Inside/Outside

...and up/down, forward/back, here/there, past/future, me/you, them/us...

It seems odd to me that in an age where everything seems to have fragmented into a million conflicting pieces (the 20th and 21st centuries) was also the age that science discovered what the philosphers of antiquity already knew: that the Cosmos is one eternal and unbroken whole.

I would like to quote from Ken Wilber's No Boundary,pp.34-35, to begin what I hope will be some continuing information on this blog about the nature of reality, the transpersonal realms including the Imaginal, and the nature of spacetime as it is perceived in these various places: But the 17th century scientists didn't just resurrect the meta-boundary of number and measurement and then sophisticate it. They went one step further and produced (or rather, perfected) an entirely new boundary of their own. Incredible as it seems, they came up with a boundary on the meta-boundary. They introduced the meta-meta-boundary, better known as algebra.

Put simply, the first boundary produces a class. The meta-boundary produces a class of classes, called number. The third or meta-meta-boundary produces a class of classes of classes, called the variable. The variable is best known as that which is represented in formulas as "x," "y," or "z." And this variable works like this: just as a number can represent any thing, a variable can represent any number. Just as five can refer to any five things, "x" can refer to any number over a given range.

By using algebra, the early scientists could proceed not only to number and measure the elements, but also to search out abstract relations between those measurements, which could be expressed in theories, laws, and principles. And these laws seemed, in some sense, to "govern" or "control" all things and events marked off with the very first type of boundaries. The early scientists produced laws by the dozens: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Force is equal to mass times the acceleration of the en-forced body." The amount of work done on a body equals the force times the distance."

This new type of boundary, the meta-meta boundary, brought new knowledge, and, of course, explosive new technological and political power. Europe was rocked with an intellectual revolution the likes of which mankind had never seen. Just imagine: Adam could name the planets; Pythagoras could count them; but Newton could tell you how much they weighed.

Notice, then: this entire process of formulating scientific laws was based on three general types of boundaries, each building on its predecessor and each being more abstract and generalized. First, you draw a classifying boundary, so as to recognize different things and events. Second, you search among your classified elements for ones that can be measured. This meta-boundary allows you to shift quality to quantity, classes to classes of classes, elements to measurements. Third, you search for relationships between the numbers and measurements of the second step until you can invent an algebraic formula embracing them all. This meta-meta-boundary converts measurements to conclusions, numbers to principles. Each step, each new boundary, brings you a more generalized knowledge, and hence more power.

With this information from Ken Wilber, I think we can begin to see how scientists felt an ever-increasing need to break the world down into its constituent parts--indeed just to 'break' the world as one would 'break' a horse. The thing was, humanity wasn't becoming more civilized or moral in pace with these incredibly huge advances. Many tragedies happened because of this and continue to happen because of this. I wonder sometimes what the world would be like today if mankind didn't have such a strong urge to classify and 'break' things down into their individual components? I also wonder if the descriptions brought back to us from those who have had experiences with 'the other side'-or at least the denizens of these strange places-from UFO contact, to encounters with gnomes or nature-spirits, to entheogenic/meditative experiences etc. I wonder if these people are telling us of a world or level of reality that isn't so broken down? Or maybe more-so?(heaven help us if that is the case!) The image is of the 'radio active' galaxy Centaurus A. Thanks for your awesome comments and peace to anyone stopping by!

Is There A Way Out? Part Seven

Before going back to Stanislav Grof and other people and things I would like to post some more of Ken Wilber's thoughts from No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth: "So successful was the mapping of nature that, to this day, our lives are largely spent in drawing boundaries. Every decision we make, our every action, our every word is based on the construction concious or unconscious, of boundaries. I am not now referring to just a self: identity boundary-important as that certainly is-but to all boundaries in the broadest sense. To makea decision means to draw a boundary line between pleasurable and painful things and then move toward the former.

The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one's boundaries, the more entrenched are one's battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries and the opposites they create.

Thus we suppose that life would be perfectly enjoyable if we could only eradicate all the negative and unwanted poles of the pairs of opposites. If we could vanquish pain, evil, death, suffering, sickness, so that life, joy, and health would abound-that, indeed, would be the good life and in fact, that is precisely many peoples' idea of Heaven. Heaven has come to mean, not a transcendence of all opposites, but the place where the positive halves of the pairs of opposites are accumulated, while Hell is the place where are massed all the negative halves: pain, suffering, torment, anxiety, sickness...

Progress, after all, is simply progress toward the positive and away from the negative. Yet despite the obvious comforts of medicine and agriculture, there is not the least bit of evidence to suggest that, after centuries of accentuating positives and trying to eliminate negatives, humanity is any happier, more content, or at peace with itself. In fact, the available evidence suggests just the contrary: today is the "age of anxiety," of "future shock," of epidemic frustration and alienation, of boredom in the midst of wealth and meaninglessness in the midst of plenty...

For in seeking to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, we have forgotten entirely that the positive is defined only in terms of the negative...In just the same way, all of the opposites share an implicit indentity. That is, however vividly the differences between these opposites may strike us, they nevertheless remain completely inseparable and mutually interdependent, and for the simple reason that the one could not exist without the other.

The inner unity of opposites is hardly an idea confined to mystics, Eastern or Western. If we look to modern day physics, the field in which the Western intellect has made is greatest advances, what we find is another version of reality as a union of opposites. In relativity theory, for example, the old opposites of rest vs. motion have become totally indistinguishable, that is, "each is both." An object which appears at rest for one observer is, at the same time, in motion for a different observer. Likewise, the split between wave and particle vanishes unto "wavicle," and the contrast of structure vs. function evaporates. Even the age-old separation of mass from energy has fallen to Einstein's E=mc^2, and these ancient "opposites" are now viewed as merely two aspects of one reality, a reality to which Hiroshima so violently bore witness.

It is for all these reasons that Alfred North Whitehead, one of the most influential philosophers of this century, set forth his philosophy of "organism" and "vibratory existence," which suggests that all the "ultimate elements are in their essence vibratory." That is, all things and events we usually consider are irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just 'like' the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration."

Thanks for all of your thoughtful and intelligent comments! I hope everyone stopping by has a wonderful weekend and week ahead!

Is There A Way Out? Part Six

The Chinese sage Lao-Tzu said: Is there a difference between yes and no?

Is there a difference between good and evil?

Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!

Having and not having rise together

Difficult and wasy complement each other

Long and short contrast each other

High and Low rest upon each other

Front and back follow one another.

We can wonder why our reality-our universe seems to be so grounded in opposites when you try to think of the 'nature of reality.' Light/Dark, Good/Evil, Ecstasy/Agony....ad infinitum seem to spring into existence together at the same moment you think of these concepts-one idea/concept being defined by its counterpart at the other pole of being that doesn't share any of the qualities of the idea being defined. Or does it?

From Ken Wilber's No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth from pages 15-27: "Even our highest abstractions rest on opposites. Logic, for instance, is concerned with the true vs. the false; epistemology, with appearance vs. reality; ontology, with being vs. non-being. Our world seems to be a massive collection of opposites.

It is certainly true that some of the things we call "opposites" appear to exist in Nature. There are for instance, big frogs and small frogs, large trees and small trees, ripe oranges and unripe oranges. But it isn't a problem for them, it doesn't throw them into paroxysms of anxiety...Likewise, there is life and death in the world of nature, but again it doesn't seem to hold the terrifying dimensions ascribed to it in the world of humans. A very old cat isn't swept with torrents of terror over its impending death. It just calmly walks out to the woods, curls up under a tree and dies.

According to the book of Genesis, one of the first tasks given to Adam was to name the animals and plants existing in nature...But Adam's real task was not so much thinking up names for the animals and plants, laborious as that undoubtedly was. Rather, the crucial part of his job was the sorting out process itself... He had to learn to draw a mental boundary line between the various groups of animals, because only after he did this could he fully recognize, and therefore name, the different beasts. In other words, the great task Adam initiated was the construction of mental or symbolic dividing lines."

To be continued....

Is There A Way Out? Part Five

I would like to post some of Ken Wilber's thoughts on suffering from his book No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth published in 1979 from pages 85-86: "The movement of descent and discovery begins at the moment you consciously become dissatisfied with life. Contrary to most professional opinion, this gnawing dissatisfaction with life is not a sign of "mental illness," nor an indication of poor social adjustment, nor a character disorder. For concealed within this basic unhappiness with life and existence is the embryo of a growing intelligence, a special intelligence usually buried under the immense weight of social shams. A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life is, at the same time, beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities. For suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality, and forces us to become alive in a special sense-to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided. It has been said, and truly I think, that suffering is the first grace. In a special sense, suffering is almost a time of rejoicing: for it thanks the birth of creative insight.

But only in a special sense. Some people cling to their suffering as a mother to a child, carrying it as a burden they dare not set down. They do not face suffering with awareness, but rather clutch at their suffering, secretly transfixed with the spasms of martyrdom. Sufferring should neither be denied awareness, avoided, despised, nor glorified, clung to, dramatized. The emergence of suffering is not so much good as it is a good sign, an indication that one is starting to realize that live lived outside unity consciousness is ultimately painful, distressing, and sorrowful. The life of boundaries is a life of battles-of fear, anxiety, pain, and finally death. It is only through all manner of numbing compensations, distractions, and enchantments that we agree not to question our illusory boundaries, the root cause of the endless wheel of agony. But sooner or later, if we are not rendered totally insensitive, our defensive compensations begin to fail their soothing and concealing purpose. As a consequence, we begin to suffer in one way or another, because our awareness is finally directed toward the conflict-ridden nature of our false boundaries and the fragmented life supported by them.

Suffering then, is the initial movement of the recognition of false boundaries. Correctly understood, it is therefore liberating, for it points beyond boundaries altogether. We suffer, then, not because we are sick, but because intelligent insight is emerging. The correct understanding of suffering, however, is necessary in order that the birth of insight is not aborted. We must correctly interpret suffering in order to enter into it, live it, and finally live beyond it. If we do not correctly understand suffering, we simply get stuck in the middle of it-we wallow in it, not knowing what else to do."