At the Crossroads: 2006

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Too many notes, Mr Thrush

From Son of Moses:

More on the theory of evolution.

I am helping a new friend write a book about the possible resolution between modern science and theology.

He begins with an account of conventional evolutionary theory, explaining that when we hear a bird sing we would be mistaken if we assumed that this is some kind of joyful or magnificent occurrence. No, it is merely an assertion of territorial rights, or maybe an attempt to attract a female for the propagation of selfish genes.

So, please comment on the following.

a) A bird utters sounds (interpreted by ourselves in our sentimental ignorance as beautiful, divine etc.) merely so as to let other birds know that they should not intrude on its territory.

b) Mozart writes a mass merely to earn cash.

Yes, I am not denying that on one level this is true. But is there any difference between these two acts?

Yes, you say (possibly), there is a difference. It is this: unlike Herr Mozart, the bird is not able consciously to express anything (which leads to interesting speculations about the special nature of the human being, but let’s leave that till later).

But I say that the joy of the Creator is expressing itself through the bird just the same, and through everything else too. That is what creation is for. It is a vast song of praise.

If this, or something like it, is so, are not the territorial and survival issues necessary only so that the play may be kept on the road so that its message may be heard by those with ears to hear?

To try to lead others into the barren and joyless outlook of evolutionary reductionism is, I believe, a spiritual crime.

Yet I do not see how this is to be avoided if the conventional evolutional doctrine is propagated.

Discuss.

A Gospel Principle

It is infinitely more worth while to present, for the time being, a mixture of truth and error, than to mutilate reality by trying prematurely to separate the wheat from the tares. I have followed this Gospel principle without hesitation, since it is the principle of all research and scientific progress.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, letter 1917.

I just discovered this today, and to me it articulates the right approach to enquiry of any kind. When people violate it - either by self-censoring and refusing to speak while they are uncertain, or by pretending that they understand something they don't - they distort not only their own minds, but those of others.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

OK, guys, I think we could lighten up just for one day here!

This is a recording by Frank Kelly, otherwise known as Fr. Jack from Father Ted - a classic now available once again due to the miracle of the internet. The letters of Gubnait O'Lunasa to his beloved Nuala.

Click here.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

Intellect

Personally I think it would be a good use of this blog to examine our use of certain words and phrases. It's clear that when one man uses a word, another man 'hears' something else (there is no personal comment implied to anyone here). So we endeavour to communicate but we filter words though our own associations and hence live in our own universe.

I recently read about Buddha. Buddha was described by the author as the embodiment of bodha. Bodha was defined as 'pure intelligence'. As we know, the words Buddha, bodha and buddhi all trace back to the same sanskrit root, 'budh' to do with being awake. This definition of 'pure intelligence' rang a bell here. So...

What is intelligence? What is intellect? Are they different? It seems to me that our habitual associations with these words are very different. Intellect, in common parlance, seems to be referring to analytical mind, manas. The word intellectual has come to be used (particularly in the school) as a derogatory term. ‘Someone who hasn't gone beyond book knowledge’ or something similar.

As I'm sure most are aware the Sri Purohit Swami translation of the Gita uses ‘intellect’ for buddhi. And I suspect the average reader would hear fairly un-buddhi-like connotations on reading it. But even in the english, getting back to ‘pure’ conception, devoid of associations:

Intellect:
1 a : the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will : the capacity for knowledge
[Merriam-Webster Dictionary]

‘The power of knowing’ is an interesting notion. Depends on what sort of ‘knowledge’ we’re talking about as to how we think of this? Our current intellectual climate would probably associate ‘capacity for knowledge’ as ‘ability to absorb and order lots of facts’ ? i.e, manas.

What about the word intelligence? The modern connotations are perhaps to do with IQ or something similar. Despite the limitations of IQ, I suggest there is an important characteristic contained in those kinds of tests. The idea is that the ability to solve the test is not related to prior knowledge. All the information should be in the question. Of course it doesn’t quite work like this when confronted with 5 anagrams and asked, ‘which of the following is not a poet?’. Is this testing the ability to solve anagrams or testing 'information about poets which I have committed to memory' ?

To me, the ‘pure intelligence’ is that faculty of mind that operates in the present, ‘awake’ without reference to prior constructs, systems etc. It ‘sees’ directly what is true or false and it can only operate when ‘awake’. Intellect in its ‘pure conception’ as ‘power of knowing’ must amount to the same thing. I wouldn’t consider this to be a denial of analysis, systems etc. The buddhi is the overseer that can pick up or put down a number of conceptual tools. It doesn’t have to be bound by any of them. It knows that none of them are ‘the whole truth’.

“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.”

~ Thomas Merton

Science - the lowest common denominator?

Son of Moses suggests a new thread following on from the one about evolution, which is as he says getting long. He writes:

Science, its validity, its limitations: a real subject for discussion, and at the root of so many of the concerns expressed in this blog ... Perhaps I could kick off the subject by being deliberately provocative and saying that the only way that Advaita manages to include all views is by a system of relative validity. On that scale, science is only one up from the evidence of the senses. It is a very culture-bound view of things and is given far too much credence by our contemporary world. It only manages to be ‘a public and shared endeavour’, as you put it, by inhabiting the lowest common denominator of understanding. A truer science would accept other modes of knowing, and yes we are debating the wonderful subject of epistemology, the science concerning the valid ways of knowing, a subject the Tradition takes very seriously but which is seldom debated within the School, surely a sign of the latter's limitations.

The real unanimity

What we need for the future of the School is, I believe, a different kind of unanimity. Thus far we have had a unanimity not only of action, but of thought. In other words, as members of the School we assent to certain ideas which are held to be part of "The Truth" or "The Teaching", and are thus beyond question.

The yugas, the five elements, the four aspects of the antahkarana, the three gunas, the division between purusha and prakriti, the unity of atman and brahman (that all organised itself very nicely, didn't it?) ... we could go on.

The point of calling into question the yugas is not to bring the whole edifice of The Teaching down about our ears, but to say that they are just ideas. Ideas are provisional mental constructions, and are therefore fully open to question by mental means, such as reason (of which science is an aspect).

What I would like to propose is that the unanimity we require is emotional. That's to say - we can be united in our hearts, while holding different theories or opinions about the world. Indeed, if we are going to have a real conversation, we need to be strongly united if we are not to be driven apart by our ideas into factions.

We cannot limit the operation of reason; but we need faith if we are to venture along the path of reason - faith that there is something to find; faith that we can live without dogma or concepts; faith that if we disagree then we can push on further, and not fall back on a facile conceptual unity.

It is not enough to say "all concepts are just concepts" and give up on thought. We are "man" - "the being who thinks" - and until we have the answers, we must question.

Evolution and the Yugas

We now know, as certainly as we can, that the species of the present day evolved from lower animals. Perhaps 100,000 years ago Neanderthals developed; then around 60,000 years ago homo sapiens.

Can we agree then that any idea of a descending series of yugas is untenable? That the Kaliyuga (literally "The Historical Period") is in fact all we know of our history, and that the other three yugas are imaginative fictions?

Come on, you know you want to disagree ... bring it on!

Illustration shows new Judaeo-Christian theory of synthetic evolution. Finally we know where the second and third 'women' came from. Thank you, Charles Darwin!

Dare to peace

At this time of the year when we traditionally wish each other both a merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year, I was interested in the following from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor who was executed in 1945 for his opposition to the Nazi regime:

'There is no way to peace along the path of safety, for peace must be dared. It is in itself a great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving yourself completely to God's commandment.'

For me, every word sounds a bell, every sentence is profound though simple, and the whole is a proclamation of the ideal Christian life. Not only Christian, there are peacemakers in every religion and in every generation. But Bonhoeffer was a Christian, living in extraordinarily difficult times, and his willingness and courage to bear witness and to lead the best Christian life led also to his execution. As has occurred before, his death did not seal him from the living. Rather, it opened the door so that his words and example spread forth.

'Peace is the opposite of security' carves a path right through the fuzzy undergrowth littering my emotional ground. Understand that, my heart tells me, and you may begin to understand God's commandment.

Does Not Compute

"Mechanical" is a word often used to describe any habitual action, thought or word. I think it's probably a Gurdjieff-Ouspensky term, but it occurs to me to ask how useful it is as a way of describing a conscious, living organism.

I do recognise what it's saying, but ought we to speak of ourselves, even in our worst moments, as if we were machines? If a machine goes wrong, it blows up, or just stops; but if a person goes wrong, they usually keep going pretty well. I can live 'mechanically' for a whole day or a week and at the end of it I probably haven't walked off any cliffs, forgotten to eat, or accidentally stopped breathing. Maybe it could be said that I'm living "vegetatively" or "animalistically"?

And even when I am relatively unaware at one level, at another, I am witnessing all: there is the possibility of learning, even in the most unpromising circumstances. There's a chance that I might 'wake up' into consciousness.

It's all too delicate and mysterious to attribute to cogs churning round. Scientists, until recently, were very enamoured of machine metaphors, but they seem to be getting over it. Maybe it's time we did too.

I don't believe people are ever like machines. What about you?

My Name is Tony, and I am an Advaitin

A couple of years ago an email was sent to most of the UK branches of the School from "Advaita The Source". It came from an anonymous email account and turned out to be an essay by Tony Parsons, possibly written by him, or just lifted from his web site. It said "please disseminate to all students". Here's a sample:

In reality, what we all long for is absence . . . limited ideas of becoming, destiny and personal attainment the absence of the "me" that seeks and feels separate. This is pure Advaita, which is totally beyond the, limited ideas of becoming, destiny and personal attainment, which are simply products of the mind.

Hmm. Not sure that I do long for absence, Tony. Except yours, obviously.

I had a correspondence with him which I think we both found mutually unenlightening.

It turns out that there is a big fashion in spiritual circles for what is called "Neo-Advaita", of which TP is a leading light. Other teachers such as Gangaji, Wayne Liquorman, Esther Veltheim, etc have remarkably similar things to say. According to Neo-Advaita, there is no need to follow a path, undergo discipline, work to help others, or to do anything at all that orthodox Advaita Vedanta, in common with most of the other philosophical and religious traditions, recommends to those in search of liberation. All that is necessary is to give up, accept that the script is already written, and stop worrying!

No wonder disenchanted members of the School are attracted.

Something about it seems to me a bit fishy. Some of these teachers do seem to have wisdom (see, for example, some quotations by Gangaji that are cited elsewhere on this blog by others) but is it really of a kind that can help others? There are some who believe that Neo-Advaita is a dangerous fad - that it absolves comfortable Westerners of concern about moral issues, that it attempts to short-circuit the process of spiritual growth, and that it is a nihilistic, empty philosophy or faith. What is Enlightenment? magazine has published a satire on Neo-Advaita, which you can read here, along with an account of a self-confessed former addict of what he calls 'spiritual heroin'.

As members of an organization that promotes a traditional, though also Westernized form of Advaita, I think we ought to be aware of the issues opened up in this article. Plus which, it's a giggle.

What's the Sanskrit for "Basic Instinct"?

I've been reading The Language Instinct, by Stephen Pinker (left) which is the standard popular work on modern linguistics. Fascinating stuff.

For example, it has been shown that any devoted mothers who read to their unborn children, or attempt to 'hothouse' their newborns by teaching them language are wasting their time. Young children have a far higher ability to acquire language than their parents. This is proved by the example of those who speak 'pidgin' dialects - languages created among a disparate group of adults who do not share a language, such as prisoners in island colonies. Pidgin dialects generally have very basic grammatical forms, and they are easy to misunderstand as a result.

But the children of pidgin-speakers make this right, by instinctively creating from nothing a far more complex version of the pidgin, with a firm but supple grammatical structure. The result of this second generation is a new language, called a creole. A creole is not in any way inferior to one of the parent languages, such as English or French. Even a single child, with pidgin-speaking parents, will develop a creole of his own.

From such evidence, Pinker and others, notably Noam Chomsky, suppose that there is an instinctive grammar built in to the human mind. They call it 'mentalese', and all languages are a translation from mentalese into the spoken word.

(I read a chapter before going to sleep the other night, and just as I was dropping off I had a remarkable experience. My mind seemed to slip into a realm of meaning without words, and I watched, at it were, random phrases and sentences forming themselves without any effort from out of this curious space. This seems to explain how we can have long conversations in dreams that are apparently full of meaning - but a meaning that is forever just out of reach. What is happening in dreams - it now seems to me - is that our unconscious mind is playing with its easy, instinctive ability to construct sentences. Whether or not there is sometimes a higher import in the dreams, I don't know. But what I caught sight of, I think, was the mechanism of language. Thank you, Mr Pinker ...)

Now, I would be unwilling to say that "mentalese" is, exactly. But it seems to me that anyone who wants to make special claims for Sanskrit as being close to some kind of "unknown tongue", the natural language of meaning, ought to be familiar with the research of Chomsky and others (I've just checked the index, and Sanskrit is not mentioned once, although Indo-European gets five references).

I'm not trying to 'have a go' here - but although Chomsky is the single most academically-cited living author, I have never heard any of this in the School. Maybe it doesn't help that he is a political dissident. I would suggest that if we are to have a Language faculty, rather than just a Sanskrit one, then we need to be abreast of the latest research, and respond to it. It would be interesting to hear whether anyone has studied modern linguistics, and if so what views have been formed.

Dude ...

A little while ago I heard the transcript of a momentous meeting addressed by Dr Roles on his return from his first trip to India. He described how he had been put under pressure by the Maharishi to change his flight back to England, because he would not get the chance to see Shantananda that week. His response was to refuse, on the grounds that he had said he would be back on that date and "a promise kept is worth any amount of spiritual experiences".

When I mentioned this before someone took this to mean "a promise kept is worth more than the self", but that isn't the point at all.

Last night I watched again the documentary Riding Giants, which is about the big-wave surfers of California and Hawaii. It's a terrific film and I found myself moved and uplifted by their passion for the biggest, most awesome, gnarliest wave imaginable. In the closing credits one of the surfers says something to the effect that, "if someone put this much energy and devotion into a religion, no-one would call them a religion bum; and I think this is a religion. There are no surf bums". It was hard not to believe him.

But what Dr Roles is saying adds a bit more. There's no doubt that a lot of people pursue a lot of different kinds of spiritual experiences, and that this transforms their lives and gives them meaning. But the really enduring traditions are not about spiritual experiences. Aim for "peak experiences" and you will get them, but that has never been the purpose of a real spiritual path. The experience is not the aim, but the by-product of the aim. And if the experience is won while neglecting some responsibility, then how pure was the motive?

New Media, New Paradigm

There are two ways to bring about a change - either by conversation or by action. Conversation is in many ways preferable, but often the arguments people offer are not close to their real reasons. If someone is afraid of change, there is no point in speaking to them about it, because they will hide the fear behind all kinds of rationalizations. Defeat one argument and, like the hydra, two more spring up in its place. What the other person needs is not reason, but a sense of security.

Sometimes, then, the best way forward is to take a different tack. Give people a different experience; give them an experience that they enjoy and like; and then, when they're happy, explain why it is they feel good about it.

That, I suppose, is the possibility offered to the School by the internet - blogging, online communities, podcasting, downloads. The old paradigm is where the wisdom comes down out of a cloud, in little drops, to the waiting faithful. The traffic is one direction only. If we take up the opportunity offered by the internet, we will suddenly have a different paradigm - in which we create a worldwide online community of philosophy, where every voice is equal in status. And why not, indeed? Socrates went around Greece asking people questions - from slaves to statesmen. What mattered was not who they were, but their wisdom.

Of course, it should never be a substitute for real conversation ... but what do you think? This is a chance to take part in the experiment.

Zen and the Art of Non-Duality

by Sengstan (Third Zen Patriarch)

The great way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the Truth
Then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
Is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the Mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The way is perfect; like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things
and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
your effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.

(cont...)

Nowhere Man

This was sparked off by Laura's story, which I quote here.

I heard a story today: 'A teacher was supervising her young pupils during class. As she walked round she noticed that one little girl was very intent on her drawing.

'What are you drawing?' asked the teacher.

'God,' said the child.

'But no one knows what God looks like,' said the teacher.

'They will soon,' said the child as she continued her drawing.

A few of us met with Mr Jaiswal at the weekend to talk about art - everyone there was either an artist of some kind or a writer - and he said "the artist is the soul of the school". He added that while the rationalist understands the past very well, he has no vision of the future; but the artist sees the future.

This phrase, "the future" is particularly odd. We are accustomed in our tradition to think of the present as the only reality, yet Mr Jaiswal in another talk spoke about "the absolute of the past", "the absolute of the present" and "the absolute of the future". Creativity is "the absolute of the future". What does this mean?

Maybe the key is the Sanskrit word sat, which means "real", "good" and "manifest". To connect with the present is to connect with sat. Then we have the word asat which has some negative connotations, but also carries the sense of "unmanifest". In one of the Upanishads (sorry, can't remember where) the asat is higher than the sat. This makes sense, of course, because the unmanifest is closer to the absolute.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V Sc i.

So the artist, it seems, discovers the asat, that which will be, while the practical man connects only with the sat, that which is.

When we met the Indian tradition at the start of the 1960s, we brought with us a tradition that connected strongly with the sat of the present moment. Accordingly, there was a strong mistrust of anything that smacked of asat: imagination, dream, thinking are all words we learned to disparage. They were associated with delusion, sickness and psychosis - which, of course, has some truth. Shakespeare in the same passage says "The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact". If we tread in the unmanifest, we may stray into the unreal, that which has no possiblity of manifestation.

The Indian tradition is rather different. It does talk about the value of the present, but it gives it far less emphasis than one would think from second-hand accounts. There is much more to the tradition than sat. To give one example, there is meditation: a practice that is a retreat from the waking consciousness of sat. Which probably explains why we have never made much progress with meditation, and why even our leaders can tell us so little about it.

By the way, you know about meditation. You've just learned to despise that part of you that knows it.

How best to serve the School? Is it by stopping on the path, asserting that we have already arrived, and protecting its heritage? Or is it by continuing along the path, doing what we can to build upon and exceed what has already been done?

We are like tourists who have two maps. The first one is commercially produced by a roadside inn, showing how to get there, but nothing else. The other is a real map, which shows not only the inn but the terrain and the way ahead to a site of pilgrimage, which is the historical reason for the road's existence. Both maps are true, but unless we put away the first and start to follow the second, we will stay where we are. The inn is getting older and a bit run-down, because fewer people pass along that way.

The way to help the inn recover its health is not by fixing up the sign or replacing the tables or advertising it, but to make the pilgrimage. When people are reminded of that, then they will need the School to help them on the way. But they don't need the School in itself, any more than we need an inn on a road to nowhere.

Only the artist - the real philosopher - can see that 'nowhere' is really where it's at. The challenge is to make that obvious, even to someone as dense as a practical man.

Whispering to the Elephant

We've started getting email reminders of our practice for the week. This week it said: "the disciplined mind is very peaceful". As great philosophical statements go, this probably does not rank up there with "do unto others", but a couple of times I recalled it today, and it made a difference.

It this Philosophy for Dummies TM ?

Why is it that even the most bland or mundane utterance of the wise can take us from darkness towards light? I suppose that maybe the word "wise" is the key there - the respect that it implies makes us pause, and that pause allows our native intelligence to function over our native ignorance. So maybe we don't need much.

Recent scientific research suggests another answer. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt borrows the Buddha's analogy for the human being of a rider on an elephant. The rider is our conscious, verbal mind; the elephant is the rest of us. The thing is, of course, the rider is a recent invention - in evolutionary terms it was dreamed up yesterday - whereas the elephant has been tested and perfected over literally millions of years. Haidt says that in effect we have "Rider 1.0" trying to control Elephant 1 million.

The rider might have his own ideas about where they are going, but if the elephant sees something it wants - or something it wants to avoid - then we go where the elephant chooses. That's why I am unable to live a measured life, even though I know all about its benefits in both theory and practice. The elephant has different priorities.

Many techniques have been developed, especially in recent times, that attempt to solve our problems by addressing the rider. Psychoanalysis, for example - if only I could understand what it was that happened with that dog when I was 2, I'd be much better able to deal with my boss. The only thing is though, psychoanalysis has never been proven to work - it might bring understanding to the rider, but he still does pretty much everything the elephant wants. When the elephant says, "Want Buns", the rider says, "how many?" (of course the elephant can't count ... this is part of the problem).

So we come back to the ancient solutions. Instead of trying to explain everything at the beginning, the traditional remedies or paths start with simple, repetitive exercises. Some are designed to give small, regular rewards for good behaviour. Others are designed to punish wrong-doing. Others, like meditation, bypass the thought process altogether. These things have to be repeated every day, because elephants don't, contrary to popular belief, have long memories. This process, if followed faithfully, builds up strength and capacity. It is compared to churning milk to make butter - there needs to be a transformation first, and then understanding. Until the disciple has gone through all of this, he or she isn't ready for philosophy.

The point is not for the rider to gain control, but for the two to learn to talk to each other, to become integrated. The elephant doesn't know what's good for it, so it desires status and power; the rider has to teach it to pursue the things that will lead to happiness. The elephant is a pessimist, and its fears dominate its thinking - it has learned over aeons that the consequences of missing a meal are far less severe than those of becoming a meal. The elephant is partial to its own interests, so it has to be taught the value of impartiality. It can't be taught all of this in one go, and it doesn't understand English or Sanskrit. It's hard to imagine that any lesson could be repeated too often, or spelled out too much.

That's why a few simple words from the wise help.

Why are we dying?

As yet another friend dies from cancer this week, I do wonder if School deaths accord with the general pattern of deaths in the UK?

As a group we are not particularly long-lived - worn out from too much activity? Or maybe it's something completely different? I haven't done a head-count over the last few years, but I can think of only one fatal heart attack but numbers of deaths from cancer.

This line of thought is not particularly helpful - except that it might point to areas of imbalance amongst the still living which could then be addressed. It would certainly repay study, to cut through any disabling myths about the health of the human body which are still lurking around the School.

If anyone is reading this who is a doctor, or similar, would you care to look at School members in this respect?

Our health may depend on it.

Can you move a little faster, said the whiting to the snail.

Recently our stream was addressed by Bill Whiting, head of the School of Meditation. For this listener, he exemplified how to teach the subject: he not only knows what His Holiness says on the subject, but also tells you what it is like to meditate, for him. I asked him about whether we should talk about meditation and he said that we certainly should.

Although I appreciate, and feel, the concern that people have about speaking of meditation, I think the value of this has been very exaggerated in the School. Why? Because there are very few people in the School - very few tutors - that feel confident to talk about it. Their reticence has led their students to follow suit. This means that the problems never get addressed or resolved. I recently spoke to someone who said that she had recently 'fessed up' to her tutor - in 25 years she'd never really got what meditation is about, and in fact she didn't meditate on her own time. I don't think that's uncommon among senior people. It's time to be honest with ourselves, and others.

I think what we should also consider is the growing scientific evidence about meditation. Firstly, it suggests that it's 'a good thing', and secondly it specifies why it's a good thing.

One thing I've noticed about meditation is that it has definite effects on the body. This morning I sat down to meditate and I noticed that I felt tense - my shoulders were gripped with tension and stiffness. There's not much you can do about this kind of tension. A massage helps a bit, or exercise, but really you're only addressing the symptoms. But after 30 minutes of meditation (no fireworks, lot of thinking) the physical problem is gone. It works by itself, despite my own worst efforts. It's kind of miraculous, and it's a daily contradiction of what I normally believe about cause and effect.

One of my students gave me printouts of two medical abstracts about meditation. The first one concludes that "the practice of meditation activates neural structures involved in attention and control of the autonomic nervous system". The second one says meditation changes the physical structure of the brain. It thickens the brain cortex, an effect especially notable in older people: "suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning". This means that meditation might be a safeguard against senility or diseases like Huntingdon's. Another book I read recently summarised the research that showed that meditation was the only thing, other than prozac or cognitive therapy, that you can do to make your outlook on life sunnier. Psychoanalysis, and all the panoply of therapies and spiritual practices, do not have a reliable effect on your level of inner happiness, but meditation does.

I suppose I mention all of this because I think a lot of people don't really believe in meditation. They don't believe because their tutors don't believe. This is not to blame the tutors, but to note an area that needs some honest self-assessment by individuals and the organisation. In the previous post I noted one reason why this might be: the School is strongly oriented towards 'the way of action', and meditation is not an activity. Meditation contradicts many of the things we believe in.

This leaves us in a bit of a quandary. In one of the Marx Brothers films, a lady says to Chico Marx that she had seen him cheating at cards "with my own eyes". Chico retorts: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Until we start believing our own eyes, our own perceptions, our own insights and intelligence, our beliefs are no better than hearsay. Until we get used to speaking about what we find, and acting on what we say, we're not really philosophers.

There is another way ... or maybe two

According to His Holiness, there are three principal 'ways' to self-realization: knowledge, devotion, action. Then there is the 'fourth way', which is the way of the householder. Sometimes Shantananda seems to favour the way of devotion, perhaps as the most direct of the three; at other times he expresses a distinct preference for the fourth way, as being less extreme and more natural than the others. The School is supposed to be for people on the fourth way, but at the same time it's clear that individuals will by their own nature be drawn to one or more of knowledge, devotion or action. All three must be accommodated.

That gives us a framework, a guiding principle. How do we measure up in practice?

My own theory - and as someone said, there's nothing so practical as a good theory - is that the School has a strong preference for the way of action. This will come as a surprise to many people - I think the general view is that the School has a predilection, if anything, for knowledge. But what I note is that the people who are most contented and at home in the School are, almost invariably, lovers of action.

Show me an entirely happy long-term School student, and I will show you a man of action. It's what we do well.

I recently listened to one of Shane Mulhall's CDs, in which he spoke at some length on the three types of people, with respect to career. According to Mr Mulhall, the devotional person is mainly interested in "relationships" - his example was a restaurateur who asks, "How was your food?", but who in reality doesn't care what sort of rubbish he serves. He's only interested in having a friendly relationship. According to Mr Mulhall, the intellectual person is not interested in people, or in being effective, but only in knowing. His example of this was a doctor 'who would be more interested in the disease than the patient'. Neither of these are, I think, people one would necessarily want to be. By contrast, his portrait of the man of action was fulsome and almost without negativity.

Now, Mr Mulhall is someone who normally sticks very closely to Shantananda's words, but here he veers dramatically away from the view presented in the Conversations. He's a thoroughly even-handed and clear-sighted individual, to judge by his lectures; and for this reason it's all the more surprising that on this topic he resembles a cyclops who's just been chopping onions. It appears that the preference for the way of action is tremendously strong in the School.

The rule holds true in almost every case. The man of action is happy in the School, because we love karma yoga - duties, action, physical work, vigour. The man of knowledge is a bit less happy, because when it comes to enquiry after truth we have a rather weaker tradition. We're not quite sure in the School whether we are really seeking truth, or whether we've already found it and, if it wasn't for that goldarned ahankara, then by golly we'd all be realised. Speaking as someone who has a bit of an affiliation to this way, I can assure you that we have a lot to learn about how to foster knowledge. We have cut "knowledge" down to our own size - a manageable size - instead of enlarging our minds. Even the phrase "practical philosophy" has a flavour of utilitarianism about it - as if the purpose of knowledge is to serve action. "Wisdom Works", according to one slogan. Does it? According to Plato, wisdom is the state of soul when it becomes unchanging. Not much work needed there.

But if you want to see someone who is really unhappy in the School, look at the man of devotion. If you hang around the School long enough you might think the word 'devoted' means 'loyal, faithful, always ready to make the tea ... maybe a bit thick, bless 'em'. In other words, the devotional person is someone who can't cut the mustard intellectually, but who is useful for practical tasks. According to this view, the purpose of devotion is to serve action. This is not devotion. In fact, it's just old-fashioned English class prejudice.

This explains why we're so bad, so throroughly and unspeakably bad, at meditation. Meditation takes you beyond doing, into being. Meditation is what the way of action knows nothing about. It is a devotional practice, and it develops the intellect by freeing us from attachment. It's really simple - at least if you're not trying to make it into something it's not. Meditation points one way; School tradition points the other. It's a wonder we've kept it going. Obviously someone up there likes us.

Fortunately, His Holiness is rather detailed in his remarks on this subject. According to him, devotion or love is the Royal Way, quicker and more direct than the others. The man of devotion has no time to attend a School or to do duties. He wakes up in the morning praising God, and there's really no need to get out of bed. He's already there. This has been ignored or rationalised away, with words such as "sentimental" or "idle".

But why take my word for it? I would recommend anyone who is interested in knowledge or devotion to read the Conversations - 1965 and 1967 for a start. But read them without your Old-School glasses on, if you can. You might find you can see more clearly.

A Forum For Dialogue

A number of people recently have noted that the School lacks a genuine forum to discuss how the School ought to be. Among this number is included its leader, and so we can bypass lengthy analysis of the Executive/Fellowship.

What I would like to propose is that we draft a proposal to set up a forum of this kind. We could take as a starting point the words of Mr Jaiswal, "It is the duty of every School member to imagine how the School should be". Would you support such a thing? Would you be prepared to give your time and effort to it? Comments please.

The Way Forward

There is a verse in one of the scriptures. The gist of it is that a good man who wants to go on the spiritual path says what he feels, and does what he says. That is, he speaks from pure feeling. When he has impure feelings, he tries not to speak or rush into action or express them. A bad man does the reverse: he feels one thing and says something else; he says something but does something else.

If one really did speak what one felt, and did exactly what one said, then this would build up the inner strength of the man and, because of this clarity and unity of his mind and sincerity of his heart, the way would be fairly clear for him.

- Shantananda Sarasvati

In another place he said something similar, if anything with a stronger emphasis on straightforward speech. He said not to worry too much about getting it wrong, because if you did someone else would correct you.

For me this blog has been a real practice in speaking what's in the heart. That's the reason I have so much to say: this is what I have been thinking for 20 years, but because no-one ever asked it stayed inside. Well, mostly! Obviously one recognises that this is an unhealthy situation, but until people can speak from the heart spiritual development will be difficult.

It still feels unhealthy, because speaking is just the first step. The words have to be enacted. It may be objected that it's up to me to enact them ... but it's not so. If speaking out has not been our habit, even less has acting without instruction been practiced. We are rusty.

Speaking out doesn't mean talking out of the corner of your mouth in the pub after group, or thinking internally that you're above what you outwardly assent to. It means speaking what you feel, and then, of course, doing what you say.

This is the instruction of the Shankaracharya ... and so it is your duty, not only to the School but to yourself.

Below the parapet - words

One phrase I keep on hearing in the School is, 'Times have changed ...,' to explain why there isn't the commitment, or the numbers, or whatever it is. Anything unsatisfactory in School - to which there appears to be no answer - is laid at the door of Times Have Changed.

So common is this phrase that it is never challenged. At the turn of the 20th century Beatrice Webb (of the social reforming duo Sidney and Beatrice Webb) used to declaim to visitors that 'Marriage is the wastepaper basket of the emotions.'

Whether or not that is the case, Times Have Changed is certainly the wastepaper basket of the School. If you don't like something - you know in which direction to throw it.

Now Times Have Changed, although I'm not revealing any secret by saying that is nothing new.

But that poor old wastepaper basket is a dull sapper of energy. It shouldn't go unchallenged.

Principles

When I met with Mr Lambie a few weeks ago to discuss this web site I said that I would establish some guiding principles. Here are some, along the lines of Socrates' Daemon which told him what not to do.

1. Don't Break Confidentiality
One of the dangers of the medium is that people become more prone to gossip than they would otherwise be. People need to feel able to speak in School gatherings without fear of it being repeated elsewhere. Having said that, there are many cases where someone will say something that sparks off a thought that needs to be pursued. There's no reason that this can't be done without a traceable direct quote. We do need to be able to speak about a principle.

2. Don't Violate Anonymity
If we know or can guess at someone's identity this information should not be shared around. It is no business of anyone else if someone wants to participate anonymously.

3. Don't Infringe Copyright Without Permision
This would include course material and private communications.

4. Don't Criticise
Another principle of the School is that one should not criticise others. If people want to give vent to their feelings, they probably know where to do it. We can still have a clear sense of what's right and we don't need to accept wrongs, no matter how old or practiced they are within the organisation.

Apart from this I think that people can use their own common sense when taking part in the web log. If you have any comments, please let me know. Or if you would like to make suggestions, please do.

RIP Vayukesha

It is with great regret that I must announce the departure of Vayukesha, my former alter-ego. One ego per body, altered or not, is more than enough.

Reminder

"It is the duty of every member of the School to imagine how the School should be".
- Mr Jaiswal, Language Lecture 2005.

"And stop asking the Indians!"
- Ditto.

The Three Questions

Many years ago my father went on a management course and he told me about the 3 sentences all managers need to learn to say:

"You did a great job there."

"I'm sorry, I made a mistake."

"What do you think?"

What strikes me now about these sentences is that they are double-edged. On the one hand, they're intended to liberate the employee; on the other, they're intended to create humility in the manager.

The first seems the easiest and maybe the least interesting. Praise can be either genuine and deserved, or it can be fake and a way of asserting one's authority: I am the person who pats you on the head. Maybe it would be better to enthuse.

The second is crucial. Earlier this year the leader of the School took this step for the first time. We used to say, "being a tutor is never having to say you're sorry" (that's the kind of group we are, I'm afraid!) ... but it seems that the School can now learn to say that sentence.

It prepares the way for the third sentence, which is the most important of all. It's easy to express appreciation and retain one's power; it's even possible to apologise, and still avoid real humility. But to ask people their opinion - really ask them, as in wanting to hear what they think and being prepared for their answer to make a difference - is surrender. It is the spiritual question.

Many years ago, the Economics faculty was deader than Henry George's dog. Occasionally there seemed to be a twitch of activity, but it might only have been a trick of the light. Hard to be sure. Then one day they did something extraordinary. A survey was sent round to every young member of the School, asking what our economic concerns were. I completed it as best I could, and at the bottom of the form remarked, "This is the first time in all my years in the School that I have been asked a non-rhetorical question."

Since then the Economics faculty has staged a revival: it started to study economists other than the Blessed Henry ... made connections with other organizations ... begun to address the needs of the world in which we actually live. All of this has nothing to do, of course, with what I wrote on that form, or in all likelihood with what anyone else wrote. It was a change of heart. For some reason the faculty had stopped thinking it had the answers already, and asked a question to which it did not know the answer.

It's probably fair to say that the School as a whole is now at the point that Economics was a decade ago. Every week brings news of the departure of a philosopher, and the deaths of two more. Soon there will not be enough students left to complete the daily rearrangement of deckchairs on the HMS Titanic. The organization as presently configured doesn't know what to do next.

How bad do things have to get before we ask the question?

So, what do you think?

Reduce the Damage, Not the Student

The following might relate to some of the recent discussions on how to effect change.

I recently spoke to a lady – let’s says she’s in the London School – who has a great problem when she goes on residentials. She’s an environmentalist, and she’s horrified by what she sees at School properties. Minimal recycling, widespread and indiscriminate use of chemical sprays and fluids, low-energy light bulbs nowhere to be seen, coal-burning fires blazing on a warm day … she says “it hits me in the solar plexus”. She can hardly bear to be on a weekend, let alone a week, because it conflicts so much with her way of life and her ideals.

She has been told repeatedly that she has to surrender this agitation. In a sense, this is merely the traditional School view. If there is agitation, it must be coming from ahankara: therefore surrender. Unfortunately, this tradition contradicts the Shankaracharya as well as reason. His Holiness does indeed recommend surrender if there is agitation, but he also says that having surrendered the agitation we should do something about what caused it. To use an extreme example, I might feel agitated if I saw a man about to murder a child; I have to collect myself, and then act to stop him.

I said to this lady that she must write to the authorities within the School and explain her views. She will never find peace until she does so, because to do nothing is to condone a wrong. Environmental concern is not only in accord with the principles of our philosophy and economics; it is central to it. Within the Indian tradition, the spiritual journey corresponds to a lessening of environmental damage as life proceeds. Eventually the forest-dweller and the sannyasin reduce desire to the point where the consequence of his existence is almost nil. Our present practices ignore this aspect of the teaching, and so this is an opportunity to evolve the School.

'Surrender the agitation' is partial truth, a dangerous thing. “One cannot simply put a stop to the stream of life”, says His Holiness. The way forward for the individual as well as for all, is to direct the stream into its rightful channel. We need to learn the importance of speaking up for what's right.

Deep Thought

"The Indians have had mantra for quite a long time. If you look at the state of India, you have to say that mantra cannot be the answer to everything". - Language lecture 2006

This seems logical and reasonable, but for many years we've had a faith in meditation as the answer to everything (along with satsanga, which the Indians have also had for a while). Is it the answer?

If so, to what? In part or full? And how?

Elderly Germans In Action

Recently James posted a comment about Pope Benedict XVI's controversial speech. A while back I mentioned that the Pope had been in dialogue with a modern left-wing philosopher called Jurgen Habermas (left). It turns out to be fascinating.

Anyone who is interested in the meeting point between the paths of faith and reason should read this excellent article from Prospect magazine.

Names

After considering the many suggestions put forward, I've decided to change the name of this weblog to "At the Crossroads".

It suggests the importance of sometimes stopping to re-assess, and an informal meeting place where important matters can be considered. It suggests a place from which to view options. It says something about the significance of this moment in the history of the School, almost 70 years on.

Maybe (although I didn't think of it at first) it might remind you of the new premises of the London School in Mandeville Place.

Thanks to everyone who offered their suggestions.

Two Cheers For The Uncharismatic Leaders!

Following on from some of the conversations in recent posts, I'd like to show how a principle can and should be examined in practice. This isn't contradicting what anyone else is saying, but clarifying my own view.

Let's consider the idea that a principle is "a thorn to remove a thorn; when you have made use of it, you throw both away".

It's not a difficult concept in theory, but in practice it seems to cause people all kinds of problems. Let's assume that this idea is true. It describes a finite process. But how long should it take? Either (a) until full self-realization; (b) until a stage of understanding is reached beyond which the individual is capable of independent reason; or (c) until the Teaching has been heard in full and is intellectually known about.

We can dismiss (c) because we know that intellectual appreciation is not enough. We have to make use of the Teaching to remove the thorn of ignorance. We can also dismiss (a). It would be unreasonable to say that the Teaching should be carried about with us forever like a crutch. Not only that, it conflicts with the tradition of the teacher giving the student rahasya and sankalpa - the secret knowledge, and the ability to decide things independently. At this point, the student is no longer a student, but an independent seeker. So if we believe in the tradition we have to accept that at some point between the extremes of total ignorance and total enlightenment, we make use of a thorn, remove a thorn, and then throw both away. There may be more thorns of ignorance and therefore more thorns of knowledge needed. It's a matter of little steps in knowledge, but little forward steps.

If we look at how things are in the School, it might seem as though almost no-one has achieved such a thing. The tutor reads something to the group. The student asks a question. The tutor re-reads the passage. Another question. Another re-reading. How many tutors can hear what is being said and understand it? How many are clear enough about what is being said to explain it in their own words? His Holiness said, "no-one needs to bind himself to a word". How many of us have transcended the word by finding its meaning?

The only way to come at this is to look at examples of apparent transcendence. We are not talking about full self-realization, but about where someone seems to know something independently. There are a few candidates - I've mentioned Mr Jaiswal before; I might also mention Shane Mulhall, whose talks I've been listening to recently. It's a funny thing, but he stands out in that he doesn't really stand out. He's kind of ... uncharismatic. He has a sad, sonorous voice, and a strange gasping laugh when he tells a joke. From his descriptions of his life (most frequent word used "pathetic") he spends time watching football on the TV, he worries about what suit to wear, and loses arguments with his wife and children. In short, he's an accountant.

Why, then, is he so universally loved and respected? It's obvious. He knows what he's talking about; he speaks from the heart; and he lives by his words. Cut him any way you like: you can read the principles of the teaching there like Brighton rock. You might not agree with everything he says, but he doesn't mind that; nor does he imagine that he's got all the answers because he has the books on his shelf. He quotes His Holiness liberally and faithfully, but with a light touch that only comes from knowing the truth of it for yourself. The result? Someone told me the other day that there are 14,000 students in the Irish School. I've no idea whether that's true, but if so it's a great testament to what can be done.

The problem with charismatic leaders is that you can't do without them. We have a few of these types knocking around - masters of the world etc etc - and the problem is that once you accept their help they make you dependent. In the end, it's not very attractive. The real teacher doesn't make you feel how wise they are, but gives you a glimpse of your own native wisdom. The real teacher sets out to make you equal to himself.

But to come back to thorns - how many of us have forgotten that the Teaching itself is a thorn, and that life is not about the Teaching? How many of us have neglected our Self, in our anxiousness to praise the Teaching about the Self? How many of us have bound ourselves to a word? The Great Men who trumpet their virtues don't do that. Neither do the wise. It's the rest of us, rubbing along together in the lowing herd. That's how we keep ourselves the same.

Change

“Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people”

~ Eleanor Roosvelt

Much to my surprise I recently heard a someone in the school use the 'L' word; logic that is. The point was that it is a basic premise of logic that you cannot go from the particular to the general. The above quote came to mind and the thought arose that if we start to generalise from the basis of particular people or events then want to create change on that basis then that is a shaky foundation to start from.

If there are problems at the level of people and events (I come across loads including experiencing myself on an average day) then the question must be, "How do we get back to a true understanding of the IDEA, the principle?". This may or may not involve change.

What concerned me about V's last post was the possibility that too many people focussed too much on change means taking your eye off the changeless. I don't aim this coment at V personally, just something that concerns me generally. I also relate this to the notion of the name for the blog being, "A School for Today and Tomorrow". The effect it creates here is to think that the blog is some kind of think tank that is going to suggest what the school should be. That may not be the intention but that is how I hear it.

From a more practical point of view when I first started going on residentials, I was asked to wear a suit and tie. Initially, I never gave it a thought as to whether this was good or bad. Just accepted it. Now, my preference would be not to. But to get caught up in arguing about whether it's good or bad is perhaps not a very good use of the mind? It's fairly superficial one way or the other. And the more the mind gets caught up in the details, the arguments, and remains focussed on this then does the changeless get forgotten?

Some might say here that I am advocating doing nothing. Well I am well practised at doing nothing but that's another matter. I feel and it is the experience that a principle deeply understood leads to inevitable change (or inevitable confirmation that what you are already doing is correct). This cannot be a purely theoretical/intellectual grasp of a principle but something that has penetrated into the being, the 'emotional truth' spoken of elsewhere. For example, I became vegetarian on the basis of health and of minimising harm to other beings. The principle was felt as well as thought, then the change was inevitable from this. It has never really been a practise or a discipline, more like a change of behaviour that results from something understood. The converse side of this is to make change without having deeply understood. Maybe it is the correct principle but the results are temporary or shallow or maybe even detrimental.

I just want to make it clear that I am not personally calling for any particular change, nor do I feel qualified to do so. But I do want to question. I want to question because I want to understand. I want to get back to the true idea, the true principle. And I am sure that there are others in the school who already understand the principles better than I do. But as has been said elsewhere, being told the 'right' answer is of only partial use and can even result in unhealthy passivity or 'shallow' change as described above. So I want to question, not to change things. But this also does not deny the possibility or change arising naturally from understanding.

Today and Tomorrow

I don't know if Art in A. has ever been 'cutting edge', but it has always seemed special. Are we in danger of losing that? It's all very well to faithfully carry on the work of the past, but the real task of youth is to renew, refresh and sharpen. That means a clean slate on which to re-imagine the event. We've got to 30 years, and if we're to last the next 30 we need a new, inspiring plan. We need to consider 'AinA 2036'.

There's no lack of talent or intelligence to do this, but there is a question mark about the will. Are we prepared to think boldly, to set a new agenda for the future? Are we prepared to do things differently?

There are a lot of suggestions I could make as to what we could do, but the real need is for someone in authority to ask the question - what do you think? - of all of the new generation of staff, and be prepared to take the answer seriously.

The same could be said of the School as a whole, of course. Maybe the title of this blog could be "A School for Today and Tomorrow". Hmm ... I think I'll live with that for a few days.

What do you think?

Creating the Container for Satsanga

Following on from V's 'Upanishad' post:

The Upanishads begin with an invocation. What is the purpose of the invocation? Presumably to prepare heart and mind so that it is receptive to what is to come? But also, using the definition of upanishad as 'sit near' this implies an intimate gathering, like Jesus sitting with his disciples rather than speaking to the masses. I find myself returning quite regularly to "saha naavavatu" from the Katha. The more I look at it the more it implies to me a preparation, creating the conditions for satsanga to take place. It could be useful to look at it as a guide to 'preparing the ground' for a true meeting. Some reflections:

1) may we be protected
- the satsanga is a safe environment where we can open our hearts and trust that we will be met from this place
- confidentiality is understood

The umbrella of protection is a propitious environment whereby:

2/3) may we be nourished / may we create strength
- the satsanga provides spiritual food whereby the being is nourished and strengthened
- from this it is possible to re-engage with the world on leaving the satsanga with greater detachment, purpose and natural discipline
- there is strength to resist the negative / various pulls of the world etc through the force of being

4) may our studies be illumined
- may the reason / intellect be lit up with clarity
- may the light of intelligence shine without hindrance
- may there be true understanding

5) may we not oppose one another
- no envy or competition
- drop any past disagreement, conflict etc that puts up a barrier to meeting NOW

I'm sure this is not exhaustive. Just some of the things that are evoked. Any other pertinent suggestions welcome.

I have used this prayer with some regularity before attending group. It does seem that the intent and the effect is to prepare oneself better for what is to take place, also (for the devotionally inclined amongst us) to ask the Absolute for help in this matter.

"For wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I AM in the midst of them."
~ Matthew 18:20

Tighten or Loosen?

I recently read a great book by American psychologist Jonathan Haidt, called The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy to the Test of Science. Haidt draws on the great teachings and asks whether what they say is supported fully, partly or not at all by science so far.

One paragraph has kept coming back to me, because it contains a simple fact that challenges my own thinking about the benefits of philosophy. Here it is:

Clinical psychologists sometimes say that two kinds of people seek therapy: those who need tightening, and those who need loosening. But for every patient seeking help in becoming more organized, self-controlled and responsible about her future, there is a waiting room full of people hoping to loosen up, lighten up, and worry less about the stupid things they said about yesterday's staff meeting or about the rejection they are sure will follow tomorrow's lunch date. For most people, ... [the instinctive self] ... sees too many things as bad and not enough as good.

Instinct is a pessimist, because that's how you survive in the jungle. The consequence of missing an opportunity for a meal is relatively minor, compared with the consequence of becoming a meal for something else. That also applies to things like prestige: the Alpha Male is only as good as his last scrap. Win a hundred battles, all you get is another day in power. Lose one, and you're out. We are pre-programmed to be more fearful than hopeful.

But the observation of the psychologists troubles me, and I wonder if it does you.

The School has always advertised itself as offering ways to become "more organized, self-controlled and responsible", and only secondarily aimed to help people to loosen up. We lighten up, according to the School, only when we become disciplined. To be disciplined is, as His Holiness famously said, to "flow freely". What we do with this is to re-frame "lightening up" as being no more than a side-effect of adding discipline to life. The world is sliding into disorder, anarchy, atheism and immorality, and we have the answer - more discipline. Stop whinging and get back in that trench, you idle, complacent layabout!

Even more troubling than the thought that we might be losing customers by our approach, appealing to the odd one out rather than responding to the needs of most people, is the implication that we are perhaps siding with the instinctive, habitual nature against reason. That's to say, if basic instinct makes me worry too much, and I fill my conscious mind with worry as well, then I am going to become more repressed, more neurotic, more miserable. And in some sense, this seems to fit the stereotype, if not the inner reality - enthusiastic, cheering crowds in part 1; grey suits and silence later.

It may be that the world is getting too free-and-easy. Let's grant that it is, for the moment. Does that necessarily mean that a corrective prescription of heavy discipline and hard work should be administered? Have we the responsibility to weigh in the scale of discipline?

I don't have the answer to this, but one begins to suggest itself. I believe that HH is right about discipline and free flow, of course, but I also believe that we've interpreted him wrongly somewhere along the line. We must have done. I would come back to his classic formulation, "tender advice, showers of love, or a little hard discipline". It seems that His Holiness wants us to be careful about how we use the negative, but to pour on the positive without any limit. If human beings really are saddled with a base nature that makes them worry too much, then it must be so that encouragement, enthusiasm and hope are what they need. When we have reassured people that they don't face a threat, then perhaps we can employ a little hard discipline, but with the lightest of touches.

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva

Much of the discussion on this blog has centred around structure and how that relates to freedom of expression or freedom of enquiry. The thought arose a while ago as to whether 'preservation' can or should exist in isolation from creation and dissolution? Is Vishnu 'preserver' or does he use all three aspects of creation, preservation and dissolution in order to 'preserve' ?

The Shankaracarya gives the analogy of the Ganges flowing down through the Himalayas towards the sea. The mountains are said to be the religions. How do they become mountains? By preserving themselves and not flowing? How do we become rigid? How do we dissolve and become creative again?

Gita, Ch4, V8 is really intriguing with regard to this question, containing all three aspects:

'To protect (preserve) the righteous, to destroy (dissolve) the wicked, and to establish (preserve) the kingdom of God, I am reborn (create) from age to age.'

(look up the sanskrit if you're so inclined!)

So the question is:

- are creation, preservation and dissolution three separate things or
- is the true 'preservation' the interaction of these three forces?

The latter definition allows for a tradition to:

a) be revitalised, re-invigorated, re-energised, re-formed (creation)
b) throw away what has become habitual, mechanical etc (dissolution)
c) protect what is 'established wisdom' (the usual definition of preservation)

and then the true 'preservation' results from all three, wisely used.

(In fact in writing the above three 'categories' it becomes difficult to separate them – dissolving and revitalising are the same thing in the same way as cleaning a window involves removing the dirt. And is preservation something separate from these apparent two? If so, what?)

Changing the Name

It's become clear to me that we need a new title.

When I started "Free the Teaching!" it perhaps reflected accurately my feelings at the time, following the Inquiry Report and the Channel 4 news piece. On the one hand, the leadership was advocating change, reflection and progress; on the other, there was the sense that some were more concerned with damage limitation. The aggression of our opponents was being returned tit for tat. I was frustrated with this, and I had lost much of my respect for the reactionaries. In short, I wanted to have a go.

Of course, that was not my only motivation. I had also come to believe that our problems were not the result of malignant outside forces, or (even worse) of any shortcomings in the Teaching as we have received it, but of a failure to fully understand that Teaching or put it into practice. So "Free the Teaching" also represents a call for all of us to stop limiting the Teaching with our ideas about it. This was not a woolly or sentimental view - I had some clear ideas about what we had got wrong, and about what needed to be done to put it right. I wanted to test those ideas on others.

Maybe the most important point I wanted to make was that it is time for all of us to take a stand and stop relying on something external to us called "the Teaching". We need to recognise that ahankara is not original sin, but an illusion. There is something called the self, which is what we really are - not just in samadhi or when we reach an imagined Himalaya of the spirit, but what we are here and now, whether or not we know it. The ego distorts things, of course; but its effect is entirely peripheral to the self, and to our essential nature, which is particular to us, but also pure. Our talents, our affections, our deeper impulses and emotions are all routes towards the self (or, if you must, the Self). I'm OK, and you're OK as well. That is what His Holiness is telling us.

What worried me most was to see that there was so much despondency around. Some people were furiously hanging on to their old view of the School; those that had dropped that were, on the whole, losing their faith in it. If we were to procure a Guna-Meter from somewhere (can you get them on mail-order?) I think that the needle would have been pointing towards T and dropping. In order to get back to the S, we had to have some R.

Anyway, maybe that has been done enough. I'd like this blog to retain its edge and bite, where necessary - those are aspects of reason, after all; it has to be a forum for open discussion, where people can express their views freely; but perhaps with a little less heat, and a little more light.

So - we need a new name ... click "comments" below and have a go.

Upanishad

Question: Is it right to assume that the words of those we believe to be wise are true?

It might seem as if the answer is self-evident to any right-thinking philosopher. But something in me keeps saying "no". It seems to be an argument that I have been having for many years. I remember someone once saying to me with some annoyance, "your group doesn't seem to be able to accept that the Teaching is true". That man has long since left the School; practically all of my group are still around. There is something that we seem to have been hanging onto, no matter what people have tried to tell us. I woke up very early this morning, with the tail end of Hurricane Gordon battering rain onto the Velux windows, and it gradually came to me what it might be.

The problem I have is that I believe it contradicts the Upanishads to say that their words are true, and it contradicts His Holiness to say that his words are true. And although I can see that we need to treat these sources with reverence, in the end I do not believe that we should contradict the Upanishads or His Holiness, even if it seems to be in support of them. I will explain what I mean.

The word "Upanishad" means literally "to sit near", but in the Upanishads it is usually used with a different sense, that of "secret knowledge" or "hidden teaching". Another word used to say the same thing is rahasya. What is the secret knowledge? It is the knowledge of satyasya satyam, "the Truth of truth". Truth is prana, the life force; and the Truth of truth is that which cannot be defined: the consciousness of the Atman. It is wrong to say that the Upanishads are true, because they offer not truth, but the hidden knowledge of that which is true.

What is said about knowledge is that it is of two kinds, higher and lower. There seems to have been a view in the early Upanishads that lower knowledge was the ritual knowledge of the Brahman priests, which was intended to get a result. The Upanishads themselves were "higher knowledge" because they aimed at no result. Possibly later, or perhaps together with this, a second view emerged, which is if I may say a more refined concept, that the lower knowledge includes everything that can be expressed in words. The higher knowledge cannot be expressed: it is not in speech, but in that by which speech is known.

His Holiness says the same thing, when he says that knowledge of the Absolute and the Self is just ordinary information. It has to be transformed into understanding. This was why he told the translator of the Conversations, "don't listen to my words - listen to my meaning, and translate that". This might seem to represent a slippery slope. The Conversations are supposed to be "unalterable", and if we take that away, the reasoning goes, what do we have? What is the School?

The courageous answer to this, I would suggest, is that if the School is nothing without having a claim to "unalterable" texts, then it is indeed nothing. Only Fundamentalists have unalterable texts, and the reason for that is that they are too poorly educated and led to penetrate to the meaning. But the School is not and never has been about such a claim. A spurious claim on the truth cannot lead to truth.

People don't need the words: they need the meaning. And we come back again to the literal meaning of the word Upanishad: "to sit near". It presents an image of the teacher and the student, sitting together. In one of the Vedic invocations that opens an Upanishad we find the moving prayer, "may we not cavil at each other". Why? Because if we are to be united by truth, there is no room for petty emotions.

And that is what Shantananda meant when he spoke of higher knowledge (and here, he exceeded what is to be found elsewhere in the tradition) as the understanding that arises at the meeting of chittani ("hearts and minds") joined by love or common purpose. The same, he said, may not arise again away from such a meeting.

Those we love are those to whom we can tell the truth. All we need to do to benefit the world is to tell the truth.

Don't Mention the Camel

One thing that comes across forcefully from the study of the Indian tradition of philosophy is its simplicity.

It's easy to miss this if one's knowledge of it is entirely mediated through a group. If a term is spent studying five verses, it is likely that most of us have forgotten verse 1 by the end. It can become a bit like studying a flower by training a powerful microscope on it - one loses the sense of a beautiful object that can be appreciated immediately and in its totality, without a lot of thought.

Not that Advaita Vedanta is "philosophy for dummies" - not at all. But it can seem as though we can't see the bigger picture because of our love of close analysis. And then, when someone asks us what 'philosophy' means, we are stuck for an answer. It's a bit like the old story of the seven blind men describing an elephant. I'm sure that a blind man could tell me amazing things about an elephant's knee - its texture, its smell, its bulk - but I would not for that reason wish to be blind. We privilege the fine detail at the expense of the eye's ability to take all in at a glance. Both are needed.

The antidote to this is to read the Upanishads or the Gita oneself - not taking years over it, but reading 20 pages at a time. Read an Upanishad at a sitting, or even two Upanishads. If you find a bit that's obscure, don't fret about it, just skip on and come back to it later. Dip into the Vedas. Or read a modern Advaitin such as Nisargadatta, Ramakrishna or Vivekananda.

Another valuable approach is to read a good Western account of Indian philosophy (I'm currently reading Paul Deussen's The Philosophy of the Upanishads). Why? Because some things are too obvious for an Indian to mention. It's the same reason why there are no camels in the Koran - they were so common that there was no need for an Arab to go on about them. So if we want to get the Upanishadic spirit, we need to understand not only the words on the page, but also those that are present but not on the page.

Or, you could go along to a class offered by one of the many Indian centres of learning. I understand from more than one friend that the Chinmaya organization has some superb teachers. Apparently it's an excellent complement to School study.

When I was a child I had a board game that said, "A minute to learn - A lifetime to master". It might take more than a minute to learn Advaita Vedanta, but it doesn't take a lifetime. Get the basics under your belt, in whatever way you can, and devote your life to mastery.

The Good, The True and the Beautiful

Traditional Western philosophy has proposed three objectives: the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

In the modern world, it has been noted by a number of commentators that we have emphasised the True at the expense of the other two. Science acknowledges only the standard of truth - speak to a scientist and ask whether he would allow ethical or aesthetic considerations to intrude on his experiments. Ethics are of course used to regulate science, but these are established from outside - by government, for example. Aesthetics are the realm of artists, and are even less important to the scientist, at least while he is being a scientist.

It should also be noted, however, that there is a secondary aspect to our tradition, which we derive from the Romantic era, that emphasises beauty and also truth. Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn makes the classic statement:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

The first problem with this is that it leaves out the Good - the moral or ethical. The second is that in practice beauty is well on top in the Romantic spirit. It is the personal response that matters - ie 'feelings' - and so we lose sight of Truth that may not accord with our personal feelings. In extreme cases, all that matters is what I feel; if you feel something different then you must be wrong, because the Beauty I experience is Truth. This is why art is greatly fragmented - standards are determined independently by the aesthetic responses of each artist or by each viewer of art, and not by reference to something outside of the individual.

What we seem to leave out, then, is the Good. Our society has things that it values as absolute ethical standards - universal equality, compassion, tolerance, charity, etc - but where do these standards come from? What inspires us? The answer still seems to be religion. Despite all that has happened over the past couple of centuries, we still do not have the Atheist Cross or the Secular Army rushing out to help people in need when disaster strikes.

This is why we need philosophy - some means to find inspiration that is not tied to faith - and yet we should also ask ourselves whether the School is not as culpable as anyone else in our neglect of the Good. We have upheld the True, and the Beautiful (not so much in our art, but in our emphasis on meditation, the exercise and similar practices that create an aesthetic or devotional experience) but have we done as much for the Good? We uphold principles and ethical standards, but how far? How real is our Good? Do we do good in society, or only in School?

Leaving aside issues such as charitable work, we might also ask whether kindness and compassion have not been neglected, in our efforts to exalt Truth. The Good is not in conflict with Truth, or with Beauty. We have perhaps more to discover about the harmony of all three.

Sanscrit - grrh .... or wonderful!

I have problems with Sanscrit grammar in a similar way to some people with meditation. I can't really see the point of it. Whereas with meditation the result is - or should be - a matter of indifference, with Sanscrit grammar there's a definite aim: to learn the language.

Why do we have to do this? What has Sanscrit got that can't be found in English? There are words, it is true, to describe states or conditions that can't readily be expressed in English, but the grammar itself is said to yield a mysterious knowledge, along with its cohort - the sounds themselves.

Mysterious certainly for me, obscure, floundering and the light never seems to dawn. It's a long hard path, a puzzle, more like a maze. And I never remember how I got there or where I'm supposed to be going. All the usual signposts have been turned around. Nothing very useful is retained.

I have asked others if they have experienced knowledge simply in the sound of Sanscrit. One said he did once but was not able to describe it.

HH has said we need to study Sanscrit - do we all have to do it? If we do, what do we need to do to make it comprehensible to those like me? If we don't all have to do it - are there other ways to bring the benefit?

And if the sound of Sanscrit alone brings knowledge it should be possible to demonstrate this. Now that would really make the point.

What Happens Backstage, Again?

There seems to have been a recognition recently that meditation needs to be reconsidered. We’ve had new meditation material on a regular basis, and been offered meditation retreats, which have been, by all accounts, successful.

Probably this needs to go further. There’s no doubt that meditation is a powerful aid on a spiritual path. Even had the Shankaracharya not recommended it, scientific research has found it to be one of the few activities that make a measurable difference to one’s life. Buddhists do it, even educated fleas do it. When the then Tory party leader William Hague said that he repeated a mantra for an hour daily, it was a bit of a surprise, but it still didn’t make him interesting.

How odd then that, as a body, we seem to have learned so little about it in 40 years.

We ‘know’ what His Holiness has to say about meditation, but our tutors often give the impression that they have never actually meditated themselves. If a History teacher taught exclusively by reading from a textbook, a child might quickly conclude that the teacher knew no history. A tutor who reads and re-reads the words of His Holiness to his group is just like that teacher – living off the words of the wise, but not living them. (Possibly this is one reason why I have quoted His Holiness so infrequently on this blog – it seems necessary to make the point that we can all make our own words. If we can’t, we haven’t listened). I long for the day when my tutor can just tell me what he knows about meditation, from experience. Even if it’s just a little piece of knowledge - his own knowledge - I will receive it gratefully. It's occasionally happened.

I’ve spoken to quite a few people recently about meditation, and I must say that the impression one often gets – from those who meditate regularly – is of someone who twice daily disappears behind a rich, black velvet curtain. What was it like? It was still, calm, ‘and one comes out refreshed’. Wow …

Such descriptions are neither like what His Holiness says about meditation, nor I must say very much like what I experience myself. One thing that rings true in his descriptions is the sense of meditation as a dynamic event. His Holiness says that a point of vibration begins behind the lips … that the mantra harmonizes with the prana – the life-force within the body … that one dips into stillness and then rises again, several times perhaps. No velvet curtains, no non-specific generalizations. He’s telling us about something he actually experiences.

And let me say here, I don't think that alone makes him a wise man. We all experience meditation - or used to - all we need do is admit it. And if we can admit it, and look at what actually happens, the funny thing is that it seems to tell us a lot about ourselves. It turns out that meditation helps with self-realization, not always mystically, but often in very simple ways. We need to have the courage to accept what it is telling us.

Perhaps this post might be a place for people to record the experiences - good, bad or appalling - that they are having in meditation.

Does the right answer help?

"There have been people who have told, in this country particularly, that the whole world is illusory, maya, it does not exist, but has it helped India in any way? The true test is there: whether it has helped, whether it has made people more authentic, more real. It has not helped at all. It has made people more deeply cunning, split, schizophrenic; it has made them hypocrites.

All the religions have done this, because they don't consider you. And you are far more important than the ultimate truth, because the ultimate truth has nothing to do with you right now. You are living in a dreamworld; some device is needed which can help you come out of it. The moment you are out of it, you will know it was a dream – but a person who is dreaming, to tell him that it is all a dream is meaningless...

And that's what has happened in India: people are living in maya, deeply in it, and still talking that "This is all maya." And this talk too is part of their dream; it does not destroy the dream. In fact it makes the dream more deeply rooted in them, because now there is no need to get rid of it – because it is a dream! So why get rid of it? It does not matter.

In a subtle way all the religions have done this: they have talked from the highest peak to the people for whom that peak does not exist yet."

~ Osho

Order and Hierarchy

In the spirit of enquiry, this is Shakespeare's argument for hierarchy ('degree').

Take but degree away, untune that string
And hark what discord follows

- Ulysses in Troilus & Cressida Act I Sc 3

Of course, he lived in a very different age: in Shakespeare ordinary people ("rude mechanicals")are there for comic relief, while the kings and princes play out the real drama. The word "freedom" is never used positively anywhere in his work - preservation of the larger order is the key virtue.

Even so, I'm sure we can all feel the force of what Ulysses is saying here. Comments, anyone?

Is Knowledge Asserting or Negating?

The question arises with some regularity, "What is the Path of Knowledge?". I often hear it spoken of as implying that someone who enjoys study, acquiring various degrees etc is following the path of knowledge. Also, it is often rejected by those of a more practical persuasion as being mere 'information'. I feel that this is a misunderstanding as to what the path of knowledge actually is. Sure, study is an aid for all of us, but what is the actual practice of the path of knowledge?

The following excerpts are from "Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna". I find this helpful in being reminded what kind of 'knowledge' we are actually talking about. The second excerpt, though Sri Ramakrishna uses a physical analogy, I find similar to the "Catching the Chameleon" method. i.e, the observation and dropping of assumed identities. Would it then be necessary to assert anything? Seems that we are often subject to a whole lot more assertion than negation? 'Assertion' leads to accumulated conclusions, 'negation' to deeper consciousness as the identifications are let go. If the ahankara has adopted various accumulated conclusions or beliefs then, because of identification, it feels threatened when the beliefs are threatened. Ever seen this? What kind of behaviour does this lead to?

What is Jnana Yoga?

Jnana Yoga is communion with God by means of knowledge. The Jnani's objective is to realise Brahman, the Absolute. He says "Not this," "Not this" and thus leaves out of account one unreal thing after another until he gets to a point where all Vichara (discrimination) between the real and the unreal ceases, and Brahman is realised in Samadhi.

***

If a man knows his own self, he knows other beings and God. What is my ego? Is it my hand or foot, flesh or blood, muscle or tendon? Ponder deeply, and you will know that there is no such thing as 'I'. As you peel off the skin of an onion, you find it consists only of skin; you cannot find any kernel in it. So too on analysing the ego, you will find that there is no real entity that you can call 'I'. Such an analysis of the ego convinces one that the ultimate substance is God alone. When egotism drops away, Divinity manifests itself.

***

...if, on the other hand, the Truth is heard and understood intellectually but no attempt is made to renounce the unreal, of what use is that knowledge? Such knowldege is like that of the men of the world, and does not help one to attain the Truth. Or else a person may profess in mere words that the world is unreal and non-existant; but the moment sense-objects – colour, taste and the rest appear before him, he takes them to be real and gets entangled just like a man who verbally asserts that there are no thorns, but bursts out screaming as soon as his hand comes in contact with a thorn and gets pricked.

Control and The Will Of The Absolute

When I visited Cuba recently, it was brought home to me why Communism cannot work. Not for philosophical reasons, but because it gets in the way of people's natural creative impulses. A friend of mine had asked me to bring her some examples of Cuban graphic art, and I searched everywhere for postcards, posters, books - nothing. Eventually I met a man who worked for the Ministry of Tourism and asked him about it. He said, "Unfortunately, the Ministry is too busy running 280 hotels and so it cannot take care of details like this".

In a capitalist economy, some little guy would long ago have translated his enthusiasm for graphic art into a thriving business - supplying us all with its benefits, without any need for government to interfere. And indeed, as a 30-second search on the internet revealed, you can easily get the art of Cuba in a capitalist state. But not in Cuba. You can see why their favourite phrase is No es facile ... "it's not easy". They blame the blockade of the US for their problems, but I regret to say that the real blockade is Comrade Fidel.

Like the Cuban People's Revolution, the School cannot quite bring itself to trust people. Nobody actually says, "Whatever is not expressly permitted is forbidden", but the tradition of "Ask your tutor about any important decision" is a subtle version of the same thing - command and control. The assumption is that without tutorial supervision, people automatically descend to the lowest level. This may seem antiquated, but if anyone wishes I can cite many recent examples to show that tutorial control is alive and well in the School.

The problem with it from a spiritual point of view - and I do appreciate the value of a watchful tutor - is that there are many good things that one can't really explain or justify in words. That's the nature of creativity - you follow a quiet hunch, playfully almost. You don't really want to ask someone about it, or explain why you do it, because you don't know yet what it is. Oddly enough, this is the way the will of the Absolute happens: the will of the Absolute is in the avyakta, the unmanifested. By the time it's obvious, it's manifested. If you want to know the will of the Absolute, you need to take a step in the dark. You need to trust the self - your own self - and not someone else.

If you trust someone else instead of yourself, then you cannot realise the self. You cannot be creative. You cannot be artistic.

I have a question for the readers of this blog who are members of the School. I think it might bring up some very interesting avenues of enquiry:

Is there anything that you do or have done or would like to do that is 'spiritual', but for which you would not ask permission?

Not Blogging

It's been interesting to have a break from all of this for a week - firstly because very little seems to have happened, and secondly because I've found it something of a relief.

The blog has been getting fairly popular ... it's all relative I suppose but 700 visitors in July means "Free the Teaching" is, oh let's see, only about 500 times less popular than the one by that woman who details her sex life. But then I suppose the potential readership of School members is dwarfed by people who are interested in sex. There may even be some crossover there, who knows?

There have been far fewer people who have been prepared to participate - but my thanks so far to Na, Geedash, Gitalover, Son of Moses, Minerva, Kapila, Laura, and of course the ever-charming Anonymous -as well as to more occasional contributors.

My point of view has by now been fairly extensively published, and I'm not sure what else I have to offer. Perhaps it might be useful to outline the essential points. These are my personal beliefs and not intended to be authoritative statements of truth:

1. The School has not listened to His Holiness
This is the root of all our problems. We've listened to the words, but ignored the message, which is one of compassion and intelligence. This is because we wanted to hang on to our old Gurdjieffian habits - which are highly disciplined, but neither compassionate nor intelligent - instead of learning from a wiser and more venerable tradition.

2. We need to discriminate between what is customary, and what is essential
There are a lot of things about the School that do not make sense. They persist because we are sentimental about "our" way of doing things and refuse to examine it rationally.

3. We need to evolve a vision for the future
We need to do this together. In the days of Mr MacLaren it was done for us; but it no longer can or should be thus. The challenge is to dissolve the hierarchy so that we can speak as equals. Some people will mistake this for mob rule, but I would ask: is the School a mob? Or has it achieved something?

4. We have many natural friends in the world
There are many people 'out there' who are desperate for the benefits of philosophy. There are others who have significant wisdom and understanding and who could and would help the School in its endeavours. The general lack of interest in the School is not, on the whole, due to the shortcomings of others, but to our own.

5. The School is potentially the best thing in the world
I don't have any arguments to back that up, but that's what I believe and intuitively feel. Rationally speaking, there is a lot of work to do.

It would be good to hear what others think about these matters, and if anyone has other suggestions they should put them forward. This blog has always been a means to an end, and at some point it will cease to exist. Whether that's now or later depends on you.

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