Sunday, August 26, 2012
Can Science locate my Dog?
East is East and West is West is West and Twain shall never meet " In the same vein can Science and Spirituality ever meet? In an enlightening interview with Ken Wilber he dwells upon eternal question of Experience vs Experiment. Can human experience be subject to scientific scrutiny and if not what is the basis of spiritual experiences? How is new age spirituality drawing richly from mystical experiences of non dual awareness different from erstwhile mythical belief system.
Ken wilber talks about his own Near Death Experience of non dual awareness. Critical of.a Quantum Physicist view of existence which says consciuosness creates its own reality, he says the ground of being is the source and there is a real objective world existing irrespective of subjective perceivers such as human beings.Most renowned scientists such as schrodinger or Einstein or Heisenberg had mystical experiences when they realized the limitations of science.
Is human existence just a 5 pound of brain matter ? Is mind the same as brain? Ultimately the sense of being void of all transient labels is the primordial existence. Call it pure consciousness or call it I AM THAT or emptiness. But can the experience of such an unconditioned existence ever captured for scientific scrutiny? Science can locate an inanimate planet in the universe with precision but can it ever predict where my dog is likely to be in the next two minutes?
Here`s is the interview of Ken Wilber: www.salon.com/2008/04/28/ken_wilber
Monday, March 26, 2012
Decoding consciousness
As our knowledge of consciousness and its operation improves, the description of our understanding of consciousness will require both metaphysics and neuro-cognitive sciences. The methods to understand consciousness have to be both experiential and experimental given the nature of the subject of our inquiry. Decoding the process of perception and its processing in the brain could probably be an area where experimental methods will provide encouraging results to improve our knowledge of consciousness. However given the inevitably personal and subjective nature of consciousness any understanding in this area has to be experientially validated because my consciousness is not available to others to detect, test or experiment with. Scientific experiments involve observation, hypothesis, experimental methodology, repeating the experiment and predicting the result. It can be done to understand brain chemistry and prescribing medicine to alter or induce a particular behavior by adding or subtracting chemical dosage to brain cells. Beyond that it will be difficult for science given its methods to analyze consciousness because it may not be possible to observe and repeat such experiments in many cases. It seems clear that as we move into the future of scientific discoveries, we should be able to understand better some aspects of consciousness but whether our knowledge about this subject can ever be complete is a debatable issue. After all it's an attempt by consciousness to understand itself. There might be an inherent limitation for a system to describe itself only using itself. Probably consciousness is forever going to be an elusive object for our mental faculties. (Courtesy:Sneha Sheth)
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Total Inner Freedom
Total inner freedom an essential condition to see what is. Awareness cannot come without total inner freedom.
Freedom is negation of any conditioning of human mind by religious or political or economic or sociological divisions. It is broadly cultural divide.
What is conditioning? Is it belief system? It is categories , thoughts, constructs , concepts , myths , images that collectively reside inside a human being. It develops into tendencies and predictable hardened behaviour. It is something unreal, some kind of fantasy which passes as real inside the human mind or brain.
Religion is supposed to be unifying force amongst all human beings. It is supposed to have a common objective of deliverance or redemption or enlightenment or nirvana whatever one chooses to call. Unfortunately it has become a dividing force. A mere belief with an emphasis that one belief is superior over the other.A mind full of belief is not a free mind.
Man has to be human first before he can absorb religion as a category. The problem with man is he identifies himself as a specie and then sees himself not as a being or existence but as separate category from overall existence such as flowers or fish or clouds. In the process he sees himself as.separate from other humans too. It's a failure to see itself as being or existence.
Me is the dividing factor separating him from others. Me is my country, my likes, my religion, my ideology, my sensuality, and so on. It is the complete psychological ideation about me. My ambition, my experiences, my superiorities, my interlocutors,my achievements,my greed, my envies, my regrets all go onto become me.me creates a conflict with external world as in me vs you as well as internal within oneself. Internal conflict create a pressure to become a better and better me.me is content of consciousness. That me wants to add and subtract the content of consciousness creating internal conflict.
There can be no observation or no observing when there is me doing the act of observing. It is me which is acts as a curtain from actually seeing the reality. The real is truth or goodness or non duality or unity or living. Till there is me there is no living.
So how does me end? Me is content of consciousness and it can end only by emptying it. Any attempt to empty it is still within the field of thought and continues to reel in the sphere of me. Any effort is merely strengthening me. Any methodology throws you back into the well of me. any process is like buying time and me continues it's whirlwind inside the human brain.
Seeing that me is not real as a fact, not as a concept. The sheer act seeing the fallacy of me is emptying it's content. It is instant and immediate . It's like a computer file which is emptied by delete command. Unlike computer you cannot command me but you can perceive it's falsehood. In seeing is the ending.
It can never end if seeing is through images. Images about myself is me, my idea of other peoples image about me is also a part of me. Till that image is seeing there is no seeing. Seeing the mirage of me end me . Then there is harmony, there is peace and there is living. It is actuality.
How does one see is an irrelevant question. The only way to see inwardly is to be aware. Which means to be attentive,to watch ones motives or actions without any judgmental or analytical exercise. In that watching there is no choice. Choice implies duality, conformity, images and lack of freedom. In real freedom there is no choice. It's important to understand that choice is exercised by me which is content of consciousness. Choice when excercised externally like choosing blue colour or square design is okay. But when choice is exercised inwardly it's in the loop of me. When there is choiceless awareness one discovers there is unity.it is not a concept or theory. It is reality.
Me is a disorder. Belief brings in security. The entire story of mankind is in it's content of consciousness. It is not an indivisual's consciousness.it is common. It is all about fulfillement,loneliness,hatred and comparison,. Pride and vanity. Frustrations and fears. Whether rich or poor, young or old, black, brown or white, educated or uneducated the content of consciousness is the same. It all gets condensed into an image. An image of a successful man or image of low self esteem.an image of moral superiority or self flagelling misery.
Invariably an image which is comparing and becoming into something. That's not freedom. There is no freedom from self or the image of self at all. When there is a complete attention one realizes there is no centre. In that realization is total freedom. In that freedom there is total security,total harmony and total stability. Where there is self with all it's images there is clinging to falsehood. In the moment of complete attention there is no self, no centre. It's just existence. From such a state whatever action emerges is the right action.it is state of total awareness void of any objectified self.
Freedom is negation of any conditioning of human mind by religious or political or economic or sociological divisions. It is broadly cultural divide.
What is conditioning? Is it belief system? It is categories , thoughts, constructs , concepts , myths , images that collectively reside inside a human being. It develops into tendencies and predictable hardened behaviour. It is something unreal, some kind of fantasy which passes as real inside the human mind or brain.
Religion is supposed to be unifying force amongst all human beings. It is supposed to have a common objective of deliverance or redemption or enlightenment or nirvana whatever one chooses to call. Unfortunately it has become a dividing force. A mere belief with an emphasis that one belief is superior over the other.A mind full of belief is not a free mind.
Man has to be human first before he can absorb religion as a category. The problem with man is he identifies himself as a specie and then sees himself not as a being or existence but as separate category from overall existence such as flowers or fish or clouds. In the process he sees himself as.separate from other humans too. It's a failure to see itself as being or existence.
Me is the dividing factor separating him from others. Me is my country, my likes, my religion, my ideology, my sensuality, and so on. It is the complete psychological ideation about me. My ambition, my experiences, my superiorities, my interlocutors,my achievements,my greed, my envies, my regrets all go onto become me.me creates a conflict with external world as in me vs you as well as internal within oneself. Internal conflict create a pressure to become a better and better me.me is content of consciousness. That me wants to add and subtract the content of consciousness creating internal conflict.
There can be no observation or no observing when there is me doing the act of observing. It is me which is acts as a curtain from actually seeing the reality. The real is truth or goodness or non duality or unity or living. Till there is me there is no living.
So how does me end? Me is content of consciousness and it can end only by emptying it. Any attempt to empty it is still within the field of thought and continues to reel in the sphere of me. Any effort is merely strengthening me. Any methodology throws you back into the well of me. any process is like buying time and me continues it's whirlwind inside the human brain.
Seeing that me is not real as a fact, not as a concept. The sheer act seeing the fallacy of me is emptying it's content. It is instant and immediate . It's like a computer file which is emptied by delete command. Unlike computer you cannot command me but you can perceive it's falsehood. In seeing is the ending.
It can never end if seeing is through images. Images about myself is me, my idea of other peoples image about me is also a part of me. Till that image is seeing there is no seeing. Seeing the mirage of me end me . Then there is harmony, there is peace and there is living. It is actuality.
How does one see is an irrelevant question. The only way to see inwardly is to be aware. Which means to be attentive,to watch ones motives or actions without any judgmental or analytical exercise. In that watching there is no choice. Choice implies duality, conformity, images and lack of freedom. In real freedom there is no choice. It's important to understand that choice is exercised by me which is content of consciousness. Choice when excercised externally like choosing blue colour or square design is okay. But when choice is exercised inwardly it's in the loop of me. When there is choiceless awareness one discovers there is unity.it is not a concept or theory. It is reality.
Me is a disorder. Belief brings in security. The entire story of mankind is in it's content of consciousness. It is not an indivisual's consciousness.it is common. It is all about fulfillement,loneliness,hatred and comparison,. Pride and vanity. Frustrations and fears. Whether rich or poor, young or old, black, brown or white, educated or uneducated the content of consciousness is the same. It all gets condensed into an image. An image of a successful man or image of low self esteem.an image of moral superiority or self flagelling misery.
Invariably an image which is comparing and becoming into something. That's not freedom. There is no freedom from self or the image of self at all. When there is a complete attention one realizes there is no centre. In that realization is total freedom. In that freedom there is total security,total harmony and total stability. Where there is self with all it's images there is clinging to falsehood. In the moment of complete attention there is no self, no centre. It's just existence. From such a state whatever action emerges is the right action.it is state of total awareness void of any objectified self.
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