updated: Sun, 8-23-15
Studying the teachings and life of Lahiri Mahasaya, and the teachings of one of his great disciples, Swami Sri Yukteswar, and finally, their emissary to the West and to the modern age, Paramhansa Yogananda, one encounters a tradition with very ancient roots. The teachings of India are almost impossibly complex and variegated. But here I am speaking more of the breadth and depth of yoga techniques, almost as a subset of the theology and philosophy of India which is known as Sanaatan Dharma. Yoga is the applied spirituality of India. The essential message and purpose of the yogic science was announced at the beginning of Yogananda's public life in America with the publication of his first book, which he called The Science of Religion.
This line of great spiritual teachers, who we view as the greatest of teachers--avatars--represent a tradition that focuses on techniques ("yoga") that utilize subtle aspects of the human body and mind to achieve states of consciousness that exist beyond and independent of the human body, including its nervous system and the brain.
It is no coincidence that scientific studies of the brain and the effects of meditation upon the body and brain are growing exponentially. Looking back we can see that Yogananda and his guru and param guru were tuning into the consciousness of a new age even as they are, simultaneously, carrying on a teaching that is incomprehensibly ancient. Not only carrying on, but clarifying and unwrapping this science from the dustbin of indifference and medieval secrecy. The clarifying aspect includes stripping away, as one who prunes branches from a rose bush or apple tree, techniques, superstitions and non-essential elements from the yogic treasury which had become dusty, hoary, misunderstood, and "overweight."
Science is taking human knowledge and awareness to the very edge of matter and energy: indeed, beyond the fringe of what can be observed, verified, experimented upon and proven. In this, science is beginning to hit a wall beyond which it will find exponentially increasing difficulty to penetrate. I have read, for example, that "string theory," though the current best guess explanation for certain esoteric (to most of us) phenomenon, cannot, the scientists admit, ever be "proven," at least not in the conventional sense we attribute to testing of drugs, rockets, and the human brain.
It is the human mind that is driven by curiosity and thirsting for knowledge. Beyond the edge of matter and energy is a realm of subtlety that can easily be viewed as "mind" or consciousness. At least it has suspiciously similar characteristics. It's like time and space being curved and turning in on itself. We've gone so far in our search for the essence of matter and energy that we find ourselves facing ourselves: the observer of the experiment cannot but effect, even by his expectations, the result of the experiment!!!! And that's not even attempting to describe what we discover out past the fringes of matter and energy.
The mind, seeking ultimate knowledge, finds its Self. Mind turned inward upon observing its Self finds its Self looking into a mirror. Like two mirrors facing each other, the image goes on and on into Infinity.
Yogananda was very much a "bhakti:" a lover of God, especially in the aspect of Divine Mother. Yet, like his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar and like Lahiri Mahasaya, he explored and shared the yoga techniques as a science. A science is something anyone can explore and use and discover the same basic results. In the science of mind, however, the only laboratory is the mind itself and the tools in the lab of consciousness are the human body, the mind, and self-awareness. The mind-body-breath of the yogi scientist must be refined and honed no less precisely than than the calibration of the Hadron Collider or any of the most sophisticated electron microscope or the most esoteric mathematical formulae.
Modern science requires a high degree of education and dedication. Higher education is costly. The tools of science, like the Hadron Collider, costs billions of dollars. Yoga techniques don't require expensive tools but the price of exploration to the edge of discovery is no less in terms of dedication and personal commitment. Just as only a few can be top level, leading edge quantum physicists, so there are but a few yogis who would be masters of the yoga science. As Yogananda's guru put it, "Saints are not produced in batches each semester like accountants." Just as millions of people work in scientific fields (engineering, medicine, research, etc.) so only a handful can be "Einsteins" in their area of expertise.
But that doesn't mean that millions can't benefit from the discoveries of the yogi-scientists, just as millions benefit from the fruits of scientific advances and discoveries. Few of the millions of those now meditating intend to, want to, or even contemplate the existence of highest states of consciousness achieved by advanced yogis and saints. Yet, they benefit in countless ways -- physically, mentally, and spiritually -- from their daily practice.
Scientists are grappling with trying to understand the human brain. Their professional dogmas and their tools dictate that they must look only to what they can see and touch (i.e., the brain) for the source of human thought, emotions, memories and health. And they are right to do so. Even common sense suggests to our minds, whether from the overarching evidence of biological evolution, or from the functions of the human body itself, that the brain produces consciousness and not the other way around. For now, they must even largely ignore the growing body of evidence that consciousness exists outside the brain. That's ok -- for now, and, for their present purposes.
But the yogi-scientists have proved otherwise using their tools and techniques to reach those conclusions. These conclusions -- that consciousness exists outside and independent of the brain -- are just as provable as the experiments of the scientists, provided you use the only tool and method that exists to discover this reality: consciousness itself. This tool needs sophisticated calibration through a strict diet and vibrant healthy lifestyle, a strong moral and ethical code that assists in overcoming narrow self-interest and helps gain mental detachment from the body, the senses, and personality. It requires wholehearted commitment to the pursuit of a level of consciousness that is ego and body transcendent. It requires one-pointed attention to the details of one's training and the regimen given by one's highly advanced teacher.
Let me digress for a moment. My son, Kashi, recently described a scene (from a movie? I'm not sure.) where three robots were talking to one another. One of them declared something like, "I know that it was I who just said that." Kashi reported that the consensus was that this proved that the robot was self-aware. "Really," I said, "does it?" I believe that most people today, being exposed to the rising rash of robot-awareness but not having thought particularly deeply about AI (artificial intelligence), have yet to make the most basic distinction there is: the distinction between the appearance of consciousness and self-awareness itself.
Just as a drunken person might talk or act but not remember what he said or did, so self-awareness is personal and individual. It cannot be detected or proven outside of itself (meaning by others) unless it takes on the appearance of sentience. Walking, talking, writing, typing, moving, etc. all are signs of life and life suggests some degree of awareness. By mechanical or electronic means (preprogramming), no matter how sophisticated is your imitation of consciousness, the appearance is NOT proof of the reality! Only I can say of myself, I am conscious. Yet saying it doesn't prove it. Only "I" can know it.
A movie may seem lifelike but we know, when watching it, that it is only a movie. And even though we get caught up in the movie, laughing and crying, getting carried by the story, its impact very quickly fades away, just like all the other emotions and thoughts that we, ourselves, have. You see, not even our thoughts and emotions are, themselves, the proof of our self-awareness. They are like leaves on a tree, bright and green for the summer, then fading into Fall and falling away in winter while yet the trunk and roots of the tree remain impervious to outer, superficial change.
Descartes said, "I think therefore I am," and, pardon me, old friend, but it is truer to say "I am conscious, therefore I can think." With our cleverness our robots may be able to imitate life and art and intelligence, but we can NEVER create self-awareness. Great art and ideas descend from a higher level of reality where no form, no logic, no past memory nor merely regurgitated conglomeration of preprogrammed data can be substituted for the flow of intelligent, self-conscious awareness. I say, "I had an idea." This is true, but it is truer to say that an "idea appeared in the mind." It might be a melody, or formula, or a solution to a problem.
What science cannot and presumably will never detect with instruments is that invisibly encoded in the flow of energy which is called many things (say, for now, "Life Force"), similar to DNA, is innate intelligence and the impulse power of intention. (After all, nothing that science can observe or test will ever explain "Why we exist at all.") Like wires inside conduit, or language embedded in a digital cell phone signal, ideas and intelligence exist within the very channel of life's energy from conception to our departure at death. Let me ask you this: "Will robots have "ideas?"
I admit that I don't know where the boundary is in the distant future between biological, human genetic material (sperm and ovum) and human, self-aware life. But I do know that no amount of data or manipulation of data can create inspiration or consciousness.
Returning now to the science of yoga, the yogi-scientist, in addition to the regimen outlined above, uses the breath and the mind as vehicles or highways that can take the human mind back to the place of awareness that transcends the functions of the brain. Life in the human body begins with our first breath and ends with our last breath. It is the most fundamental sign of life and consciousness. (BTW, robots don't breathe!) Wherever life comes from and wherever it may go when it leaves the body, it comes and goes evidenced by and carried upon the back of our breath. In Paramhansa Yogananda's famous life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," he wrote "The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness [consciousness beyond the brain] is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India's unique and deathless contribution to the world's treasury of knowledge."
The brain and nervous system are designed to operate the physical body, to protect, sustain, and defend the body. But these fulfill, for human life at least, a dual role: not only to create and protect the human body, but also, endowed with the power of abstract thought, logic, reason, and memory, to explore and question the very essence and basis of life itself. In the highly developed and advanced potential of the human brain and nervous system, consciousness finds the means, an organ, fit to express and reveal itself as it Self: self-aware and, ultimately, independent of its own vehicle.
Just as most of us cannot survey the heavens above or the intricacies of life within without a sense of awe at the overwhelming power, majesty, intelligence and beauty that cannot but be the motive force behind it all, so too the evolution of life has for its highest purpose, the yogis tell us, the revelation of Self-discovery: a game of divine "hide-n-seek." No matter that this Infinite Consciousness bides its time through incomprehensibly long eons of time and seemingly microscopically slow evolutionary processes, for in the mind of Mind it is all but an idea, a dream: real seeming only to the players in the dream but not to the playwright.
Every night in sleep, the world and our body is whisked away on a magic carpet of subconsciousness. Our troubles are, for a few hours, gone as we sleep in space unmindful of the bag of bones which is our prison. In this prison the bars of bones and walls of flesh prevent us from seeing the blue skies of omnipresence. The yogi learns conscious sleep wherein the alpha brain waves and the theta brain waves are brought into equilibrium between conscious and subconscious states.
For brain transcendence is, like the horizon line at the sea, a thin line between the ocean of subconscious and the sky of the conscious mind. The yogi learns to "escape" through the worm hole that lies thinly between the two. The vehicle that takes him there is the breath. For when the breath can be made to be quieted (by consistency and intensity of yoga practice), the brain functions that tie him to the body are sufficiently quieted that the "escape route" appears.
In conscious freedom from the pounding heart and breath which tie us to the body, the yogi's consciousness can soar and feel a joy that is without sensory or circumstantial conditions. Tasting this frequently and then daily, the yogi gradually achieves control of autonomic functions of the body and eventually this state of consciousness can be retained regardless of outer involvements and activities.
This in brief and narrowly described summary is the science of religion. No use of religious terminology is needed to free us, though it contributes greatly given the fullness of the human character and its need for feeling, inspiration, and self-giving. One cannot aspire or love or be devoted to a merely abstract concept. The effort it takes and hinted at above demand a dedication beyond any form of human self-giving to a cause or person. Love for the guru (as in incarnation of God); love for God as joy or peace; love for God in any sincere and pure form...........love, as dedication and commitment and as the willingness to sacrifice all lesser things for the pearl of great price.......love is the beginning and bliss is the end.
"Think" beyond the brain; beyond the ego; soar in breathlessness outside of the prison of ego. Think freedom; be free; give your all to the All. Meditation will take us beyond the brain; beyond the body; beyond the ego, and, finally, beyond the mind and perceive objects into pure and infinite Consciousness. No matter how much time; effort (whether mild or intense); how many lives.....for, indeed, God is always with us; God IS us; God is within us, forever.
When does it all end? Yogananda, when asked this question replied, "When we achieve endlessness."
Joy to you in the contemplation of No-thing!
Swami Hrimananda
Showing posts with label Science of Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science of Religion. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2015
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Happiness: the new God!
The war between religion and science has been a long one and bitter one. I suppose it started with the Renaissance and man's growing interest in the natural world and in himself.
Science and its offspring and sidekick, materialism, have brought undeniable prosperity, health, security and comfort to billions. While the skirmishing continues, for the most part there is a no man's land, a kind of DMZ (De-militarized zone) between faith and science. "Never the twain shall meet" to quote Rudyard Kipling.
Scientists who have faith simply say the one has nothing to do with the other. Following Einstein's failure to put the universe neatly together in a box, they figure, well, if Einstein couldn't make sense of the natural world why should we even try to imagine there's any connection with God? Even India's ancient scriptures, those known generally as Shankhya philosophy, declare "Iswara ashidhha," God cannot be proved (to the satisfaction of the intellect or the senses, that is).
But our worship of the gods of unlimited material progress and ever-better technology has not brought the world peace nor to our hearts, harmony. Neither, for that matter, has the worship and praise of a distant and aloof God for all of our credos and rituals done much more. Worse, sectarian competition and rivalry are more like the battles between cable networks.
Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the now spiritual classic, "Autobiography of a Yogi," was born in 1893. It was a time and an era when New Thought in America was born. By the time he arrived in 1920 in America to make his home here, he had declared his life's work to be based on a simple observation of what all humans possess and share: the desire to avoid pain and find happiness! And, he had a solution to offer.
No coincidence that he came to the first country in human history to be founded on the principle that its citizens should have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Yogananda came to America to cash in the promissory note of our Founding Fathers!
Never mind that the citizens of our young nation assumed that happiness was primarily defined by materialism and self-interest. Yogananda came to help us understand something deeper and more satisfying than owning a Prius or having a second home or having an important sounding title.
By uniting the ancient Vedic teaching, endorsed down through the ages by saints and sages East and West, that we are made in the image of God with the teaching that "the kingdom of heaven is within you," Yogananda helped usher in a new dispensation of understanding.
It is happiness that bridges the otherwise impenetrable gap between God and human life. It is meditation that provides the tool to discover that happiness within and that that happiness IS God, the joy of God; the joy of our own soul's nature. Science can delight in the fact that happiness, unlike God, can be studied, analyzed, and measured!
Science proved its point and its worth. Religion, based solely upon belief and enforced by authority and expressed only through ritual, is steadily losing ground. During much of the 20th century that lost ground was still born and sterile; in its place materialism offered only emptiness; meaninglessness; and naked self-interest. The brutality of two world wars and many lesser ones only proved its "worth."
Now, however, the message of hope for a better world is growing. The search for happiness unites us. The wealth of happiness that we seek is an "inside job." Citizens of prosperous and relatively secure nations like America have demonstrated that material success cannot bring happiness. Each and every one of us, if we make the effort, can prove that happiness is within us. We need no intercession or outside authority.
Happiness, or what I will now term, joy, is the new religion. It is the spirituality that is not religious. Ananda's motto is "Joy is within you." This might as well be everyone's motto who seeks it within, especially those millions (and growing daily) who seek it through the science of religion: meditation.
Yogananda's very first book was called: "The Science of Religion." Meditation is for everyone. Even scientists and atheists want happiness, don't they?
And if there's more to it than this simple article addresses, well, that's less important than the point I seek to share. Never mind that just because happiness is an inside job that doesn't mean it's a solo flight. Nor that we don't need guidance and inspiration for the journey.
As our complex bodies work their wonderful magic without our conscious consent, so too our inner peace and happiness are already there, within us, and ultimately they can be and must be our guides. We need not be concerned about where the journey takes us and what form it will assume. We need only take one step at a time. See you there!
Joy to you!
Nayaswami Hriman
Science and its offspring and sidekick, materialism, have brought undeniable prosperity, health, security and comfort to billions. While the skirmishing continues, for the most part there is a no man's land, a kind of DMZ (De-militarized zone) between faith and science. "Never the twain shall meet" to quote Rudyard Kipling.
Scientists who have faith simply say the one has nothing to do with the other. Following Einstein's failure to put the universe neatly together in a box, they figure, well, if Einstein couldn't make sense of the natural world why should we even try to imagine there's any connection with God? Even India's ancient scriptures, those known generally as Shankhya philosophy, declare "Iswara ashidhha," God cannot be proved (to the satisfaction of the intellect or the senses, that is).
But our worship of the gods of unlimited material progress and ever-better technology has not brought the world peace nor to our hearts, harmony. Neither, for that matter, has the worship and praise of a distant and aloof God for all of our credos and rituals done much more. Worse, sectarian competition and rivalry are more like the battles between cable networks.
Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the now spiritual classic, "Autobiography of a Yogi," was born in 1893. It was a time and an era when New Thought in America was born. By the time he arrived in 1920 in America to make his home here, he had declared his life's work to be based on a simple observation of what all humans possess and share: the desire to avoid pain and find happiness! And, he had a solution to offer.
No coincidence that he came to the first country in human history to be founded on the principle that its citizens should have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Yogananda came to America to cash in the promissory note of our Founding Fathers!
Never mind that the citizens of our young nation assumed that happiness was primarily defined by materialism and self-interest. Yogananda came to help us understand something deeper and more satisfying than owning a Prius or having a second home or having an important sounding title.
By uniting the ancient Vedic teaching, endorsed down through the ages by saints and sages East and West, that we are made in the image of God with the teaching that "the kingdom of heaven is within you," Yogananda helped usher in a new dispensation of understanding.
It is happiness that bridges the otherwise impenetrable gap between God and human life. It is meditation that provides the tool to discover that happiness within and that that happiness IS God, the joy of God; the joy of our own soul's nature. Science can delight in the fact that happiness, unlike God, can be studied, analyzed, and measured!
Science proved its point and its worth. Religion, based solely upon belief and enforced by authority and expressed only through ritual, is steadily losing ground. During much of the 20th century that lost ground was still born and sterile; in its place materialism offered only emptiness; meaninglessness; and naked self-interest. The brutality of two world wars and many lesser ones only proved its "worth."
Now, however, the message of hope for a better world is growing. The search for happiness unites us. The wealth of happiness that we seek is an "inside job." Citizens of prosperous and relatively secure nations like America have demonstrated that material success cannot bring happiness. Each and every one of us, if we make the effort, can prove that happiness is within us. We need no intercession or outside authority.
Happiness, or what I will now term, joy, is the new religion. It is the spirituality that is not religious. Ananda's motto is "Joy is within you." This might as well be everyone's motto who seeks it within, especially those millions (and growing daily) who seek it through the science of religion: meditation.
Yogananda's very first book was called: "The Science of Religion." Meditation is for everyone. Even scientists and atheists want happiness, don't they?
And if there's more to it than this simple article addresses, well, that's less important than the point I seek to share. Never mind that just because happiness is an inside job that doesn't mean it's a solo flight. Nor that we don't need guidance and inspiration for the journey.
As our complex bodies work their wonderful magic without our conscious consent, so too our inner peace and happiness are already there, within us, and ultimately they can be and must be our guides. We need not be concerned about where the journey takes us and what form it will assume. We need only take one step at a time. See you there!
Joy to you!
Nayaswami Hriman
Monday, April 13, 2015
Where do Ideas Come From? What caused the BIG BANG?
"I have an idea," you announce to your co-workers. Yes, it's true, literally, that you "have" an idea (in your mind). But do you ever wonder where ideas come from? Most of us take it for granted that we, being in original possession of the idea must be its owner.
Indeed, the law says it is so, and it is so. But this convenient and pragmatic logic fails to examine the source of the idea. Don't you and I, as intelligent, creative, thinking persons, rely upon what might be called a process, even a "mechanism," of searching for answers out in an unknown space of the ether for answers? We do this so instinctively that we rarely question or probe the process itself.
Take something totally mundane, like "What should I give my friend for her birthday?" Your eyebrows frown or narrow slightly; one or both of your eyes squint as if peering into some unseen dark box; the mind quiets momentarily. It's as if you've sent a search command into your hard drive for a file as you wait, sometimes a nano second, for a reply. You examine it, perhaps discard it, and ask for another. If none comes, you may abandon your conscious search and go onto the next task fully expectant, based on experience, that an answer will suddenly pop up later. (That resembles the speed of my computer at home, unfortunately.)
But the analogy to a computer, while interesting and somewhat relevant, doesn't give the full answer because my computer doesn't create new files, it only searches existing ones. My brain simply CANNOT be the source of a symphony or a poem even if rigidly evidence-based inquiries insist that it must be for lack of any other measurable source. Why doesn't MY brain produce symphonies or poems, but yours does?
To produce something intelligible to the human intellect and that is communicable to other humans, the brain serves as a necessary tool. It gives language, sound, description and feeling to my idea for a present for my friend. Indeed, the very question originates in the material world of friends and birthdays, so the response must take a relevant form. The brain thus acts as a translator back and forth between consciousness and matter via the transmission of measurable brain energy.
Do you think that the brain originates ideas? If you do, you have strong support from the scientific community but they'll NEVER tell you how! They can measure things like brain waves and can tell you that certain parts of the brain are working and they can stimulate memory or even hallucinations by poking at your brain but they cannot tell you how thoughts pass through the magical boundary between their source (which is immaterial) and their outer expression into words, emotions or movements. Where and how do new ideas (the kind never before thought of by you and not mere re-hashes of past thoughts or experiences) get created?
A computer can store images (including words which are symbols of thought) in binary form but it cannot produce anything new except by building on its existing database. Until computers become super-duper, they are clumsy in creating anything more than a mathematical or merely logical construct. (This is the "missing-link" of conscious, self-awareness that I describe in a recent, and extremely popular, blog article, "Chappie: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness".)
If a brain operates more like a computer (as we tend to believe it does), then how could it compose a poem? Or a symphony? Yes, by practicing poetry or music one can develop one's skills but many people are taught specific skills but never become great artists? Nor can an examination of the genes or DNA ever reveal the hidden seed of an idea.
Notwithstanding the volume of brain and meditation research happening these days, I aver that scientists will never discover "the missing link:" that mysterious, invisible non-substance called consciousness: the stuff of "good ideas." The brain may be a wonderful mechanism to allow for the logical expression of ideas or the dramatic expression of feelings, but it will never be found to be the originator.
I suppose there must be studies on people who have lots of good ideas and others who have few. If so, I've never stumbled upon them. But, ok, fine some people have good ideas. Maybe they eat a lot of fish, according to P.G. Wodehouse, like his butler, Jeeves. That's great but it doesn't answer my question: where do ideas actually come from? Surely not from fish!
Is not my question perhaps the same question as "What produced the BIG BANG" or the question "Why does anything exist at all? (See the book by Jim Holt, "Why Does the World Exist.")
Just as ideas seem to come out of nowhere, though not necessarily randomly, so too the universe seems to have come out of nowhere. With fresh ideas we might need to "sleep on it," go on vacation, go for a run or take a shower. In the creative process, there's a very definite pattern of emptiness alternating with fullness; or silence and then sound; dark and light. In energizing this pattern, there is no singular human activity better than meditation to stimulate a person's consistent creativity.
As to whether there really is, anywhere, "nothing," well, science itself, and meditators themselves, know that the silence is pregnant with pause; filled with latent potentiality. The silence of the deeper states of meditation are innately creative, powerful, rich and very full states of mind. The only difference is that in silence there is no outer expression: thoughts have not yet taken shape or form.
In the Ananda Festival of Light Sunday Service (written by Ananda's founder, Swami Kriyananda), there's song called "Thunder of AUM." It's opening line, echoing Genesis, is "Out of the silence came the song of creation, out of the darkness came the light."
While this sphere of nothing can produce random ideas of no personal relevance to the person receiving them, like my 3-part blog series on "If I were president," humanity's great ideas (in science, religion, art, or politics) are tailored made for the people destined to manifest them. A person who indulges daily in daydreams or fantasies can create his own world but it is entirely subjective because no attempt is made, or possible, to bring that world into manifestation. The ideas are still-born and I would wager that the person is not better off, meaning better balanced and mature, for the indulgence.
Setting aside random or irrelevant ideas and those that preoccupy minds with nothing better to do, important ideas are very personal and very relevant to our needs or our life's destiny.
Since personally meaningful ideas appear in response to our personal needs, then the BIG idea of creating a universe must also be a response to a universal or BIG need. Since ideas cannot exist apart from consciousness, so of course consciousness had the BIG IDEA and perhaps, then, the BIG NEED. (I would propose that the term "need" can include a creative impulse; a desire; an interest.) A further statement is that ideas (thought) cannot exist apart from self-awareness. Self-awareness may be intense or dim, but in the realm of ideas it is always present. This can only be proved to oneself, it cannot be proven by logic or by observation from outside. Consciousness and self-awareness are one and the same and cannot be proved: only its material manifestations, like words, emotions, actions, brain waves, etc. can be observed.
Since neither science nor philosophy can answer the question "Why does anything exist at all," I will offer to them a solution to their dilemma (at no additional cost): the universe exists because it was intended to. "Someone" put out the intention and BANG, IT WAS SO! I challenge them to do me one better. We cannot responsibly say the universe doesn't exist, so we must accept that it does. We might speculate that it came into being through some random force but our experience of life, including the creative process in ourselves, suggests otherwise. Why not take the evidence where it leads and accept it as the best evidence we have at this time? Maybe that's as far as our logic and reason can take us.
In my popular blog article "Chappie: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness" I posited the self-evident but intellectually unprovable statement that self-awareness is what distinguishes consciousness from artificial intelligence. This "missing link" as I called it in that article, is what I am discussing here in this article. And here I am positing an ages old precept that consciousness preexists and is the intention that gives rise to ideas, self-awareness, energy and matter.
This is where my favorite topic and hidden agenda surfaces: meditation! Yup, SURPRISE! (You didn't see that coming, did you?) I further posit that there is a link between "why creation exists at all," creativity, self-awareness and why meditation enhances creativity.
Imagine now building something really big: yeah, ok, say, a universe. Its gonna take some time. "Rome wasn't built in a day," we've been told. If this universe is going to be built piece by piece, as material things are, you won't see it in all its splendor until it's finished. As it is being built it looks pretty lumpy, the job site is messy, and its ultimate beauty and functionality is postponed until the end. Not only does "someone" need to intend it; and then guide its construction, but, in the end, "someone" needs to see and acknowledge it. Otherwise..........we cannot know if it actually exists!
So it wouldn't be surprising that the Consciousness that lit the fuse of the BIG BANG had to wait awhile until the construction project (i.e., evolution) produced an "independent" witness. On this planet, the only one we know, I understand it's taken over 4 billion years and that human existence is fairly recent. So if it is true that Consciousness produced the universe and our planet, it had to take some time before anyone (i.e. we humans) came into existence, began getting curious, even suspicious, and then began asking these questions! Objective and subjective, though separable in logical, linear time and processing, are inextricably linked. Science has said as much when, much to its shock and horror, it concluded that the observer is part of the observation and the observed.
Given the nature of the enormous length and complexity of the evolutionary process we would be forgiven in imaging that the process produced us randomly. I mean, gee, at first glance, popping out of the egg shell, so to speak, who can blame us from looking around and imaging the egg produced us? We wake up and the first thing we see.........are monkeys, or fishes, or whatever. While logical, it isn't necessary so! Our vision is, as yet, myopic! Limited to mere logic, we mistake the means for the cause. (Take THAT, Richard Dawkins!)
Notwithstanding the limitations of the "religion" of science, there is overwhelming historical evidence that humans, from the beginning of our existence, have intuited that our self-awareness holds the key to a sacred mystery of sorts: that it hints to us in a wordless communication that our real "parent" is not the material world that only appears to have produced us. Rocks and trees don't seem to possess this gift; animals seem to have some self-awareness, but most only fleetingly. There's something about the human experience, a gift of intuitive sight, that has continually insisted to our minds that we possess something decidedly "different" from planets, rocks and trees and that this awareness is special. It is sacred. And, yes, it is a mystery, even to us. We give it many names and no name but we cannot rid ourselves of its haunting shadow which follows us wherever we go. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Travel is a fool's paradise because wherever I go, there I am.
Creativity is the outward moving expression of self-awareness. Creativity is the natural impulse of self-awareness. It bestows upon humanity great gifts and powers: and the obligation to use them wisely. But ideas are difficult, in fact, impossible, to bully into being subservient to our demands. Some call creativity the "Muses," godlike, in other words. Thus holy men, shamans, healers, and in more modern times artists, geniuses, inventors, great scientists, super heroes in sports and stage, and even tech wizards are all said to possess some of this "magic," this special gift, this mojo.
The impulse of modern consciousness is to demystify that which formerly was held in awe and surrounded by superstition and mystery and otherwise considered occult. Meditation, too, and yoga are being secularized as the left-brain of human consciousness continues to achieve ascendancy to the point of being our modern "religion" and language. We, like the disciples of Jesus, are impatient with parables, stories, myths and rituals.
It is no coincidence that the spiritual genius of Paramhansa Yogananda, whose life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," has become a classic in our times, titled his first book, "The Science of Religion." [Being a wayshower from the past to the future, he, yet, retained a deep and abiding devotion and religious expression in his poetry, prayers, and personal expression. As Jesus said of himself, he came not to destroy but to "fulfill" the prophets of the past, so too Yogananda had no intentions of throwing the "baby out with the bath water." Nonetheless, he gave expression, and therefore spiritual authority and credibility to the emerging efforts to use our intellects to understand spirituality and to see the underlying connection between the material world, through the eyes of science, and the subtler and higher world of consciousness out of which all things emerge. Throughout his miracle-saturated life story, are testimonies from science pointing to subtler laws and forces.]
The down side of the new ascendency of the intellect (see past ages such as the classical age of Greece) is its hubris that substitutes a well-honed definition for the reality it merely describes. The intellect believes that what it observes and defines, it can control. The history of 20th century world wars and many lesser wars, and the pernicious rise of violence and innumerable addictions, disproves and mocks the power of the intellect. What Yogananda predicted (or, at least, advised) was a cooperative harmonious blending of East and West, of intellect and heart, science and spirituality: in short, a model of cooperation based on the acceptance of the inextricable interrelationship of all things material and spiritual. We are One: whether averred through the science of ecology, astrophysics, quantum physics, chemistry and biology or through the science of the intuitive, meditative mind.
Meditation is the "science of mind." It hones the tool by which, using our brain, body and nervous system, we can peer into a realm which only consciousness can perceive by direct, intuitive contemplation. While the highly evolved brain and nervous system of humans gives to us this gift, the lower cannot possess or control the higher for consciousness transcends the material realm.
Thus the brain and body fulfill a dual function: both a vehicle to the outer space of Mind but also a container and engine which must be ejected and left behind, at least while we are traveling through the space-mind of consciousness. This is where the science of yoga (meditation) enters human history and the evolution of human consciousness.
[But save this for another blog.The specific psycho-physiological methodology of yoga science is based on controlling, slowing the heart and breath rate. Research into meditation only uses subjects who are but amateurs in the science of breath. A yogi who can enter the breathless state at will for prolonged periods would be needed to take the research into higher realms.]
For individual creative acts, it's not so difficult to trace the appearance of an idea into its manifestation. For example, if I have the idea to build a dog house (for when I get into trouble next), I can go out and buy materials and make it. But on a cosmic level and relating to the BIG BANG, we are faced with the difficult challenge of tracing the appearance of energy (then matter) from its proposed source in intention (consciousness). Can consciousness create matter by force of thought alone? Science can prove to us the interchangeability of matter and energy but has yet to reveal the "missing link" of consciousness.
I aver that consciousness itself cannot be directly observed. It can only be inferred by its effects: brain waves, words, emotions or actions.
But, the human experience of creativity provides a clue, for it is an echo of the cosmic creation. We see that a person who is filled with vitality and confidence regarding his destiny, can change the world; can pass through a hail of bullets, unharmed. The achievements of humans down through the ages testify to a power (a conscious, intelligent, guiding force) that defies and transcends all limitations. Human creativity, including self-sacrifice for a greater good, is, itself, the most enduring witness of a greater Consciousness which some people tap more readily and more powerfully and more visibly than most.
Nonetheless, our left-brain culture seeks, nay, demands, to know HOW thought produces matter through the medium of energy. The ancients counsel us to turn to the human experience of dreaming. I had a powerful dream last night in answer to this question. I went to be bed far later than usual as I composed this article. I struggled mentally to put into words something useful in regard to this elemental and all-important mystery of life. "Who am I to even attempt this," I thought as I fell instantly to sleep.
Immediately I began to dream. My dream took me through the experience that I purchased a small airplane. In it were my children, then very small. As I attempted to land on the patch of ground in front of my boyhood home (250 Lighthouse Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA), a wing broke off. Fortunately we came to a stop more or less instantly and no one was hurt. But I was bummed out for having broken my new plane. Then I awoke and laughed at my disappointment, for it was only a dream.....it was only a dream.
This is the key, we are told. As in a dream, the events are as real as events during the conscious, waking state, so, too, is the universe but a dream in the mind of the Creator. Just as the dream persons act, talk, make war or peace and do fantastical things, so too in this great dream the players appear to act independently. Those dream persons certainly seem to have free will and the power of independent and unpredictable action. In the dream experience there is no hint otherwise but yet when we awake we realize that it "but" a dream.
What we deem to be real, whether our thoughts and emotions, or the world around us, can only be so to the extent that we deem it so. Is our cup of life half full or half empty? But we, as individuals in this great dream, are not the originators of the great dream. We are players in the theatre of the cosmic mind. If we play our part poorly, we will, being though a dream, suffer. We must strive to play our part well. We have no choice in the matter. There is no option to leave the stage until we have accomplished our part, for the drama of creation, though only a drama, must go on. Our only choice is to play wisely or foolishly. Humans know this instinctively and we express it in our statements about the law of survival and procreation. We recognize that we must strive, struggle, create and move forward. We view suicide as a defeat for the human spirit.
If we play our part well, we can, in time, leave the drama for good. Or, so we are promised by those who demonstrate their power over the dream sequence. Those who can stop the storm of breath at will; who can raise the living from dead; who can heal the sick; etc.; These are the super-heroes the Masters of their own destiny, co-creators of the cosmic dream. The philosophers and theologians engage in mere speculation, not gnosis, as the great ones do.
The rest of us are working on wresting the power of changing our destiny from Destiny. The trick is that we cannot have it for ourselves because the power that we seek is greater than our littleness. It cannot be made to obey us; we, instead, must learn to obey (or cooperate and attune ourselves) to it. It is our friend, lover, mother and father and means us no harm and offers us all good. But it is an exacting task manager. This deep lesson takes time and effort to learn. Those who have conquered fate (i.e., the law of karma) (O Death, where is thy sting?) come again and again to show us the way.
How is a dream created? We don't really know, beyond observing brain activity and knowing from personal experience that we do, in fact, dream! At night our dreams subside into the dreamless state that gives us true rest and true peace. As I write this blog or write a poem, the thoughts pour out of me like oil from a barrel. I have to intend and want to write this for the ideas to begin to flow. I do not need to know where the writing will take me or how it will unfold. I imitate, then, the Creator by participating in the creative process. All creativity brings the added benefit of joy.
It is intention that begins the movement of thoughts and ideas in the mind and in the Cosmic Mind. This stimulates the flow of creativity. To write, don't stare at a blank screen. Have a seed idea and begin composing. Action, movement, energy, you see, brings the dream world into manifestation. As with you and I, so with the creation and Creator. We are reflections one of the Other.
This will never be proved by the haughty intellect in people like Richard Dawkins. Thoughts have no limits in time or space; they cannot be commanded, though they can be teased and invited to flow. I can no more be the next Einstein by sheer will power, than I can command the forces of nature. Not yet, anyway, if and until I can align my destiny with the Creative Mind.
I can't prove to you that I am not a robot or that I even exist. I can't prove that I am not being manipulated by the great Matrix manager somewhere. But I am convinced "I" exist by my own self-evident, self-awareness. When I gaze at a great painting or up into the starry skies and I feel the presence of God (use any name or no name as you feel), you can say I am imagining that and I can't disprove you but neither can you disprove my conviction that I feel alive and connected, aware of a greater reality than my own.
To have more and fresher ideas; to be more creative; to have more connection, more joy in your life, rise above petty preoccupations and "give yourself" without reservation to the conviction that Life itself exists, sustains, endures, is good, and is loving and you will not be disappointed. It is a paradox that this God-ness, this good-ness exists in spite of and in the face of suffering. Grief and this existential joy can, in fact, co-exist, though the former is temporary and cannot endure long in the presence of the latter which is always there beneath the surface of our mind.
Joy in giving; joy in living; joy in being; joy in transcending littleness: joy is the proof of God, of goodness, of love and life. Consciousness, when pure, IS joy; it is its own reward. Between thoughts, pause and BE. With practice, you will be free. Meditation is the fastest way to BE-ing, without condition. Be your own BIG BANG.
Reflections of this innate joy of Life are found in the Golden Rule; in just laws and wise social mores; in the happiness of giving and sharing. We find it in the peace and pleasure of nature and in the silent messages written in the heavens above. For we are a part of all that is.
The creative life is a one BIG BANG! Where does it end? Yogananda, when asked this question, said simply: it ends in ENDLESSNESS, in Infinite Consciousness: ever existing, ever conscious, ever-new JOY: Satchidanandam.
Om Shanti, Amen!
Nayaswami Hriman
Indeed, the law says it is so, and it is so. But this convenient and pragmatic logic fails to examine the source of the idea. Don't you and I, as intelligent, creative, thinking persons, rely upon what might be called a process, even a "mechanism," of searching for answers out in an unknown space of the ether for answers? We do this so instinctively that we rarely question or probe the process itself.
Take something totally mundane, like "What should I give my friend for her birthday?" Your eyebrows frown or narrow slightly; one or both of your eyes squint as if peering into some unseen dark box; the mind quiets momentarily. It's as if you've sent a search command into your hard drive for a file as you wait, sometimes a nano second, for a reply. You examine it, perhaps discard it, and ask for another. If none comes, you may abandon your conscious search and go onto the next task fully expectant, based on experience, that an answer will suddenly pop up later. (That resembles the speed of my computer at home, unfortunately.)
But the analogy to a computer, while interesting and somewhat relevant, doesn't give the full answer because my computer doesn't create new files, it only searches existing ones. My brain simply CANNOT be the source of a symphony or a poem even if rigidly evidence-based inquiries insist that it must be for lack of any other measurable source. Why doesn't MY brain produce symphonies or poems, but yours does?
To produce something intelligible to the human intellect and that is communicable to other humans, the brain serves as a necessary tool. It gives language, sound, description and feeling to my idea for a present for my friend. Indeed, the very question originates in the material world of friends and birthdays, so the response must take a relevant form. The brain thus acts as a translator back and forth between consciousness and matter via the transmission of measurable brain energy.
Do you think that the brain originates ideas? If you do, you have strong support from the scientific community but they'll NEVER tell you how! They can measure things like brain waves and can tell you that certain parts of the brain are working and they can stimulate memory or even hallucinations by poking at your brain but they cannot tell you how thoughts pass through the magical boundary between their source (which is immaterial) and their outer expression into words, emotions or movements. Where and how do new ideas (the kind never before thought of by you and not mere re-hashes of past thoughts or experiences) get created?
A computer can store images (including words which are symbols of thought) in binary form but it cannot produce anything new except by building on its existing database. Until computers become super-duper, they are clumsy in creating anything more than a mathematical or merely logical construct. (This is the "missing-link" of conscious, self-awareness that I describe in a recent, and extremely popular, blog article, "Chappie: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness".)
If a brain operates more like a computer (as we tend to believe it does), then how could it compose a poem? Or a symphony? Yes, by practicing poetry or music one can develop one's skills but many people are taught specific skills but never become great artists? Nor can an examination of the genes or DNA ever reveal the hidden seed of an idea.
Notwithstanding the volume of brain and meditation research happening these days, I aver that scientists will never discover "the missing link:" that mysterious, invisible non-substance called consciousness: the stuff of "good ideas." The brain may be a wonderful mechanism to allow for the logical expression of ideas or the dramatic expression of feelings, but it will never be found to be the originator.
I suppose there must be studies on people who have lots of good ideas and others who have few. If so, I've never stumbled upon them. But, ok, fine some people have good ideas. Maybe they eat a lot of fish, according to P.G. Wodehouse, like his butler, Jeeves. That's great but it doesn't answer my question: where do ideas actually come from? Surely not from fish!
Is not my question perhaps the same question as "What produced the BIG BANG" or the question "Why does anything exist at all? (See the book by Jim Holt, "Why Does the World Exist.")
Just as ideas seem to come out of nowhere, though not necessarily randomly, so too the universe seems to have come out of nowhere. With fresh ideas we might need to "sleep on it," go on vacation, go for a run or take a shower. In the creative process, there's a very definite pattern of emptiness alternating with fullness; or silence and then sound; dark and light. In energizing this pattern, there is no singular human activity better than meditation to stimulate a person's consistent creativity.
As to whether there really is, anywhere, "nothing," well, science itself, and meditators themselves, know that the silence is pregnant with pause; filled with latent potentiality. The silence of the deeper states of meditation are innately creative, powerful, rich and very full states of mind. The only difference is that in silence there is no outer expression: thoughts have not yet taken shape or form.
In the Ananda Festival of Light Sunday Service (written by Ananda's founder, Swami Kriyananda), there's song called "Thunder of AUM." It's opening line, echoing Genesis, is "Out of the silence came the song of creation, out of the darkness came the light."
While this sphere of nothing can produce random ideas of no personal relevance to the person receiving them, like my 3-part blog series on "If I were president," humanity's great ideas (in science, religion, art, or politics) are tailored made for the people destined to manifest them. A person who indulges daily in daydreams or fantasies can create his own world but it is entirely subjective because no attempt is made, or possible, to bring that world into manifestation. The ideas are still-born and I would wager that the person is not better off, meaning better balanced and mature, for the indulgence.
Setting aside random or irrelevant ideas and those that preoccupy minds with nothing better to do, important ideas are very personal and very relevant to our needs or our life's destiny.
Since personally meaningful ideas appear in response to our personal needs, then the BIG idea of creating a universe must also be a response to a universal or BIG need. Since ideas cannot exist apart from consciousness, so of course consciousness had the BIG IDEA and perhaps, then, the BIG NEED. (I would propose that the term "need" can include a creative impulse; a desire; an interest.) A further statement is that ideas (thought) cannot exist apart from self-awareness. Self-awareness may be intense or dim, but in the realm of ideas it is always present. This can only be proved to oneself, it cannot be proven by logic or by observation from outside. Consciousness and self-awareness are one and the same and cannot be proved: only its material manifestations, like words, emotions, actions, brain waves, etc. can be observed.
Since neither science nor philosophy can answer the question "Why does anything exist at all," I will offer to them a solution to their dilemma (at no additional cost): the universe exists because it was intended to. "Someone" put out the intention and BANG, IT WAS SO! I challenge them to do me one better. We cannot responsibly say the universe doesn't exist, so we must accept that it does. We might speculate that it came into being through some random force but our experience of life, including the creative process in ourselves, suggests otherwise. Why not take the evidence where it leads and accept it as the best evidence we have at this time? Maybe that's as far as our logic and reason can take us.
In my popular blog article "Chappie: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness" I posited the self-evident but intellectually unprovable statement that self-awareness is what distinguishes consciousness from artificial intelligence. This "missing link" as I called it in that article, is what I am discussing here in this article. And here I am positing an ages old precept that consciousness preexists and is the intention that gives rise to ideas, self-awareness, energy and matter.
This is where my favorite topic and hidden agenda surfaces: meditation! Yup, SURPRISE! (You didn't see that coming, did you?) I further posit that there is a link between "why creation exists at all," creativity, self-awareness and why meditation enhances creativity.
Imagine now building something really big: yeah, ok, say, a universe. Its gonna take some time. "Rome wasn't built in a day," we've been told. If this universe is going to be built piece by piece, as material things are, you won't see it in all its splendor until it's finished. As it is being built it looks pretty lumpy, the job site is messy, and its ultimate beauty and functionality is postponed until the end. Not only does "someone" need to intend it; and then guide its construction, but, in the end, "someone" needs to see and acknowledge it. Otherwise..........we cannot know if it actually exists!
So it wouldn't be surprising that the Consciousness that lit the fuse of the BIG BANG had to wait awhile until the construction project (i.e., evolution) produced an "independent" witness. On this planet, the only one we know, I understand it's taken over 4 billion years and that human existence is fairly recent. So if it is true that Consciousness produced the universe and our planet, it had to take some time before anyone (i.e. we humans) came into existence, began getting curious, even suspicious, and then began asking these questions! Objective and subjective, though separable in logical, linear time and processing, are inextricably linked. Science has said as much when, much to its shock and horror, it concluded that the observer is part of the observation and the observed.
Given the nature of the enormous length and complexity of the evolutionary process we would be forgiven in imaging that the process produced us randomly. I mean, gee, at first glance, popping out of the egg shell, so to speak, who can blame us from looking around and imaging the egg produced us? We wake up and the first thing we see.........are monkeys, or fishes, or whatever. While logical, it isn't necessary so! Our vision is, as yet, myopic! Limited to mere logic, we mistake the means for the cause. (Take THAT, Richard Dawkins!)
Notwithstanding the limitations of the "religion" of science, there is overwhelming historical evidence that humans, from the beginning of our existence, have intuited that our self-awareness holds the key to a sacred mystery of sorts: that it hints to us in a wordless communication that our real "parent" is not the material world that only appears to have produced us. Rocks and trees don't seem to possess this gift; animals seem to have some self-awareness, but most only fleetingly. There's something about the human experience, a gift of intuitive sight, that has continually insisted to our minds that we possess something decidedly "different" from planets, rocks and trees and that this awareness is special. It is sacred. And, yes, it is a mystery, even to us. We give it many names and no name but we cannot rid ourselves of its haunting shadow which follows us wherever we go. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Travel is a fool's paradise because wherever I go, there I am.
Creativity is the outward moving expression of self-awareness. Creativity is the natural impulse of self-awareness. It bestows upon humanity great gifts and powers: and the obligation to use them wisely. But ideas are difficult, in fact, impossible, to bully into being subservient to our demands. Some call creativity the "Muses," godlike, in other words. Thus holy men, shamans, healers, and in more modern times artists, geniuses, inventors, great scientists, super heroes in sports and stage, and even tech wizards are all said to possess some of this "magic," this special gift, this mojo.
The impulse of modern consciousness is to demystify that which formerly was held in awe and surrounded by superstition and mystery and otherwise considered occult. Meditation, too, and yoga are being secularized as the left-brain of human consciousness continues to achieve ascendancy to the point of being our modern "religion" and language. We, like the disciples of Jesus, are impatient with parables, stories, myths and rituals.
It is no coincidence that the spiritual genius of Paramhansa Yogananda, whose life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," has become a classic in our times, titled his first book, "The Science of Religion." [Being a wayshower from the past to the future, he, yet, retained a deep and abiding devotion and religious expression in his poetry, prayers, and personal expression. As Jesus said of himself, he came not to destroy but to "fulfill" the prophets of the past, so too Yogananda had no intentions of throwing the "baby out with the bath water." Nonetheless, he gave expression, and therefore spiritual authority and credibility to the emerging efforts to use our intellects to understand spirituality and to see the underlying connection between the material world, through the eyes of science, and the subtler and higher world of consciousness out of which all things emerge. Throughout his miracle-saturated life story, are testimonies from science pointing to subtler laws and forces.]
The down side of the new ascendency of the intellect (see past ages such as the classical age of Greece) is its hubris that substitutes a well-honed definition for the reality it merely describes. The intellect believes that what it observes and defines, it can control. The history of 20th century world wars and many lesser wars, and the pernicious rise of violence and innumerable addictions, disproves and mocks the power of the intellect. What Yogananda predicted (or, at least, advised) was a cooperative harmonious blending of East and West, of intellect and heart, science and spirituality: in short, a model of cooperation based on the acceptance of the inextricable interrelationship of all things material and spiritual. We are One: whether averred through the science of ecology, astrophysics, quantum physics, chemistry and biology or through the science of the intuitive, meditative mind.
Meditation is the "science of mind." It hones the tool by which, using our brain, body and nervous system, we can peer into a realm which only consciousness can perceive by direct, intuitive contemplation. While the highly evolved brain and nervous system of humans gives to us this gift, the lower cannot possess or control the higher for consciousness transcends the material realm.
Thus the brain and body fulfill a dual function: both a vehicle to the outer space of Mind but also a container and engine which must be ejected and left behind, at least while we are traveling through the space-mind of consciousness. This is where the science of yoga (meditation) enters human history and the evolution of human consciousness.
[But save this for another blog.The specific psycho-physiological methodology of yoga science is based on controlling, slowing the heart and breath rate. Research into meditation only uses subjects who are but amateurs in the science of breath. A yogi who can enter the breathless state at will for prolonged periods would be needed to take the research into higher realms.]
For individual creative acts, it's not so difficult to trace the appearance of an idea into its manifestation. For example, if I have the idea to build a dog house (for when I get into trouble next), I can go out and buy materials and make it. But on a cosmic level and relating to the BIG BANG, we are faced with the difficult challenge of tracing the appearance of energy (then matter) from its proposed source in intention (consciousness). Can consciousness create matter by force of thought alone? Science can prove to us the interchangeability of matter and energy but has yet to reveal the "missing link" of consciousness.
I aver that consciousness itself cannot be directly observed. It can only be inferred by its effects: brain waves, words, emotions or actions.
But, the human experience of creativity provides a clue, for it is an echo of the cosmic creation. We see that a person who is filled with vitality and confidence regarding his destiny, can change the world; can pass through a hail of bullets, unharmed. The achievements of humans down through the ages testify to a power (a conscious, intelligent, guiding force) that defies and transcends all limitations. Human creativity, including self-sacrifice for a greater good, is, itself, the most enduring witness of a greater Consciousness which some people tap more readily and more powerfully and more visibly than most.
Nonetheless, our left-brain culture seeks, nay, demands, to know HOW thought produces matter through the medium of energy. The ancients counsel us to turn to the human experience of dreaming. I had a powerful dream last night in answer to this question. I went to be bed far later than usual as I composed this article. I struggled mentally to put into words something useful in regard to this elemental and all-important mystery of life. "Who am I to even attempt this," I thought as I fell instantly to sleep.
Immediately I began to dream. My dream took me through the experience that I purchased a small airplane. In it were my children, then very small. As I attempted to land on the patch of ground in front of my boyhood home (250 Lighthouse Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA), a wing broke off. Fortunately we came to a stop more or less instantly and no one was hurt. But I was bummed out for having broken my new plane. Then I awoke and laughed at my disappointment, for it was only a dream.....it was only a dream.
This is the key, we are told. As in a dream, the events are as real as events during the conscious, waking state, so, too, is the universe but a dream in the mind of the Creator. Just as the dream persons act, talk, make war or peace and do fantastical things, so too in this great dream the players appear to act independently. Those dream persons certainly seem to have free will and the power of independent and unpredictable action. In the dream experience there is no hint otherwise but yet when we awake we realize that it "but" a dream.
What we deem to be real, whether our thoughts and emotions, or the world around us, can only be so to the extent that we deem it so. Is our cup of life half full or half empty? But we, as individuals in this great dream, are not the originators of the great dream. We are players in the theatre of the cosmic mind. If we play our part poorly, we will, being though a dream, suffer. We must strive to play our part well. We have no choice in the matter. There is no option to leave the stage until we have accomplished our part, for the drama of creation, though only a drama, must go on. Our only choice is to play wisely or foolishly. Humans know this instinctively and we express it in our statements about the law of survival and procreation. We recognize that we must strive, struggle, create and move forward. We view suicide as a defeat for the human spirit.
If we play our part well, we can, in time, leave the drama for good. Or, so we are promised by those who demonstrate their power over the dream sequence. Those who can stop the storm of breath at will; who can raise the living from dead; who can heal the sick; etc.; These are the super-heroes the Masters of their own destiny, co-creators of the cosmic dream. The philosophers and theologians engage in mere speculation, not gnosis, as the great ones do.
The rest of us are working on wresting the power of changing our destiny from Destiny. The trick is that we cannot have it for ourselves because the power that we seek is greater than our littleness. It cannot be made to obey us; we, instead, must learn to obey (or cooperate and attune ourselves) to it. It is our friend, lover, mother and father and means us no harm and offers us all good. But it is an exacting task manager. This deep lesson takes time and effort to learn. Those who have conquered fate (i.e., the law of karma) (O Death, where is thy sting?) come again and again to show us the way.
How is a dream created? We don't really know, beyond observing brain activity and knowing from personal experience that we do, in fact, dream! At night our dreams subside into the dreamless state that gives us true rest and true peace. As I write this blog or write a poem, the thoughts pour out of me like oil from a barrel. I have to intend and want to write this for the ideas to begin to flow. I do not need to know where the writing will take me or how it will unfold. I imitate, then, the Creator by participating in the creative process. All creativity brings the added benefit of joy.
It is intention that begins the movement of thoughts and ideas in the mind and in the Cosmic Mind. This stimulates the flow of creativity. To write, don't stare at a blank screen. Have a seed idea and begin composing. Action, movement, energy, you see, brings the dream world into manifestation. As with you and I, so with the creation and Creator. We are reflections one of the Other.
This will never be proved by the haughty intellect in people like Richard Dawkins. Thoughts have no limits in time or space; they cannot be commanded, though they can be teased and invited to flow. I can no more be the next Einstein by sheer will power, than I can command the forces of nature. Not yet, anyway, if and until I can align my destiny with the Creative Mind.
I can't prove to you that I am not a robot or that I even exist. I can't prove that I am not being manipulated by the great Matrix manager somewhere. But I am convinced "I" exist by my own self-evident, self-awareness. When I gaze at a great painting or up into the starry skies and I feel the presence of God (use any name or no name as you feel), you can say I am imagining that and I can't disprove you but neither can you disprove my conviction that I feel alive and connected, aware of a greater reality than my own.
To have more and fresher ideas; to be more creative; to have more connection, more joy in your life, rise above petty preoccupations and "give yourself" without reservation to the conviction that Life itself exists, sustains, endures, is good, and is loving and you will not be disappointed. It is a paradox that this God-ness, this good-ness exists in spite of and in the face of suffering. Grief and this existential joy can, in fact, co-exist, though the former is temporary and cannot endure long in the presence of the latter which is always there beneath the surface of our mind.
Joy in giving; joy in living; joy in being; joy in transcending littleness: joy is the proof of God, of goodness, of love and life. Consciousness, when pure, IS joy; it is its own reward. Between thoughts, pause and BE. With practice, you will be free. Meditation is the fastest way to BE-ing, without condition. Be your own BIG BANG.
Reflections of this innate joy of Life are found in the Golden Rule; in just laws and wise social mores; in the happiness of giving and sharing. We find it in the peace and pleasure of nature and in the silent messages written in the heavens above. For we are a part of all that is.
The creative life is a one BIG BANG! Where does it end? Yogananda, when asked this question, said simply: it ends in ENDLESSNESS, in Infinite Consciousness: ever existing, ever conscious, ever-new JOY: Satchidanandam.
Om Shanti, Amen!
Nayaswami Hriman
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Is Yoga Spiritual or is Yoga Exercise?
I'm supposed to be preparing my talk for Sunday Service tomorrow. So, instead, I'm going to write this because it's easier. Ok, it is somewhat related but my talks rarely are anything like these blog posts---so there!
Millions of human beings are practicing energetic health-inducing disciplines like martial arts and yoga. These help over-active people to slow down, get centered, and learn to move in the body and through the world with calm, conscious vitality.
The other day I was speaking with a fellow who has decades of experience in more martial arts systems than I had ever heard of. He had only been introduced to yoga and meditation recently. He made a simple comment of distinction. He said that in martial arts one gets hold of one's chi (energy) and directs it outward. In yoga, by contrast, you do the same thing but direct the prana (chi) inward (and upward to the brain). I found that helpful and it seemed intuitively clear (though I've had no experience in martial arts).
Is the practice of yoga (the physical poses, that is) simply another exercise system? This, in fact, is being debated around the world, from New Delhi, India to Delhi, California. As exercise, various governmental and non-profit organizations seek to monitor, license and otherwise control the quality and consequences of the practice. This patterns how we think about the sale of goods and services in the marketplace and how we think about the role of government to protect us from shoddy or fraudulent business practices.
Is yoga a spiritual practice or is it exercise? If spiritual, governments or other bodies may be forced to leave it alone in the name of separation of church and state and/or freedom of religious practice. If exercise, then government is likely to view its role as to protect our citizens from inadequately trained or even fraudulent yoga teachers.
Is meditation a psycho-physiological mental-health system or is it a spiritual practice? In the spiritual tradition from which yoga (including meditation) has arisen, a student seeks a teacher and undertakes what is usually a lengthy and rigorous training. The student may, or may not, be authorized, instructed or permitted to go out and teach others; or, he may simply do that with or without his teacher's sanction when his training is complete. Because the outer form of yoga practices are infinitely varied and because in the yogic tradition the purpose is to awaken a higher consciousness (which cannot, by its nature, be measured or quantified to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats or proven by consumer surveys), only the most egregious applications can be sanctioned and those, usually, by being unmasked, ostracized and "run out of town."
Yoga claims to be practical, scientific, and independent of religious belief or affiliation. Paramhansa Yogananda's mission statement when he came to America in 1920 was published in the ghost-written book, "The Science of Religion." (In recent years this was clarified and conformed to his actual teachings by his disciple, and founder of Ananda, Swami Kriyananda with the book title, "God is for Everyone.")
Because of this claim, yoga opens itself up to the view that it is therefore not spiritual! Let the battle begin! This is where "spiritual but not religious" enters the fray. But the fact is, much of physical (hatha) yoga IS taught and practiced strictly (or, well, mostly) as a form of exercise, with some mental health benefits in the form of calmness, relaxation, and self-awareness added in for good measure. So, some do; some, don't.
It's a perfect dilemma for a left brain, rule-bound society! In Washington State a few years ago, a state agency held hearings on this and some of us from the yoga schools testified. For the time being they concluded that in certain contexts yoga classes were off limits to their oversight, and in others, the practice had to be licensed with them. Ananda, being already a church and practicing yoga overtly AS A spiritual practice, we easily received exemption. Fitness studios and gyms, by contrast, did not. Seemed a reasonable line to draw.
It drives the orthodox religionists (except Hindus, of course) crazy. I read an article about yoga practice in Iran, for example! Yes, there are some 200 yoga studios but they are frowned upon big-time. A yoga teacher in my area re-named her yoga class (held in a Christian church) to suit the tastes of her orthodox Christian members.......Movement and Prayer, or something like that?
But the dirty little secret about yoga is that it IS spiritual......in this sense, at least: with consistent and focused practice (and irrespective of beliefs or expectations), some students will begin to experience states of awareness that enter their lives bestowing, as if from "nowhere," unconditioned joy, steady calmness and an experience of sacredness and reverence. Is that a threat to orthodoxy? That depends on orthodoxy, but it need not be so because all religions possess (somewhere) this same sense of reverence and sacredness.
Some, more than others. Not Unitarians, of course, but more likely Catholics, well, you get my meaning (all poking fun, aside). In principle, a Christian could direct this sacredness towards her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The orthodox religionist, however, detecting that this sacredness appears without being prompted by or without having an initial identification with an orthodox-approved outer form might call it satanic because it has no known source and takes no orthodox form (or has the potential to take UNorthodox form). So, again, we have cup that is half empty or half full.
But the reality remains that yoga practice MIGHT awaken its practitioner to state of being independent of outward circumstances and possessing the potential to find within ourselves the happiness we normally seek outside ourselves. This is, and probably should be, a threat to orthodoxy for the simple fact that orthodoxy wants its adherents to receive their spiritual wisdom and graces through the authorized vehicle of their priestly class and its sacraments and chain of approved dispensations.
Whether government has the right to control who can teach yoga (and meditation) must be left to society and government. The way these things are encircling the globe more or less leaves governmental control at least partly in the dust, if you include the internet as form of learning and practice. No doubt some ridiculously lame circumstance will be so outrageous that public cries for reform and control will bring the hammer of government oversight down again and again. Such is the way of the world.
But there will always exist either secretive or at least less public esoteric practices and practitioners reserved to whom those go who are willing to give their all to the "way" and who understand that true "yoga" is an "all-or-nothing" proposition in respect to the ego. There simply cannot be a more "religious" or "spiritual" end-game than "union with God, the Infinite Power!"
Never before in recorded history has something like yoga happened. Millions discover a wellspring of spirituality within themselves. What do they DO with that living water? It's as varied as the individual, of course. To keep the spring flowing it is essential to share it somehow; to associate with others who share it with you; to find some outward form of expressing it. No surprise, then, that "spiritual but not religious" is like a rising tide. Those who keep it to themselves will, in time, lose their source.
This article has already taken an unanticipated direction on me. So I'm going to go to a different vantage point and take it home for now. What I had intended to write about is on the theme that yoga (meaning, really, meditation, or for sake of clarity, "raja yoga") is coming to the fore of human society because our souls crave to balance our commitment to materialism and outwardness with inner Self-awareness. Modern life has given millions the freedom for ego to explore the candy store of the senses and the world. This inevitably brings over-satiety, suffering, nervousness, depression and existential dread. Truth simply IS and the truth IS that our true nature is greater than the ego, the personality and the body. We can never be satisfied with possessing material abundance and its satisfactions. Death itself mocks us.
Yoga is the natural antidote to a world, in historic terms, gone wild with newly-won freedom to grasp for life, liberty and the pursuit of material happiness. Egos everywhere have been freed from centuries of bondage in medieval caste consciousness and far too many now worship at the altar of selfish indulgence unaware that pursued to the extreme will destroy the very pleasure, prosperity and illusive security it worships, and in the process, harm many others around! It is impossible for everyone on the planet to be rich, young, beautiful, famous, and live the "good life" defined by today's rate of resource consumption in suburban and urban life in countries like America. We CAN be healthy and happy but not by living that way, by ignoring the consequences to others and future generations. Happiness comes from living in harmony with ourselves and with others, and the world around us. They are not the result of technology and wealth.
The cure for society's ills lies within us, for as Jesus said so long ago, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Many up and coming nations are busy in the world's candy store but millions, like you and I, know that "dissatisfaction" is guaranteed. Humanity has the potential to destroy itself and all life if enough people do not claim our soul's birthright as children of God. Ego-aggrandizement ensures destruction when practiced worldwide. Ego self-offering to God, in service, in devotion, and in silence can save us from ourselves.
Yoga teaches us the science of mind: how our consciousness is connected to the body through the neutral medium of Life Force (chi, prana). Yoga teaches us how to use the breath and body to awaken that intelligent energy, bring it under our control, withdraw it from the senses, and direct it upward toward the brain, the only true "garden of Eden" in the East of the body (forehead) where true and lasting happiness is found. Finding that happiness exists within us, we no longer have to go begging for it in the marketplace of sense satisfaction and resource consumption. We can live simply, harmoniously, with health, vitality and friendships born of divine attunement.
Well too much said already. Enough a'ready....
Blessings to all, yoga is for everyone!
Nayaswami Hriman
Millions of human beings are practicing energetic health-inducing disciplines like martial arts and yoga. These help over-active people to slow down, get centered, and learn to move in the body and through the world with calm, conscious vitality.
The other day I was speaking with a fellow who has decades of experience in more martial arts systems than I had ever heard of. He had only been introduced to yoga and meditation recently. He made a simple comment of distinction. He said that in martial arts one gets hold of one's chi (energy) and directs it outward. In yoga, by contrast, you do the same thing but direct the prana (chi) inward (and upward to the brain). I found that helpful and it seemed intuitively clear (though I've had no experience in martial arts).
Is the practice of yoga (the physical poses, that is) simply another exercise system? This, in fact, is being debated around the world, from New Delhi, India to Delhi, California. As exercise, various governmental and non-profit organizations seek to monitor, license and otherwise control the quality and consequences of the practice. This patterns how we think about the sale of goods and services in the marketplace and how we think about the role of government to protect us from shoddy or fraudulent business practices.
Is yoga a spiritual practice or is it exercise? If spiritual, governments or other bodies may be forced to leave it alone in the name of separation of church and state and/or freedom of religious practice. If exercise, then government is likely to view its role as to protect our citizens from inadequately trained or even fraudulent yoga teachers.
Is meditation a psycho-physiological mental-health system or is it a spiritual practice? In the spiritual tradition from which yoga (including meditation) has arisen, a student seeks a teacher and undertakes what is usually a lengthy and rigorous training. The student may, or may not, be authorized, instructed or permitted to go out and teach others; or, he may simply do that with or without his teacher's sanction when his training is complete. Because the outer form of yoga practices are infinitely varied and because in the yogic tradition the purpose is to awaken a higher consciousness (which cannot, by its nature, be measured or quantified to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats or proven by consumer surveys), only the most egregious applications can be sanctioned and those, usually, by being unmasked, ostracized and "run out of town."
Yoga claims to be practical, scientific, and independent of religious belief or affiliation. Paramhansa Yogananda's mission statement when he came to America in 1920 was published in the ghost-written book, "The Science of Religion." (In recent years this was clarified and conformed to his actual teachings by his disciple, and founder of Ananda, Swami Kriyananda with the book title, "God is for Everyone.")
Because of this claim, yoga opens itself up to the view that it is therefore not spiritual! Let the battle begin! This is where "spiritual but not religious" enters the fray. But the fact is, much of physical (hatha) yoga IS taught and practiced strictly (or, well, mostly) as a form of exercise, with some mental health benefits in the form of calmness, relaxation, and self-awareness added in for good measure. So, some do; some, don't.
It's a perfect dilemma for a left brain, rule-bound society! In Washington State a few years ago, a state agency held hearings on this and some of us from the yoga schools testified. For the time being they concluded that in certain contexts yoga classes were off limits to their oversight, and in others, the practice had to be licensed with them. Ananda, being already a church and practicing yoga overtly AS A spiritual practice, we easily received exemption. Fitness studios and gyms, by contrast, did not. Seemed a reasonable line to draw.
It drives the orthodox religionists (except Hindus, of course) crazy. I read an article about yoga practice in Iran, for example! Yes, there are some 200 yoga studios but they are frowned upon big-time. A yoga teacher in my area re-named her yoga class (held in a Christian church) to suit the tastes of her orthodox Christian members.......Movement and Prayer, or something like that?
But the dirty little secret about yoga is that it IS spiritual......in this sense, at least: with consistent and focused practice (and irrespective of beliefs or expectations), some students will begin to experience states of awareness that enter their lives bestowing, as if from "nowhere," unconditioned joy, steady calmness and an experience of sacredness and reverence. Is that a threat to orthodoxy? That depends on orthodoxy, but it need not be so because all religions possess (somewhere) this same sense of reverence and sacredness.
Some, more than others. Not Unitarians, of course, but more likely Catholics, well, you get my meaning (all poking fun, aside). In principle, a Christian could direct this sacredness towards her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The orthodox religionist, however, detecting that this sacredness appears without being prompted by or without having an initial identification with an orthodox-approved outer form might call it satanic because it has no known source and takes no orthodox form (or has the potential to take UNorthodox form). So, again, we have cup that is half empty or half full.
But the reality remains that yoga practice MIGHT awaken its practitioner to state of being independent of outward circumstances and possessing the potential to find within ourselves the happiness we normally seek outside ourselves. This is, and probably should be, a threat to orthodoxy for the simple fact that orthodoxy wants its adherents to receive their spiritual wisdom and graces through the authorized vehicle of their priestly class and its sacraments and chain of approved dispensations.
Whether government has the right to control who can teach yoga (and meditation) must be left to society and government. The way these things are encircling the globe more or less leaves governmental control at least partly in the dust, if you include the internet as form of learning and practice. No doubt some ridiculously lame circumstance will be so outrageous that public cries for reform and control will bring the hammer of government oversight down again and again. Such is the way of the world.
But there will always exist either secretive or at least less public esoteric practices and practitioners reserved to whom those go who are willing to give their all to the "way" and who understand that true "yoga" is an "all-or-nothing" proposition in respect to the ego. There simply cannot be a more "religious" or "spiritual" end-game than "union with God, the Infinite Power!"
Never before in recorded history has something like yoga happened. Millions discover a wellspring of spirituality within themselves. What do they DO with that living water? It's as varied as the individual, of course. To keep the spring flowing it is essential to share it somehow; to associate with others who share it with you; to find some outward form of expressing it. No surprise, then, that "spiritual but not religious" is like a rising tide. Those who keep it to themselves will, in time, lose their source.
This article has already taken an unanticipated direction on me. So I'm going to go to a different vantage point and take it home for now. What I had intended to write about is on the theme that yoga (meaning, really, meditation, or for sake of clarity, "raja yoga") is coming to the fore of human society because our souls crave to balance our commitment to materialism and outwardness with inner Self-awareness. Modern life has given millions the freedom for ego to explore the candy store of the senses and the world. This inevitably brings over-satiety, suffering, nervousness, depression and existential dread. Truth simply IS and the truth IS that our true nature is greater than the ego, the personality and the body. We can never be satisfied with possessing material abundance and its satisfactions. Death itself mocks us.
Yoga is the natural antidote to a world, in historic terms, gone wild with newly-won freedom to grasp for life, liberty and the pursuit of material happiness. Egos everywhere have been freed from centuries of bondage in medieval caste consciousness and far too many now worship at the altar of selfish indulgence unaware that pursued to the extreme will destroy the very pleasure, prosperity and illusive security it worships, and in the process, harm many others around! It is impossible for everyone on the planet to be rich, young, beautiful, famous, and live the "good life" defined by today's rate of resource consumption in suburban and urban life in countries like America. We CAN be healthy and happy but not by living that way, by ignoring the consequences to others and future generations. Happiness comes from living in harmony with ourselves and with others, and the world around us. They are not the result of technology and wealth.
The cure for society's ills lies within us, for as Jesus said so long ago, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Many up and coming nations are busy in the world's candy store but millions, like you and I, know that "dissatisfaction" is guaranteed. Humanity has the potential to destroy itself and all life if enough people do not claim our soul's birthright as children of God. Ego-aggrandizement ensures destruction when practiced worldwide. Ego self-offering to God, in service, in devotion, and in silence can save us from ourselves.
Yoga teaches us the science of mind: how our consciousness is connected to the body through the neutral medium of Life Force (chi, prana). Yoga teaches us how to use the breath and body to awaken that intelligent energy, bring it under our control, withdraw it from the senses, and direct it upward toward the brain, the only true "garden of Eden" in the East of the body (forehead) where true and lasting happiness is found. Finding that happiness exists within us, we no longer have to go begging for it in the marketplace of sense satisfaction and resource consumption. We can live simply, harmoniously, with health, vitality and friendships born of divine attunement.
Well too much said already. Enough a'ready....
Blessings to all, yoga is for everyone!
Nayaswami Hriman
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