Holding the Tension

Some years ago I met a lady who lived in a small town in Ireland. She spoke of her fear of flying and what she said evoked something about the pace of the modern world. She was someone who worked primarily from feeling, a devotional lady. What was evoked from this encounter is that our manas-driven age of accelerating technology, information-overload, over-analysis etc is going too fast for the ‘being’ to keep up with. Many seem to be living in the manas world whilst the level of being, feeling etc remains unaffected by the ‘information’. I think there is, for many, an existential split which has occurred. (We can, of course also apply this to ‘spiritual information’.)

The radical psychiatrist R D Laing suggested that most of us are to some degree schizophrenic. Then the person labelled as ‘schizophrenic’ is simply someone who is more deeply split (or who has become more deeply aware of the split in themselves and is greatly disturbed by it). I don’t know if this is the whole story but it fits with SOMs experiences shared elsewhere about the layers of mind that were revealed to him. Some psychological techniques, of course, seek to remove the ‘tension’ by expression of that which has been repressed. I don’t advocate this. But also, I feel that the inner sense of division, the tension, the dis-ease must somehow be resolved or understood.

The image is from a photo I took at the V&A Museum back in the summer. Coming back to our earlier discussion on mythology, it is interesting to note how the image connected with something 'within' that the analytical mind doesn’t immediately ‘get’ but something, somewhere knows it’s important. In the statue, Mercury lifts Psyche with his eyes fixed above on the vial that psyche holds. Do we not often see, and is it not a symptom of our age, that Mercury and Psyche are separated? Mercury is stuck in a world of information or ideals that become disconnected from the emotional being. Or the emotional being remains unaffected by higher knowledge. The deep seated samskaras don’t change?

All this fits back with earlier conversations. We have the ‘words of the wise’. Those who have seen further. Or we have our own glimpses of true insight but these become covered again. (Perhaps these may be considered to be the contents of the vial, the distilled essence of wisdom and experience?) Then we have the ‘emotional truth’ of our day to day experience. To deny the former is to deny the possibility of anything higher than our current experience. To deny the latter is to begin to live in an abstract world, at worst a hypocritical world. How to hold the tension between the two? How to allow the two to converge rather than retreat into ideals or the comfort of ‘the known’ ? I don’t claim any answers but a couple of possibilities arise after some reflection on this:

- On our earlier subject of myth, I believe that there is something in myth that penetrates deeper into the being than analytical knowledge. Just like the initial effect of seeing the Mercury and Psyche statue. I think we make a mistake if we consider myths primitive or irrational. Maybe they are in some sense irrational, but they are endeavouring to describe a world that is at least partially irrational - so why not? A study of the myths can perhaps bring light and harmony into the workings of Psyche? Interestingly, Shastri, in his introduction to his Gita translation, claims the Puranas are of the same source as the Gita.

- The image also evokes the practice of simply holding the world of Psyche in awareness. (Mercury is also a symbol for consciousness.) By this, I mean just watching without indulging or repressing (as a Buddhist teacher put it). The metaphor that arises is: allowing simple organic growth in the light of the conscious sun. This, as opposed to genetic modification; the artificial, ‘forced’ interference of judgment, criticism, expectation, manipulation etc. (I also relate this back to the Elephant Whispering post.)

There's more than I can express here because I don't have this worked out. I relate Psyche to chitta, the heart-mind of a real or mythical people of greater integration and wholeness. The words 'creative tension' also arise. Is there creativity whilst the tension is there? Does the creativity vanish when retreating to one pole or the other? Does any of this mean anything to anyone else?

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Better to travel hopefully...?

We've covered much ground in the last nine months on this blog but I wondered today why we're doing this? It's interesting, it's alive, it's often clarifying and educating - but what's it for, other than for our own edification? Do we need an aim or is the blog sufficient unto itself? It could be that, each in our hearts, we hold a desire for the outcome of the blog about which we haven't yet spoken.

All new projects need space to find a voice - is it now time to gather ourselves together to put forward a programme? Or, if that's too definite an article, then to explore themes of renewal and recovery within the applied context of the School? We've asked many questions (there will be more to come)but are we ready to come up with some answers? These may be provisional - this is, after all, a work in progress. But at the moment our ideas and observations are scattered in various sections of the blog and have no real force.

We would need to specify the foundation stone of the work - this could be HH's words. Then the task would be to construct on that foundation.

Much as I value the blog (and its creator)I do also seek an outcome for it.

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Flow

Tonight is the first meeting of The No-Novels Book Group ... we have been reading Flow by the unpronounceable Hungarian psychologist. His central thesis is that "flow" is the secret to happiness. It sounds pretty much like sattva - it's the experience of being "in the zone" between the anxiety of overwhelming stress and the boredom of unchallenging circumstances. We find challenges that suit our present level of skills, and as we develop we raise the bar to keep things interesting.

One point struck me by its relevance to this blog. There are said to be two societal obstacles to happiness - anomie, which is the feeling of aimlessness that arises in a society without strong ethical norms; and alienation, which is the feeling of individual irrelevance that arises in a society with overpowering ethical norms.

As it happens His Holiness says something very similar in the 1991 Conversations, where he says "Each disciple must find balance within the disciplines so that he is neither ill-prepared nor over-powered". The assumption he makes, of course, is that the disciplines themselves allow this to happen easily and naturally. My own assumption is that our disciplines do not match perfectly the ones he is talking about. Click "read more!" to continue ...

I don't think it would be difficult to diagnose which of the two problems we face. We do not lack guidelines in the School; we have a lot of those, and many people join, I imagine, because it provides something that our society lacks in this regard. The School is a protection against Western anomie. So we would expect that if there are problems, they would come from excessive alienation of individual members and groups, from feeling that their own contribution is of very little relevance to the overall organization. No matter what I think or feel, certain things will never vary. I heard a senior lady remark recently that she felt that it did not matter in the least to the School whether she stayed or left. This is alienation.

This is beginning to be addressed. Students now have more personal choice, whether it is on major issues such as whether to attend a weekend or not, or on minor, but important matters such as what to wear. The danger is that, as history tells us, revolutions take place not when things are getting worse, but when they are getting better. The repressed individual suddenly wakes up to what has been happening all these years, and instead of being grateful for the moderation of discipline, storms off angrily.

So if we are going to reduce alienation, we need a corresponding strengthening of our principles. It is not enough to change the dress code and make a single (almost incomprehensible) announcement. People have given their lives to dressing as if they worked for a 1950s accountancy firm, or had a disfiguring birthmark on the lower calf. They cannot simply be expected to change this without it changing how they feel and think about the School. Are we going forward? Are we retreating in the face of pressure? What is the principle that was important then that we have now refined?

This is a time for leadership.

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Modern philosophy circa 1800

"People mean nowadays by a philosopher not the man who learns the art of mastering his passions or adding to his insight, but the man who has cast off prejudices without acquiring virtues".
- Antoine de Rivarol (1753 - 1801)

This would still apply, it seems to me, to many modern philosophers and intellectuals, as well as to many fake gurus of the East and West. Advaita is easy to twist into this kind of empty doctrine, if cut free from its traditional moorings.

I would like to think that the School will always represent an alternative approach, regardless of any transformations it may go through. What about you?

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A Story of Creation

This is from Son of Moses, in response to a challenge to come up with an alternative to the scientific narrative of evolution. I am trying to limit the length of postings that are visible, so to read the full text, click on "Read More!" below. - Kevin

In the Beginning. What? Why? Who knows?

Did it happen at all? Was it in the past, or is it happening only right now? Or is it merely a misperception, a misperceiving of the True Reality?

And if it exists, does it have any more meaning than a momentary white dot appearing and disappearing on a black cathode ray screen?

Who knows?

Indeed, what right have we to assume that we could ever hope to understand? Can a mere droplet of water understand the great Ocean?

And yet, suppose there is an original Reality, a Beginning; is it pure Consciousness, pure knowing, infinite, eternal, One without a second? Or what was it?

From That, in That, for its own reasons, or maybe beyond any concept of reason that our minds could entertain, came a Second, so that in it could appear a reflection of the Original One.

This appearance is a stepping down, a reduction. It constituted a split, for now there existed two, the Original and its ‘Matter’; or perhaps three, these two and the Reflection of the First in the Second. Did it all happen in the same instant?

Whether so or not, note that, in relation to the One, the second is the not-so-perfect; it is dependent, and timebound. In this less-Good lay the seed of evil.

But there was no one yet to dwell on the implications of this fact, and in what seemed a mere moment there was spread out an unimaginably vast heirarchy of beings. Consciousness fragmented into countless seemingly separate individuals, each partaking of the original Magic that fills every step.

But as the Cosmos filled out, a concern arose in the mind of the Creators. Will the outward Surge fragment so much that memory of the original freedom and bliss will be lost? Will the ever increasing density and finitude at the outer edge enter a rigid bondage, a state of endless misery? How may this mighty journey outwards, Consciousness running down through creation, be reversed?

Let us, therefore, make a new being, capable of spanning the whole array of the Cosmos, able to regenerate the great depletion, to convert lower energies back into higher. Let us raise a Transformer from the dust of earth, creating him in our own image.

We shall place him just there, in the earth, a little lower than the angels, having dominion over all creatures.

And the angels of the Lord brought forth from the dust a magnificent body, of intricate passages and pathways, evolved over long ages. Patiently, through the power of their attention, they moulded a receptacle for the soul of man.

Who knows how many experiments and trials were essayed in their quest to produce the ideal agency for the task to be performed? Who can tell how much work it required to bring about this marvel conceived in the Divine Mind prior to the first impulse of manifestation? What seems aeons to us is indeed but a second in the Cosmic Mind.

He thought and it was done.

And know that just as a few microscopic cells of our deep brain govern the entire metabolism of our magnificent bodies, yet nonetheless comprise only the merest fraction of the whole, so the race of man comprises an infinitely tiny proportion of the cosmos, yet plays this vital part as the end point of the whole creative pageant, the point of turning, the beginning of the journey upward and back.

And if you ask how such an apparently insignificant creature could be of such importance when we see him every day strutting his infinite foolishness on the globe, then know that this is just that, the age of foolishness, that there are much longer ages when his true stature is unmistakably evident, his mighty responsibility properly fulfilled.

Praise be to Him that was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

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Nice Theory And All That ...

This post is prompted by the lengthy correspondence appended to the "Second Innocence" posting, between myself and Son of Moses. There, he suggests that I (and others like me) are

trying to hygienise, sanitise – that word again - the local and non-abstract into a scientific, vaporous, cleaned up version of the truth, the equivalent in words to a Mondrian or a 1930’s modernist kitchen, which now, incidentally, looks so dated, in a quaint sort of way.

Where are the demons, the heavenly hosts, Jesus Christ incarnated amidst the mud, dust and straw of the stable?

Where is the harrowing of hell, the miracles and dream of Joseph?

I confess that I'm not personally a theist - nor am I an atheist - but I feel that the discussion about this or that theology can obscure a more urgent issue about how people are treated within the School. We do find that a beautiful, ornate philosophy can be accompanied by the crudest unkindness (this is not, may I say, directed at Son of Moses!) I suspect that many Senior people will have no idea what I mean by that - they only have to ask! But do they still have questions?

If that occurs then I would far rather chuck out the whole philosophy and start again with simple morality. This is from the Essays of Montaigne (16th Century), much beloved of Shakespeare, with apologies for the charming old translation:

Super-celestiall opinions, and under-terrestriall manners, are things, that amongst us, I have ever seen to be of singular accord ... It is meere folly, insteade of transforming themselves into Angels, they transchange themselves into beastes ... Such transcending humours affright me as much, as steepy, high, and inaccessible places.

And Emerson (from memory): "Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee".

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Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps ...

The non-existent was not; the existent was not at that time. The atmosphere was not nor the heavens which are beyond. What was concealed? Where? In whose protection? Was it water? An unfathomable abyss?

There was neither death nor immortality then. There was not distinction of day or night. That alone breathed windless by its own power. Other than that there was not anything else.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning. All this was an indistinguishable sea. That which becomes, that which was enveloped by the void, that alone was born through the power of heat.

Upon that desire arose in the beginning. This was the first discharge of thought. Sages discovered this link of the existent to the nonexistent, having searched in the heart with wisdom.

Their line [of vision] was extended across; what was below, what was above? There were impregnators, there were powers: inherent power below, impulses above.

Who knows truly? Who here will declare whence it arose, whence this creation? The gods are subsequent to the creation of this. Who, then, knows whence it has come into being?

Whence this creation has come into being; whether it was made or not; he in the highest heaven is its surveyor. Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not.

- Rig Veda, Creation Hymn

We have had a lot of discussion recently about traditional vs modern, and so I thought it would be interesting to actually read a few words from the ancient world. Click below to read more.


The Vedas were preserved orally using remarkable mnemonic devices that ensured not one word could be changed - in the words of one scholar, the above is "a tape recording from 3500 BC". In translation, obviously.

What strikes me about this Creation Hymn is that the author is fundamentally agnostic and curious. He really has the spirit of enquiry - he is more interested in getting at the truth than in getting a pat answer.

Today people make all kinds of assertions about the nature of God and what He knows or does, and to back this up they claim that the ancients discovered all of these things or had them revealed to them. I think that an objective reading of this text should throw all of that into question. The ancients did not have a monopoly on wisdom. Nor were they more confident than us, necessarily.

Day 2 of the 1991 Conversation has Mr MacLaren quoting the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, asking whether what it says about the transmigration of the father into the son is true. HH simply replies, "This is not so," and goes on to explain why. He doesn't qualify it - he just says that the Upanishad is wrong, on the basis of Advaita Vedanta philosophy. So perhaps we today are rather more certain of our point of view than the ancients were.

Howsoever that may be, the author of the Creation Hymn has the right attitude - awe at the universe, curiosity about it, reverence for the spiritual, and a desire to know. The Upanishads, the first systematic philosophy, are among the fruits of this desire.

Reading this hymn, I can personally feel great kinship and affection for its ancient author.

PS Sorry about the picture - I couldn't resist it!

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The Life Aquatic, with Graham

Thought for the Day this morning was presented by an Indian chap - I didn't get his name - who asserted that a sunken city had just been found off the coast of India that was thought to be 11,000 years old. He cited this in passing as evidence for the vast antiquity of the Vedic culture.

When I published a book in 2004, including what I thought was a balanced account of Indian philosophy, I was very surprised to be attacked by someone in the School for what I wrote. Apparently I had been duped by prejudiced Western scientists and historians who wished to cover up the truth about the great antiquity of Indian culture. According to Western scholars, the Upanishads date from 1000 BC - 150 AD, which makes the oldest of them the most ancient philosophical texts known. This isn't enough for the 'Hindutvas', though, who seem to feel that anything short of full authentication of legendary dates is a cover-up.

Anyway, when I heard on Radio 4 that there was proof of a pre-Sumerian culture in India, I was of course interested. (to read on, click Read More below ...)

A little research on Google revealed a couple of possible candidates. An expedition led by one Graham Hancock in 2002 discovered a port city at Mahabalipuram in the Bay of Bengal that was claimed to be of great antiquity. The recent tsunami then uncovered some remarkable statues which were recognised to be 7th Century AD, possibly with another layer from the first century. Old, but not really ancient enough for the Hindutvas.

But wait - another sunken city was also discovered in the Bay of Cambay (Northwest India) in 2001 by a team led by ... er, Graham Hancock. A lot of excitement on web-sites about anything from Freemasonry to Hermetic teachings. Could this be the lost city of Atlantis/Lemuria? The Indians are really thrilled as well.

Much digging around later, I am struggling to find any scientific data on the site, but finally this. It turns out the piece of wood dated to 9500 BC was just a piece of wood that was dredged up from the sea bed, which turned out to be quite old. And Graham's 'artifacts' were just natural formations. Oh well, never mind!

Graham Hancock is, of course, the legendary 'pyramidiot' author of "The Sign and the Seal", "Fingerprints of the Gods", etc. Like Baigent and Leigh (who just lost $2m failing to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism of their 'research'), he is what is called an 'Alternative Historian'. The 'Alternative' part means that, instead of conducting ordinary research, he does just enough to convince a lay person, and makes the rest of it up.

This is a bit of a digression from the usual subject, but it illustrates a useful point. Many people who are spiritually oriented want to believe that they have 'one up' on the boring, unimaginative scientists. This makes them all too willing to believe what shysters like Hancock feed them.

What I would say to anyone who is inclined to Freemasonry, Knights Templar, Bloodlines of the Grail, Pyramids on Mars, Mayan Calendars, or indeed legendary Hinduism, as a proof that the world is more mysterious than it seems, is, "why bother?" These lurid tales are metaphors in pseudo-scientific language for what is genuinely beyond ordinary comprehension. We all have direct access to the deepest mysteries of the spirit.

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Fundamentals

I feel the need to return to where I began with this blog. We have covered a lot of ground and opened up areas of enquiry that undoubtedly need attention (science, meditation, devotional work, School organization). My original conviction, however, was that all that is necessary is for the School to return to the words of His Holiness Sri Shantananda Sarasvati.

Even more fundamental, that we return to his meaning. We got some of that meaning first time around, but for whatever reason we missed a lot.

In order to understand his meaning, it is not enough to slavishly learn 'his' words (as we have them in translation). We must bring to the task our own intelligence, our spiritual intuitions, and our creativity. If we bring only our obedient loyalty, we bring only part of ourselves to the meeting. Since he brought all of himself, we should do the same.

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Second Innocence

I've almost finished reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which is a history of the world over the past 13,000 years. Diamond asks why the Conquistador Pizarro was able to march into the middle of the Inca empire, kill 7,000 Inca soldiers in battle, kidnap their king and extract a vast ransom, and eventually subjugate its entire people, with only 168 Spanish soldiers. Why, to put it the other way, was it not the Incas who sailed across the Atlantic and subjugated Spain?

The short answer is that the Spanish had guns and steel weapons and, most importantly, they carried germs that wiped out 95% of the native population. To read more click below ...

The book explores how civilizations evolve. The first and most difficult step is the development of food production, which enables higher population density. Everything else follows on from this - writing (enabling information to be shared more widely), bureaucracy (to organize a society), standing armies (for which large surpluses must be generated), metal tools, etc. The germs incubate in cities, whose inhabitants develop resistance, or die off leaving only those genetically resistant.

Spain was able to subjugate the Incas and the Aztecs not because of innate racial differences (genetically the native Americans are Chinese, who were ahead of Europe until 500 years ago) but because of disparities in the resources and geography of their respective continents. Maybe the single most important factor is that the settlers who crossed to the Americas from China around 10,000 BC exterminated virtually all of the large domesticable animals. We had sheep, cows, pigs, horses and goats - they had llamas and alpacas. The other crucial factor is that we (meaning the supercontinent of Eurasia) had a huge variety of plant species, including wheat, barley, rice and oats, while they had only maize corn and little else. These factors, among many other less significant ones, meant that the evolution of civilization in the Americas would be much slower than in Eurasia.

In the discussion we've been having about science, spirituality, tradition and modernity we've been missing something crucial, I think, which is that 500 years ago the civilizations of Europe, the Ottoman Empire and China were already way ahead of primitive cultures elsewhere in the world. One estimate in the book is that the native North Americans would have developed steel by 5500 AD, had they been left alone. (There's also a great story about a Cherokee who invented writing just by hearing about this invention of the white man, neatly illustrating that intelligence is the same everywhere.) The rise of modern science and technology, which gets going from the 18th Century onwards, is an acceleration of the rate of change, but the inevitable outcome of Eurasian cultures vs the rest was decided thousand of years ago.

So the rise of technology and complex modern societies is inevitable. Again and again the same pattern has been followed independently in different locations around the world - only the pace of change differs, determined mainly by environmental factors. Since we evolved from the apes, we have been moving in one direction - towards complex, technologically advanced civilization.

The law of natural selection determines that this must happen, because if I have a stone axe and you have a bronze spear, you are going to kill me; if I hunt deer for food and you farm wheat, your family are going to be bigger than mine; and if I am a hunter-gatherer and you live in a town, no matter how nice a chap you are I am almost certainly going to die shortly after meeting you from typhus, TB, smallpox, influenza, syphilis, bubonic plague or HIV-AIDS.

Anyone who wants to believe that the story of human history is a 'running down' from fine to coarse, must argue with this evidence. In the end, I think that this view can only be sustained if the spiritual is entirely disconnected from the practical. That's to say, that the inevitable rise of civilization - with all its learning, art, religion, philosophy, science - is the running down of consciousness.

If one believes that there is a 'plan' for the world, or alternatively that there are laws in operation that govern human beings and societies, then surely one must accept that the inexorable rise of modernity (with all its violence, conflict and frightening pace of change) is part of our unfolding destiny?

I would like to propose an alternative idea to the glum logic of the yugas. This is it: we are born with our first innocence, but our second innocence must be earned.

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A Personal Wish-List for the School

This was sent to me by a former member, and I quote it with permission. The correspondent notes that since departing the School some of the items have been 'ticked'. What do you think of these suggestions? Do you have any of your own?

1. Groups meet less often - say, once a month. This makes them better valued, less taken for granted.
2. All attendance voluntary, with the proviso that if a commitment has been made to perform a service, it must be kept, for an agreed limited period which can be renewed as necessary.
3. Groups sit in a circle, with 'tutor' not set apart.
4. Students take it in turns to occupy the tutor position.
5. Abolish dress code!
6. Everyone to be thanked regularly and sincerely for a) attending the group, b) serving, c) anything else that seems appropriate.
7. De-segregate men and women. (Perhaps have occasional separate meetings to talk about boy things/girly things.) Appoint at least some female stream-heads!
8. Weekends. Each group to have one per year. For the second one, a list of weekend dates to be published, so that people could sign up for the one they would like to attend. Possibly the weekends could have a pre-arranged theme, so people could choose. Also publish the name of the person (stream-head) who would be conducting the weekend. Early birds get the popular weekends.
9. As a consequence of 8, everyone gets a chance to sample different stream-heads. They could then be given the opportunity to opt to become a student in a particular stream (subject to numbers not getting too great). (Rationale: it is normal for people to find a teacher, then decide if that teacher is the right one for them. The School just tells you: this is your tutor, this is your stream, these are your duties. This does not respect people's integrity and equality.)
10. Donald Lambie and the stream heads visit other teachers, not to become students or followers, but to learn from their methods and styles of presenting, and possibly to get fresh inspiration.

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Tradition

HRH Prince of Wales

"...the teachings of the traditionalists should not, in any sense, be taken to mean that they seek, as it were, to repeat the past – or, indeed, simply to draw a distinction between the present and the past. Their’s is not a nostalgia for the past, but a yearning for the sacred and, if they defend the past, it is because in the pre-modern world all civilizations were marked by the presence of the sacred. As I understand it, in referring to Tradition they refer to a metaphysical reality and to underlying principles that are timeless – as true now as they have ever been and will be. And, by way of contrast, in referring to Modernism they refer to a particular (though false) definition of reality; a particular (though false) manner of seeing and engaging with the world that, likewise, is distinguished not by time, but by its ideology.

In an article written in 1983 for the traditionalist journal Studies in Comparative Religion, Professor Nasr put it this way:

When we use the term ‘modern’ we mean neither contemporary nor up-to-date… Rather, for us ‘modern’ means that which is cut off from the Transcendent, from the immutable principles which in reality govern all things and which are made known to man through revelation in its most universal sense. Modernism is thus contrasted with tradition…; the latter implies all that which is of Divine Origin along with its manifestations and deployments on the human plane while the former by contrast implies all that is merely human and now ever more increasingly subhuman, and all that is divorced and cut off from the Divine source.

Most especially, therefore, we can see that it is the very timeless quality of these immutable principles of Tradition that makes its teachings so timely.

(The rest of the article is thoroughly recommended - link below)
http://www.sacredweb.com/conference06/conference_introduction.html

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Ventilating the House of Knowing

Knowing is stowing;
unknowing is flowing.

Building a house requires intricate knowing;
living in it will tap a rich, dangerous stream not charted in the blueprints.

To study someone's horoscope numerically builds up a house of concepts;
to cry with someone is to surrender to an indescribable flowing.

Financial expertise is a product of keen attention and experience;
heartfully allocating resources can be done by a three-year-old giving his dog a biscuit.

To gather straight A's in college is an obedient harvesting of the known;
later upheavings may lead to sleepless, fathomless nights that drain away diplomas but open one's heart to a fresh humility.

Knowing is a keen memory of all the chess openings, over a neatly squared chess board, with well-behaved pieces;
unknowing brings one to a bewilderment in midgame from which a victory may spring.

Knowing within a religion can spawn rickety beliefs, defensive fears, or exclusive duality;
to avoid naming the nameless, or believing in the heard, or excluding the "other" can admit a universe into the mind, and release the mind into a universe.

Experience leads to knowing; knowing leads to more intense experience;
then perhaps to a shambles; from which may emanate a steadying awe of the flowing.

The known manifests as forward motion;
the unknown as a gentle, inscrutable smile.

The knower has developed a system for success, having created a perfect tinker toy windmill;
his fragile fabrication already tosses precariously on an unseen boundless sea.

Many know their appetites, preferring a certain spice or sugar;
the mysterious source of all flavors is unknown to them but controls their dining.

Professors in universities want to increase and perpetuate the known;
the Perpetual winks.

Knowing is to have a well-kept lawn;
flowing is to have nothing but everything, to leave it right where it is, and perhaps to care for the lawn too.

A brilliant nation converts a billion dollars worth of knowing into a Stealth Bomber;
to sit at one's dinner table is to fly imperceptibly fast on a planet, free of charge, without need of a target.

Knowers worry about dying, which might destroy their tinker toy windmill;
the imponderable is immense and welcomes windmills of all designs.

A violinist knows his part; a conductor knows his score; a composer knows how to notate his emotions;
in concert all of them yield their knowings to the fountain source of music, with exquisite results.

The known is of great price;
the unknown is priceless.

Assertions have been made herein as if known;
a puff of wind from no direction will soon scatter them without loss.

~ Alan Harris

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From Son of Moses

Most of us who read or post on this blogsite are members of the School. We love the School and the people in it. We love the Teaching also. And yet we perhaps feel there is something amiss, something lacking. It seems to me that it is this feeling of dissatisfaction (which I hear more and more throughout the School) that through Kevin’s good offices, has called this blog into being.

Maybe we feel that it is the way the organization is run, or that certain unhelpful habits and assumptions have, after all these years, got fossilized into the system, as it were, or (as I feel myself) that there is something extra needed that isn’t being supplied.

Occasionally on this site there is talk of purging the School of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky legacy. Personally, however, I feel there is plenty we can yet learn from that tradition.

Anyway, it is good to have a forum through which to express ourselves, as long as this is done constructively and without negativity or nitpicking. It is also good to be able to talk across the generations (You might be shocked to hear that I have been in the School for almost 45 years. On the other hand, you may think that the nature of my contributions make my age rather obvious).

So much for the intro. I have asked the Webmaster if I might initiate a new, but subsidiary function for this site. This was in fact one of the main functions of the original blogsites (back in those early pioneer days, almost a decade ago), namely giving fellow enthusiasts links to other sites recommended for some reason or other.

I thought I would inform you of some of the URLs that I have found, and still find, interesting and helpful.

It won’t surprise you to learn that when I was brought up in the School there was a strong assumption that we were the only ones with the truth and that we had nothing to learn from anyone else. Recognise it? This, of course, is one source of the School’s reputation for arrogance and self-congratulation, and it has made sure that we have been left out of the vital debates that have been going on around the world concerning the future of humanity at this very crucial time in its history.

I believe that it is long past the time that the School, or at least those of us who care, should join what has been called ‘the Great Conversation’, first of all listening humbly and attentively to what the best people of all nations are saying.

Interestingly enough, most of the following websites, apart from having no connection with the School, have no Advaitic pretensions either. Nonetheless, I have learnt much from them and I recommend them to you.

They are given in no particular order, but, in relation to our recent debates, the first one is the Prince of Wales speaking not very long ago of this age as the Kaliyuga, although he did not use this word, I think he calls it ‘the last times’.

Sacred Web.

One Cosmos. A rarity, a right-wing Advaitin!

Peggy Noonan. A very talented writer with intelligence and heart

First Things. An intelligent Christian magazine with a good archive:

Pathwork. This is a most wonderful spiritual system which for me supplies (as mentioned earlier) most of what is left out in our work in the School:

Wittingshire. A lovely, intelligent and cultured Christian site

Rod Dreher. his interesting Crunchy Conservative site, a man of worthy interests:

Uncommon Descent. A very good Intelligent Design site

Civitas. This one, like many, reveals my rightwing bias. I am, after all, of the old S/school

Gideon Strauss. A Neo-Calvinist of refreshingly wide interests. His two daughters’ blogs are almost as good, an impressive example of what home-schooling and a good Christian upbringing can do.

Arts & Letters Daily. Current articles, lots of good connections

Political Theory Daily Review. Tons of current articles, you have to comb out the left-wing nonsense though

These, then, are some of my favourites, some of them rather politically incorrect, really. Perhaps you can balance the picture with some of your own favourites.

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Science and Art of Meditation

On yesterday's study day we had a talk from Jonah about meditation.

One of the most interesting things was the overview of the dozens of different meditation techniques that there are. The old attitude of "most people off the street don't really understand what meditation is" has been turned round on us, and it appears that our knowledge is pretty narrow. When we split from the Maharishi it was he who popularized meditation; and now the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist teachers have taken the initiative.

Perhaps 'narrow and deep' is all one needs, but there was more. A few studies have recently been done that appear to show wide differences in the effects of different types of meditation. Broadly speaking, techniques can be divided into "single-pointed" and "open". Ours is the former; Zen methods are generally the latter, focussing on awareness of the wider universe. ... Click below for more ...

It appears that the single-pointed style of meditation has the effect of reducing the meditator's connection with the senses immediately afterwards, while the open style strengthens it. In a study at the University of Kentucky, 'open' meditation was the only intervention that was effective in speeding up reaction times to a 'psychomotor' test, even for inexperienced meditators. I gathered that the opposite effect would arise from 'our' approach, and this fits with the experience of coming out of a deep meditation and taking a few minutes to 'come round'. This does not, of course, mean that single-pointed meditation does not have practical benefits.

For a few years now I've suspected that 'our' meditation is problematic for the School. We don't seem to have learned a lot about the practice in 40 years. I've begun to suspect that it does not mesh perfectly with our older (for us) practices of giving attention outwards. Except for meditation and other practices gleaned from HH, we focus very much on physical work, giving attention, achieving targets both in the School and in the world (such as making money!) I have heard it said that we should promote meditation by emphasising that it is said to make one more efficient in daily life, including helping one to be 'successful', because that is what people want. I think this is a mistake, because although there may be beneficial side effects to meditation, it is not possible to meditate for a worldly aim. It's like two horses pulling in opposite directions. I also think it is too cynical about people's motives.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the exercise and other outward-directed practices that we got from the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky tradition are wrong or unhelpful. I think they're excellent, and in many ways the thing we do most successfully. All I would like to say is that there is a gap between these 'outgoing' practices and the more 'introspective' ones we got from the East - meditation, reflection, pausing, etc. It would be useful if we could recognise this, because it is holding us back.

These problems persist because historically we haven't liked to talk about our actual experience of meditation, or about our genuine responses to the practices. After a while, all that is expected is that one says how "useful" School practices are. OK, they're useful. But there might be some refinement needed, because some people, even after 20 or 30 years of trying, are unable to meditate even for five minutes. I don't think that's 'their problem'. I think that the problem of one of us is the problem of all of us.

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From Katharine Watson

This was originally posted as a comment here. I remarked that it would be good to hear from Katharine as a way to break down communication barriers within the School.

Thanks, Kevin. I'm not sure how valid it is for me to comment on matters within SES, now that I'm no longer a member. But I am interested in what you say about the generation gap. I think most of what I'll call the long-term people would sincerely wish to free things up, be honest, etc. But there are several factors which affect this.

For one thing, something that came to light for me after I had left: I was shocked to discover how many quite unconscious 'attitudes' to things I had, and which on inspection I didn't actually agree with at all. I became aware of a sort of faint moral disapproval in certain areas, an air of judgement, based on what I had unthinkingly taken on board as truth. It horrified me, because I hadn't even known I was harbouring such ideas. I had thought of myself as far too radical and liberal to have any truck with all that social moralising stuff. But there it was. And I realised there had been a sort of unspoken consensus among us (in my area of SES anyway) about what is and is not 'acceptable', or to put it more loftily (which is how it gets sold in the first place) what is 'in the interests of humanity' or even 'the will of the Absolute'. On closer inspection, I saw it as simply tosh, even if admittedly well-meaning. There's that Zen story - can't remember the details - which ends with the punchline, "You can never say whether something is a good thing or a bad thing," which illustrates the point perfectly.

I think I'm probably not alone in having taken on board a whole lot of unexamined stuff - mainly from Mr MacLaren, or from skewed interpretations of HH - so I think that is one reason why things take a long time to change.Secondly, something I saw quite vividly (after I got 'promoted' to becoming a sort of celebrity wife in the H Stream, which consisted almost entirely of what used to be the XYZ groups) is that there is a kind of 'cabinet responsibility' among the people who run streams, tutor groups and generally run the show. They feel they have to be 'on message', so although they may privately disagree with something, they will keep quiet out of loyalty. I know of some who feel that if they openly disagree with anything, this will mean that they will have to leave the School. They don't want to do that, so they compromise. Ultimately, it's self-betrayal - or so it seems to me. HH (I think it was him, but I could be wrong) says somewhere that once the organisation becomes more important than the truth, that's the beginning of the end.

Personally, I left after years (so many I'm ashamed) of hoping for radical reform, and concluding that it was never going to happen. I also couldn't help noticing that no-one ever seemed to attain freedom, or 'become enlightened' or whatever you want to call it. Whereas with Gangaji (who has the advantage of a) speaking English, b) being a woman, c) being fully realised, d) being available, alive, and here, e) having a degree in English (icing on the cake for me!), f) having seen all the movies I've seen, read all the books, understands and knows our culture from within, g)accepts and welcomes everyone, from whatever background, h) being very funny, humane, loving, terrifying intelligent, fierce, able to see straight through any bullshit, and totally uncompromising - phew, I'm getting carried away here...) - as I was saying, whereas with Gangaji, a great many of her students have become free, enlightened, etc. Many indeed are now teachers themselves.

I think, for what it's worth, that the School really needs to decide what it is for. I spoke to many people before I left and asked them why they stayed, given that all of them grumbled. Most said they didn't really know - perhaps for the company. That doesn't seem a good enough reason to me.

At the same time, individuals within the School impress me enormously - not least my own dear husband. I think perhaps many people are much closer to enlightenment than they realise. The trouble is, there seems to be no-one who has the authority to confirm their realisation - to say, as Gangaji does, 'Yes, yes, yes! That's it! I'm so happy for you!'

I really do hope it all works out for the School and that those who long for true freedom will find it. I wish you guys godspeed.

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