Mike Todd
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Andrei,
I was a *nix admin and coder for almost 20 years. Like you, I found that a career in IT eventually lost its meaning, and I spent a long time in its wake wandering the landscape of vocation and avocation. After almost a decade in this wilderness I reached a point best framed by a few lines of poetry:
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.And so I shut myself in like Kamo and immersed myself in introspection for several years. Who, or what, emerged was an acceptance of uncertainty and an appreciation of circumspection. There was only one thing of which I was remotely convinced; as Easwaran observes in his introduction to The Upanishads:
[The] wider field of consciousness is our native land. We are not cabin-dwellers, born to a life cramped and confined; we are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our potential as human beings. The world of the senses is just a base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in consciousness as in the world of physical reality.
An exploration of consciousness, both experiential and intellectual, led me to Dr. McGilchrist’s work, and here we are.
If I might now offer a reflection in retrospect which may be of service going forward – one grounded in uncertainty and circumspection: no individual approach, either experiential or intellectual, will suffice to survey, even remotely, our “wider … native land”. If you find yourself on a spiritual path, with the aim of connecting and cooperating, look to the renaissance man as your model.
A couple of quotes from Dr. McGilchrist to close:
Certainty is … related to narrowness, as though the more certain we become of something the less we see.
Uncertainty … is not a sign of failure, but lies deep in the nature of what we are trying to grasp. Truth is uncertain not because it is empty, but because it is full – rich, complex, manifold.
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Thanks so much, Allan. It’s clear to me that, being an artist, you have far greater facility comprehending and describing art than I do. Your nods to longing, collocation and visual metaphor have, as it were, set the wheels of my mind in motion, and I’m off now to gather quotes from Dr. McGilchrist and others with which to frame a nascent intuition. Back in a bit.
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Thanks, Andrei. I am, and always will be, very much a beginner. But that doesn’t stop me from musing out loud here and elsewhere. (If you aren’t already aware of them, you might find SMN, The Scientific and Medical Network, as well as The Galileo Commission and SAND, Science and Non-Duality, rewarding fora if, like myself, you feel that science and spirituality complement each other and should be integrated.)
https://scientificandmedical.net/
https://galileocommission.org/
https://we.scienceandnonduality.com/
Kamo no Chomei is an important figure in Japanese* literature, a 12th century eremite poet and essayist who wrote genre-defining works, most notably Hojoki: My Ten Foot Square Hut. He is, I suppose you could say, the quintessential recluse. (Sometimes it’s necessary to withdraw to one’s hut or cabin in order to dive deep so that one can surface again. The latter is just as necessary as the former.)
When Easwaran says that “we are not cabin-dwellers”, I believe he means that we are not meant to be confined, with respect to both our inner and outer worlds, but rather that we should explore our “wider … native land”, which is to say, consciousness: we should be renaissance “men” or polymaths of our inner and outer worlds, attending carefully, by all manner of intellectual and experiential means, to psychophysical reality.
Regarding uncertainty, you know what they say about death and taxes, but it needn’t be the case that embracing uncertainty entails what Max Velmans and others have called “ontological insecurity” – quite the opposite, in fact. Prof. Velmans has an interesting story, especially if you’re curious about, or familiar with, psychedelics, as well as an equally interesting philosophy of consciousness:
*I’m a sucker for many aspects of Japanese culture – art and aesthetics, literature, spirituality, and, of course, food and drink. There are several curious correspondences between Japanese aesthetics in particular and elements of Dr. McGilchrist’s thesis, most obviously in the cases of fukinsei (natural asymmetry) and yugen (the implicit).
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Hi Lucy,
At the risk of further departure from “occasions that open experience”, and as a complement to the information Don generously shared, I recommend Prof. Max Velmans’ series of videos on reflexive monism:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSmLGjJrqQas0pcp-KI-CgRuklGOSkh7O
Don’t be dissuaded by how technical “reflexive monism” may sound; Prof. Velmans’ view is no more or less than a nondual description of reality, with particular emphasis on the role of consciousness, albeit not consciousness as it is typically understood in the West. His view also includes an exploration of the conscious and preconscious self/Self, and its implications for free will, as well as serving as a wonderful synthesis of other nondual descriptions of reality, such as Buddhism post-Nagarjuna, philosophical Daoism, and both Advaita and Aurobindo’s Integral Vedanta, whilst also incorporating insights into brain and mind from contemporary neuroscience and the whole gamut of Western psychology.
The wonderful B. Alan Wallace, whom Don mentioned, also appears in a few of Prof. Velmans’ videos. I heartily recommend another book of his, The Attention Revolution, which served as my own gateway to daily meditation.
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Thanks, Christina.
Occasions that open experience – widen the world? – I imagine that’s an interest many here share.
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Hi Christina,
I apologise for digressing. It’s a bad habit I notice only in retrospect. I need to get out of my own way more often.
The quotes you shared are themselves enormously rich, with profound implications reminiscent of those of Mary’s Room. But philosophy aside, the implied injunction is clear: pay attention to the way you pay attention. Is it your view that, in lieu of an anechoic chamber, works of art (in whichever medium) may also serve as vehicles for revivifying the world? By which I mean, can works of art enable us to see things differently, not merely cognitively, which I think is a given, but also perceptually? And would that mean works of art were, in effect, psychedelics?
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Hi Don,
Yes.
At some point we need to “put the words down”; and Sri Aurobindo uses terminology and ideas that Dr. McGilchrist doesn’t. But here’s the thing: we’re all beginners and we never stop being beginners; in order to learn how to “ride the bike” (while eating a mango) it’s almost always necessary to bolt on some “stabilisers”. There are many different manufacturers of stabilisers, but they all have the same goal in mind – to stop the rider from falling off so that they can get a feel for what it’s like to ride, and then after enough practice they can “put the stabilisers down” and ride free. But then of course, since riders are perennial beginners, there never comes a point where the stabilisers can be finally thrown in the trash. Riders, at least those who acknowledge the perennial novitiate, cycle back and forth between riding with stabilisers and riding free, and they may come to recognise that each adds something to the experience of the other.
Dr. McGilchrist, BK, Sri Aurobindo – they all manufacture stabilisers. You might prefer one brand over others, maybe one brand especially suits the way you like to ride. You get the picture.
Dr. McGilchrist has pointed out a few times (e.g. in the discussion with Rupert Read), with respect to the explicative nature and reserved scope of his books, that he wrote them with a particular target audience in mind. He manufactured stabilisers for LH riders, essentially. He isn’t unaware that he might have written more or differently. And it’s clear from the range of guests he’s engaged with that he isn’t shy of promoting alternative manufacturers.
A more explicit way of putting it is: conceptual frameworks (which includes scientific, philosophical and spiritual explorations) are stabilisers. HH Dalai Lama, as much as he is a spiritual leader, continues to practice riding with the aid of Buddhist scriptures as well as contemporary scientific and philosophical texts. And of course, being an utter novice, I do the same sort of thing with the aid of Eastern and Western scriptures, philosophical and scientific texts, poetry, music, art – some pretty cool stabilisers, all told.
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Hi Don,
In his philosophy Nagarjuna employs a form of logic called dialetheism, which is a type of paraconsistent logic, to which Dr. McGilchrist refers in his books. Dialetheism complements paradox, which is itself a way of pointing at the essentially ineffable. This is relevant with respect to “going beyond both duality and nonduality”, because I believe that, notwithstanding the unavoidable duality (in language) of juxtaposing two perspectives on one thing, Dr. McGilchrist was in fact pointing at the unconditionally nondual which transcends conceptions of duality and nonduality. This is encapsulated in a phrase he sometimes uses: “the unity of division and unity”.
It’s impossible to reflect the nature of unconditional nonduality in language, because unconditional nonduality is limitless, and language, being composed of words, is inherently limiting: words define; to define is to limit. Language, as a limitation, reflects the inherent limitation that individuation entails: The One/cosmos/Brahman adopts a limited perspective whenever it individuates as one of us, and there is nothing we can do, no experience we can have, that will utterly emancipate us from this ineluctable minded embodiment; only death can do that. But we can contemplate unconditional nonduality, intuit it, so that it becomes in some sense “present” for us, even if it remains tantalisingly out of reach – we can hear its bell echoing on the wind and be moved.
Given the above, we should allow that any language we use, with respect to unconditional nonduality or anything else, is a concession and will necessitate a duality, i.e. speaking in terms of “this and that” rather than “this is that”; and ultimately what it concedes is that we are inherently limited as a consequence of individuation. Concession, the limits of language and the impossibility of articulating the ineffable – BK eloquently touches on these in the following video, starting at 48:38.
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Hi Lucy,
Your experience by the lake sounds very much like an instance of nondual awareness – nondual in the sense of there being no apparent subject-object division. Perhaps you already see it as such.
The following article, which may seem out of place in a thread such as this, makes clear that instances of nondual awareness (NDA) may sometimes be phenomenally rich and are therefore distinct from minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), which other literatures equate with the paradigmatic NDA experience, so-called “pure awareness”.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02087/full
The article also highlights that NDA is only conditionally nondual: there is, albeit only in retrospect, a diaphanous reflexivity at play, demonstrated by the simple fact that NDA experiences can be recalled, sometimes vividly, which implicitly acknowledges that “something” had an experience of “something else”, even if the terms subject and object now appear wholly inadequate.
I believe that “something” and “something else” are none other than The One manifesting to itself as The Many, the cosmos (re)cognising itself – and thereby we see that, as Advaita Vedanta puts it, Atman is Brahman, although at the same time this undermines AV’s view that The Many is a dreamlike illusion to be renounced and transcended. All of this is congruent with Max Velmans’ metaphysic of reflexive monism, which is explored in the following video:
https://galileocommission.org/max-velmans-experiences-of-a-self-observing-universe/
The diaphanous reflexivity I mentioned is perhaps put best by Emerson in Nature:
Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
frontiersin.org
Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. They can be thought of as episodes of greatly reduced or even absent phenomenal content together with a reduced level of arousal. It … Continue reading
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Hi Christina,
Thanks, that’s a wonderful reminder not to get swept away by the current of one’s thoughts. It reminds me of something Jon Kabat-Zinn said with reference to mindfulness and presencing: “remember to get out of your own way”.
I confess – and you may be aware of this from another thread – I get a buzz from intellectualising/ideating. However, I like to believe I stay grounded, because, with respect to what makes an idea useful/substantive, I concur with the view that ideas should foster rather than stymie creativity, or more generally, ideas should enlarge rather than diminish our appreciation. It’s this “widening of the world” that gives me pleasure, rather than the bare act of churning out ideas. There’s also the question of whether one’s ideas may be considered insightful or true, accepting that truth is multifaceted and as easy to grasp as water. With regard to this, I defer direct judgement, instead relying on usefulness (as defined above) as a tentative guide to concordance with reality, additionally coloured by whether or not an idea fruitfully reconciles and helps integrate erstwhile opposing “truths”.
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Hi Don (and Christina),
Not to detract from the profound insights of Barfield, Prem or Blake, but it’s worth bearing in mind that there are well-established Western and Eastern traditions which recognise that language, and perhaps our conceptual system as a whole, is metaphorical in nature, such that “sun” and “Apollo” are (equally valid) metaphors for something beyond our conception which just is, as the following video exemplifies.
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/video/who-is-aware
Given that we experience a nondual reality most of the time as a duality, and mindful that we ought to revere all that is the sacred – in terms of the immanent (“that which is experienced” and “that which experiences”) and the transcendent (the nonduality beyond these and other dualities) – perhaps the approach most amenable to this is one in which we acknowledge and integrate a variety of metaphorical perspectives as well as the non-conceptual “perspective” tacitly championed in the video. (The unity of division and unity).
Just my $0.02.
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Hi Don,
The following article arrived on my feed this morning. I believe it describes the kind of intellectualising I mentioned previously, and it reminded me that I often used to wonder as I wandered, reflecting unawares on the latest book or essay as I walked through the local woods and fields (a la Wordsworth, as noted by Thoreau: “Here is his library, but his study is out of doors”). I regularly realised a truth that the article highlights: “many of our best ideas catch us by surprise while we’re … strolling through the woods”.
https://www.templeton.org/news/the-difference-between-mind-wandering-and-mind-wondering
Of relevance to this discussion thread is the following observation the article makes:
While past research has focused on mind wandering’s negative impact on happiness and well-being, Schooler found that not all mind wandering is created equal. One of his lab’s previous studies showed that when people mind wander, they become less happy than when they’re mentally present and on task. “But we also asked people to indicate what they were mind wandering about. And if they were mind wandering about something they were especially interested in, they were actually happier than when they were on task.” This discovery led him to distinguish between mind wandering and what he termed “mind wondering.”
And then there’s this:
People who ask questions and really listen to the responses encourage a change in brain activity. They create more neural flexibility through open, exploratory questioning. And the people who do that, Wheatley found, not only have the ability to receive and integrate other people’s points of view, but they also act as hubs in their social network.
By “really listen” I understand “pay attention”, which, when placed in the context of the above quote, appears to affirm the theme of recent discussions Dr. McGilchrist has had: [paying] attention [is] a moral act.
templeton.org
The Difference Between Mind Wandering and Mind Wondering - John Templeton Foundation
The Difference Between Mind Wandering and Mind Wondering - John Templeton Foundation
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Hi Don,
No offence taken – and I hope none given. I’ll come back tomorrow or the day after, but just to clarify for now: I don’t remember saying that physics provides an exhaustive account of physical reality (which is a tautology, anyway); I think I said that “Physicalism is the view that reality may be exhaustively described by (the equations of) physics”.
Bach and maths…
You may enjoy this:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/10/04/escher-bach-rachel-carson/
themarginalian.org
M.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach
“A person who is lucidly aware of the miracles that surround him, who has learned to bear up under the loneliness, has made quite a bit of progress on the road to wisdom.”
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Thanks, Don.
It wasn’t my intention to derail the discussion. I get pleasure – in terms of a dopamine-mediated sense of achievement as well as a serotonin-mediated sense of contentment – from thinking about things and, if I’m lucky, from seeing relationships between ideas separated by time, space and other contexts. This pleasure influences my mood and disposition, which in turn influences my behaviour. Let me fill in some real-life blanks to connect what I’ve just said with the theme of this discussion.
At present I’m caring, more or less round the clock, for my mum (aged 90) who’s about five months into recovering from a near-fatal right hemisphere haemorrhage. I begin each day, around about 4AM, with 30-45 minutes of mindfulness-based meditation, followed by a few hours of reading and thinking about fairly beefy ideas, by which point my mum is awake and ready to be washed, dressed, breakfasted and entertained with a few hours of conversation before lunch.
I find that meditation, reading and thinking – does it all count as contemplation? – puts me in a frame of mind most conducive to compassionate caring. Looking after my mum requires a great deal of patience and empathy: in addition to significant physical impairment, she has experienced a hefty cognitive and psychological knock from the haemorrhage; thankfully, and rather miraculously, she appears to be on the way to putting it all behind her, but there are still trying times every single day.
I don’t believe I’d be able to adequately care for my mum day after day without the morning routine I mentioned, which includes a large slice of intellectualising. Last year the same routine also bolstered my own recovery from an extended period of mental illness; and there are many accounts of people across the ages rescuing themselves from private hells by having a good think about things, e.g. Boethius. Is it possible that intellectualising may be therapeutic for some of us?
I’m aware that intellectualising is classed as a coping mechanism in some literatures, but the usage there appears to refer to abstracting one’s psychological state and thereby effectively distancing oneself from it. That’s not at all what I do each morning. To put it in a nutshell, I find that using my intellect (intuiting, rationalising and synthesising) goes hand in hand with, and can’t really be separated from, feeling good about myself, others and the world at large. How does that square with your view?
I’m not in any sense devaluing other approaches which aren’t conceptual or even cognitive in nature. In fact, I believe that thinking and feeling (and raw experiencing) are complimentary and ideally should be integrated.
Anyway, I’ve explicated overmuch here and elsewhere, so I’ll close with a figure. I like to imagine our evolution (spiritual or otherwise) as a work of poetry penned by the cosmos, and to borrow from my favourite poet: A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
More on that theme here:
https://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=150982
sheilaomalley.com
“Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous, and must be left in.” — Robert Frost | The Sheila Variations
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Thanks, Don, I found that really interesting.
I’ve long marvelled at the prospect that Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta each has something truly insightful to say about who we are, in terms of, respectively, the self as an aspect of “that which is experienced” (Buddhism’s no-self) and the self as “that which experiences” (AV’s Self). I see tantalising parallels between these two ways of understanding who we are and the Soul and Divine Consciousness Sri Aurobindo intuited.
I believe Sri Aurobindo also intuited what he called the supermind, a level of reality between what Zen and other approaches have called Absolute and Relative levels of reality, or between unmanifested Brahman and the manifested world amenable to our senses. My own nascent metaphysic posits an intermediate level of reality, between unconditioned foundational consciousness and differentiated phenomenal reality, that I have elsewhere called noumenal reality. Donald Hoffman, drawing on the work of Nima Arkani-Hamed and others, has discussed the amplituhedron as a contender for this intermediate level of reality within a metaphysic of foundational consciousness.
The amplituhedron is a mathematical construct, a spatially and temporally – quantitative time, that is – unbounded “jewel”, as it has been called, with, purportedly, an infinite number of dimensions. Mindful of Sri Aurobindo”s supermind, I feel a strong sense of yugen thinking of the amplituhedron as a “supreme gem” which is about to be retrieved from the mud:
“The true nature of any state of mind is free of flaws
And unaffected by the mire of existence and nirvana.
Even so, if a supreme gem is placed in a swamp,
Its radiance will not be clear.The analogy presented here is of a jewel that has somehow fallen into a swamp. The jewel itself has excellent color and shape and is completely pure in being a jewel. It does not degenerate at all while mired in the swamp; it remains exactly what it was. On the other hand, it can’t be used. The jewel’s qualities are not apparent because it is concealed. If the jewel is removed from the swamp and the mud is cleaned away, the jewel will be a perfect jewel and can be used appropriately.”
The verse is from A Song for the King by the Buddhist poet Saraha, c. 800CE.
buddhanature.tsadra.org
Mind Is Empty and Lucid, Its Nature Is Great Bliss - Buddha-Nature
Mind Is Empty and Lucid, Its Nature Is Great Bliss - Buddha-Nature