Q.
you talk about "all-pervasive stillness and oneness". That makes no rational or scientific sense. Is this just hyperbole and "hand-waving" or is there something to it?
G.
One of the most consistent, and puzzling assertions by virtually all mystics of whatever tradition, age or culture, is that they experience a "oneness", a knowing that "all is one". Honestly, i never paid much attention to these claims, as i just assumed that it was exaggeration and "hand waving" required for the idea of non-duality.
At that time, as i looked around, all i saw were the myriad forms of trees, house, other folk, my arms and legs, sky, water, birds, flowers, etc. There was an "I" that saw these "objects", the traditional duality of a subject and an object. However, as i bumped all over the spiritual path, i did have moments, as many do, where i saw things very differently in which "objects" took on an unusual, much less substantial appearance, where they appeared to have a different energy than they did only moments earlier.
my initial "Zen" experience opened mysteriously into a world where everything had this quality. Nothing disappeared, but everything was somehow one thing, with some enormously heightened energy, manifesting in some unknown, strange way. This lasted for 30 to 45 minutes, and as i would see happen again many times, it vanished as the ego came in to grab hold of it, claim credit for creating it, and/or push it under the rug with a "pay no attention to the man behind the screen" denial.
As discussed earlier, i did not do psychedelics, so i had no idea what this was. What i could read, or hear, of psychedelics' experiences, seemed to be something like this, but not exactly. There were no strange creatures manifesting, no spirit guides or magical birds, no Buddha, Mary or Christ, etc. This was far from "all pervading oneness", and was certainly not persistent, or even easily and reliably accessible.
Doggedly, pursuing a permanent return of/to this state, i did many practices in many places with many teachers, eventually finding Ramana Maharshi's and Bassui Tokusho's, a 14th century Japanese Rinzai Zen master, teachings on the self inquiry practice of "Who Am I?", and its many variations, which eventually unraveled the "I/self" construct and led to total surrender.
As i was doing an asana/posture, suddenly, everything changed - self-referential thoughts, fears, desires, stopped. It was clear that everything was all one thing, of a totally different dimension and energy, and it was all somehow contained within "me". That has persisted, and deepened, over the intervening 14 years.
To put this into some intellectual "context", as it was so strange, i found myself in the non-dual/advaita texts, like Shankara's Nirvana Shatakam, the Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. They all described this "all-pervading", everlasting, indestructible, unmoving, and immovable Self/Atman/Brahman which was never born and never dies. For example, the Bhagavad Gita:
a) X, 20, "I am the Atman that resides in the hearts of all beings",
b) II, 17, "Know That which pervades all this to be indestructible.",
c) XIII, 32, "The Self pervading the whole body is not affected",
d) VI, 29, "All beings reside in the Atman, and the Atman resides in all beings"
And now, i was seeing the same thing. But how to make this understandable to my scientific mind and understand if it was scientifically reasonable or rational.
Well, as the Universe would have it, some quantum physicists manifested to work with. In our discussions and explorations, they told of "dark energy" and of its strange and mysterious properties. Dark energy makes up 74% of the Universe and is characterized as what "permeates all of space". Notice that "stuff", like "stars, etc." are only 0.4% of the Universe.
A 2011 Anglo-Australian study, popularized by a BBC story, found dark energy in 200,000 galaxies and confirmed the "constant effects of dark energy through time". This dark energy also "is thought to be very homogeneous, not very dense and is not known to interact through any of the fundamental forces of gravity. Since it is not very dense - roughly 10 to -29 power, it is unlikely to be detectable in laboratory experiments." It is, however, readily detectable by astronomical investigations of "red shift". i attended a "dark energy" conference at Penn State with a bunch of cosmologists. They talked incessantly about "red shift", even over dinner.
An article in the NYTimes in November 2006 reports on research at the Space Telescope Science Institute with the Hubble telescope which was published in The Astrophysical Journal. As Dr. Carroll of CalTech said "Dark energy makes us nervous", as physicists concede that they don't really understand it.
Not surprisingly, there are also many "esoteric scientists" on the web who have detailed discussions of why dark energy is Brahman/Atman and why "all is one" and link it to the ancient Indian teachings. This is not "hard science", but if you put "dark energy" and "brahman" in your browser, you will have days of reading.
Much of the "all is One" justification relates to the Big Bang, from which everything apparently originated from one "point/singularity" about 13.75 billion years ago. As the reasoning goes, if the multiplicity manifested from one single source, would not "everything" contain the fundamental characteristics/ground of its origin?
We cannot currently ascertain what the "intelligence" properties are, if any, of the all-pervasive, constant over astrological time, "dark energy". There is even the argument that we will never be able to, like in the classic book, "Flatland". It we are two dimensional beings, how can we visualize three dimensional space?
Books like Amit Goswami's "The Self Aware Universe" point to an explanation of how all of "This" might work. Amit, "the quantum activist", has fascinating youTube videos and normally presents at the Science and NonDuality Conferences, where i have presented since they have existed. i had the opportunity to be in a small workshop w/Amit.
So that is a quick summary of "my" direct on-going experience of "all-pervasive stillness and oneness", and the current, fairly compelling science on the topic. It can be experienced directly as personal experience, just like the mystical texts describe. It appears as if science is also coming to the conclusion that those texts were pointing to the truth.
you talk about "all-pervasive stillness and oneness". That makes no rational or scientific sense. Is this just hyperbole and "hand-waving" or is there something to it?
G.
One of the most consistent, and puzzling assertions by virtually all mystics of whatever tradition, age or culture, is that they experience a "oneness", a knowing that "all is one". Honestly, i never paid much attention to these claims, as i just assumed that it was exaggeration and "hand waving" required for the idea of non-duality.
At that time, as i looked around, all i saw were the myriad forms of trees, house, other folk, my arms and legs, sky, water, birds, flowers, etc. There was an "I" that saw these "objects", the traditional duality of a subject and an object. However, as i bumped all over the spiritual path, i did have moments, as many do, where i saw things very differently in which "objects" took on an unusual, much less substantial appearance, where they appeared to have a different energy than they did only moments earlier.
 |
| Bassui Tokusho |
As discussed earlier, i did not do psychedelics, so i had no idea what this was. What i could read, or hear, of psychedelics' experiences, seemed to be something like this, but not exactly. There were no strange creatures manifesting, no spirit guides or magical birds, no Buddha, Mary or Christ, etc. This was far from "all pervading oneness", and was certainly not persistent, or even easily and reliably accessible.
Doggedly, pursuing a permanent return of/to this state, i did many practices in many places with many teachers, eventually finding Ramana Maharshi's and Bassui Tokusho's, a 14th century Japanese Rinzai Zen master, teachings on the self inquiry practice of "Who Am I?", and its many variations, which eventually unraveled the "I/self" construct and led to total surrender.
As i was doing an asana/posture, suddenly, everything changed - self-referential thoughts, fears, desires, stopped. It was clear that everything was all one thing, of a totally different dimension and energy, and it was all somehow contained within "me". That has persisted, and deepened, over the intervening 14 years.
To put this into some intellectual "context", as it was so strange, i found myself in the non-dual/advaita texts, like Shankara's Nirvana Shatakam, the Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. They all described this "all-pervading", everlasting, indestructible, unmoving, and immovable Self/Atman/Brahman which was never born and never dies. For example, the Bhagavad Gita:
a) X, 20, "I am the Atman that resides in the hearts of all beings",
b) II, 17, "Know That which pervades all this to be indestructible.",
c) XIII, 32, "The Self pervading the whole body is not affected",
d) VI, 29, "All beings reside in the Atman, and the Atman resides in all beings"
And now, i was seeing the same thing. But how to make this understandable to my scientific mind and understand if it was scientifically reasonable or rational.
Well, as the Universe would have it, some quantum physicists manifested to work with. In our discussions and explorations, they told of "dark energy" and of its strange and mysterious properties. Dark energy makes up 74% of the Universe and is characterized as what "permeates all of space". Notice that "stuff", like "stars, etc." are only 0.4% of the Universe.
A 2011 Anglo-Australian study, popularized by a BBC story, found dark energy in 200,000 galaxies and confirmed the "constant effects of dark energy through time". This dark energy also "is thought to be very homogeneous, not very dense and is not known to interact through any of the fundamental forces of gravity. Since it is not very dense - roughly 10 to -29 power, it is unlikely to be detectable in laboratory experiments." It is, however, readily detectable by astronomical investigations of "red shift". i attended a "dark energy" conference at Penn State with a bunch of cosmologists. They talked incessantly about "red shift", even over dinner.
An article in the NYTimes in November 2006 reports on research at the Space Telescope Science Institute with the Hubble telescope which was published in The Astrophysical Journal. As Dr. Carroll of CalTech said "Dark energy makes us nervous", as physicists concede that they don't really understand it.
Not surprisingly, there are also many "esoteric scientists" on the web who have detailed discussions of why dark energy is Brahman/Atman and why "all is one" and link it to the ancient Indian teachings. This is not "hard science", but if you put "dark energy" and "brahman" in your browser, you will have days of reading.
Much of the "all is One" justification relates to the Big Bang, from which everything apparently originated from one "point/singularity" about 13.75 billion years ago. As the reasoning goes, if the multiplicity manifested from one single source, would not "everything" contain the fundamental characteristics/ground of its origin?
 |
| Amit Goswami |
We cannot currently ascertain what the "intelligence" properties are, if any, of the all-pervasive, constant over astrological time, "dark energy". There is even the argument that we will never be able to, like in the classic book, "Flatland". It we are two dimensional beings, how can we visualize three dimensional space?
Books like Amit Goswami's "The Self Aware Universe" point to an explanation of how all of "This" might work. Amit, "the quantum activist", has fascinating youTube videos and normally presents at the Science and NonDuality Conferences, where i have presented since they have existed. i had the opportunity to be in a small workshop w/Amit.
So that is a quick summary of "my" direct on-going experience of "all-pervasive stillness and oneness", and the current, fairly compelling science on the topic. It can be experienced directly as personal experience, just like the mystical texts describe. It appears as if science is also coming to the conclusion that those texts were pointing to the truth.
You may also be interested in Ervin Laszlo's work as well. He formulates a similar amalgam of quantum theory and mystical experience in Science and the Akashic Field. It's pretty technical, which makes it difficult for me to evaluate the scientific foundations of his arguments and whether they are accepted by the broad scientific community. You may be able to develop a more informed opinion however.
ReplyDeleteHi Jake
ReplyDeleteYes, i know Ervin Laszlo. He was the keynote of a follow-on conference after the Asia Consciousness Festival in Hong Kong in 2010 at which i gave several talks, a workshop, a panel discussion, etc. i met him and was scheduled to talk during his conference, but the travel situation got "complicated", so i didn't.
Laszlo's take is less scientific, IMHO, than what i discussed. His "quantum vacuum" now seems to be a strange, and dated concept w/little or no scientific support any more. Visualizing a field as "carrying all information" is really different than my, the texts', and Einstein's, model in which SOMETHING controls and is everything.
His model leaves a lot of questions like "what stores, accesses and manages the information - a vacuum?" hanging as well (not that there aren't questions to be answered in "my" model). Laszlo's model attempts to solve several "problems" in quantum physics but it doesn't address some more fundamental issues.
Tks for sending this.
stillness