February 2, 2009
I’m worrying about my relationship with an old friend. It seems to be suffering because I no longer drink. Maybe that throws a wet blanket on everything. Because I don’t lose the thread of the conversation; I will follow but I don’t get lost in tangents, and am not bamboozled by ridiculous arguments. I don’t take the bait on those with near as much heat as I used to when I was similarly trashed. So maybe I’m just no fun to talk philosophy with anymore. Maybe I’ve grown too pedantic and teacherly and know-it-all.
I have caught myself lecturing a couple times. See, I discovered that with all his knowledge of Buddhism, Taoism and even the fringes of Jainism and Sikhism, he knows next to nothing about the central beliefs of Hinduism. He knows enough to mask his lack of knowledge and understanding, so he starts with “Which hinduism? Jains or Sikhs? The Bhagavad Gita? Isn’t that the battle on the Plain, where the Pandava clan . . .” blah, blah, blah. Yes, but what is the message of the Gita? What does Krishna say in it? No clue. See? Slippery fellow to talk to. He begins to make you feel like a heel for daring to suggest he hasn’t fully considered all the aspects of something (all the while insisting he knows nothing so you cannot have hurt his pride), but if you push at the structure, you realize it is a house of cards. And then he says, “Well yeah, I told you I don’t really know anything about all this stuff. I don’t really care about it, either. Just something to pass the time.”
So I was lecturing him a bit, because I wanted him to at least have the alternate, Sanatana Dharma, jnana yoga, Upanishad and Gita reality in his head, as something to contrast to his very negative, life-denying and judgmental mixed up combo of Buddhism and Calvinism he’s got right now. He’s tied together the Buddha’s view that all life is suffering and there are no actions that relieve the suffering permanently except detachment, with his father’s beliefs that this world is run by Satan. So he has pretty well programmed himself to see only the negative, only death, sickness, greed, dissolution, evil, etc. And he sees no hope for the world; he doesn’t believe in a redeeming savior, he is not really even seeing Buddha as a figure that helps pull the raft. Pretty hopeless. And he really hasn’t stressed much of the compassion. He doesn’t seem to remember that the Buddha was always laughing and smiling; he wasn’t walking around wailing and glum.
There also isn’t much room for action. There isn’t any point so why bother? On the one hand, humans got themselves into this mess and will have to get themselves out. On the other, he doesn’t believe in actually working toward that end. Or at least, he’s been going around in circles about that for the ten years I’ve known him, freely admitting it might be an excuse to avoid having to do anything. A decade is a pretty long time to be in the same place philosophically and spiritually. I devoutly pray I will not remain in the same place I am right now for 10 days, let alone 10 years.
Chapter 8 of the CU will help me along the path. It begins by saying that inside “this fort of brahman,” meaning our bodies, “There is a small lotus, a dwelling place. And in that lotus there is a space. That is what you should try to discover.” The space is smaller than an atom and larger than the galaxy. It does not age, is never sick, is not killed, does not die, and no evil attaches to it. It is the eternal, joyful, blissful part of us that we should seek to know.
February 3
In the CU 8.2 it says that you get whatever kind of heaven you want. A person who has fully found that space inside the lotus – “If such a person desires the world of fathers, by his intention alone fathers rise up. And securing the world of fathers, he rejoices.” Or the world of mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, perfumes and garlands, food and drink, singing and music, women – whatever he desires. Okay, so it is not heaven, it is here on earth. Once you know the true Self, you control Reality.
Then again . . . 8.3 is impenetrable. It says all the desires (real) are masked by (unreal) desires. Though real, they wear an unreal mask “for when someone close to him departs from the world, he doesn’t get to see him here.” But, all the things he desires but doesn’t get, he will get by going there, “. . . for these real desires, masked by the unreal, are located there.”
Where is “there”? Okay, it can’t be heaven, or after death, even though the example is a departed loved one, because of the context. We are talking about that lotus-space in the heart, the dwelling place of atman.
And 8.3.2-4 confirms by saying it is like a buried treasure; those who don’t know it is there will tramp over it every day, never realizing they are walking on gold. In the same way, the people and creatures use and go into their own hearts every day, they never suspect such power is right there. “The name of brahman is Real (satyam).” I note that because my novel is all about people deciding what is “real” and what is not – creating and sharing reality in that way. [Probability Moon by Nancy Kress].
This is interesting and I need to share it with Mara. 8.4 “Now, this self is a dike, a divider, to keep these worlds from colliding with one another.” Doesn’t it seem more like “to keep them from flowing into one another” than colliding? Either way, we can and will pass over the dike eventually, into where old age, illness, death and evil cannot follow.
Oh man, this is so cool! But to explain why it is so cool, I have to explain so much about the novel I’m reading. I wasn’t planning to, but I just got to the point where she (Kress) explains the most recent scientific theories about the quantum basis of thought, of human consciousness. Our understanding of how the mind works is still limited, but it has gotten far enough to tell us that our first idea, electromagnetism, is certainly occurring but does not explain everything that happens in the brain. The second idea, neurochemicals, transmitters, was a huge leap forward and explained so much more. We can now analyze and tinker with brain chemistry in a much more sophisticated way than with electicity or – I guess what was really first, plain old mechanics – just anatomy – open it up and chop something out and see what happened.
But even neurochemistry doesn’t explain it all. “The electrical impulse hits the presynaptic grid; it has a measurable, constant voltage, the same voltage across all neurons. But sometimes it causes a release of neurotransmitters and sometimes it doesn’t. The probablility of release varies from .17 to .62 depending on the kind of neuron. And no one really knows why.” (Kress 200:128)
See, the problem is this – why do we have thoughts with no external stimuli? That’s one of the problems. And why, given that constant electrical impulse, does the exact same stimulus only have a 17-62% chance of causing some mental reaction?
Because, maybe, we are dealing with quantum effects. Probability waves. At the end of every nerve synapse we have vesicular grids. Billions of them. They are what control how much neurotransmitter is released with each nerve impulse. “Paracrystalline vesicular grids are very small. They operate according to the laws of quantum physics. They can cause quantum events outside their energy barrier, because part of their quantum probability field lies there. More and more, it looks like that is how consciousness affects the brain. Through altering the prbability field. There’s no other way for a purely mental event, such as deciding to get up from your chair, to produce an effect in the natural world without violating the law of the conservation of energy.” P.275
And when you start talking quarks, you bring in quantum entanglement. This has so many implications I can’t think through them all right now. It applies directly to my belief that metaphor is the mind’s language, not linear, digital, binary code. But check out what the very next part of the CU 8th chapter says, that blew me away with its timing:
In 8.5.3 it mentions two rivers “in” a “land” of brahman, kind of like a metaphor for perfect bliss and joy. These rivers are called “the rivers of the heart.” So in 8.6 it says these rivers flow like or with the rays of the sun, like a long highway they traverse the worlds, the one “up there” and the one “down here.” When we sleep and dream peacefully, we have slipped into those rivers and been transported to the sun “up there.” No evil can disturb us because we aren’t even here, not “really.” When we die, we rise up along these same rays, with the sound OM. “No sooner does he think it than he reaches the sun.” That’s the line that really grabbed me. “It is the door to the farther world, open to those who have knowledge, closed to those who do not.” 8.7.4
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