A blog on understanding your 'self' – and for lovers and teachers of interfaith as inter-spiritual living. It's an ongoing stream of interspiritual Nondual & interfaith resources for realizing happiness by finding our way home to our true Self.
Dr. Peter Adamson writesHEREabout Avicenna that the most famous of his thought experiments; is the so-called ‘flying man’ thought experiment, devised by the most influential philosopher of the Islamic world, Avicenna (in Arabic, Ibn Sīnā, who lived from 980 to 1037 CE). Imagine, he says, that a person is created by God in mid-air, in good condition but with his sight veiled and his limbs outstretched so that he is touching nothing, not even his own body. This person has no memories, having only just been created. Will his mind be a blank, devoid as it is of past or present sensory experience? No, says Avicenna. He will be aware of his own existence…….
….is Avicenna right that the ‘flying man’ would be self-aware? Well, it’s important to realise that Avicenna does not attempt to argue that the flying man would know that he exists. Rather, he takes it as obvious. In one version, he even tells readers that we should imagine ourselves being so created. If we put ourselves in the flying man’s dangling shoes, we should just see that we would be self-aware. Indeed, this turns out to be a fundamental idea in Avicenna’s philosophy. He thinks that we are all always self-aware, even when we’re asleep or focusing hard on something other than ourselves. Paradoxically, we’re often not aware of being self-aware: it is the non-interruptive background music of human psychology, something we notice only when our attention is called to it, a pre-reflective awareness of self. The flying man thought experiment is itself one way to call attention to this self-awareness: Avicenna calls it a tanbīh, meaning a ‘pointer’ to something. -0-
My, Roger’s, sense is that our personal awareness is limited but ceases to be limited proportionate to how far we lose our egoic self and come to rest as Awareness which, since it is not composed cannot de-compose, must therefore be eternal. As Nondual teachings including Advaita Vedanta teach take away everything, arms legs, status, personality, qualities etc what is left of you or me? Answer = Awareness.
See Prof Deikman’s ‘I = Awareness HERE http://www.deikman.com/awareness.html
under the heading of ‘A Tour of Advaita via the Books of Dennis Waite’
As a summary of advaita some may find it useful;
Summary
• Advaita uses various methods (prakriyA-s) to analyze topics about which we have mistaken beliefs in order to reveal our errors and to demonstrate that there is only Brahman.
• The method of discriminating between who we are (the seer) and what we are not (the seen – body, mind etc.) is called dRRigdRRiSya- viveka.
• Who we really are – Brahman – is beyond description and immaculate.
• The body is nothing more than the food we have eaten, yet we worry about its comfort, aging and death.
• Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the mind. Everything “appears” in Consciousness.
• We do not “think” thoughts – they arise and we witness them.
• The mind assumes the power of Consciousness in the way that an iron ball in the fire becomes hot.
• Attachment to emotions occurs similarly and we must cultivate dispassion (vairAgya). Peace is beyond all emotions.
• The ego is a construction of concepts and its power is destroyed once the truth is understood. This is the basis of “Self-enquiry.”
• ahaMkAra is the process by which we identify with ideas, emotions, roles etc. All disappear in sleep so we cannot be them.
• Neither are we the mask of a “person.” We are the changeless “I am,” the essence of the changing forms.
• The sheath model (pa~ncha-kosha-prakriyA) is used to illustrate the various levels of identification.
• The true Self has nothing to do with the body and mind etc, just as the moon has nothing to do with the bough of the tree on which it appears to rest.
• We are constantly lured by the form and miss the essence.
• Everything transient is first rejected (neti, neti) in order to discover who we truly are, the eternal unchanging. It is then realized that the changing, too, is none other than the non-dual Self.
• Just as dreams are seen to have been nothing but the mind itself on awakening, so the world is seen to be the Self on enlightenment.
• If it can be spoken of, I am not that. Truth is beyond language, which is necessarily in duality. I am the eternal subject. Reality is self-evident.
ECKHART TOLLE – THE PAIN BODY – A TRANSCRIPTION FROM HERE –
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It goes deeper than that and we are not running away from the fact that in you there lives a field of residue of past Human pain.
On a personal level, pain from childhood that leaves residues, Energetic residues….different things painful things have happened to you in your childhood and of course far beyond that in time. But lets just talk from the level of your present existence in this form.
The pain that is carried over from your childhood and beyond and leaves residues …doesn’t go away completely, it leaves residues of pain, Energy fields, everything is Energy. And then those Energy Fields get together, because they feel, they vibrate at the same frequency. So emotional pain gathers into one mass of pain, contracted Energy, that is not flowing freely. An energy that I call the “Pain Body”, that humans carry inside them.
An energy field of pain. And if you don’t recognize that, no matter how much Spiritual Practice you do and even what we are doing here if you do not see, if you do not recognize how the Pain Body operates, it will trick every time and you will lose consciousness through it.
First we realize “there is an Energy Field of pain in me”, that may manifest either as turbulence, anger, heaviness, depression, tightness, fear. Whatever way it manifests its not pleasant its painful its past pain but very much alive still.
You carry it inside. But you are not always conscious of it and I talk about it briefly in one Chapter of the book, so we go a little bit more deeply now, and now that the added Energy of Presence that we take into the Pain Body.
The Pain Body is sometimes dormant and sometimes active. It becomes active when you suddenly feel it very strongly, when it needs to feed on further experience of pain. As it always has to do regularly like, it’s a little entity almost, it needs Feeding, temporarily on the experience of further pain, and you will know this has happened when a relatively insignificant trigger produces an Incredible outburst, reaction of Pain. A minor thing goes wrong or somebody say something, or your partner says something or does something and there is suddenly a deep or even a thought come in, and suddenly it serves as a trigger for an immense, the arising of deep emotional pain.
At that moment the Pain Body this Energy Field has come up out of its dormant state, it is ready to feed on more Pain.
I haven’t put it that clearly in the First Book I will explain it in the next book (Laughter)
There are two ways in which it feeds, because that is all it can feed on .Pain Body consists of that energy of pain its needs (ET says) “please where can I get more Pain”.
It feed on your thoughts, when it’s ready to rise up, it will control your thinking, it rises into the mind and your mind, which is your thought activity, because with the Pain Body every thought you think is destructive and painful.
And the Pain Body loves it!!! It gobbles up the Energy of every thought that you think every destructive and deeply negative thought, it eats it up, so to speak, (ET makes chomping sounds while all laugh) And it’s having a Good Time! It’s feeding and, at that moment, one way of putting it is, one could say “the addictive quality of Human Pain”. Addictive because it loves it’s pain.
When the Pain Body has taken you over and has succeeded in pretending that that’s ‘Who you are‘, all your thinking is completely aligned with it. And it’s feeding on it. At that very moment the last thing you want is to be free of pain. At that moment pain IS what you want because at that moment, You are the Pain Body.
And if I came into your life at that moment and gave you this message, “that Life free from Pain IS possible” You would hit me over the Head!!! (Laughter). Because the Pain Body would be there and I would be talking to the Pain Body and the Pain Body would be talking back at me.
So the pain body needs to come in periodically and we all have experienced it with partners now the pain body will use you thinking, it will feed on you negative and destructive thinking.
How long the feeding time lasts of any particular pain body varies greatly from person to person, I could be a brief one, it could be an hour or two; some pain bodies have a feeding time of several weeks, even months. That is the extreme and in very extreme cases there are some pain bodies that have virtually no dormant stage that are continuously feeding and active.
But that’s more rare but you sometimes meet people and the pain body is looking at you through their eyes and they are waiting for an excuse to have more. They want you to give them a painful reaction. They want you to be angry with them; they want you to attack them. That’s people totally possessed by the Pain Body.
So Level One: the pain body feeds on your thinking. Level Two: The pain body feeds on the feedback of the emotional pain from other people
So it might not only use your own thinking it might even predominantly use somebody else’s reactions. So the Pain Body feeds on thinking. The Pain Body feeding on others reactions. Now I mentioned last night the “unhappy me” a mind pattern that people are identified with an unhappy sense of self. This mind pattern, when the pain is active it becomes amplified, the Energy of the Unhappy me when the Pain Body moves into that mind pattern that already is telling you “your life has not been good enough” and so on and you may not make it, “life has passed me by”, and so on.
Now the Pain Body moves into that mind pattern and its Energy gets amplified, 10 times, 20 times, 50 times, 100 times in other words the “unhappy me”; the Pain Body arises, it flows into that mind structure, the emotion flows into that mind structure, the Unhappy sense of me becomes dreadfully Unhappy and Loves it’s Unhappiness because that’s what it consists of.
Now it is not a foreign body, which lives in you. There is nothing that is not Life Energy.
Even your pain body is life Energy except it is not flowing freely. It’s got stuck somewhere.
And when Energy gets stuck and cannot flow freely pain arise like a river. If a river cannot flow the water accumulates and pressure accumulates. But really it’s beautiful Life Energy.
The water is still beautiful there is pressure accumulating, inside. That’s what the pain body is. Now, as we bright Presence, this consciousness in o the Pain Body, it can no longer fool you into completely identifying with it.
The presence, as the pain arises, from now on, and many of you are already practicing that. The Pain body comes up and at that moment you will recognize it as the Pain Body. That is the Beginning of Freedom from it. The recognition, when it comes, slight trigger, provocation, even a thought, deep Pain arises, in whatever form, in some people it is a very active pain, active aggressive pain, in other persons it is a Passive form of Pain, “poor little me” victim pain, does not matter which, pain bodies have different qualities in different people.
It maybe turbulence or tightness or constriction, it does not matter what it is. As it arises you will know there is a witnessing presence, and you watch.
Where is the pain body and where do you feel the energy field of it?
In your body.
You can feel it in the solar plexus or stomach area, as a dreadful sense of heaviness.
Some people perceive it as a big hole, a gaping hole inside. Or intense anger.
But whatever it is you watch it, this is why it is so helpful, you sitting here witnessing, is witnessing Presence which is part of this new state of consciousness. It gets so much strengthened by sitting in this Energy Field.
So the Watcher will be there watching the pain so the pain can not use your mind anymore it can not feed on your thinking because you are watching it directly it cannot creep into your mind and then become an “unhappy me”.
All that’s left of the pain is an energy field of turbulence, or a heavy feeling inside you.
But the pain has not become an “unhappy me” a sense of self, of who you are. That’s the beginning of the end of the pain. But our practice is allowing “what is” to be. And that also applies as long as the Pain Body it there in you allowing the Pain that is there in you Also to be. That is a very powerful practice.
So I am not saying, we are not fighting the pain we are not even trying to get rid of it. You bring the consciousness, which is a very compassionate state of allowing “what is”. It is a very powerful state it implies you are Present. As the one who is able to allow.
You are the one who is able to allow the pain to be. You know you are not creating this pain at this moment because you are practicing accepting “what is”. So it is not pain you are creating, it is old pain. You bring the “acceptance” to the old pain.
TAGS: eckhart tolle, consciousness, liberation, freedom, awakening, pain body, you are not your thoughts, healing, energy, spirit,
When the mote turns in the light: A 10 STEP Barthesian course on Street Photography
Sub-title: 31 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS ABOUT (STREET) PHOTOGRAPHY
DERIVED FROM ROLAND BARTHES’ BOOK CAMERA LUCIDA
inspired by the annotation by Kasia Houlihan (University of Chicago)
Roger Prentice Ph.D., MA (ACE), B. Ed. (Hons)
1st draft 4th Dec 2011
INTRODUCTION
Although my practice of photography is still at a beginning stage I want to keep up an old habit – that of theorizing my practice and practicing my theory. On the theory side as a starting point I have gone for ‘the big one’ Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.
Barthes’ book Camera Lucida: reflections on photography is more like literature than an academic text. Indeed its very purpose is to get us to function in a ‘heart-centred’ way, instead of via left-brain classification and logic-chopping. It is even more like a Zen master’s pointings or teachings. It is profoundly intuitive and insightful about photography in relation to the inner life of being human. It is not in any conventional sense subjective – it is about the very opposite the state of transcending the ego and ironically, given its arguments, it is about living transcendentally in the now.
Camera Lucida provides answers for an enormous range of problems, not just to understanding the true nature of photography. In particular it is staggeringly insightful about what it is to be human, in the world with others (and the memories of them) and the exquisite place the art of photography can play in deepening our realization of our true selves.
I have taken as a starting point Kasia Houlihan’s excellent summary/annotation to be found HERE The four sections relate to the 4 paragraphs in Kasia’s original summary/annotation. To Kasia I will be eternally grateful because it enabled me to stop wandering around in a desert of unmanageable responses to Camera Lucida – and it saved me from the temptation to dive in to the very large pools of academic writing about Camera Lucida – where I would probably have developed unbearable head-hurt and eventually drowned. Including the 10 Step course this is a framework for further development.
The area of photography that grips me currently is Street Photography. I discovered the truth in Camera Lucida two ways a) by doing street photography, however modest my achievements to date and b) through all the work that went into my doctorate – see HERE .
For serious students therefore I suggest the following 10 steps;
1) start taking photographs and keep up the practice between every one of the other steps listed here – & get as much feedback as possible.
2) look at photographs a lot – yours, your family’s and those of great photographers,
3) read Camera Lucida, don’t worry about understanding
4) read Kasia Houlihan’s original summary/annotation to be found HERE and this piece (in development) which was inspired by it.
5) read or re-read this listing of 31 major ideas,
6) read articles about street photography – there are a range of starting points – HERE
7) read at least the summaries of my doctorate HERE or work out your own understanding of the human spirit
8) do even more photography
9) read every poem and other literature you can find about photos & photography, look at every painting & dance about light etc. Link photography to transcendent spirituality if you will – there’s a ‘course-on-a-page HERE
10) then and only then read the academic literature on Camera Lucida and Barthes!
Whatever is true here about photography is also true about street photography – in fact I would say it is especially true about street photography. I intend to write other articles about how this incisive, manageable way into Camera Lucida relates to street photography, to art generally, to spirituality and so on.
SECTION 1
1 The book Camera Lucida sets out to determine a new way of looking at photography.
2 Camera Lucida is about a new consciousness – by way of photography.
3 Barthes seeks a new way of reading and valuing photographs – an altogether customized framework.
4 Barthes’ framework is to be distinct from all existing accounts of classifying photographs.
5 He wants to deal with photographs so as to get at the essence or noeme of photography.
6 Barthes says that he wants, ‘a History of Looking’. (RP don’t know what is meant but 26e below might be the answer)
7a In his search Barthes attempts to account for the fundamental roles of emotion and subjectivity
7b in i) the experience of and ii) accounting for Photography.
8 Subjective experience of photography (I would say creating as well as reading) has an essential nature—or eidos
9 The essential nature of a photograph is as an index indicating, ‘that-has-been.’
SECTION 2
10 Photography is set apart from all other forms of representation.
11 Previously established ways of classification etc are ‘disordered’ (because they fail to work with the essential nature of photography.)
12 Consequently it is unclassifiable (I suppose compared to say genre classification in film).
13 We need to hold to the fact that ‘the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially’.
14 The essence is the event,
15 The event is ‘that which is never transcended for the sake of something else.’
16 In other words, the photograph is never distinguished from its referent—that which it represents;
17 ‘it simply is what it is’ (I, RP, wonder if this means, “It is what it is because it is indissolubly linked to that which it represents?)”
18 This is illustrated by the fact that one says ‘this is me’ when showing someone a photographic image of oneself, as opposed to ‘this is a picture of me.’
19 When we look at a photograph, it is not the actual photo that we see, for the photograph itself is rendered invisible; (presumably because we see what the photo is a referent of – or see what we are)
20 Consequently the photograph is unclassifiable,
21 Why? – because it resists language, as it is without signs or marks—it simply is. (This is comparable to Lacan’s version of the Real.)
22 Furthermore, the subject that is photographed is rendered object, dispossessed of itself.
23 Consequently it becomes ‘Death in person.’
SECTION 3
24 In his personal—subjective—examination of multiple photographs, Barthes proceeded to note a duality that was characteristic of certain photographs: a ‘co-presence of two discontinuous elements’—what he terms, the studium and the punctum.
25a The studium refers to the range of meanings available and obvious to everyone (RP because we are taught by the culture and society of which we are part).
25b The studium part of these photographs is unary and coded, – the former term implying that the image is a unified and self-contained whole
25c The unary meaning of the studium can be taken in at a glance (without effort, or ‘thinking’).
25d The latter (THE CODING) implies that the pictorial space is ordered in a universal, comprehensible way.
25e The studium speaks of the interest which we show in a photograph,
25f the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph,
25g to explore the relationship between the meanings and our own subjectivities.
26a The punctum (a Latin word derived from the Greek word for trauma) on the other hand inspires an intensely private meaning,
26b one that is suddenly, unexpectedly recognized and consequently remembered
26c It “shoots out of [the photograph] like an arrow and pierces me”.
26d It ‘escapes’ language (like Lacan’s real); it is not easily communicable through/with language.
26e The punctum is ‘historical’ as an experience of the irrefutable indexicality of the photograph (its contingency upon a referent).
26f The punctum is a detail or “partial object” that attracts and holds the viewer’s (the Spectator’s) gaze;
26g it pricks or wounds the observer.
SECTION 4
27a The ambiguity of the book’s title lends itself to the many levels on which the text addresses media theory.
27b This ranges from the very materiality of the photographic medium itself
27c to its grander implications for human consciousness in the pursuit of truth.
28a In his efforts to divorce photography from realms of analysis that deny or obscure its essence, Barthes ultimately formulates a new science of photography
28b It is an original framework in which photography steps beyond the shackles of classification and such terms as ‘art,’ ‘technique,’ etc. and, thus,
29a It draws upon an ‘absolute subjectivity’
29b This absolute subjectivity exceeds the normal boundaries of the everyday by moving the activity of viewing from a transparent relationship of meaning and expression to a level in which meaning seems to be there without the presence of subjectivity.
29c It is as if the photograph brings out the unconscious;
29d it also represents the unconscious, while at the same time, it denies all of these relations of meaning.
29e The photograph allows for the sight of self,
29f not as a mirror but as an access point into a definition of identity—
29g but identity associated with consciousness,
29h thus housing a whole;
30a it is in the photograph ‘where being coincides with self,’ (109)
30b It is ‘true being, not resemblance.’
31a The photographer, (is) a mediator,
31b S/he is one who (RP potentially & for themselves) supplies the transparent soul its clear shadow,
31c S/he reveals the soul’s value and not its mere identity (110);
31d the photographer, ‘makes permanent the truth.’
MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION
Camera Lucida is more like a revelation, a spiritual text, than a piece of academic writing. I have no no doubt that it’s a work of intuitive, soul-searching genius. It tells us nothing about the mechanics and technique of photography. It tells us everything about the nature of being human, in which photographs are a gateway to reading our soul.
We (should) read photographs as we are asked to read the text of the self – with the whole of our consciousness and with truth, beauty, goodness and justice.
As Barthes shows himself, and us, the defining characteristic of photographs (at least the personally affecting ones) is that they show us ‘that which has been’. They are embodiments of memories. As such they elicit powerful emotions and as such they tell us who we are, which is why when that part of the brain which enables memories is damaged people no longer know who they are, or who people close to them are. In normal health however we can only have a healthy life-supporting relationship with memories, and photographs, if we live reasonably successfully in the now. Living in the now is the only way we can healthily experience ‘that which has been’.
All photographs are self-portraits. In all creating of, and viewing of, photographs we are searching. For ourselves, for our love, for that mysterious Whole of which we each are an infinitesimally small part.
We, and our photographs, are each the mote that the ray of light makes visible. Through them we enter the lucidly lit room.
For me in our ‘plucking from the flow’ the photographs that come to us it is not so much the ‘collecting of souls’, as Thomas Leuthard suggests, but is the embodiment of spirit caught when the mote turns in the light. That for me is my street, and its flow of (human) spirit, in that genre we call street photography.
Photo: Roger Prentice
END
GLOSSARY 1 WikiPedia Indexicality an indexical behaviour or utterance points to (or indicates) some state of affairs…….. Social indexicality in the human realm has been regarded as including any sign (clothing, speech variety, table manners) that points to, and helps create, social identity.
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Photography, street photography, rogerprentice, roger prentice street photography, photography course, Henri Cartier-Bresson, p
Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes — concepts that are literally alive.
Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. His 2003 book Freedom Evolves explores the way our brains have evolved to give us — and only us — the kind of freedom that matters, while 2006’s Breaking the Spell examines religious belief through the lens of biology.
ACCEPTING – “You are accepted!” … accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask the name now, perhaps you will know it later. Do not try to do anything, perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. – – Paul Tillich
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AMBIGUITY – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
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ANGER “Anger is a noble infirmity; the generous failing of the just; the one…”
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ART AS SUBJECTIVITY – Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature. (Paul Tillich)
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ASTONISHMENT – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. (Paul Tillich)
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AUTHORITY – The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority. – Paul Tillich
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AWARENESS – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
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BECOMING AS FULFILLING PERSONAL DESTINY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. (Paul Tillich)
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BEING AVOIDANCE – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being
~ Paul Tillich
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BEING GRASPED – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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BEING RELIGIOUS – “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.” – Paul Tillich
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BOREDOM – Boredom is rage spread thin. (Paul Tillich)
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CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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COURAGE – The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable. – Paul Tillich
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COURAGE TO BE – The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. (Paul Tillich)
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CRUELTY – Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. ~ Paul Tillich
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CYNICISM – Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it. (Paul Tillich)
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DECISION-MAKING – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich)
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DEPRESSION – Depression is rage spread thin. – Paul Tillich
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DEPTH – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
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DOING SMALL THINGS – We can do not great things – only small things with great love. (Paul Tillich)
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DOUBT AS FAITH – “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith” – Paul Tillich
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FAILURE – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. – Paul Tillich
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FAITH – Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. – Paul Tillich
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FAITH AS BEING GRASPED – Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite. – Paul Tillich
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FEAR – Fear is the absence of faith. – Paul Tillich
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FEAR v ANXIETY – Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured… anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object. (Paul Tillich)
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FREEDOM – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free – Paul Tillich
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GOD – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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HELP – There is no love which does not become help. – Paul Tillich
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HUMAN BEING – The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”: the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces – both individual and social.- – Paul Tillich
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HU-MAN-ITY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. – Paul Tillich
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KNOWING GOD – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
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LANGUAGE, LONLINESS & SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. – Paul Tillich
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LISTENING – The first duty of love is to listen. (Paul Tillich)
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LONLINESS – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
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LOVE AS HELP – There is no love which does not become help – Paul Tillich
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LOVE AS THE BLOOD OF LIFE – For love … is the blood of life, the power of reunion in the separated.- Paul Tillich
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MEANING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
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MEANING OF EXISTENCE – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
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MEANING SEEKING AS FAITH – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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NEUROSIS – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being (The Courage To Be) – Paul Tillich
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NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION – We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea. – Paul Tillich
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PHILOSOPHY – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. – Paul Tillich
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QUEST FOR MEANING – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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QUESTIONING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. (Paul Tillich)
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RAGE – Boredom is rage spread thin – Paul Tillich
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REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith – Paul Tillich
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REFLECTION AS FAITH – “Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
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RELIGION AS ULTIMATE CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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RISKING – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. (Paul Tillich)
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SINGING YOUR SONG – If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song. (Paul Tillich)
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SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
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SPEAKING OF GOD – I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment. (Paul Tillich)
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SYMBOLIC EXPRESSION – Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate. (Paul Tillich)
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ULTIMATE REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
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WORK AS PLEASURE – The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us.- Paul Tillich
Of course the two artists I chose are somewhere between very good and great. But even if they were students showing just single pieces of their work it wouldn’t make any difference.
The gain was in and around – ‘space – being human – memory’ – i.e. a deepening and widening of consciousness.
Whiteread and Gormley – are both important to me for reasons other than ‘space – being human – memory‘ but just for extending, deeping, enjoying the resonances of that area, “Thanks – many, many thanks – I’m so glad I came across you.”
It’s always great when a new idea bursts in your mind – or simply a new slant that puts in focused place long-held but vaguer ideas.
This for me was such an idea;
‘What you do is what you you’ve got’.
It came from here;
With Eckhart Tolle however I would say that having, knowing, being and doing have more than complex interactions, they have the context of silence – from which their truths arise.
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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –
through our caring our creativity and our criticality –
developed via service to the communities to which we belong.
All postings to this site relate to the central model in the
1) Like your lives my life, (in a modest way), has (for the last 45 years), been dedicated to;
‘the advancement of education in the consideration of the basic unity of all religions, in particular by the provision of courses to provide an understanding of the relationship of man to the universe, the earth, the environment and the society he lives in, to Reality and to God.’
and right now the global and local opportunities, and dangers, strike me as unparalleled.
2) The great challenge seems to me to concern ‘the how’ of getting wider acceptance of Oneness and oneness as in Perennial Philosophy and the The Golden Rule – raised consciousness that will positively affect decision-making in all of the vital arenas of human concern.
3) A great shift in consciousness is taking place.
The great shift in consciousness is evidenced by two events.
Firstly in just the last few years what was esoteric is now open and freely available to to all.
Secondly millions are responding – in some way shape or form.
I have in mind especially the work of Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong and most recently Eckhart Tolle.
Tolle’s writing is highly accessible – in the UK most Sun and Daily Mirror readers could handle it.
Of course functional literacy and level of consciousness and not directly correlated! But eleven million had by Week 3 tuned in to Tolle’s course run by Oprah Winfrey – see HERE
….. Oprah went further with Eckhart Tolle than she has ever gone with a previous author picked for her book club. She chose to present, with Tolle, a 10-week series of “webinars” – online seminars – with one chapter of the book (which she puts on the bedside table of all of her guest rooms) discussed each week. In the first webinar, transmitted on 3 March, Tolle led Winfrey and the millions of viewers who logged on in several different countries in silent meditation; viewers were then encouraged to submit questions to Tolle via Skype. By the third week, 11 million people were logging on.
This surely has no parallel in the whole of humankind’s spiritual history. The course is HERE
Not only are ‘the books open’ but there is more than Maslow’s 2% willing a new earth.
The question is how can their energy be harnessed and focused for the common good – or do we have to wait until the first nuclear war, simply because those who ‘know’ can’t find ways and means to influence those who actually ‘do the doing’ and make our world as it is.
4) We need to be thinking ‘outside of the box’. The old ways may not be sufficient. Keeping the candles of light and hope and truth is something that the precious few have done down through the ages, but now the challenge is to shift up to a larger stage.
For example inter-faith dialogue may well be effete (and for some cunning PR) compared to the people who really operate at the ‘hot interfaces’ – e. g. diplomats and business-people.
5) Absorbing and responding to this fact seems to me to be the challenge that might bring forth balm for suffering being borne by untold millions.
A sufficient proportion of America has said ‘Yes we can’ but even more critical than the decisions Obama will be making over the next 4 or 8 years is how can the light of Oneness be brought into the darkened hearts of religious haters and racists. That Oneness is the Tipping Point. The
‘tipping-point’ is realization of that Oneness – and it needs more than abstract assent.
6) My personal experience has led me to realize that individuals need something real and living and breathing through which to connect with ‘foreign’ wisdom traditions.
I believed in the oneness of religions long before I came across
a) Jane Clark’s article on Ibn al-Arabi – which created for me a living connection to Islam – and
b) the Bhagavad Gita Chanted in English HERE using a text of the Bhagavad Gita in English HERE
NB Try listening to the chanting whilst reading the text – wonderful! – transporting!
These gave me a living connection to Hinduism.
7) Starting points:
Perhaps looking very closely and deeply at ‘reverse fundamentalism’ is the way to generate programmes of positive action.
Karen Armstrong as you probably know is being given the opportunity to raise up the principle of the Golden Rule via her ‘Charter for Compassion’ campaign see HERE
Perhaps making celebratory programmes free to all on the internet…..
Perhaps Golden Rule materials free online for Heads and school…….
Perennial philosophy and the ‘federal’ Golden Rule – the ‘world language’ to be taught, in addition to their own religions, so that all can communicate with those of other faiths ……
What do you think?
We who have striven to keep the candles alight have to contribute to ways and means of reaching a sufficiently wider audience to get established some of the foundations for a new earth.
All blessings on the further development of your work.
The campaign Charter for Compassion are asking for contributions for the final charter. Here is my first draft contribution;
Compassion and Peace: ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred
1 See the Golden Rule as the equivalent to a language in addition to your own – “My ‘mother tongue’ is Islam/Christianity/Buddhism etc but I also speak ‘the Golden Rule’ – so that I can be a sister/brother to peoples of all religions and none.
2 Implore people like Barack Obama to spend money on deepening cultural understanding – say 10% of the military budget switched to Arabic/Islamic, Chinese and Russian studies. Generate an ‘open data-base’ of experience learned.
3 Encourage all countries to massively increase exchange programmes. Send everyone with a ‘We’ve got these problems how are my host country dealing with them’ pack – and require a thorrough de-briefing upon return to home country – we must see that the most important problems are held in common, and that we must pool answers.
4 Use the knowledge as a data-base for university and school respect for other cultures courses – instead of allowing our societies to continue falsely claiming that the mad fundamentalist minority = the reality of the whole communuity.
5 Get celebrity goodwill ambassadors for the GR – include business people , they have more interchange with ‘foreigners’ than any other group. Get pop groups talking and singing about it.
Get Barack Obama talking about it – and Nels Mandela, and Archbishop Tutu etc.
6 Start teaching the Golden Rule – one school at a time – everywhere.
7 Generate badges, widgets and bling for websites, windows, clothing that conveys messages such as – ‘I speak oneness and diversity’. ‘We support the GR’, etc (Get some adverstising agencies working on it).
8 Support studies of fundamentalism – focus on ways and means antidotes and prophylactics. The best writers on fundamentalism may not be in obvious academic fields – the best I have found is
9 Look for ‘out of the box’ solutions such as brilliant comedians such as Omid Djalili and Shazia Mirza.
If you don’t like strong comedy don’t go – but I suspect that Omid, and the others have ‘lanced more religious boils’ for the general population than all of the politicians and academics put put together!
10 Support ways and means for deeper applications of the Golden Rule – we need courses from nursery to university epecially based on the brilliant writings and work of a) Eckhart Tolle, b) Ken Wilber and c) Karen Armstrong.
The branches of a tree don't make war on each other!
I added this post to an earlier piece but I think it is worth posting and developing because it contains an idea that is new to me! The difference is that I place it here in the discussion concerning the recent massacre in Mumbai.
The suggestion is that the idea of federalism – politically it works well in many countries – could and should be popularized as a key to the peoples of the world relating more successfully at the religious ideological level. Perhaps this could be termed ‘Federalism of spirit’ – the harmony that cherishes diversity.
How can we prevent massive amplification of hatred? What would be a starting point forward? The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – (SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site). But I’m suggesting that we teach, step-by-step, a Universalist world-view in addition to whatever is the majority religion. Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being. Similarly I am proudly and faithfully a Christian/Moslem/Buddhist, or whatever, but I can also be a Universalist through recognizing;
1) The Golden Rule,
2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions – Perennial Philosophy – and that
3) we are simply all emanations of one Source.
The deal at the moment for many is this – if I have a strong faith I am compelled because of ‘exclusivity of truth’ to hate all deemed to be ‘other’. If we all were Universalists as well as being of a particular tradition we could dialogue more profitably instead of killing each other. Federalism works – even without oceans of blood as precursors.
Of course there are other elements and needs in the mix – the need for greater political justice, the prevention of plain old crime etc. but shifting the world’s mind-set through teaching the Universal alongside the particular would improve matters enormously.
Eckhart Tolle is probably the most accessible proponent of Perennial Philosophy – the United nations should emply him and Karen Armstrong as Goodwill Ambassadors!
Perennial Philosophy, or mysticism, in one sentence
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“We can be happy, and serve others well,
if we realize our true Self
by detaching ourselves from the egotistic lower self –
through our step-by-step becoming aware
of the stillness beneath the noise.”
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This is the mystical core of all of the great world wisdom traditions.
If you don’t have the time to delve deeply into one or all of the religions read Eckhart Tolle’s The New Earth and do this course presented by Oprah Winfrey – HERE
Spiritual maturity, as related to religion, is a function of two things.
Firstly the degree toward which the ‘believer’ manages to de-anthropomorphise God, and gain a grown-up understanding of Ultimate Reality.
Secondly the ability to feel and think and do without attachment to ‘thumb-sucking’ supports – they vary with each individual.
The pay-off? We consequently learn to live with justice as the conditioning influence of all we see, think and do – we come to see through his own eyes and not through the eyes of another.
God of course by definition is undefinable.
Here is one definition that defies that indefinablity AND manage to capture the essence of the combined immanence and transcendence of the theological position known as panentheism;
“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”
Anonymous, ‘The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers‘ (12thC)
Here are some other attempts -less satisfactory;
To define God is to limit Him. Still it seems inevitable that man should do that in order to get some edge to which his mind may cling. – Heywood Broun
When I was fifteen years old or so I came up with a definition of God to which, in my old age, I come back more and more, I would call it an operational definition. It reads as follows: God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies. – Viktor Frankl
God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, Ah! – Joseph Campbell
We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him. – Joseph Joubert
God… a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive. – Ayn Rand
A stimulating, and largely satisfactory phenomenological definition of God is;
The philosopher Michel Henry defines God in a phenomenological point of view. He says: “God is Life, he is the essence of Life, or, if we prefer, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what is God, we know it not by the effect of a learning or of some knowledge, we don’t know it by the thought, on the background of the truth of the world ; we know it and we can know it only in and by the Life itself. We can know it only in God.” (I Am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity).
This Life is not biological life defined by objective and exterior properties, nor an abstract and empty philosophical concept, but the absolute phenomenological life, a radically immanent life which possesses in it the power of showing itself in itself without distance, a life which reveals permanently itself. A manifestation of oneself and a self-revelation which doesn’t consist in the fact of seeing outside of oneself or of perceiving the exterior world, but in the fact of feeling and of feeling oneself, of experiencing in oneself its own inner and affective reality.
As Michel Henry says also in this same book, “God is that pure Revelation that reveals nothing other than itself. God reveals Himself. The Revelation of God is his self-revelation”. God is in himself revelation, he is the primordial Revelation that tears everything from nothingness, a revelation which is the pathetic self-revelation and the absolute self-enjoyment of Life. As John says, God is love, because Life loves itself in an infinite and eternal love. See HERE for more
The Baha’i view is also panentheistic;
In the Bahá’í Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation. God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. God, however, is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bahá’í understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence. Creation is seen as the expression of God’s will in the contingent world and every created thing is seen as a sign of God’s sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.
The above two are more less long-winded – why not just say with the blessed Anonymous from the 12thC “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”
Each of us, each and every part of Creation is a ‘sunbeam’ shining out of the Whole. All is Spirit. Spirit with a capital ‘S’ is the Whole, the ultimate Oneness, Mystery, ultimate Reality……God (not anthropomorphised) if you prefer.
All that isn’t Spirit per se is spirit-as-emanation, emanation set aside in each case for a special purpose. The rock is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the rockness of a rock. The tree is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the treeness of a tree. The human being is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the positive and noble humanness of a human being.
What would be a starting point forward? The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site. But the Universalist world view, including the panentheistic perspective enables something much more importanta federalist position. Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being. Similarly I am proudly and faithfully Christian/Moslem/Buddhist or whatever but I am also a Universalist through recognizing
1) The Golden Rule,
2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions and that
3) we are all emanations of one Source.
Probably no idea has more power to overcome the seemingly endless capacity for suffering and creating suffering than this; ‘There are many paths to the summit but only one summit’.
In the context of discussion with contributor ‘Patrick’ I offer a contribution to the issues I raised concerning the brilliant Eckhart Tolle. I do this via a beautiful poem that describes, with exquisite simplicity, the mystical experience of non-duality, or oneness. The poem is by the renowned Chinese poet Li Po;
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountains and me,
until only the mountains remain.
Li Po (701-762)
IMHO
1 Clearly for Li Po there was, to start with, on that occasion, duality.
2 I’m assuming that Li Po returned from non-duality, back in to duality – unless he sat there until his bones turned to dust. I assume he returned in order to do the laundry, chop wood, carry water. Of course he would now do them on the bed-rock of enhanced consciousness derived from his mystical/aesthetic experience of non-duality. Both wings of being human would be beating – as he scrubbed and carried and chopped. Enlightenment is now – if we let it.
In this world – the contingent world, the world of duality, the ‘Kingdom of Names’ – the complementarity of duality and non-duality is the key. Duality is not a curse, or a failing. When in dynamic inter-relation with non-dual experience it is heaven and perfection. Without non-dual experience it is hell, including the hell of relativity. The purpose of life is not just transcendence and timelessness – it is also immanence and being in time, moment by moment. Complementarity is the key.
3 The non-duality or mystic state is the same as the state of creativity (or the truly aesthetic experience). We are ‘taken out of ourselves’ as we say in modern parlance. Art and ‘religion’ are not similar, they are the same – as Coomaraswami says. It is the forgetting of self, a loss of ego boundaries, a letting go and letting God etc. But the artist as well as the mystic comes out of the non-dual state back into the dual state. – and s/he becomes someone who lives with what s/he has created. What s/he has produced might even be a bit of a shock – a bit like the dumb panda who jumps when she sees that something is moving on the floor beneath her i.e the cub to which she has just given birth. The artist becomes nurturer/appreciator/critic – more or less. They in duality are the left-brain evaluator (criticality mode) to complement their non-dual right-brain creativity mode. Complementarity is the key. One mode, and only one mode is in the foreground at any one time. Duration is from milliseconds to hours in the case of non-duality.
4 The question is are both states normal, desirable and, if the term is acceptable, God-given, i.e. both part of the life’s teaching-machine from which we are supposed to learn. Or is one state bad, immature, to be got rid of, so that we can be non-dual 24/7?
5 Intellectuality is not the same as intellectualism, just as individuality is not the same as individualism. In both cases the first is normal, healthy, proper, desirable. In both cases the second is excessive, unbalanced, undesirable and pathological. The same difference incidentally exists between sexuality and sexual-obsession. Tolle IMHO makes the mistake of not distinguishing between ego and the egotistic. He also can give the impression that he is trying to invalidate mind per se instead of distinguishing between true mind and the neurotic egotistical mind, trapped as it is by attachment.
Awareness, raised consciousness, is true mind. True mind is ‘xin’ heart-mind, interiority bathed in the light of the intellect and the warmth of true love, without attachment to forms – derived from the complementarity of the modes of duality and non-duality. ‘Without attachment to forms’ doesn’t mean without love of forms. Forms are the means (the only means) by which we can come to understand the essentiality of formlessness.
True love as Tolle says is realization of oneness – complementary to which is the glory of diversity.
God loves our celebrating diversity with Him as much as wanting us to realize oneness.
The one who is awakened is a one as well as a not-one – the Buddha was not non-Buddha – at least as a gateway, a pointer.
Spirituality or transcendence or consciousness is not increased by a diminution of intelligence, or more correctly a diminution of intellectuality. The intellect as enlightened heart-mind is the human spirit. Enlightenment comes from realization of the true Self, as opposed to self, that is the eternal. Unlimited Whole, the Silent One, God the Father, God without Name, the Nameless One etc.
Complementarity is the key. Yin is lovely only in the balanced presence of yang – and vice-versa.
6 ‘Before all else, God created the mind.’ (Koranic tradition) The intellect is the supreme gift of God to man, the pinnacle of the way in which we are made in His image – providing we realize that all rivers flow back to the one Ocean, from which those parts also have their origin. Complementarity is the key.
7 The fear and misunderstanding of the term ego. The ego is simply the part of the self – the dimension or mode – that deals with immediate reality. As such it is neutral – like the heart or lungs or kidney. Whether it is healthy or diseased – now that is a different matter. The ego is as much part of the enlightened one as with the crass self-obsessive.
God celebrates His Creativity in the uniqueness of me, as well as in His Creation of our species.
We believe what we believe – some we choose to believe, some is ingrained.
The happiest of worlds is one where we can believe different things without feeling an obligation to kill each other! Complementarity is the key.
The ultimate sickness is to know who you are through knowing who you hate.
A thoughtful respondent stimulated me in to raising a few more issues re Eckhart Tolle, so here they are.
Is Eckhart Tolle in his teachings anti-intellectual – or at least might he be playing into the hands of anti-intellectualists?
My perspective is from within a Perennial Philosophy and Universalist world-view, as is Wilber and Tolle.
So, in my understanding:-
You said:
‘Tolle does not speak of ‘non-duality as everything’. But he speaks of duality and our relationship to it often.’
The ‘it’ that relates to the non-duality I am arguing is part of the design – not just a deficiency on our part!
Does he celebrate duality as one of the two wings of being human, in this world with others. Or does he say, or imply, that the non-dual is not just desirable but the only goal – to such an extent that a newcomer might think, “I’m not good, I’m not normal, I’m not a true Tolle-ist (God forbid – but I bet it happens) unless I experience complete non-duality 24/7.”
I guess my question is, “Would God’s Creativity have failed if for all humans there was 24/7 non-duality?”
I want to argue that non-duality is the goal and indispensable to unity, peace, stability, conflict-resolution, an end to suffering etc. BUT being in duality is also normal, beautiful, testing, the source of compassion and empathy etc. It is more than just the darkness to the realization of the beauty of light.
I don’t underestimate the collective pain-body and collective insanity that continues to rule our world.
Duality is THE means of all growth and development – up to the need to realize non-duality. It’s the name of the game in this world. My understanding is that babies don’t immediately realize that they are separate beings from their mothers – although the birthing process and daily experiences get that process going pretty quickly!
My point is that although duality is not the goal – it is the means, and a means without which we would neither realize the essentiality of non-duality nor would we have the means to accomplish the realization of it. We have to feel separate to realize at-one-ness. If this is the case then both non-duality and duality are part of the game – and part of God’s great teaching ‘machine’.
So in my view we come to realize that we need (at least in this world) two wings – not one wing and a useless stump! To change metaphors – the purpose of life is for the drop to lose itself in the Ocean – not all the time but sufficiently deeply and sufficiently often to become the conditioning bedrock for all of our living within duality. The dynamic is where knowledge comes from – and duality is not just a design fault or sin!
I have the same problem with an even greater ‘genius’ Ken Wilber. God speaks via duality as well as non-duality, He speaks via subjectivity as well as objectivity AND He speaks via mind and reason as well as their opposites.
A separate, but vitally connected subject concerns the nature of the pain-body and how it relates to mind and thought. The great Tolle also gives the impression that the mind is virtually the same as the pain-body. I would say the the ‘egoic-mind’ = the pain-body – or more accurately the pain-body is the habituated shadow-self created in us via our egoic responses.
He should be ‘condemning’ the egoic-mind not the mind! The mind free of the egoic pain-body = a ray of the Holy Spirit. I don’t think because I’m sinful, I think because I am made in the image of God! Tolle is at risk of giving the mind and thinking a really bad name, whereas they are, when free from the egoic pain-body, first in Creation – the very purpose of Creation.
I have the same problem with (possibly) an even greater ‘genius’ Abraham Joshua Heschel.
You said:
‘When a person is not in the now, it is natural to ask where they should be, because there is an inner sensing that they are not where they belong.’
The ache you refer to is when we haven’t realized that we already have enlightenment, and that it is simply a matter of ‘letting go and let God’. When we have had experiences of non-duality, and re-cognize them and re-alize them, the wood chopping is in the enlightenment and the enlightenment is in the wood chopping!
You said:
‘When you are not in the now, God continues on. Your presence in the now, or not, has no effect on God.’
Yup! The sun shines whether I choose to face it and reflect it or not.
You said:
‘Duality is not ‘not non-being’. Duality is the natural state of the world of form. Seeking an understanding of ‘non-duality’ is not the only thing to do in life, but understanding ‘non-duality’ gives one a profound foundation for all of living.’
Yup! – Beautifully put.
You said:
‘All knowledge comes from consciousness, and you are consciousness. So when you behold, or categorize, the inter-play between duality and non-duality, you, that is consciousness, has created knowledge.’
Ah but what is ‘you’?
For me your term ‘inter-play’ is the key – it indicates the dynamic between experiences of duality and of singleness: me-not me, me and ‘the greater whole of which I and all other phenomena are emanations’ etc.
The explanation that works for me goes like this. I ask of my Spirit a question. My Spirit answers, and lo the light breaks forth. The ‘I’ of course is the egoic self and the Self, ultimately, is God within. But it is more then the pain to which I am addicted – it is God’s Creativity via difference (diversity) – complementary to His/Her/It’s creativity via sameness.
Ultimately I suppose I’m arguing that to deny God’s Creativity in His creation of difference is to deny some aspect of Him/Her/It that cannot be denied. I, and you and him and her and them, are important outside of complete self-abnegation in non-duality! Hooray – vivre la difference – I want dia-logos from you as well as silence, I gratefully acknowledge the dia-logos within me as well as the speechless silence of complete self-abnegation!
The ‘me’ is vital – along with experiences of non-duality – for God to perpetually continue His Creation-emanation. The film projected needs a screen. Every lily of the field is different or unique as well as belonging to the same species.
If you accept the temporary naming of the un-nameable both are part of God’s teaching machine. Difference as well as sameness reveals. The uniqueness as well as the sameness of each of us ‘reveals’ – to us and to others. It is ‘me and non-duality’ that gives rise to development in consciousness, which gives rise to the kind of knowing to which you refer.
This ‘knowing-that-comes-through-raised-consciousness’, comes to us as a ‘gift’ without book-learning and academic study. It is the majority of what we know.
An Islamic (hence Arabic terms) and Bahá’í distinction helps (me) here;
SOURCE: Two words for knowledge, but very different kinds of knowledge. Ilm can be acquired by education and training and through the exercise of reason. Irfan is higher knowledge, or gnosis, that can only be acquired by, first, education, and then contemplation under the guidance of a master. The guidance would include spiritual training in zikr, music (sama) and meditation. Ilm is expected to lead to the sober contemplation of God as both Creator and Judge—his awesome power– whereas irfan may lead to ecstasy as a person is simply overwhelmed by God’s immense beauty and falls in love with that Beauty. SOURCE
The sheer weight of emphases in Tolle might give the impression that mind and thinking = bad. Whereas although the soul is infinite because it is ultimately God, and the mind is finite, the two are essential – from our perspective. Religions can suffer from anti-intellectualism as well as what a friend calls ‘adminology’ in which the essential heart is set aside in favour of jurisprudence and nit-picking.
I am wondering if Tolle, understandably, started from the (to me erroneous) Western view that separates heart and mind, as opposed to the Chinese view of heart-mind – ‘xin’.
I don’t think Tolle is anti-intellectual but I wish he would celebrate a bit more the other wing of being human – duality, without which non-duality would not be.
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May the Nameless One, who some call God, finish raising up the Self-actualized 2% , the yeast for the bread of humanity!
Maybe He/She/It already has and they are just really badly organized!
“How does the energy generated by Tolle actually get transformed into social action and social transformation?”
Below is the introduction to a fascinating paper the whole of which can be reached HERE
The following is a contribution to Serendip by Phouttasone (Pilou) Thirakoul, who wrote it during her senior year (1996-1997) as a Psychology major and Neural and Behavioral Sciences concentrator at Bryn Mawr College. Pilou’s essay provides a useful introduction to both Buddhist thinking in relation to brain and behavior, and to a branch of western psychology which, with its stress on active generation and regeneration of self, is of considerable interest from a Serendip perspective. Pilou’s essay also represents an example of the benefits to be gained by looking at problems from multiple perspectives, and as encouragement to further thinking about the relations between psychological, neuroscientific, and spiritual approaches to problems of consciousness and self-hood.
Soul Needs - One Garden 