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Reflections on science, spiritual teachings, and mystical philosophy, by Thomas McFarlane
Browsing All Posts filed under »Spiritual Practice«
Suffering is Proportional to Resistance
An earlier post entitled Substantiality is Inversely Proportional to Ponderability discussed an insight of Franklin Merrell-Wolff which proposes a relationship between recognition of transcendent reality, or Substantiality, to cognition of objectivity, or Ponderability. Because of their inverse relationship, the more one experiences a world of ponderable objects, the less one recognizes transcendent Substantiality. This relationship can […]
Contemplating the Nature of Time
February 21, 2010
A previous post explored the question of whether time has an objective existence. In this post, we continue this investigation in a more contemplative way. Consider, for example, the sound of a train passing by not far away. Our conventional and habitual way of interpreting such auditory phenomena is to imagine a thing called a […]
What Changes with Awakening?
November 25, 2007
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, a liberation from delusion. Yet, from another perspective, it may be described as Recognition […]
The Law of Attraction and the Law of Karma
June 26, 2007
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 […]
Open to the Infinite
October 9, 2006
(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 […]
Deconstructing the Subject-Object Distinction
August 9, 2006
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 […]
Substantiality is Inversely Proportional to Ponderability
July 31, 2006
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. […]
About the Author
Thomas McFarlane is the author of Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. A graduate of Stanford University in physics, he also holds advanced degrees in mathematics and in philosophy and religion. He is a US patent agent and founder of a Silicon Valley patent firm. View author profile on Google+
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December 29, 2010
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