutta, think of a small child in Afghanistan - and you have raw material in your body that was circulating there only three weeks ago. In less than one year you replace ninety-eight per cent of all the atoms in your body.
At the atomic level you make a new liver every six weeks; a new skin once every five days; you replace your skeleton every three months; and you replace the raw material of your DNA every six weeks - it comes and goes like migratory birds. Your DNA contains the memories of millions of years of evolutionary time. That's what DNA is: DNA is the metabolism of experience. We metabolise our experience and we record it as DNA. DNA has metabolised the experience of your human ancestors, your animal ancestors and your microbial ancestors.
The insulin molecule in your body is the same as the insulin molecule not only in cows and pigs but in salmon and also in micro-organisms. What is insulin? Insulin is the knowledge of how to process sugar. That's what it is in the form of a molecule but it is actually knowledge and that knowledge comes through eons of time. Everything that we call a molecule is actually a physical expression of experience. So we metabolise experience, we record it in our bodies and then we transfer it to the next generation. And so our DNA remembers the memories and experiences; what we in the East call karma.
Karma is the accumulated experience of the past - it takes all that karma: your karma, your ancestors' karma, all the karma of creation, and then it passes it on - but the actual raw material of the DNA comes and goes every six weeks like migratory birds. So the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen is replacing itself every six weeks. If you have replaced your entire body down to the last atom in less than a year, you are certainly not your body. My body which I brought to England with me last year is gone: it's dead, it doesn't exist in this form any more; but it is everywhere else. It's circulating in other life forms; my physical body is recycled in the earth, the water, the air, and the planet is recycling itself incorporating my physical body. So what I call myself couldn't possibly be my physical body.
In one of his plays, Shakespeare says, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Shakespeare was a great seer. There is an Indian expression that says, "The body is just the place that our memories and our dreams call 'home' for the time being." We continually replace our bodies, and we know how we do it. So, if the physical expression is nothing other than memory and dreams, how do we reinterpret the memory and dream experience into the physical body? How do we exorcise the ghost of disease, because disease is actually a disordered dream state in consciousness that is manifesting in our body?
WHAT IF WE could see the body as it really is? What would we see? We would see first of all that it is made up of atoms, the atoms in turn are made up of subatomic particles, and these subatomic particles are not material things, but fluctuations of energy and information that are flickering in and out of an infinite void at the speed of light. If I could see my body as it really is, through quantum instruments, what I would see is that 99% of my body is empty space and that 1% that appears to be material is also empty space; that the whole thing is made out of nothing. As I go beyond the appearance of molecules, I enter a subatomic cloud, I go beyond the cloud, I end up with a handful of nothingness; and then the crucial question that scientists today are asking is, what is the nature of this emptiness from where we all come? Is it just a void or could it be the womb of creation? Is it possible that nature goes to exactly the same place to create a galaxy of stars, a cluster of nebulae, a rain forest, an ecosystem, a human body or a thought?
Do trees, galaxies, our bodies, the furniture and this thought all come from the same place? Because in the end, as we go beyond the flickering of electromagnetic phenomena, where photons are flickering in and out, what are they flickering in and out of? There is an emptiness from which they seem to appear, they hang on for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second and then they disappear whence they came. And it seems that everything that we call form and phenomena, that we call observer and observed, is all coming from the same place, including our own thoughts.
The world is a discontinuity, and every experience arises because of the discontinuity. So, what does discontinuity mean? Let me give you an example. If I go to see a movie I see on the screen a continuous picture, but when I go to the projection room I find out that there is a series of still frames with little spaces in between. If I move the reel fast enough, I cannot see the 'off': I can only see the 'on'; so I experience in consciousness a continuity. But the reality is that the movie is a discontinuity. When I see a television programme, I see an image moving from one part of the screen to another part of the screen, but nothing actually moves. Only electrons and photons flash in and out in a certain sequence, and because I cannot see the off, but I can only see the on, then I experience it as a continuity. Scientists believe that perception is possible because of this discontinuity. All the form and phenomena of the universe expresses this 'on-ing' and 'off-ing', and our senses are such that they can perceive the on and not the off. Yet without the off we would not experience the on.
As you are reading this, for a second, just turn your attention to who is reading. In that split second of shifting awareness, what you feel is a presence, don't you? As you are reading, you become aware of who is reading. Well, that presence is your soul. It's not your mind that might be saying, "Oh, I think I'll have a cup of coffee." There is a presence, and that presence is in the on/off of your thoughts: there is a thought flickering on and off and in that off there is a presence. In that presence thoughts come and they go. So a thought emerges, it hangs on for a fraction of a second, literally, and then it goes. Then of course through association it leads to another thought, and that comes and that goes. In that presence emotions come and go. In that presence the perceptions of the world come and go. In that presence the molecules of your body come and go. In that presence everything that happens comes and goes.
Only the presence remains, and in Eastern traditions we call that presence the ever-present witnessing awareness, or consciousness. And in Eastern traditions we also say that the window to that presence is in the space between your thoughts. And that presence is an ever-present witnessing awareness in which all comes and goes. So when you were a baby your body was different, your perceptions were different, your thoughts were different, your emotions were different, but they all happened in the presence that is there right now and was there at that time as well. When you were a teenager, everything was different, and when you are an old person, everything is different but the presence remains constant. This is your identity at the soul level in which everything else is transforming and changing its form and phenomena. If you hang on to this presence, it might be your ticket to freedom. This presence is the only thing that is real about you, and if you go a little deeper into this presence you will also recognise, not intellectually, maybe, but definitely at the level of experience, that this presence is beyond birth and death. That even birth and death are the on and off in the presence.
THERE IS NO life without consciousness - consciousness and life are one and the same. Life is synonymous with what we call spirit, consciousness, awareness and existence. For the last 300 years people have thought that consciousness was an epiphenomenon of physical matter. This 'reductionist' worldview says that if we can understand the behaviour of molecules then we will also understand that consciousness is an emergent property; that once molecules attain a certain degree of complexity in behaviour then from that, somehow, consciousness emerges.
This reductionist worldview can be explained in a very simple biological way: your pancreas makes pancreatic juice, your gallbladder makes bile, your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid, and your brain secretes consciousness. So your brain somehow manufactures consciousness in the same way that your stomach manufactures hydrochloric acid or your pancreas manufactures pancreatic juice. This reductionist model is used in science and medicine, but it is a very incomplete model. It is a flawed map of reality.
There are three methods by which we can understand reality. The first is through our senses: sound, touch, taste, sight and smell. We experience reality through the instruments of observation: the 'eyes of the flesh'. The second way that we understand reality is through the instrument that we call the mind: the 'eyes of the mind', metaphorically speaking. If I want to understand the theory of relativity I have to participate at least to some extent with the experiments that occurred in the mind of Einstein. If I want to understand quantum physics then also I have to have some idea of the mathematical concepts that occurred in the minds of scientists in the last century. If you look at the major revolution of the last century it is quantum physics and quantum mechanics and if you study the history of the emergence of that science you will see that this revolution actually occurred in people's minds. The observations came much later.
With that revolution came new technology. I have this amazing little gadget: it's a telephone with email and internet access. I could record a lecture on it, take photos or video on it, and send the information anywhere in the world. The information will go through walls, it will go through trees, it will bounce off a satellite in space, it will go through traffic jams, it will go through human bodies, and somebody anywhere in the world, in China or in India, can receive this information or watch the video.
This technology is based on a very fundamental premise in science: that the essential nature of the material world is that it is not material. Otherwise we wouldn't have this technology. We are able to surf the information highway on the internet because what we call the material world is really not material. This technology is a result of what we call the quantum revolution. It is the second way of examining reality.
There is a third way of examining reality that goes even deeper. Our sensory apparatus takes us to a very superficial level: this is a chair, that is a flower, that is a human being; and the quantum level takes us deeper into the mind of nature, making the world much more miraculous. So the eyes of the mind take us to a level which is a more wondrous than that seen through the eyes of the flesh. The third way of knowing reality is through the 'eyes of the soul', which take us much, much deeper into the nature of existence.
THERE IS A beautiful poem by the English visionary poet Blake:
We are led to believe a lieWhen we see with, and not through the eyeWhich was born in a night to perish in a night,When the soul slept in beams of light.
It's beautiful; but what is Blake saying? Why are we led to believe a lie when we see with the eye? What Blake is saying is what any student of perception will tell you today: we cannot rely on sensory observation alone to know the essential nature of reality. For the last 300 years, the whole basis of science has relied on our observational senses; but our senses are the least reliable test of what we call reality. My senses tell me that the ground I am sitting on is stationary and yet we know it is spinning at a dizzying speed, hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. My senses tell me that, from where I am standing, the Earth is flat. Nobody believes that any more. Even when I look at an object like a flower and perceive its colour or texture, this is not its essential quality. The eye cells of a honeybee do not perceive the same wavelengths of light that you and I perceive and so a bee will have a completely different range of experience of the flower, and will 'see' it in ultraviolet wavelengths. A bat will experience the flower as the echo of ultrasound. A chameleon's eyeballs swivel on two different axes so we can't even remotely imagine what a flower looks like to a chameleon!
So what is the essential nature of this flower? The answer depends on who is looking; it also depends on the instruments of observation. Our nervous systems are our main instruments of observation, and at a simplistic level our brains respond to neuron activity that translates into a binary code of electrical charges across cell membranes. So if I could look inside your brain and see what's happening I would see this vibrating electrical charge shifting from the outside to the inside of the cell membrane. How that becomes a flower, nobody knows.
Sir Arthur Eddington, a great scientists of the last century, said, "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." The more we start to understand perception, the more we don't understand it. Actually, this flower exists only in consciousness, and it exists in a place that is beyond space and time, and it exists 'as potential' before you observe it. There is no external world as such.
Everything that we call the universe, trees and stars and galaxies - everything that we observe as the external world - is a translation of bodily processes into binary codes of photons across cell membranes in neurons. That's why in the Ayurvedic tradition we say we are not in the world; the world is in us. We don't exist in the world; the world exists in us. We don't exist in the body; the body exists in us. We don't exist in the mind; the mind exists in us. We curve back within ourselves and create the mind, the body and the physical world. We manifest it. We are manufacturing everything: the mind, the body and the total universe. I am not speaking philosophically or talking about Eastern metaphysics - this is science.
LET'S LOOK AT our senses. My senses tell me first of all that my body is physical, anatomical and static. But in reality, the body seems anatomical to us through our senses; the body is like a flowing river, constantly changing. The physical body that you are using to sit on a chair and read this magazine is not the same physical body that you came into the room with a little while ago. When you take one deep breath you inhale 1022 atoms from the universe. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. It's an astronomical amount of raw material that comes into your body every time you breathe in. Every time you breathe out, you breathe out 1022 atoms that have their origin in every cell of your body. So, we are all intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time. I am breathing everything that's inside you and you are breathing everything that's inside me. We are actually exchanging atoms all the time.
It is possible today to compute the total number of atoms in the atmosphere on planet Earth. It's possible to compute what you are inhaling and exhaling in one breath. With a little more calculation, we can show beyond a shadow of doubt that right this moment you have in your physical body at least a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, or the Buddha, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden, or George Bush. You have a million atoms right now that have been in the body of every single being that has existed since the dawn of creation. In just the last three weeks a quadrillion atoms (quadrillion means ten followed by fifteen zeros) have gone through your body and they have gone through the body of every other living species on this planet. So think of anything in the ecosystem right now - think of a tree in Africa, think of a squirrel in Siberia, think of a peasant in China, think of a taxi-driver in Calcutta, think of a small child in Afghanistan - and you have raw material in your body that was circulating there only three weeks ago. In less than one year you replace ninety-eight per cent of all the atoms in your body.
At the atomic level you make a new liver every six weeks; a new skin once every five days; you replace your skeleton every three months; and you replace the raw material of your DNA every six weeks - it comes and goes like migratory birds. Your DNA contains the memories of millions of years of evolutionary time. That's what DNA is: DNA is the metabolism of experience. We metabolise our experience and we record it as DNA. DNA has metabolised the experience of your human ancestors, your animal ancestors and your microbial ancestors.
The insulin molecule in your body is the same as the insulin molecule not only in cows and pigs but in salmon and also in micro-organisms. What is insulin? Insulin is the knowledge of how to process sugar. That's what it is in the form of a molecule but it is actually knowledge and that knowledge comes through eons of time. Everything that we call a molecule is actually a physical expression of experience. So we metabolise experience, we record it in our bodies and then we transfer it to the next generation. And so our DNA remembers the memories and experiences; what we in the East call karma.
Karma is the accumulated experience of the past - it takes all that karma: your karma, your ancestors' karma, all the karma of creation, and then it passes it on - but the actual raw material of the DNA comes and goes every six weeks like migratory birds. So the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen is replacing itself every six weeks. If you have replaced your entire body down to the last atom in less than a year, you are certainly not your body. My body which I brought to England with me last year is gone: it's dead, it doesn't exist in this form any more; but it is everywhere else. It's circulating in other life forms; my physical body is recycled in the earth, the water, the air, and the planet is recycling itself incorporating my physical body. So what I call myself couldn't possibly be my physical body.
In one of his plays, Shakespeare says, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Shakespeare was a great seer. There is an Indian expression that says, "The body is just the place that our memories and our dreams call 'home' for the time being." We continually replace our bodies, and we know how we do it. So, if the physical expression is nothing other than memory and dreams, how do we reinterpret the memory and dream experience into the physical body? How do we exorcise the ghost of disease, because disease is actually a disordered dream state in consciousness that is manifesting in our body?
WHAT IF WE could see the body as it really is? What would we see? We would see first of all that it is made up of atoms, the atoms in turn are made up of subatomic particles, and these subatomic particles are not material things, but fluctuations of energy and information that are flickering in and out of an infinite void at the speed of light. If I could see my body as it really is, through quantum instruments, what I would see is that 99% of my body is empty space and that 1% that appears to be material is also empty space; that the whole thing is made out of nothing. As I go beyond the appearance of molecules, I enter a subatomic cloud, I go beyond the cloud, I end up with a handful of nothingness; and then the crucial question that scientists today are asking is, what is the nature of this emptiness from where we all come? Is it just a void or could it be the womb of creation? Is it possible that nature goes to exactly the same place to create a galaxy of stars, a cluster of nebulae, a rain forest, an ecosystem, a human body or a thought?
Do trees, galaxies, our bodies, the furniture and this thought all come from the same place? Because in the end, as we go beyond the flickering of electromagnetic phenomena, where photons are flickering in and out, what are they flickering in and out of? There is an emptiness from which they seem to appear, they hang on for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second and then they disappear whence they came. And it seems that everything that we call form and phenomena, that we call observer and observed, is all coming from the same place, including our own thoughts.
The world is a discontinuity, and every experience arises because of the discontinuity. So, what does discontinuity mean? Let me give you an example. If I go to see a movie I see on the screen a continuous picture, but when I go to the projection room I find out that there is a series of still frames with little spaces in between. If I move the reel fast enough, I cannot see the 'off': I can only see the 'on'; so I experience in consciousness a continuity. But the reality is that the movie is a discontinuity. When I see a television programme, I see an image moving from one part of the screen to another part of the screen, but nothing actually moves. Only electrons and photons flash in and out in a certain sequence, and because I cannot see the off, but I can only see the on, then I experience it as a continuity. Scientists believe that perception is possible because of this discontinuity. All the form and phenomena of the universe expresses this 'on-ing' and 'off-ing', and our senses are such that they can perceive the on and not the off. Yet without the off we would not experience the on.
As you are reading this, for a second, just turn your attention to who is reading. In that split second of shifting awareness, what you feel is a presence, don't you? As you are reading, you become aware of who is reading. Well, that presence is your soul. It's not your mind that might be saying, "Oh, I think I'll have a cup of coffee." There is a presence, and that presence is in the on/off of your thoughts: there is a thought flickering on and off and in that off there is a presence. In that presence thoughts come and they go. So a thought emerges, it hangs on for a fraction of a second, literally, and then it goes. Then of course through association it leads to another thought, and that comes and that goes. In that presence emotions come and go. In that presence the perceptions of the world come and go. In that presence the molecules of your body come and go. In that presence everything that happens comes and goes.
Only the presence remains, and in Eastern traditions we call that presence the ever-present witnessing awareness, or consciousness. And in Eastern traditions we also say that the window to that presence is in the space between your thoughts. And that presence is an ever-present witnessing awareness in which all comes and goes. So when you were a baby your body was different, your perceptions were different, your thoughts were different, your emotions were different, but they all happened in the presence that is there right now and was there at that time as well. When you were a teenager, everything was different, and when you are an old person, everything is different but the presence remains constant. This is your identity at the soul level in which everything else is transforming and changing its form and phenomena. If you hang on to this presence, it might be your ticket to freedom. This presence is the only thing that is real about you, and if you go a little deeper into this presence you will also recognise, not intellectually, maybe, but definitely at the level of experience, that this presence is beyond birth and death. That even birth and death are the on and off in the presence.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The demise of scientific duality
MUKUL SHARMA
FOR a long time, 19th and early 20th century science used to be uneasy about their antecedents. Its precursors — those who developed the infrastructure and backbone of empirical enquiry — either derived from pagan elements and culture or, like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and right up to the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, were all deeply devout Christians. Thus there was this huge scientific sigh of relief when the likes of a Darwin finally cleaved the divine away from the data and established a tradition that culminated in theories of relativity and the foundation of the new physics. Anyway, then along came the behavioural sciences and neurology and upset the applecart all over again. Earlier, psychology had just about been tolerated as one of those wannabe disciplines that had gone soft in the head for dealing with unscientific stuff like emotions, memories, dreams and other subjective phenomena. In fact the neurosciences too were considered okay only till such time as they dealt with something tangible such as the brain and regarded everything like mind and consciousness as merely an emergent property or a function of its complexity. But when it began investigating the effects of this airy-fairy artefact back on the brain, the scientific mind boggled. How could an epiphenomenon have a feedback loop to its origin? Yet meditation, for example, appeared to work in reverse, in the sense that there was neuronal activity associated with it and, in many cases, as part of the restructuring pattern of the brain. This was unbelievable because in western philosophies of the mind, epiphenomenalism is of the view that mental events are caused by physical precedents and cannot themselves instigate anything material. Not only that, now the cognitive sciences had to deal with the next episode — transcendent consciousness! Would scientific inquiry have to investigate enlightenment after this or what? In his book The Universe in a Single Atom the Dalai Lama wrote, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” Science should accept the same thing in reverse. Or as the Buddha said: “Don’t take my statements to be true simply out of reverence for me. But rather, put them to the test.”
FOR a long time, 19th and early 20th century science used to be uneasy about their antecedents. Its precursors — those who developed the infrastructure and backbone of empirical enquiry — either derived from pagan elements and culture or, like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and right up to the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, were all deeply devout Christians. Thus there was this huge scientific sigh of relief when the likes of a Darwin finally cleaved the divine away from the data and established a tradition that culminated in theories of relativity and the foundation of the new physics. Anyway, then along came the behavioural sciences and neurology and upset the applecart all over again. Earlier, psychology had just about been tolerated as one of those wannabe disciplines that had gone soft in the head for dealing with unscientific stuff like emotions, memories, dreams and other subjective phenomena. In fact the neurosciences too were considered okay only till such time as they dealt with something tangible such as the brain and regarded everything like mind and consciousness as merely an emergent property or a function of its complexity. But when it began investigating the effects of this airy-fairy artefact back on the brain, the scientific mind boggled. How could an epiphenomenon have a feedback loop to its origin? Yet meditation, for example, appeared to work in reverse, in the sense that there was neuronal activity associated with it and, in many cases, as part of the restructuring pattern of the brain. This was unbelievable because in western philosophies of the mind, epiphenomenalism is of the view that mental events are caused by physical precedents and cannot themselves instigate anything material. Not only that, now the cognitive sciences had to deal with the next episode — transcendent consciousness! Would scientific inquiry have to investigate enlightenment after this or what? In his book The Universe in a Single Atom the Dalai Lama wrote, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” Science should accept the same thing in reverse. Or as the Buddha said: “Don’t take my statements to be true simply out of reverence for me. But rather, put them to the test.”
Look East Policy To Experience The Light
Janina Gomes
Keep looking to the east till the sun rises again. Those who look to the west will never see the sun rise. Similarly, we habitually look at and preoccupy ourselves with the negative. We all flee God in countless ways. We flee him along the labyrinthian paths of our own mind. We choose the path of least resistance. We seek easy accolades and flowers. We like to dwell in gracious fields where everything seems to flow with the even tide. How easy it is to be one of a crowd, to move and follow the direction they all seem to take. Yet God seems to point another way, the path not frequently trod. There, one might often walk in darkness. Few would like to accompany us on such a path. There are few lamp posts along the way. The sun may be enveloped by fog. We may have to peer through the darkness to catch the shafts of light that strain in. Darkness is personal, it is also social. It sets off a chain of hatefilled living that stirs up the unnatural. It pits people against each other. It uproots giant trees set up by culture and civilisation. Like a relentless roadroller, it crushes what is beneath. That is what it means metaphorically, when we say look west. Another chain operates, driven by the power and grace of God. The light it radiates is another kind of light. It is light that heals, patches up differences, protects the innocent,it creates new communities and recreates the earth. Like the child learning to walk, we learn to step out in faith. God holds out an inviting hand. He steadies us when we stumble. He throws a veil of protection around us when we are hedged and hemmed in by the darkness. The master weaver weaves, creating patterns that we are slow to see and understand. When we look towards the east we see the first signs of the earth rising to a new day. We breathe in the salmon and pink streaks that light the sky and the freshness of the morning. The whole of creation which seemed to be hurtling relentlessly to an early death comes alive. We know deep down that we are loved and protected. The nights are no longer heralds of darkness. They are a prelude to light. Looking east calls for hope. Hope that someday things will change. We will not be like herded cattle that sometimes stampede each other. We will trust once again. We will welcome what is yet to be born — a world not shaped by hatred and revenge, but of true human solidarity that deep down we all long for. Perhaps we have forgotten that creation was meant to be about sisterhood and brotherhood, about loving and caring. New life born from the old is always fresh and gentle to the touch. We can catch it not only in the warmth of an infant’s eyes, the shaking hands of the infirm, the mellow quietness of the old who are content with life, but also in the movement of people and nations walking towards a better life, the noise of traffic, the hustle and bustle of the city, the slow working of a village life. Those who make the effort to look east — instead of following the crowd — find the struggle was worth the trouble taken. A new day begins. The sun rises once again. Creation turns around. For those who have no Master, the flowers are attraction enough. Those for whom God is all in all, the darkness is only a prelude to the dawn. Keep looking to the east till the sun rises again.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Truth and beauty through meditation
K VIJAYARAGHAVAN
MEDITATION that works in real life through its cleansing impact upon all accumulated opinions, prejudices, notions and perceptions opens the mind to see matters and things as they truly are. This is the working of the ancient Sanskrit prayer seeking to be cleansed of ignorance by the instrument of true knowledge. When truth dawns, things and issues also assume a different meaning and appearance. Integrating oneself with the wide and vast world of men and matter and with the breaking of one’s narrow world and his own sense of ego and self righteousness, the aspirant observes to his sheer delight the practical working of these words of Norman Vincent Peale: “When people get rid of fear, anxiety and self-centredness, they develop a kind of ecstatic joy and delight in living. The world seems so different and newly wonderful that they tend to love everybody and everything.” This is also the translation into actual reality of John Keats’ concept: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Indeed, there comes about a ‘paradigm shift’ in all aspects! Truly, relaxation confers an altered state of perception. In this state of harmony of all things within and without, subtle and sublime messages spring to real life. These further soothe, gladden and enrich the inner spirit, adding to the quality of meditation within. This process further inspires the mind to absorb fully the spirit of sublime exhortations, which abound all over — a virtuous cycle indeed! This is the working concept of the Rig Vedic prayer, “May noble thoughts come to us from all over” and that of the Biblical exhortation (Philippians, 4, 8): “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely…. think on these things.” It is also in this state of inner power that acceptance and faith take over where doubts, grudges and anxieties had been. Even the apparently stressful, trying and difficult past would assume a new dimension — storehouse of didactic experiences, like adversity, which, “like the toad though ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head”. In this state of clarity, the natural outcome of simple and true meditation, sublime messages, benefits of inspiring company and every aspect of life and living — these become endearingly and enduringly rooted to the spirit. Naturally, these flower forth for the benefit of oneself and all others too!
MEDITATION that works in real life through its cleansing impact upon all accumulated opinions, prejudices, notions and perceptions opens the mind to see matters and things as they truly are. This is the working of the ancient Sanskrit prayer seeking to be cleansed of ignorance by the instrument of true knowledge. When truth dawns, things and issues also assume a different meaning and appearance. Integrating oneself with the wide and vast world of men and matter and with the breaking of one’s narrow world and his own sense of ego and self righteousness, the aspirant observes to his sheer delight the practical working of these words of Norman Vincent Peale: “When people get rid of fear, anxiety and self-centredness, they develop a kind of ecstatic joy and delight in living. The world seems so different and newly wonderful that they tend to love everybody and everything.” This is also the translation into actual reality of John Keats’ concept: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Indeed, there comes about a ‘paradigm shift’ in all aspects! Truly, relaxation confers an altered state of perception. In this state of harmony of all things within and without, subtle and sublime messages spring to real life. These further soothe, gladden and enrich the inner spirit, adding to the quality of meditation within. This process further inspires the mind to absorb fully the spirit of sublime exhortations, which abound all over — a virtuous cycle indeed! This is the working concept of the Rig Vedic prayer, “May noble thoughts come to us from all over” and that of the Biblical exhortation (Philippians, 4, 8): “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely…. think on these things.” It is also in this state of inner power that acceptance and faith take over where doubts, grudges and anxieties had been. Even the apparently stressful, trying and difficult past would assume a new dimension — storehouse of didactic experiences, like adversity, which, “like the toad though ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head”. In this state of clarity, the natural outcome of simple and true meditation, sublime messages, benefits of inspiring company and every aspect of life and living — these become endearingly and enduringly rooted to the spirit. Naturally, these flower forth for the benefit of oneself and all others too!
Overcome The Cycle Of Birth And Death
Avatar Meher Baba
The series of incarnations the soul is impelled to take through karmic determination have a tendency to become endless. Through innumerable lives an individual has come into contact with countless persons and had all kinds of dealings of give and take with them. He is entangled in a web consisting of debts to pay and dues to recover. According to karmic law, he can avoid neither debts nor dues, since both are the outcome of karma inspired by desire. He keeps incarnating in order to pay off his debts and to recover his dues; but even when he means to clear up the account, often he is unable to do so. The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence, which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfilment of cravings that the ego-mind keeps on incarnating itself. When all forms of craving disappear, the impressions that create and enliven the ego-mind disappear. With the disappearance of these impressions, the egomind itself is shed. Then there is only the realisation of the one eternal, unchanging Oversoul, the only Reality. God-realisation is the end of incarnations of ego-mind because it is the end of its very existence. The spinning of the yarn of karmic debts and dues would be endless if there were no provision for getting out of the karmic entanglements through the help of a Perfect Master. He can not only initiate an aspirant into the supreme art of non-binding karma, but can become directly instrumental in freeing him from his karma. If a person must get bound to someone, it is best for him to get bound to God or a Master, because this facilitates emancipation from all other karmic ties. When the good karma of past lives has secured for the aspirant the benefit of having a Master, the best thing he can do is to surrender himself to the Master and to serve him. The aspirant throws the burden of his karma on the Master, who has to find ways of freeing him from it. The master-disciple relationship is often carried forward from one life to another. Those who had gurus in past lives are drawn to him by an unconscious magnetism, not knowing why they are thus drawn. Treading the spiritual path continues for several incarnations before the aspirant attains the goal. The life of the reincarnate has many events and phases. The wheel of life makes its ceaseless rounds, lifting the individual to the heights or bringing him down from high positions. It contributes to the enrichment of his experience. Ideals left unattained in one life are pursued in the next; things left undone are finished; rough edges left by incomplete endeavour are rounded off; wrongs are set right. At last, out of the ripeness of experience and through the dissolution of the ego-mind, the soul enters into the unity of divine life. Then there is neither bondage of giving nor taking, because the soul has completely transcended the consciousness of separateness or duality.
The series of incarnations the soul is impelled to take through karmic determination have a tendency to become endless. Through innumerable lives an individual has come into contact with countless persons and had all kinds of dealings of give and take with them. He is entangled in a web consisting of debts to pay and dues to recover. According to karmic law, he can avoid neither debts nor dues, since both are the outcome of karma inspired by desire. He keeps incarnating in order to pay off his debts and to recover his dues; but even when he means to clear up the account, often he is unable to do so. The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for separate existence, which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfilment of cravings that the ego-mind keeps on incarnating itself. When all forms of craving disappear, the impressions that create and enliven the ego-mind disappear. With the disappearance of these impressions, the egomind itself is shed. Then there is only the realisation of the one eternal, unchanging Oversoul, the only Reality. God-realisation is the end of incarnations of ego-mind because it is the end of its very existence. The spinning of the yarn of karmic debts and dues would be endless if there were no provision for getting out of the karmic entanglements through the help of a Perfect Master. He can not only initiate an aspirant into the supreme art of non-binding karma, but can become directly instrumental in freeing him from his karma. If a person must get bound to someone, it is best for him to get bound to God or a Master, because this facilitates emancipation from all other karmic ties. When the good karma of past lives has secured for the aspirant the benefit of having a Master, the best thing he can do is to surrender himself to the Master and to serve him. The aspirant throws the burden of his karma on the Master, who has to find ways of freeing him from it. The master-disciple relationship is often carried forward from one life to another. Those who had gurus in past lives are drawn to him by an unconscious magnetism, not knowing why they are thus drawn. Treading the spiritual path continues for several incarnations before the aspirant attains the goal. The life of the reincarnate has many events and phases. The wheel of life makes its ceaseless rounds, lifting the individual to the heights or bringing him down from high positions. It contributes to the enrichment of his experience. Ideals left unattained in one life are pursued in the next; things left undone are finished; rough edges left by incomplete endeavour are rounded off; wrongs are set right. At last, out of the ripeness of experience and through the dissolution of the ego-mind, the soul enters into the unity of divine life. Then there is neither bondage of giving nor taking, because the soul has completely transcended the consciousness of separateness or duality.
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