True Nature: Notes on Spirit and Science

A paradox of Awakening is that, from one perspective, it may be described as an event in time that somehow changes something about experience at a fundamental level. It is a radical shift from a dualistic to nondualistic way of consciousness. Yet, from another perspective, it may be described as Awakening to a timeless dimension that is recognized as having always been present and always will be present. It is not a recognition of anything new, and it does not involve any change in the contents of consciousness. Which is it? This is a kind of koan of Awakening.

One meta-perspective on these perspectives is that neither perspective is absolutely true or final or correct, but in a given situation one perspective may be more valuable to emphasize as a way to help bring to awareness the limits of the complementary perspective and reveal what currently is not being fully recognized.

For example, sometimes we may be stuck in a view that Awakening is some new or different state, content or experience that we’ve yet to experience (and this reinforces the notion that we lack some “state of Awakening,” and that we need to seek and attain it, and that we might then lose it). It can then be helpful to emphasize the timeless dimension of Awakening to help recognize and release this one-sided view of it.

Conversely, at other times we may be stuck in a view that Awakening is only a timeless recognition that has no associated manifestations in human experience (and this reinforces the notion that Awakening has no consequence for human life, and is therefore irrelevant). To help recognize and release this one-sided view, it can be helpful to emphasize the changes in how life is experienced after Awakening as compared to experience under delusion, before Awakening.

All this is, of course, just one meta-perspective on these different perspectives about what Awakening is or involves. Other perspectives might also be useful. As for what is really the case about Awakening…that is a koan that only Awakening itself resolves.

The “Law of Attraction” (which I understand is the “secret” of “The Secret”) apparently states that our thoughts/actions/intentions “attract” corresponding experiences into our lives. While rational Westerners might dismiss this as mere “magical” thinking, the world we experience is not simply “given” to us, either.

Our thoughts play a powerful role in constructing/mediating our experience (which is one thing that meditation practice is designed to help reveal). Change your worldview, for example, and you will experience a different world. Think and act in selfish ways and you “attract” experiences of suffering. Think and act in selfless ways and you “attract” experiences of joy. As we sow, so shall we reap. This is just the Law of Karma, of course.

But it seems that the Law of Attraction says something quite a bit different, namely, that particular intentions and thoughts will attract the object of our intention and manifest it in our lives. Now, that may or may not be true. But, in any case, the deeper Law of Karma still holds, namely, the more our intentions and actions are self-centered, the more we will suffer.

So, regardless of whether or not the Law of Attraction is true or works, if you practice it with self-centered motives, then you’ll end up suffering even if you “attract” what you wanted. If you practice it with selfless motives, on the other hand, then you’ll end up joyful no matter what. That’s the deeper secret, the more fundamental law.

(An invited contribution to The Vision Project)

Underneath our everyday problems and their usual solutions are the profound questions of life. These questions call us to look deeper into the nature of ourselves and reality. This is not a call to turn away from the normal challenges we face, but rather to see them in a larger context so we can respond to them more effectively. Because the limits of our vision limit the effectiveness of our action, a deeper vision is vitally important and essential to any effective action. And it is even more essential if we are to resolve the enduring existential questions of life.

The scope of our vision is determined by our view of the world. To expand our worldview requires an intention to see its limits and hidden assumptions and then to look beyond them. Once we have this intention, our lives become full of opportunities to grow. Our relationships with each other—especially the difficult ones—help us become aware of our own perspectives. Exposure to different cultures and new experiences help broaden our understanding and appreciation. Cultivation of more subtle capacities of observation and attention unveil aspects of our present experience that were previously ignored. Like the scientist, our discoveries come not from confirmation of what we already know, but from challenging our current understanding with new anomalies and paradoxes. The unknown and inexplicable are our guides, calling us to open our minds to new possibilities and perspectives, new patterns and paradigms.

This openness is a capacity to embrace opposites, a willingness to experience all aspects of life, and to give balanced and unprejudiced consideration to alternatives. It is a capacity to act with freedom from personal attachments and aversions. Radical openness is profound and powerful enough to embrace not only our family, friends and nature, but also our enemies, our fears and our suffering. It is a willingness to face the uncomfortable, the threatening, and the painful; it is a love that has the courage to open completely without reservation or resistance to the greatest of horrors and mysteries. A profoundly open mind is not merely interested in what it would like to know; it wants to know the truth, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant. It is open to all viewpoints and perspectives, and not just those that are comfortable. It embraces paradox and contradiction, takes joy in the unexplained and unknown. So let us listen and be attentive to ourselves, each other, and the world. Let us be willing to honestly examine ourselves, and confess to the limitations of our current capacity to see. This willingness naturally leads to an expansion of vision. And the more expanded our vision becomes, the more wise, compassionate, and effective our response will be to the challenges we face.

Any viewpoint or perspective, however, is a finite framework for understanding. Although an expansive worldview is better than a narrow one, we must not merely be open to more expanded viewpoints and perspectives. We must be open to the infinite. An openness to the infinite requires a willingness to see and surrender every limitation of our vision. This goes far beyond merely exchanging one worldview for a more comprehensive one. It demands we examine and ultimately let go of every preconception and presupposition about ourselves and the world. We can imagine what we might like to become, how we might like things to be. But our greatest potential is not imaginable, and our true destiny is inconceivable. Our greatest vision is beyond what we can currently envision. Let us therefore aspire to what is beyond our imagination and thought, and let go of all limits. Let us open our vision to the infinite.

Our normal experience is of a world of objects or phenomena that are distinct from a subject or experiencer of them. Mystics, however, claim that this distinction is imaginary and not real. Insofar as we experience it as real, our experience is a distortion of the true nature of reality.

One way to investigate this claim of the mystics for ourselves is to go back to what it really means for something to be distinct or different from something else. Insofar as A is distinct from B, they are separate and not related, because if they are related then they depend at least in part on each other and can not actually be completely distinguished. You might object that there is some “essential” or “inherent” part of A that does not depend on B, while other “non-essential” parts of A depend on B. But then the same problem arises with the distinction between the essential and non-essential parts of A. If they are related, then the essential part of A depends somehow on the non-essential part of A, which depends in turn on B. So the essential part of A is not “essential” or “inherent” after all. To sum it up, a real distinction has to be a complete separation. If it is “leaky” and allows some dependence or connection, then there is not really any distinction there; it is just an imaginary distinction that we superimpose on reality that is in fact an undivided whole.

So far, this is all just theoretical abstraction, of course. But if you really ponder this deeply, and get an insight into how it applies to your own experience, you’ll realize that “you” must have some relationship to your experience and, therefore, you cannot be separate or distinct from your experience. This starts to eat away at the sense of a separate self. No distinctions actually exist in reality. They are all only imagined to exist.

This insight can have real consequences for our life. If there is no separate ego then there is no “one” to suffer. It’s not that pain or discomfort or irritation don’t arise, but that there’s noone there to suffer from it, to resist it as something “other” than oneself. Without resistance to what is, there is freedom from the struggle to get away from it. (If you found this post interesting, you might also enjoy my article The Meaning of Sunyata in Nagarjuna’s Philosophy.)

Closely related to the topic of the earlier post on universals and particulars is an important philosophical insight in the mystical unfoldment of Franklin Merrell-Wolff, i.e., the aphorism “Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability.” Below is a brief discussion of this aphorism, followed by an example of what it might mean in our own experience.

The insight behind this aphorism came in late July, 1936, about two weeks prior to Wolff’s fundamental Realization. Prior to this insight, Wolff experienced certain logical difficulties reconciling Transcendent Being with the physical universe. These difficulties arise from the habit of regarding objects of consciousness, i.e., any appearance in consciousness that we can ponder or experience, as in some sense substantial. Although Wolff had a prior intellectual conviction that the Transcendent Being was more substantial, the intellectual idea alone had failed to have a powerful transformative effect on his consciousness. This insight, however, had a profound effect on his consciousness that served to clear the way for the fundamental breakthrough that would follow in a matter of days.

Wolff formally expressed the insight with the following proposition: “Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability”. In other words, the degree of true substance or reality is the inverse or opposite of the degree of ponderability. Thus, concrete objects of experience, which have a high degree of ponderability, are the least substantial. Subtle or abstract objects of experience, on the other hand, which are less ponderable, partake of a higher degree of substantiality and reality. The effect of this insight upon Wolff was a far more effective acceptance of substantial reality where the senses reported emptiness, and a greater capacity to realize unreality, or merely dependent or derivative reality, in the material given through the senses. This insight brought about a more profound shift of identification with the transcendent supersensible reality, and a correspondingly profound detachment from the objects of consciousness. This shift was decisive in clearing the way for the fundamental realizations that were to follow.

This aphorism is not a merely speculative philosophical idea, but expresses an insight from direct experience. To illustrate with an example, if we look up in the sky and see a cloud, normal relative consciousness habitually posits this ponderable cloud as an object “out there”. Thus, the cloud seems to be “given” to us as a real, substantial object separate from us. This objectification is not normally a conscious process, so we are consequently in bondage to this mode of subject-object experience. This mode of experience might be expressed by saying that substantiality is directly proportional to ponderability, since what is substantial seems to be what is objectifiable. Wolff’s philosophical inquiry convinced him intellectually that this is not the case, but that it is actually what is non-objective that is more real or substantial. Yet that intellectual understanding did not free him from the deep-seated mode of subject-object experience.

Now, to return to the cloud, if we become conscious of this process of objectification through sufficiently deep meditative insight, we may then “see” the cloud nakedly in the absence of that objectification. Strictly speaking there is then no seer nor seen, but just pure seeing. Although the cloud as an object is absent (or at least not in the foreground of awareness), yet the naked perceptual appearance of the “cloud” in consciousness does not disappear. It is a mere appearance that is not other than the very seeing. This insight reveals that the object was not substantial but was a mere act of imagination superimposed upon the pure awareness that is realized as identical with the pure appearance. Thus, the true substantiality is revealed only when the ponderability or objectification is absent. Hence, “substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability.” A hint of this is experienced by most of us when beholding the clouds of a beautiful sunset. The more beauty we experience, the less we are objectifying the clouds as “out there”. You can experiment with this next time you see a beautiful sunset. When you have a sense of beauty, make a conscious effort to see the clouds as objects: judge how far away they are, where one ends and the other begins, etc. This will veil the sense of their beauty. But if that objectification is surrendered and one relaxes into contemplation of the beauty of the scene, then one is closer to resting in what is truly substantial: they beauty and glory of pure consciousness without an object.

(Originally written 30 Nov. 2003)

(If you liked this post, you might also enjoy my article The Heart of Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s Philosophy.)

There are some spiritual teachers who claim to be Enlightened, and yet their actions may not seem very Enlightened. This creates doubt about whether or not they are really Enlightened or not. Is there a way to know? What are the signs of Enlightenment? How can you know for sure if someone else is Enlightened? While these questions have relative value, it is important to recognize some hidden assumptions and misconceptions that often lurk behind them.

First of all, any judgment as to someone else’s state of being, be it spiritual or psychological or physiological, is relative to some assumptions and definitions. In particular, it is impossible to judge whether or not someone else is Enlightened without some assumption about what it means to be Enlightened, or how you draw the line between Enlightenment and non-Enlightenment. Different traditions and people have their different ways of drawing this line. So, judging whether or not someone else is Enlightened is a relative judgment about which there can be no absolute certainty.

There is also a second, more profound, reason why we can not know for sure whether someone else is Enlightened. Because of the nondual nature of Enlightenment, the only person whose Enlightenment you can be absolutely certain about is your own. And even in that case, it is not even “your” Enlightenment that “you” are certain about. There is no “you”. There is no “thing” to be certain about. There is just Enlightenment. That is the only Truth that absolute certainty applies to. The moment we start talking about ourselves and other people, about delusion and enlightenment, we are entering a relative world of duality in which there is no absolute certainty. Enlightenment is nondual and inconceivable. Thus, it has no definite mark or sign to distinguish it from something else. The moment we define Enlightenment as being this or that, we have not described it. We’ve only described some idea of it.

Some spiritual teachings tell us, “You already are that which you seek” or “Give up all practices. Just be.” Like any teaching, the value of these kinds of teachings depends completely on what happens when they are put into practice. If those teachings spontaneously bring about an Awakening, if they are actually followed, then great. Unfortunately, though, they do not have that effect on most people most of the time. And — even more unfortunately — some people think that these high teachings provide some kind of “short-cut to Enlightenment.” Seeking, they reason, is based on the delusion of duality. So, one should stop seeking to realize nonduality.

The problem is, you can’t simply decide to stop seeking, because that itself is a subtle kind of seeking — a seeking to stop seeking. The point of seeking is to exhaust all seeking so that it stops of itself. So, as long as our seeking has not been exhausted, we need to keep seeking in order to exhaust it. If we contrive to stop seeking, we are taking a short-cut away from Enlightenment into a subtle kind of contrived self-deception.

These high teachings can be useful, though, even if they don’t trigger a spontaneous Awakening. For example, one could attempt to stop seeking, and then see how that itself is a subtle kind of seeking. Then one could attempt to stop that seeking, and so on. This can bring to awareness many subtle aspects of experience that previously went unnoticed. Similarly, one could try to give up all practices and just be, and then see how there is a sense of practicing and doing something. Then one could try to give up doing that, and so on. Cultivate an attitude of being open to learning about the nature of seeking rather than trying to get to some state of non-seeking. See what reveals itself, and enjoy!

For an excellent article on this topic, see To Practice or Not to Practice? by Joel Morwood.

Some of the most ancient poetry was sacred poetry and song as a vehicle for sacred teachings. The Vedas of India, for example, are sacred verses that are traditionally chanted. It is said that they are not merely descriptions of doctrines, but revelations of Truth. Their poetic power to transform consciousness derives from the fact that these verses are not merely sounds referencing a silent Truth separate from the sounds. Rather, the vowels and consonants of the sacred verses are the tangible presence of Truth itself. According to this tradition, poetry is not merely a fanciful and pleasant play of words and sounds that might evoke some surprising images or emotions, but a direct manifestation of a deeper reality that has the potential to radically transform us and shift us out of fixed modes of awareness.

Moreover, it is said that all existence manifests in this way from a fundamental seed syllable or vibration, OM. As the Mandukya Upanishad says, “This eternal Word is all: what was, what is, and what shall be, and what is beyond eternity. All is OM.” The Greek word poesis (related to our words poetry and poem) means simply making or creating. The divine poetry is thus the divine creation, which is the world made manifest through the act of divine speech, such as in Genesis where it brings heaven and earth into existence. The world is God’s speech, God’s poem. As Meister Eckhart puts it, the simple being of a stone is the speech of God. It, and everything else, is the divine OM. When we begin to sense this, then we become the poetry.