Don Salmon
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This is a description of contemplative awakening that comes later in The Synthesis of Yoga. It may be helpful in that it describers a realization that is common to contemplative traditions the world over, even though using English and Indian terms. It also gives a practice.
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This realisation of all things as God or Brahman has, as we have seen, three aspects of which we can conveniently make three successive stages of experience.
First, there is the Self in whom all beings exist. The Spirit, the Divine has manifested itself as infinite self-extended being, self-existent, pure, not subject to Time and Space, but supporting Time and Space as figures of its consciousness. It is more than all things and contains them all within that self-extended being and consciousness, not bound by anything that it creates, holds or becomes, but free and infinite and all-blissful. It holds them, in the old image, as the infinite ether contains in itself all objects.
NOTE: THIS PRACTICE IS VERY SIMILAR TO THOSE GIVEN IN THE JAPANESE, CHINESE AND TIBETAN BUDDHIST TRADITIONS, AS WELL AS MANY PRACTICES IN THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN TRADITION GOING BACK AT LEAST TO THE 3RD CENTURY DESERT FATHERS: This image of the ethereal (Akasha) Brahman may indeed be of great practical help to the sadhaka who finds a difficulty in meditating on what seems to him at first an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether, not physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness and bliss, he may seek to see with the mind and to feel in his mental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness with the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought to a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or withdrawing of the veil, the supramental vision may flood the mentality and change entirely all our seeing. And upon that change of seeing, as it becomes more and more potent and insistent and occupies all our consciousness, there will supervene eventually a change of becoming so that what we see we become.
We shall be in our self-consciousness not so much cosmic as ultra-cosmic, infinite. Mind and life and body will then be only movements in that infinity which we have become, and we shall see that what exists is not world at all but simply this infinity of spirit in which move the mighty cosmic harmonies of its own images of self-conscious becoming.
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If the whole universe is consciousness – if consciousness is, as Sri Aurobindo writes, “the fundamental thing in the universe”, with everything simply being movements of consciousness in varying degrees, I don’t see why there would be any particular surprise if AI were “conscious” – as everything is made of consciousness.
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“The starting point [for the discovery of the soul] is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it a sense of universality, limitless expansion, unbroken continuity. Then you decentralize, extend and widen yourself; you begin to live in all things and in all beings; the barriers separating individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, feel in their feelings, live in the life of all. What seemed inert suddenly becomes full of life, stones quicken, plants feel and will and suffer, animals speak in a langauge more or less inarticulate, but clear and expressive; everything is animated by a marvelous consciousness without time or limit. And this is only one aspect of the [realization of the soul]; there are others, many others. All help you to go beyond the barriers of your egoism, the walls of your external personality, the impotence of your reactions and the incapacity of your will.
“….Never forget the purpose and goal of your life. The will for the great discovery should be always there above you, above what you do and what you are, like a huge bird of light dominating all the movements of your being.
“Before the untiring persistence of your effort, an inner door will suddenly open and you will emerge into a dazzling splendor that will bring you the certitude of immortality, the concrete experience that you have always lived and always shall live, that external forms alone perish and that these forms are, in relation to what you are in reality, like clothes that are thrown away when worn out. Then you will stand erect, freed from all chains, and instead of advancing laboriously under the weight of circumstances imposed upon you by nature, which you had to endure and bear if you did not want to be crushed by them, you will be able ot walk on, straight and firm, conscious of your destiny, master of your life.”
The Mother, The Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education, February 1952<
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Hi Mark:
Fascinating reflections. Thanks so much for posting this video.
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Sure, you’re welcome. If you have an otherwise good relationship with your brother, letting him know you care about him and love him is the key. Then wait! A good friend of mine lives in what is now a “blood red” state and his FOUR brothers are all conspiracy mongers. he’s gone back and forth for years, but letting go of the need to convert them has led him to a weekly meeting with the brother he’s closest to, and his brother evidently has opened his heart considerably to him – and this (the brother) is a guy who always had hyper rational jobs, interests, etc. Since his wife died he’s become a fundamentalist Christian (the family was always rather open, religiously liberal) and it’s become so obvious to my friend that this is just his brother coming to terms with his mortality, and he just doesn’t ever get into arguing with him anymore.
Before I say more about the societal level, I’ve noticed there’s not too many – if any – folks on this Channel who are interested in occult or spiritual views. I don’t personally see any possibility of hope apart from recognizing this collective change of consciousness that is occurring, and learning how to align ourselves with it – but I may have tagged myself as a hopeless New Age flake already, so before saying more, I’ll check with y’all and see if it’s ok to go in that (crazy?) direction!
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Great video. Thanks a lot Samuel.
I would be quite cautious, though, about overly dividing up qualities of LH and RH. Take “exploration” for example – you need a sense of direction (literal or metaphorical!) to provide structure for the RH openness.
Although Iain is a clinician, to the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t said much – if anything apart from “try mindfulness” – about how to apply these things to our lives.
Les Fehmi was a physiological psychologist who taught people varying forms of attention (which, I suppose if you combine them, would yield dozens if not hundreds of different ways to mix LH and RH attention) that successfully reduced or cured depression, anxiety, trauma, chronic pain, relationship problems, and more.
I’ve noticed, particularly when I do “free improv,” that there’s an ever-changing (moment to moment, seemingly instant to instant) process of shifting attention as I need to let go of anticipation and then need to add a bit more structure – and even the way I’m putting it, it may seem like “let go of anticipation” is “RH” and “more structure is “LH.” But I don’t think it works that way, and I don’t think Iain would either – IF he would talk more about practical applications.
I know he always assumes that to talk about practical applications is a LH preoccupation.
But I think that holding tightly to that idea may be LH imbalance!
in any case, we can try it for ourselves. How am I attending this very moment? Is it loose, tight, constricted, relaxed, immersed in experience, detached and controlling, or some complex combination? It’s a fascinating experiment which can be done every moment of one’s life.
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Hi Paul,
Yes, quite well today. Beautiful day in the Blue Ridge mountains!
I’m guessing our views are SO distant that we may have difficulty – at least initially – getting things clear.
I think I do get – sort of, at least – your interest in AI and language and what it can tell us about consciousness.
Let me try this – it may go nowhere, but hey….
The yogis say it’s possible to reach a state of consciousness which gives us “knowledge which, having attained, all is “known.” This doesn’t mean omniscient information but rather, knowing directly the consciousness that is the substance of the universe. It does include all sorts of what in Sanskrit are known as “Siddhis” – including telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, psychokinesis, the ability to understand any language – including the “language” of any animal (or plant!)
I’ll stop there. If that’s too crazy and woo and far out sounding, I’ll leave it alone for now. It just seems to me, one is likely to learn a lot more through such contemplative consciousness than through ordinary analytic (or even intuitive) thinking – that is, through ordinary LH or RH thought.
Ok, it’s official – Don’s certifiably nuts:>))
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Hi Whit:
A suggestion. Iain hasn’t really done any research – or much thinking – about how to relate his findings to practical matters.
Les Fehmi used hemispheric research – VERY much along the lines of what Iain writes about – for 50+ years to help people with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and relationship problems AND to help with athletic skills.
It rarely works out in practice to divide LH and RH so neatly. Fehmi spoke of 4 major modes of attention:
Narrow detached
Wide detached
Narrow immersed
Wide immersed
Detached TENDS to be (not always) LH dominant, and immersed more RH. But in practice there’s dozens of variations and it takes a subtle level of experience to discern what is going on, which we aren’t even close to having the imaging technology to correlate with brain processes.
If you want something to start with, just notice the difference between being caught up in a mental narrative and “coming to your sense.”
Getting lost in the stories of our mind almost always involves a kind of partially detached, disconnected state of attention, whereas shifting attention to sensory experience frequently if not always gives more of a sense of immersion.
The key is – don’t think about this. Look. When you “get it,” it’s so incredibly obvious you can’t imagine how it was ever confusing.
But don’t complicate it either.
1. Catch the detached way you’re attending to experience when you’ve just come out of being lost in thought.
2. notice the difference from detachment to immersion when you suddenly pay attention to sounds in the environment. It’s SO striking when you get how different it is.
For one thing, among many others, you’ll understand what it is about attention that leads us to believe in physicalism or materialism, and you’ll also see how it affects political orientation, as well as fundamentalist religion vs yogic or mystical religion. It affects our relationship to people, to music, nature, science, sports, entertainment, everything.
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Hi folks – great discussion here.
I started composing music when I was 11 (playing the accordion!!ARGHH) and continued enjoying it as a kind of free form improvisation for the next 6 years. I learned harmony by listening to and improvising on all of the Beatles’ songs, and most of my friends in rock groups learned to create music by ear.
When I was 17, I took a year off from high school to study formal composition and it drove me crazy at first. I had somehow managed to improvise a somewhat sophisticated piece that was a kind of cross between Bartok and Profokiev. Well, my composition teacher showed me all kinds of (very left hemisphere) tricks to play around with the main theme, the harmony, etc.
I got nowhere for months, as I would improvise something that sounded good but had no logical structure, or I’d compose a few bars that were logically clear but sounded terrible.
Then one day something happened and took over my hand and I simply sat with the music paper and “composed” logically clear AND nice sounding music – about 1 1/2 pages of it. This was astonishing to me and initiated a life-long interest in the integration of intuition and analysis (RH/LH).
I saw it expressed in countless ways when I did research as a psychologist or wrote psychological evaluations and even in doing therapy. I see it in amazing ways in the contemplative and yogic worlds, East and West, where SO many these days have a left hemisphere fascination with “techniques” – yet if you go back a few centuries, you don’t find spiritual practice (even among many if not most “yogis”) so obsessed with breathing and postures and mantras – well, mantras, but often more as a devotional means of bringing attention to an infinite “reality” – but that’s another topic)
I spend a little time each day going to my keyboard (music, not computer) and just opening to whatever inspiration strikes. It’s amusing – having been a near fanatic Jarrett fan decades ago, I still find motifs and even passages of his flowing into my improvisations.
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Hi Whit:
For practical purposes, though I’ve been familiar with Iain’s work for 13 years, I don’t find it of much use. Les Fehmi, a psychophysiologist who studied the practical implications of hemispheric differences, taught a method of using attention for more than 40 years that had astonishing results with chronic pain, depression, couples’ relationships, anxiety and even with Olympic athletes.
He talked about 4 kinds of attention –
wide detached and narrow detached – both primarily meditated by LH
wide immersed and narrow immersed – both RH.
And he talked about Open Focus, which is a blended, integrated attention which incorporates both LH and RH styles, i n a way that McGilchrist’s tendency to bifurcate attentional styles (a surprisingly LH tendency!) simply doesn’t capture.
it’s not just two hemispheres but an astonishing array of whole brain functions, cortical (the hemispheres) and subcortical – AND the heart brain (40,000 nerve cells) gut brain (100 million) and really, the intelligence of every cell in the body.
But there’s more, though it gets into occult, paranormal regions I won’t touch on.
But I taught mindfulness and chronic pain for several years and did successful research on it.
I saw many times that initially, when people attended to pain sensations, they increased. This is because they were attending with a subcortical, fight or flight response. Through a combination of relaxing, breathing, music and more, I would teach them to attend to the sensations from a place of inner calm and openness.
When they could do this a number of remarkable things would happen:
They could SEE – in a way most neuroscientists only theorize- how “pain” is made up of a complex web of instinctive, emotional and cognitive impulses and habits, and JUST THIS SEEING ALONE – discerning the different contributing factors, was sometimes enough to reduce the pain.
Further, they would observe that the thingness of “pain” would start to shift radically, and suddenly there’s this undulating pattern of shifting energy, and just seeing this too would be enough to reduce the pain.
More advanced, they could see, directly, experiencing it, the non-dual relationship between awareness of pain and “pain” itself.
Which leads me to mention – what you wrote about awareness the other day was I think, about mental or cognitive awareness.
The awareness that contemplatives speak about remains as is even with the death of the body/brain. That’s quite something else! That, they say, is what we are now. “Tat Tvam Asi:” That Thou Art.
Above the door to the entrance of William James Hall (the philosophy building at Harvard) was once written the Biblical phrase: “What art man that that art mindful of him?”
Someone crossed over all but 3 words, leaving: “That thou art.”
Something to ponder rather deeply:>))
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oh dear, I gave one of these exercises in another group and someone thought I was trying to be a “teacher.”
Far from it. Just sharing. I hope it’s taken in that way. I’m delighted to hear arguments, rebuttals, etc, though I think it may be more fun to share practices:>)))
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Hi Whit:
I hope you don’t mind if I keep shifting away from intellectual discussion to practice.
Krishna Prem (I’ll tell you more about him at some point if there’s interest – he was the first Westerner – a British citizen, no less – accepted into the Vaishnava order in India; the devotees of Krishna. He was a spiritual and scientific genius who knew Western philosophy through and through, and taught himself Pali and Sanskrit to read the Buddhist scriptures in the original. But he was a rare individual East or West who knew Reality beyond personal and impersonal)
Anyway, Krishna Prem wrote a wonderful essay on symbolism in the 1920s. He noted how religious scholar Rudolf Otto wrote an essay wondering if Shankara’s Brahman, the Buddhist Nirvana were the “same” or “different.”
Krishna Prem responded: “Are the words different? Of course they are. Is the Reality to which they point the same or different? Well, Reality is infinite so of course there are different “aspects” of it (which is what the “Gods” have always referred to in India and much of the more mystical east). But Reality is One.
OF course, the LH can argue forever about what “One” means. The Zen answer is “not-two” (which doesn’t mean One!!!)
So let’s practice! What are you aware of?
Colors, sounds, body sensations; instinctive cravings or fears; various more complex emotions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc.
All of these exist within one field of awareness.
Here’s an age old exercise you can try:
Conjure up an image of a dog.
You have 2 aspects of experience: the dog image, and the awareness of it. Notice the awareness is effortless; you don’t have to DO anything to conjure it up.
Now erase the dog and you just have awareness.
There are any number of LH arguments against this exercise by the way. As with Stephenson’s answer to the problem of the impossibility of his steam locomotive working (your problem is solved by its moving), the arguments are irrelevant. You CAN see this aspect of experience – it’s not an “Argument” about a dog and awareness – it’s a practice.
When you see EVERYTHING within and as reflections of this one awareness (well, it’s not “one” but let’s not get back into philosophy:>)))
You’ll see that all the arguments down the centuries about God or Gods or Tao or whatever become completely irrelevant. Thomas Aquinas realized this at the end of his life (all my theology has no more worth than straw, he said).
But really, see what happens if you don’t think about it. you can see this with your eyes open – One Presence, One Life, One Being, One Consciousness, One Bliss. And yet there is infinite multiplicity (oops, I did say don’t think about it:>))
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Hi Whit and Ralph:
I heard the same thing Whit said. There’s this idea which is almost universal in liberal circles (also in New Age circles, though they don’t necessarily overlap) that we should ALWAYS be careful in simply asserting, “No, that’s incorrect.”
I think this is actually a literal, left hemisphere understanding of truth.
“Truth” with a capital “T” is never a matter of right and wrong (and I think that “never” is not necessarily a LH absolute!!)
truth in terms of factual things is simple.
Climate change, exacerbated by humans, is happening.
What to do about it is up for grabs. But if someone tells you it’s not caused by humans, they are factually wrong.
I hope we can start there. Then Whit’s original question can be more easily dealt with.
Social movements: Whit, personally, I strongly believe that ANY social movement not founded on the evolution of a state of consciousness beyond the mind – beyond BOTH RH and LH – is doomed to failure from the start.
To some extent, we may need to open to RH/immediate experience to begin, but that could just as easily lead to all kinds of dangerous totalitarian movements as true freedom.
Is what I’m saying making any sense? Does it sound absolutist or complicated?
If I was talking with a 13 year old kid, I’d ask them to look at moments in nature, playing sports or music, or just talking with a dear friend in times of deep connection, and ask them to consider what it is about those moments that is so profound, so touching, so moving.
And then to suggest, “What if it’s possible to shift one’s attention in a way that no matter what one is doing, no matter how “terrible” the world system may appear to be, no matter how much emotional or physical pain one may be experiencing, it may be possible to shift to that state of flow.
And then, as far as a worldwide movement goes (I wish it was mindfulness but for the most part that’s become McMindfulness), how would one encourage, on a societal, international level, even a remote interest in this?
There’s now a worldwide renaissance of interest in psychedelics. What I’m talking about includes all the possibilities of psychedelics but goes far beyond it.
Any ideas as to whether this is even interesting to you, and if so, how would it be made more well known?
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Hi Lucy:
Can’t recall if I’ve seen your name before. If you’re new, welcome, if I missed you before, sorry!
I’m wondering if you have any reflections on how “God” fits in all this. Iain made this a central theme in the later sections of TMWT. That is really my main interest in conversations but it doesn’t seem to be a popular topic:>))
Perhaps because of the many meanings we give that word? I’m perfectly happy to talk about the Tao, Brahman, Allah, the Divine Mother, or any phrase one wishes.
And my interest is not so much in ‘discussing’ the “ideas” but in how people’s consciousness can be transformed so as to perceive directly (beyond right and wrong, as you say) that Divine omnipresence “in which we live and move and have our being.”
I’d particularly be intrigued to hear an answer to Whit’s question in this context. is there something each of us can do to connect to that Unity within which we all exist, which may affect the bizarre overreach of our egoic LH?
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Hi Ralph:
Well, I agree with all you say, though I’m not sure how it relates to Whit’s question.
I hope you all will forgive me – you guys write so intelligently, I feel like I’m writing like a child. But let me see if I can connect all this together:
Whit writes that he is concerned that his brother – who clearly has the intellectual capacity to know better – is caught up in conspiracy theories, including the idea that climate change is a hoax. He asks what to do about this on the individual and collective level.
Ralph, I may be COMPLETELY misunderstanding your initial response, but it sounded to me like you were saying Whit shouldn’t judge his brother. Which I think we all agree on, if that means to make an ethical or value judgment.
It also wasn’t clear to me – maybe I’m misunderstanding – it sounded like you were also implying we shouldn’t assess Whit’s brother as making a mistake to think of climate change as a hoax.
I think that’s where the confusion was.
So to sum up:
1. Whit is concerned that his brother, due to what I think Whit correctly assessed as a hyper rational, LH tendency toward paranoid thinking (common to most conspiracy theories), has bought into this irrational way of thinking.
2. Whit asked what do to about it, for individuals and for the society
3. It sounds like – sorry if I’m oversimplifying – both Ralph and I are saying, on the individual level, to not judge him for his error in thinking – to put it even more simply, to love him and express that love and empathy toward him.
I think that is the essence of where we’ve gotten so far. I couldn’t tell, in this latest comment, Ralph, if you’re hinting at a spiritual solution for society?
I guess I”ll jump in. I’ve spoken with a remarkable number of people who have pursued contemplative practices for decades, and I along with many of them have noticed it’s MUCH easier to have a peaceful, quiet mind than it used to be and more remarkably it’s gotten much easier to have glimpses of that state of Nirvana, the Kingdom of Heaven within, the all pervading Presence of God or whatever you wish to call it, than it used to be.
this to me is a sign of a massive shift in collective human consciousness. The question then is, how do we align ourselves with it?
To get back to Whit’s question, the crucial thing is to NOT allow our emotional minds to get all that concerned about the dust that is being raised as the Divine Mother is sweeping with Her broom, sweeping away the detritus of the past 5000 years ago since the LH first began to usurp the place of the RH.
Conspiracy theories are just the dust being swept up. And here, perhaps this is where Ralph was pointing us, looking within at the ways our own consciousness makes room for hatred, fear, paranoia, etc may be the greatest service we can perform for humanity.