.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged consciousness
Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
Apr 14th
The mind desires this,
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.
Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.
In this way you are bound.
But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away. . .
Then you are free.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
When there is no attraction,
You are free.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
~ Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
This is really the essence of Advaita. Another beautiful expression is within the Hsin Hsin Ming. You can find a copy on the WWW. I understand that this sounds like a plea to be joyless; however, perhaps joy and pleasure are not the same. Also, perhaps the word “mind” may not accurately capture the non-duality message. It is the thinking function that discriminates and fuels the judgement that in the end results in pain and suffering. The message is based on the fact that there are NO dualities, just the Dao, just the moment.
All this is clearly expressed in the wonderful treasure which is the Hsin Hsin Ming. It may take you years of pondering, re-reading, looking at again, asking the universe for understanding – all that before you begin to “get it.” Then perhaps you’ll lose it again and at one and the same time know and despair that you don’t know, don’t understand. What might help or maybe put you over the edge of being able to relate is that you cannot “know” yourself, the Dao simply because it does not exist as an object. You cannot separate it – you- out in an effort to “know” it because you are it. You are a person looking for eyes to see. I must put in a word for the late Jean Klein. If you can obtain any of his books of dialogues, you may find that his clarity may tip you over the edge with the “oh, now I get it” moment. Oh there is so much that lies around the fringe of Advaita. Some say that you “get it” when you quit looking. Others, like The Maharshi tell us that our impediment is thinking that we can’t find “it” when actually we are what we seek.
Lastly, you will never know why you either care about these ideas or just can’t be bothered. “It” either calls you relentlessly until you don’t feel the need to “be bothered” or will always sound just too weird and you will never “be bothered.” Either way, you may rest assured, in my not so humble opinion, that there is no separate “you” inside your head looking out onto a separate world.
Death and Consciousness
Feb 10th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Death, Dualism, Consciousness and Panexperientialism
Why the long word panexperientialism? Probably because narrowing down aspects of a previous long word often results in even longer words. This one is a refinement of panpsychism, a view that all matter has a mental aspect. I suspect a lot of Pagans would agree with this proposition and it may be closely related to what Emma has in mind when she says: “*Paganism is non-dual.” “Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead, is a less bold variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with full-fledged minds.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
Now, I don’t have the faintest idea of what a less than full-fledged mind looks like. However, I do have vast respect and stand in awe of Alfred North Whitehead. An aside, I’ll probably never forget a moment the first or second time I sat in the Depauw University library at the tender and seriously ignorant age of 18 and picked up a book by Whitehead. I couldn’t get through the first page! I thought, holy smoke, what have I got myself into here. Then a couple of three years ago I tried again and managed a few pages but oh my, what a mind.
I’ve introduced the subject of death in my first blog and promised to follow up with the next one. But first, let me talk a little about dualism. The *Pagan attitude towards dualism colours attitudes about death. The subjects dualism and consciousness have been analysed, rationalised and categorised such to make all but the most experienced philosophers swoon with a splitting headache. Simply and historically, dualism depicts reality as divided into two separate, fundamental aspects – mind and physicality or spirit and matter. *Paganism is non-dual. In a non-dual world there are only manifestations of energy, spirit, song or essence; whatever or however one chooses to name it. *Pagans don’t hold that a separate spirit leaves the body after death. To me, death is the start of a change of path and identity for all bodily materiality. Consciousness channelled by the organism stops coordinating a coherence of multiple parts the manifestation of which we term life. Transfiguration and changes that we call decay set in and materiality breaks down often into its constituent parts. Dust to dust so to speak.
Considered from a distance, so to speak, Earthly life is cyclical, tremendously diverse and the material constituents constantly recycled from organism to organism. Assuming, for a moment, that all life-forms are actually limbs and sensory faculties of Gaia expressing according to their ability Gaia’s consciousness, again I ask, who dies? Now, from a human being perspective, which is the only embodied perspective open to us, the above only makes sense is when we realise that we ARE the planet. Jean Klein, speaking from a Hindu Advaita Vedanta, non-dualistic viewpoint, might say that we can never observe our consciousness because we are what we are looking for. Our consciousness is not a separate object that we can perceive. One might as well expect the eye to be able to see itself seeing. Further, there is no separate “me” in here seeing something, there is only the seeing.
Let me follow on at this point with a perspective that is gaining acceptance. Our dualistic science and scientific method tends to trap us into an either/or research outcome. I expect many scientists continue to ignore the results of the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought paradox. The results of the experiment contradicts common sense. In case you are not familiar with it, “A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger’s_cat
Situations such as the one above lead us to amend our either/or expectations to the realisation that many situations are actually both/ and. Now of course, in our everyday reality, a cat cannot be both dead and alive according to the instrument{s} observing reality at the time. However, at another level of consciousness and another type of observing instrument at an extremely smaller or larger physical size, such might be the case.
A carbon element, for example, has 6 electrons, 2 electrons in its inner shell and 4 in its outer shell. Carbon is very brittle, and cannot be rolled into wires or pounded into sheets. Yet, at nanometer sizes and a cylindrical shape, they become 10 times the tensil strength of graphite or coal. They also exhibit high conductivity and heat conductance properties. I cite this example of carbon to illustrate that carbon has both high and low tensil strength according to its size and shape. More and more we are finding that our differences of opinion and belief are subject to a both/and result due to different world views and levels of consciousness held by the contending parties. Further, concepts such as ultimate reality, absolute truth and perfect repeatability may be unobtainable when considering a living planet and a living Universe. The problem of convincing argumentation as to the anthropogenic responsibility for global warming is largely due to the limitations of the worldview of a majority of people. Instrumentation designed for machines just are NOT VALID for measuring the behaviour of a huge, intelligent, living being. I leave you with these quotes:
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein
“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there” Roshi, Yasutani
An Update
Jan 19th
I’ve just posted an update to my start page, What is Earthen Spirituality? Please have a look at the new content at the bottom.
How much is the planet worth to you?
Dec 1st
Some parts of this are stunningly beautiful and others will stop your heart in painful grief.
This is a non-commercial attempt from http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/ to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/).
“For millions of years the earth has drifted thought space. Through that time she has taken many forms. Many different forms of life evolved and some still exist and more than could be counted are no more. The time of the human race is but a mere tick in the time of the earth. If by our actions we destroy the fragile conditions needed for our survival. The earth is not the one that will be no more.”
Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
- Cree Indian Prophecy –
Cree are one of the largest group of indigenous peoples of North America, located mainly across Canada, and historically in the United States from Minnesota westward but are found today in Montana.
Wherein lies the power of the internet?
Nov 13th
I’m reading about change, especially the fast pace of change in technology. It seems the significant thing is that the change is exponential rather than linear. Perhaps we still think in linear patterns and fail to appreciate how the rate of change varies when the expansion is exponential rather than linear. What prompted this bit of writing is the question around global intelligence. Is the internet intelligent? We hear it said that the power of the internet is growing at an exponential rate. But surely we need to think slowly [not exponentially] about the difference in information or data and just what makes for power. The power of the internet does not rest in the data stored. Just as it is with our brains. The power is not in all the data stored in memory. No, the power is in the connections our consciousness makes of the data. There will be no global brain from the data stored on the internet. As I said, the power is in the ideas and expression of ideas through the text and graphics. Yet again, the power is not contained in the text or the graphics. The power is in the consciousness that takes in various ideas invoked from reading, seeing, hearing and makes connections; makes relationships from out of what Sam, Joe and Sally say about the world. So, I’m saying that it is the relationships between and among the data that may be known as power. Of course, speed of data collection, speed of data access, the speed of our ability to input new ideas is vital. Timeliness counts when we see how a series of ideas funneled into our minds make connections and result in insights that form a whole. Perhaps we could use the word emergence. The connections and relationships that we make from the data results in a power that exceeds the sum of the parts, the sum of the individual groupings of ideas.
I realize that some of those who speak of the global brain and question whether the internet will become conscious are far more intelligent and aware than I. However, I insist that creative thinking, creative expression comes out of consciousness and I don’t mean just humans. Have you ever watched a crow use a serious of three different sized and shaped sticks to winkle out a morsel of food? It is amazing.
Many scientists don’t speak of consciousness; probably deny that any such thing exists. However, you can fill a person with data day in and day out and some will never gain an iota, a molecule of insight out of it. Lots of people don’t see the forest for the trees. The plight of the frog that will sit quietly in a pot of warm water and not jump out before the water boils and kills it so long as the heat is raised slowly and gradually. Many people just don’t see relationships. I like to call it connecting the dots. Think of an old style raster image on a television phosphor. What is there is simply a series of dots and that goes for colour as well as black and white. The picture is formed by your consciousness. Right? You weren’t watching Jack Benny or Johnny Carson, you were only seeing dots; a matrix of dots with a scan repeat so fast that it looked like movement of wholes, movement of pictures. I expect all the data that we would ever need to understand the universe is available right now, but we don’t know because we cannot see the relationships of the great number of energy structures before us.
As I said, I believe we need to ponder the wondrous nature of consciousness, find out just where it resides and how it operates: find out where it goes, if it does go anywhere, when we experience what we call death.
Time will be better spent with these questions rather than be concerned that the internet will become conscious and we won’t even know it! Finally, I say these things with all due respect to those who don’t share my interest or concerns. Horses for courses!
An Interview with Jorie Graham III
Nov 2nd
An Interview with Jorie Graham Issue 2 (August 2012)
Earthlines Magazine
“People were clearly not meant to live as they
wished to live on the planet, as I could see it. The mismatch
between this species – with its needs and desires – and this
place was evident everywhere … Native Americans, in their
early history, knew how to live on land. But we took care
of that. Oh it made me and makes me half-crazed at times
with grief, then with rage, then with just total bafflement.
Most of my poetry has spent its time trying to figure out what
‘being’ is – human ‘being’ and non-human ‘being’. How do
they go together. Can they. What on earth is human desire. I
knew even then desire was our illness, as well as our stunning
spark. It has turned out to be more our illness. Our terminal
illness. What can I say. That is what I write from and about.”
What is the planet worth to you?
Feb 15th
The Gift of Good Land, Wendell Berry, 1981, Counterpoint,USA
“The forest could not survive because we could not see it; we saw clear fields. The prairies could not survive because in their place we saw cornfields and pastures sowed to the cool-season grasses of the old world. And this habit of assigning a higher value to what might be than to what is has stayed with us, so that we have continued to sacrifice the health of our land and of our own communities to the abstract values of money making and industrialism.” pg 82
I enjoyed bed and breakfast at the Farmhouse B&B in Barwick near Yeovil this last Friday and Saturday nights. The breakfast room contains a fantastic library of literature, history, politics, religion, some fiction and much more. I happened to pick up this book and found the quote above. Barwick is just a hamlet. There I found the peace and quiet I crave more and more as the years grow on me. With the quiet and time to reflect, I let myself become somewhat depressed over the impact and truth of the above.
In my book, Planet as Self, I ask: why do we not love the Earth, Gaia? My answer is that it is because we don’t know who we are. We have lost the connection, the realisation perhaps of our higher self, the self that is the planet. We are taught that we live ON a planet when actually, we are the planet similar to how the leaves are the tree. Think about it, is the tree its roots? Is it its trunk, branches, bark? All these so called parts – as human language labels them – are the tree.
We are taught, as unbelievable as it may appear to some, that the planet is inanimate – dead, with live bits clinging to the surface. Stop and think about it, please. How does life emerge from non-life? There attempts to explain this, for instance, the hot bubbly, chemical soup that just happened to spring forth life. Emergent properties within matter. It may be our dichotomies that obscure our vision, our understanding. Those same people who go with the emergent properties story must agree that science will not and perhaps cannot agree as to just what it is life and what is not life. Without that answer, then to say that life just emerges from within somewhere, somehow doesn’t really help us much to understand existence.
At the present moment in history, there is far more evidence to support the idea of a living planet, a conscious planet than the idea of inanimate matter that just happened to conjure up life from non-life. The Gaia theory suggests that the Earth behaves as if it is a living organism. Many scientists agree on this. “As if.” However, let us be honest with ourselves, if it walks like a turtle, looks like a turtle, eats what turtles like to eat, pulls in its head and feet when threatened, then it is a turtle. Why not? How else do you recognise a turtle?
“We will not fight to save what we do not love.” Stephen Jay Gould. Yes, Stephen has a good point here. As long as the planet is “out there.” As long as we feel the separation and continue to think that Nature is to be somehow overcome and controlled we will remain still. I ask myself, how much sacrifice is the planet worth? I am not happy with my answer, are you happy with yours?
Gaia Eros
Nov 7th
GreenSpirit, Summer 2005
Jesse Wolf Hardin
GAIA EROS:Reconnecting to the Magic and Spirit of Nature
The Career Press, Franklin Lakes NJ (USA) 2004.
ISBN 1–56414–729–0 (pbk)
Jesse Wolf Hardin’s new book bears an accurately descriptive title. Gaia, the living, conscious, inspirited Earth, and eros, the love of the Earth. Gaia Eros – Earth love. Its thirty-eight small chapters felt to me more like a collection of love poems than a series of essays. Unconnected by a logical, progressive unfolding of ideas, each is complete in itself like musical variations on a theme – the theme of Earthly love.
In much the same vein as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau, Wolf writes and talks from out of his personal experience, revealing his love affair with the larger domain of himself. Love for others, and for all of Nature, must be grounded in love of self. Not so much the egoic, personal self, but more the larger Self fully embodied in the sacred skin of the living Earth. ‘Earthen Spirituality’ or ‘New Nature Spirituality’ is what Wolf likes to call it.
All his chapters – or poetic vignettes – are like expressions of the lover speaking from a heart saturated with over twenty-five years spent in the sensual, erotic bower of his beloved canyon. It is a place of cool breezes and laughing waters, thick and luxuriant with a backdrop of forest and stately cliffs rising to lofty crags and pinnacles. Cool boulders of bold design dotted with hardy cacti lie among fallen limbs in and among sand washed down with Autumn thundershowers. “I’m excited,” says Wolf. And having walked the sacred canyon myself, I understand and share that excitement.
Of course, the American Southwest has no monopoly on beauty. Equally, there may be the loveliness of a potted plant, hedgerows of campions interspersed with the withering bluebell blossoms past their prime and forming seed. The joyfully sounding song of the robin shortly before his summer silence or the melodious notes of the blackbird taking a short break from the relentless task of feeding her young; all are equal parts of Gaia. As Wolf puts it, “the interpenetration and interrelationship of all her sacred parts.”
Interwoven with the affirmations of joyful communion with Gaia are several invigorating themes. I’ll just touch on a few. Earthen Spirituality promises no transcendent answer or creed. Where is it that we think we might go? The Tao is within, not out there somewhere. There is no need to look further than our Earthly home for sustenance. In my own words: let us wholly immerse ourselves in the love and beauty of Gaia and let Gaia, who is better equipped, deal with cosmic consciousness. Our connection to the cosmos must come through Gaia. We, as earthling animals, simply don’t have the sensors to deal directly with galactic spirit.
And why should we be concerned? Can we not be satisfied with being Earthlings?
Wolf says-”Earth is a spirit-embodied being, sexually charged and reproductive, but also sensitive and vulnerable. In this way our playmate, partner, and lover.”
In Chapter 11, there is a fairly detailed ‘Anatomy of a Quest’ as guided by the residents of the Earthen Spirituality Project in the magical Gila Mountains of New Mexico, USA, once the abode of the Mogollon (‘Sweet Medicine’) people.
A major part of the New Nature Spirituality involves “recreating a practice that is true to our mixed heritage and found homes, true to the current needs of self and earth in these contemporary times.” Avoiding ‘cultural appropriation’, we need authentic rituals that reflect our new understanding of Gaia, (what I call ‘rituals of uncertainty’). These must be pulled from the heart and shared. Early on, in Chapter 2, there is a ‘sweet medicine query,’ a preparatory rite of passage into the book. This mental preparation seems to parallel the two mile walk into the canyon, where the visitor must cross the usually calf deep river seven times.
Some other charming chapters feature such things as ‘Mulberry Truths’ – a collection of affirmations and truths from Nature’s storehouse, and ‘Lessons of the Furry Buddhas’ – things the author has learned from bobcats, such as: “Anytime you’re not actively being pursued, don’t bother being afraid”. Then there is Wolf’s ‘Ode to Wilderness’, an impassioned testimony rather than reasoned argument. In Gaia Eros one also finds a detailed example of restoring and resacramenting land, beautiful suggestions for reclaiming the ever present ‘now’ and several interviews which help the reader to be come better acquainted with the author. These and others are all illustrated with Wolf’s art.
In a culture that is currently threatening to bring about “the end of Nature”, Gaia Eros is a Song of Songs, an inspirited beacon piercing through the darkness.
Sky McCain
A beautiful story
Nov 5th
Deep Intellect
Inside the mind of the octopus
by Sy Montgomery
Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine
Comment:
Camilla B. on Nov 04, 2011
It’s hard to convey the way I felt when I first saw a small octopus in the wild (hiding in a crevice below a dock in theFlorida Keys). My whole heart responded to it with a tenderness which we reserve for the completely harmless, and the completely innocent. The recognition of another mind, soul and personality was instantaneous. I’ve never felt such a deep and immediate connection to any other creature. It was amazing, unworldly.
Part of my comment:
I believe that there is just one consciousness, that of our higher self, Gaia. We are the planet. We are in a sense being lived rather than living “on” a planet.
Each material object expresses Gaia’s consciousness to the extent of its development. Gaia loves and cares for all parts of herself.
The flood of love and acceptance Camilla B. above has experienced may just be evidence of our spiritual connection, a connection based on being “in” rather than “on” our greater self.