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Tom - some time back you linked me to some researchers, perhaps universities at a broad cutting edge of consciousness studies: have been searching my computer high and low for these links to no avail. If it is easy for you to do so, could you point me in that direction again please? Anything inclusive of Indian Philosophy is of interest.
Thanks Tom! Just out of curiousity - does Meher Baba's teachings link back to any of the Hindu Schools or any of the 'stand-alone' teachers like Kabir (am still to read deeper than a scan there)? The Masters Dwahl Kuhl mentions seem to be another group again.
jrbarch Thanks Tom! Just out of curiousity - does Meher Baba's teachings link back to any of the Hindu Schools or any of the 'stand-alone' teachers like Kabir
According to Meher Baba, truth is one, eternal and absolute. Those who have realized it speak of it differently however, depending on the context in which it is given.
This is a very ancient teaching, found in Rig Veda, for example: ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti, that is, "Being is one, the sages express it variously." — Rig Veda 1.164.46.
This universal teaching is expressed as "perennial wisdom" in the testimony of the mystics and teaching of masters, saints, sages and prophets worldwide from time immemorial, and it articulates the core spirituality of humankind.
One's ability to apprehend the teaching depends on one's "light." The purpose of cultivation is to increase that light. The universal teaching is that the simpest way to do this is through the expansion of love, which is available at all times to everyone.
The teaching is imparted not by intellectual instruction by by direct transmission. Meher Baba: "I have come not to teach but to awaken."
Meher Baba mentioned that Kabir was not only realized but also a perfect master. It's not like Kabir listened to Ramanand's teaching, which stems from Ramanujacharya, and passed along what he had heard in his poetry. Rather, Kabir is in that line of direct transmission and speaks from that level of awareness.
Kabir's poetry continues to fascinate only only because it is great poetry, but because it comes from that level of consciousness and therefore has transformative power by coming in contact with it.
Meher Baba in a letter to M. K. Gandhi (1932): ""Politics, social welfare, economics, et cetera, are but different facets of the same one substance - spirituality - because each of these are included in the Knowledge of the One. Spirituality includes everything - politics, economics, ethics, social welfare, civics, and all other kinds of service."
There is a principle, from nothing comes nothing. It has a double meaning. The first meaning is that creation from nothing is a contradiction in terms, therefore, logically impossible. The second meaning is that from nothing, illusion of something is created, like stage magic, or imagination.
Adopting the first meaning, realists hold that the manifest is "real."
Adopting the second meaning, idealists hold that the manifest only appears "real" and is "illusory" in that what is actual is not real. For example, physics tells us that mass is "congealed" energy. Information theory tell us that energy is information. Idealists say that information is the structure of the one stuff that manifests in experience as the subjective and objective poles of consciousness.
Perennial wisdom teaches that underling consciousness is the source. This is ineffable, being beyond conception and imagination, and therefore beyond predication. But the sages say it can be realized, and this realization can be reported although not described.
This realization of the unmanifest source is reported as void or emptiness, the eternally unmanifest "nothing" (no-thing) from which "everything" (every-thing) manifests and to which everything eventually returns (n time) through realization. Testimony to this is found in all wisdom traditions, although it is spoken of differently.
The "takeover" cycle is inherent in all growing systems. How tolerance limits are or aren't eventually set is where rubber meets the road.
Lacking feedback, MOST growing systems consume their essential counterparts - and don't survive.
Thee theory of Evolution postulates that those species that DO evolve into something else, are the few who happened to stumble into patterns of feedback-response that DO allow even more capable systems to emerge. Takes a LOT of trial & error pattern matching. Basically, which impossibly complex Rube Goldberg machine can scale up to even bigger heights? Answer: the one that can. There's no architect, only massively parallel trials - all but a few of which fail.
We call it sexual/cultural/option-RECOMBINATION. If you look close, there are amazing mechanisms in every system, dedicated to nothing more than early auto-destruct as soon as signs are DETECTED that the latest recombinant form won't work.
What constitutes detection? That's a very messy process too. Not all firms forced into bankruptcy, for example, should be liquidated. Nor should all rescued orgs be the ones saved. It's always messy. No one ever said it's easy, or should be.
The self-consuming observation is as old as tribal societies themselves. It's also written into some of Aesop's Fables - e.g., the one about the belly, limbs and stomach.
Roger: There's another fascinating Rig Veda quote, don't know the exact reference, so have to paraphrase it.
"The answer only the gods can tell, IF EVEN THEY KNOW."
It's Rig Veda 10: 129. Here are two translations.
Then even nothingness was not, nor existence. There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it. What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping? Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed? Then there was neither death nor immortality, nor was there then the touch of night and day. The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining. There was that One then, and there was no other. In the beginning desire descended upon it -- that was the primal seed, born of the mind. The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom know that which is kin to that which is not. But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened? The gods themselves are later than creation, so who knows truely whence it has arisen? Whence all creating had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, he who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows -- or maybe even he does not know.
HYMN CXXIX. Creation. 1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? 2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever. 3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit. 4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. 5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder 6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? 7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
Through the ages, the human mind has been profoundly restless in its search for final explanations for first things. The history of these endeavors to grasp first things through the intellect is a tale of recurrent failures. The redeeming feature of these great efforts is that instead of being disheartened by the confessed failures of past thinkers, others are inspired to make fresh attempts. All these philosophical explanations are creations of the mind that has never succeeded in passing beyond itself. Thus they are confessed though inspiring failures; nonetheless each such failure is a partial contribution to knowledge of the Beyond. Only those who have gone beyond the mind know the Truth in its reality. If they sometimes explain what they know, which they rarely do, those explanations also being in words are limited but these words illumine the mind; they do not fill it with novel ideas.
The unitarian Beyond is an indivisible and indescribable infinity. It seeks to know itself. It is of no use to ask why it does so. To attempt to give a reason for this is to be involved in further questions and thus to start an unending chain of reasons for reasons, reasons for these reasons and so on ad infinitum. The plain truth about this initial urge to know itself is best called a whim (Lahar). A whim is not a whim if it can be explained or rationalized. And just as no one may usefully ask why it arises, so no one may ask when it arises. "When" implies a time series with past, present and future. All these are absent in the eternal Beyond. So let us call this initial urge to know a "whim". You may call this an explanation if you like or you may call it an affirmation of its inherent inexplicability.
The initial whim is completely independent of reason, intellect, or imagination, all of which are by-products of this whim. Reason, intellect and imagination depend upon the initial whim and not vice versa. Because the whim is not dependent upon reason, intellect or imagination, it can neither be understood nor interpreted in terms of any of these faculties of the limited mind.
The first whim to know instantaneously implies a duality, an apparent differentiation (not amounting to a breaking up) into two separate aspects, both of which are infinite as aspects of the Infinite. The first aspect is that of infinite consciousness and the second aspect is that of infinite unconsciousness. The duality strives to overcome itself and to restore the apparently lost unity: The infinite unconsciousness tries to unite with infinite consciousness. Both aspects are precipitated by the whim. This whim of the Infinite is in a way comparable to an infinite question, calling forth an infinite answer.
With the infinite question, there arises also the infinite answer. The infinite question is infinite unconsciousness; the infinite answer is infinite consciousness. But the infinite question and the infinite answer do not simply annul each other and relapse into the original unity of the Beyond. The two aspects have now descended into the primal duality which can resolve itself only by fulfilling the entire game of duality and not by any shortcut. The infinite unconsciousness cannot overlap on infinite consciousness; such coalescence is impossible.
To reach out towards infinite consciousness the infinite unconsciousness first has to fathom its own depths. It must experience itself first as infinitely finite, and gradually evolve into limited and limiting consciousness. With the evolution of the limited and limiting consciousness, there is also the evolution of the illusion which limits this limiting consciousness. The two processes keep pace with each other.
When the infinite unconsciousness tries to reach out to the infinite consciousness, the process is not instantaneous because of the infinite disparity between the two. The process takes an infinitely long time and eternity gets seemingly broken into the unending past, the transient present and the uncertain future. Instead of embracing the infinite consciousness in one timeless act the infinite unconsciousness reaches out towards it through a long-drawn-out temporal process of evolution, with all of its innumerable steps. It first attempts to fathom its own depths, then by backward treads it seeks and ultimately finds the infinite consciousness through numberless steps, thus fulfilling the whim from the Beyond.
In Patanjali's view it is difficult for (especially Western) mind to grasp the idea of mind as an organ of vision, direct cognition and transmission - "The seer is pure knowledge (gnosis). Though pure he looks upon the presented idea through the medium of the mind" [Patanjali II:20].
Ordinarily, (Patanjali explains) mind is caught up in processes and pursuits of intellection, discrimination and egoism (the three worlds - physical, emotional, mental). When mind is held still and concentrated, gradually, from above there enters into mind an awareness of Self (soul~heart) whose gnosis is slowly revealed. Mind then becomes a medium of transmission to the physical brain and the persona becomes aware of the inner realm and Self.
Just as the persona is a vehicle for Self, Self is a vehicle for a 'spark from the central Sun'; and just as Self is revealed to the persona this central Sun and spark, is revealed to both.
To talk about whether or not the Sun emerged from Nothing or Something, why or why not, would cause laughter to ring among the stars - like a firefly flying before the face of an endless Light demanding to know Everything? Not possible if the firefly is to remain Conscious!
So it was recommended that the firefly just be itself. Whatever evolves from the seed (spark) is already there. I think we were meant to absolutely enjoy being alive!!
14 comments:
Tom - some time back you linked me to some researchers, perhaps universities at a broad cutting edge of consciousness studies: have been searching my computer high and low for these links to no avail. If it is easy for you to do so, could you point me in that direction again please? Anything inclusive of Indian Philosophy is of interest.
Thanks and cheers!
jrbarch.
The cycle between big business and households is pretty much the same.
I wouldn't call it virtuous. Another word for profit is parasitism. A fundamental component of capitalism.
Right, business pretty much in surplus all the time too Paul.
Balances just build up as retained earnings ie "savings".
rsp,
@jrbarch
Some compilations of references:
Consciousness Studies-Wikibook
Wikipedia/Category: Consciousness Studies
Philosophy of Mind/Consciousness Studies
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
Thanks Tom! Just out of curiousity - does Meher Baba's teachings link back to any of the Hindu Schools or any of the 'stand-alone' teachers like Kabir (am still to read deeper than a scan there)? The Masters Dwahl Kuhl mentions seem to be another group again.
Wiki - Hindu Philosophy
jrbarch Thanks Tom! Just out of curiousity - does Meher Baba's teachings link back to any of the Hindu Schools or any of the 'stand-alone' teachers like Kabir
According to Meher Baba, truth is one, eternal and absolute. Those who have realized it speak of it differently however, depending on the context in which it is given.
This is a very ancient teaching, found in Rig Veda, for example: ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti, that is, "Being is one, the sages express it variously." — Rig Veda 1.164.46.
This universal teaching is expressed as "perennial wisdom" in the testimony of the mystics and teaching of masters, saints, sages and prophets worldwide from time immemorial, and it articulates the core spirituality of humankind.
One's ability to apprehend the teaching depends on one's "light." The purpose of cultivation is to increase that light. The universal teaching is that the simpest way to do this is through the expansion of love, which is available at all times to everyone.
The teaching is imparted not by intellectual instruction by by direct transmission. Meher Baba: "I have come not to teach but to awaken."
Meher Baba mentioned that Kabir was not only realized but also a perfect master. It's not like Kabir listened to Ramanand's teaching, which stems from Ramanujacharya, and passed along what he had heard in his poetry. Rather, Kabir is in that line of direct transmission and speaks from that level of awareness.
Kabir's poetry continues to fascinate only only because it is great poetry, but because it comes from that level of consciousness and therefore has transformative power by coming in contact with it.
Meher Baba in a letter to M. K. Gandhi (1932): ""Politics, social welfare, economics, et cetera, are but different facets of the same one substance - spirituality - because each of these are included in the Knowledge of the One. Spirituality includes everything - politics, economics, ethics, social welfare, civics, and all other kinds of service."
"Spirituality includes everything"
Then nothing is truly "ex nihilo" right?
rsp,
Then nothing is truly "ex nihilo" right?
There is a principle, from nothing comes nothing. It has a double meaning. The first meaning is that creation from nothing is a contradiction in terms, therefore, logically impossible. The second meaning is that from nothing, illusion of something is created, like stage magic, or imagination.
Adopting the first meaning, realists hold that the manifest is "real."
Adopting the second meaning, idealists hold that the manifest only appears "real" and is "illusory" in that what is actual is not real. For example, physics tells us that mass is "congealed" energy. Information theory tell us that energy is information. Idealists say that information is the structure of the one stuff that manifests in experience as the subjective and objective poles of consciousness.
Perennial wisdom teaches that underling consciousness is the source. This is ineffable, being beyond conception and imagination, and therefore beyond predication. But the sages say it can be realized, and this realization can be reported although not described.
This realization of the unmanifest source is reported as void or emptiness, the eternally unmanifest "nothing" (no-thing) from which "everything" (every-thing) manifests and to which everything eventually returns (n time) through realization. Testimony to this is found in all wisdom traditions, although it is spoken of differently.
There's another fascinating Rig Veda quote, don't know the exact reference, so have to paraphrase it.
"The answer only the gods can tell, IF EVEN THEY KNOW."
Seems most likely that kind of view - recognizing doubt & uncertainty - would arise among people that had run into a wide variety of religions.
The "takeover" cycle is inherent in all growing systems. How tolerance limits are or aren't eventually set is where rubber meets the road.
Lacking feedback, MOST growing systems consume their essential counterparts - and don't survive.
Thee theory of Evolution postulates that those species that DO evolve into something else, are the few who happened to stumble into patterns of feedback-response that DO allow even more capable systems to emerge. Takes a LOT of trial & error pattern matching. Basically, which impossibly complex Rube Goldberg machine can scale up to even bigger heights? Answer: the one that can. There's no architect, only massively parallel trials - all but a few of which fail.
We call it sexual/cultural/option-RECOMBINATION. If you look close, there are amazing mechanisms in every system, dedicated to nothing more than early auto-destruct as soon as signs are DETECTED that the latest recombinant form won't work.
What constitutes detection? That's a very messy process too. Not all firms forced into bankruptcy, for example, should be liquidated. Nor should all rescued orgs be the ones saved. It's always messy. No one ever said it's easy, or should be.
The self-consuming observation is as old as tribal societies themselves. It's also written into some of Aesop's Fables - e.g., the one about the belly, limbs and stomach.
Roger: There's another fascinating Rig Veda quote, don't know the exact reference, so have to paraphrase it.
"The answer only the gods can tell, IF EVEN THEY KNOW."
It's Rig Veda 10: 129. Here are two translations.
Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
Then there was neither death nor immortality,
nor was there then the touch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.
In the beginning desire descended upon it --
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is kin to that which is not.
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truely whence it has arisen?
Whence all creating had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows -- or maybe even he does not know.
Rig Veda, X:129
nāsadīya sūkta
HYMN CXXIX. Creation.
1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
Rig Veda, tr. by Ralph T.H. Griffith, [1896], at sacred-texts.com
Here is Meher Baba's explanation:
Through the ages, the human mind has been profoundly restless in its search for final explanations for first things. The history of these endeavors to grasp first things through the intellect is a tale of recurrent failures. The redeeming feature of these great efforts is that instead of being disheartened by the confessed failures of past thinkers, others are inspired to make fresh attempts. All these philosophical explanations are creations of the mind that has never succeeded in passing beyond itself. Thus they are confessed though inspiring failures; nonetheless each such failure is a partial contribution to knowledge of the Beyond. Only those who have gone beyond the mind know the Truth in its reality. If they sometimes explain what they know, which they rarely do, those explanations also being in words are limited but these words illumine the mind; they do not fill it with novel ideas.
The unitarian Beyond is an indivisible and indescribable infinity. It seeks to know itself. It is of no use to ask why it does so. To attempt to give a reason for this is to be involved in further questions and thus to start an unending chain of reasons for reasons, reasons for these reasons and so on ad infinitum. The plain truth about this initial urge to know itself is best called a whim (Lahar). A whim is not a whim if it can be explained or rationalized. And just as no one may usefully ask why it arises, so no one may ask when it arises. "When" implies a time series with past, present and future. All these are absent in the eternal Beyond. So let us call this initial urge to know a "whim". You may call this an explanation if you like or you may call it an affirmation of its inherent inexplicability.
The initial whim is completely independent of reason, intellect, or imagination, all of which are by-products of this whim. Reason, intellect and imagination depend upon the initial whim and not vice versa. Because the whim is not dependent upon reason, intellect or imagination, it can neither be understood nor interpreted in terms of any of these faculties of the limited mind.
The first whim to know instantaneously implies a duality, an apparent differentiation (not amounting to a breaking up) into two separate aspects, both of which are infinite as aspects of the Infinite. The first aspect is that of infinite consciousness and the second aspect is that of infinite unconsciousness. The duality strives to overcome itself and to restore the apparently lost unity: The infinite unconsciousness tries to unite with infinite consciousness. Both aspects are precipitated by the whim. This whim of the Infinite is in a way comparable to an infinite question, calling forth an infinite answer.
With the infinite question, there arises also the infinite answer. The infinite question is infinite unconsciousness; the infinite answer is infinite consciousness. But the infinite question and the infinite answer do not simply annul each other and relapse into the original unity of the Beyond. The two aspects have now descended into the primal duality which can resolve itself only by fulfilling the entire game of duality and not by any shortcut. The infinite unconsciousness cannot overlap on infinite consciousness; such coalescence is impossible.
continued
continuation
To reach out towards infinite consciousness the infinite unconsciousness first has to fathom its own depths. It must experience itself first as infinitely finite, and gradually evolve into limited and limiting consciousness. With the evolution of the limited and limiting consciousness, there is also the evolution of the illusion which limits this limiting consciousness. The two processes keep pace with each other.
When the infinite unconsciousness tries to reach out to the infinite consciousness, the process is not instantaneous because of the infinite disparity between the two. The process takes an infinitely long time and eternity gets seemingly broken into the unending past, the transient present and the uncertain future. Instead of embracing the infinite consciousness in one timeless act the infinite unconsciousness reaches out towards it through a long-drawn-out temporal process of evolution, with all of its innumerable steps. It first attempts to fathom its own depths, then by backward treads it seeks and ultimately finds the infinite consciousness through numberless steps, thus fulfilling the whim from the Beyond.
Meher Baba
Beams from Meher Baba on the Spiritual Panorama, 1958, p. 7-11
Another way of putting it:
In Patanjali's view it is difficult for (especially Western) mind to grasp the idea of mind as an organ of vision, direct cognition and transmission - "The seer is pure knowledge (gnosis). Though pure he looks upon the presented idea through the medium of the mind" [Patanjali II:20].
Ordinarily, (Patanjali explains) mind is caught up in processes and pursuits of intellection, discrimination and egoism (the three worlds - physical, emotional, mental). When mind is held still and concentrated, gradually, from above there enters into mind an awareness of Self (soul~heart) whose gnosis is slowly revealed. Mind then becomes a medium of transmission to the physical brain and the persona becomes aware of the inner realm and Self.
Just as the persona is a vehicle for Self, Self is a vehicle for a 'spark from the central Sun'; and just as Self is revealed to the persona this central Sun and spark, is revealed to both.
To talk about whether or not the Sun emerged from Nothing or Something, why or why not, would cause laughter to ring among the stars - like a firefly flying before the face of an endless Light demanding to know Everything? Not possible if the firefly is to remain Conscious!
So it was recommended that the firefly just be itself. Whatever evolves from the seed (spark) is already there. I think we were meant to absolutely enjoy being alive!!
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