Matt Chait - Saturday, May 16, 2009

DEFINING LIFE

http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/

What is life? The demarcation between what is living and what is not seems so obvious to the average person that it is surprising to learn how much difficulty there is in the scientific community defining just what life is. Richard Dawkins who is considered by many, especially himself, as the foremost expert on the origin and evolution of life writes, “Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like ‘living’ does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.” This may be a charming admission of humility in our 'foremost authority' but if a word like 'life' does not refer to anything definite, how can words like the 'origin of life' or the 'evolution of life' refer to anything definite either? If Dawkins begins without a clear definition of life, then how in the world does he know that any of his conclusions as to life's origin and development are in any way accurate? Is it possible that what Dawkins loquaciously espouses, whether we agree with it or not, is not really the origin and development of life, but merely the origin and development of the equipment that life uses?

Scientists often employ a list of the shared functions of life as a definition for life. In other words, life, by this definition, is "that which grows and develops, metabolizes energy, reproduces, eliminates waste and reacts to changes in its environment." Defining anything as "that which....." is never entirely satisfactory. If I say that my sister is "that which......eats ricotta cheese and Macoun apples, sends me a birthday card every year, and loves British television shows" all of which may be true, there is still some essence of my sister that is missing from this, or any, list of her activities, no matter how complete. Even if I listed every detail of my sister's daily life, behavior and history, which I would never do (I don't want you showing up at her door step saying, "So you're the sister of that guy with the weird blog!") it would still not capture her essence. I would be describing her behaviors and characteristics but not the person that performs those behaviors and that has those characteristics.

Let's suppose that we could construct the body of a robot that could somehow perform mechanically all the tasks of life that I mentioned above: growth, digestion, replication, etc. Let's imagine that this robot, behaviorally and physically, resembled a human being so well that you were fooled and did not know that this 'being' was, in fact, a robot. One day the robot breaks down; it suddenly stops. An expert is called in and you watch as the robot is dismantled, repaired and then restarted. The robot, then, continues on with no interruption of its earlier activities and no sense of regret or fear about what had happenned to it. When it needed a repair, it simply stopped. It did not care whether it stopped or not; it had no concern about whether it got repaired and remained functional or stood there, frozen in space and time. You would probably feel duped, because every communication that you had with this robot, while you thought it was a real human being, you had assumed was accompanied by some degree of genuine feeling and volition, that the robot was saying what it felt like saying, that it was talking because it wanted to. Now you realize that there was no feeling at all; that the robots words and intonations and facial expressions may have been artfully adjusted to give the impression of feeling and spontaneity, but that there was no real feeling or volition there; that there was no self capable of experiencing feelings or capable of 'wanting' to do anything. This revelation would probably feel similar to, but more intense than, the feeling that you have when you realize that the person talking to you on the phone is not making genuine conversation but is reading from a sales script, or worse, that it is a recorded message. So here is, at least, a hypothetical example of something, a robot, which could conceivably be designed to fulfill all those biological functions on the 'life' list in some kind of a mechanical way and yet still not be alive. One of the criteria that we use to determine that the robot is not alive is that the robot has no ability to care, if not for someone else, at least for its own survival; and that it has no desires of its own; but let's hold this line of inquiry for a moment while we consider something else.

The activities that are used to define life: growing, developing, metabolizing,etc., we do not actually do. We are so used to saying that we do these things that it may be shocking to learn that we actually do not. Now I don't want to underestimate anyone who may be reading this blog. I know you are very intelligent and capable, but, in truth, do you know how to grow your own body and metabolize energy from food sources and or is it done for you? If you do know, please don't tell anyone. You would immediately put several thousand research biologists out of business and our economy is suffering enough already. Please don't think that I am splitting hairs. If living is so elusive a concept that we are forced to define it by the things that living beings do, let's at least list those things that we actually do and not list processes that go on in our bodies, processes that we depend on, that serve us in vital ways, but that we do not actually execute and know next to nothing about. And don't confuse those few facts that you learned in biology class with your ability to do anything at all on a biological level. Our very best Nobel Prize biologists cannot begin to create anything from scratch, from basic elements, that metabolizes, grows, is responsive to it's surroundings, etc. And even the most brilliant biology students were breathing, metabolizing and growing just fine way before they ever heard of or could pronounce the word 'biology.'

Suppose you are acquainted with a very wealthy playboy who spends his entire time loafing and entertaining himself. Bewildered by his life style you ask him what he does. He proudly tells you that he manufactures tires, several million of them every year. Upon further investigation you discover that this tire business was, in fact, inherited from his father who inherited it from his grandfather. This gentleman's entire involvement with the tire business is to show up once a year for a board meeting during which he struggles to stay awake because he has so little knowledge of any of the business details that are being discussed. You have discovered the truth; that this fellow does not, in fact, manufacture tires; but that the tires are manufactured by others for his benefit. He is served by the manufacture of these tires but he does not really manufacture them. Likewise for the trophy wife who responds to an inquiry of just what it is that she does, by saying that she is raising her three children and maintaining a ten room house. You subsequently find out that she and her husband employ two full time maids, a full time nanny,a chauffeur and a cook. The kids are woken up and gotten ready for their prep schools by the nanny, cooked and served breakfast by the cook and driven to school by the chauffeur, while our 'housewife' sleeps in. After school they are in the care of the nanny who tries to keep them occupied until dinner, which is prepared by the cook and served by the maid, at which point the children may be joined, on ocassion, by their mother if her social schedule permits. Once again, she is not bringing up children or maintaining a home. It is all being done for her. She is benefitting from it; all these people serve her, but she is not actually doing the work and probably does not know how to.

Getting back to accurately defining life, with this understanding, life is not "that which metabolizes, grows, develops, eliminates, etc." but life is "that which is served by a metabolic system, a process of growth and development, and systems of reproduction and elimination." Is this the best we can do to define life and to define ourselves? No wonder Dawkins questions whether there is any such thing as living and others believe that consciousness is the same thing as the physical brain and the self is a figment of our imagination. Defining life by the processes that serve it would be like writing an obituary for a great woman or man by simply listing this person's staff, assistants and aides with no mention of the person's actual accomplishments.

Abraham Lincoln was a great man. He was assisted in life by a devoted mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, a brilliant Secretary of State, William H. Seward, an astute Secretary of the Treasury, Salman P. Chase, and a fearless general, Ulysses S. Grant. Oh, yes, he was assassinated in 1865. What a shame!

This kind of definition is almost comically demeaning to Lincoln's life. Were there no things that we could list that Abraham Lincoln actually accomplished himself; nothing for which he, himself, could be proud? Of course there were. Yet this is very similar to the way that we currently define ourselves as living beings. By defining living as a list of biological processes, processes that, supposedly, came about accidentally, randomly and mechanically (Darwin and Dawkins), and processes that cannot be properly understood, supposedly, without years of post graduate study and research; well, where does that leave the vast majority of us? Is there nothing about life, about us, that is unique? Nothing in which we can take pride or gratitude or even understand and appreciate?

If life is too elusive to define it directly, could we at least define it by isolating those activities that we actually do; activities that distinguish us from inanimate objects and even distinguish us from the organic materials of our bodies; from fats and proteins and nucleic acids; and from the biological processes that these materials are engaged in? Can we say what it is that these processes serve? What is it that these processes allow us, and all of life to do? With Richard Dawkins' objection duly noted, I can say, emphatically, yes, we can. Life is that which experiences and initiates. All our biological processes serve us in that they allow us to experience and to initiate; our sense organs allow us to experience the physical world in a particular way and our brains allow us to record and define those experiences; and our nervous systems, skeletons and musculature allow us to express, or manifest, our desires in the physical world. We, as living beings as opposed to matter, experience things and we do things because we want to do things. Now I know that I am suggesting a complete paradigm shift in the way that we look at life and that my words may have already provoked in you a torrent of materialist objections. I will anticipate some of these objections and try to respond to them later in the post. For now, let's return for a moment to our foremost expert on life, Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins would have us believe that prior to life there was no consciousness, no purpose and no initiative. There was merely the random collision of atoms, expanding and contracting, combining to form molecules and separating into individual atoms again. (The fact that these combinings and expansions and contractions followed an uncannily precise and inviolable set of physical laws without which there would be no atoms,no molecules, no galaxies and no Big Bang, which supposedly put this whole thing in motion; and where these laws came from, is never explained or discussed). Again, according to Dawkins, the first self initiated action in the entire universe, the first thing that was done by 'itself' (prior to this moment there was no such thing as a self) was that a randomly accumulated molecule 'made a copy of itself', it self-replicated. That the first self-initiated action in the universe was made by a molecule (no known organic molecule initiates anything, but merely, and automatically, responds to enzymes and electronic stimuli connected to the needs and cycles of a cell) and that this first initiated action was not some simple movement or simple starting or stopping, but replication, perhaps the most baffling and complex of all biological activities; and that the molecule that self-replicated just happenned to be made of nucleic acids that were arranged in a code that coded for proteins each of which proteins must be of an absolutely precise shape, charge and chemical composition to be of any biological value what so ever;and that this code was not like any other code we know, like letters or numbers or computer code; but these nucleic acids arranged themselves into codes, which is equivalent to letters arranging themselves into novels, numbers arranging themselves into equations and the high and low frequency charges of computer code arranging themselves into software programs; and that the entire mechanism for translating this code into proteins, which mechanism is similar to our best modern day computers, except much more precise and complex, had also and simultaneously accumulated by itself;and the amazing system whereby these proteins are then combined with each other and energized to form a specific and growing body with a specific and growing shape; all of this somehow being done by itself; and how the organic ingredients (think raw eggs without their shells) of this molecule could accumulate over millions of years without any protection (in our bodies our DNA is protected by the wall of the nucleus, the wall of the cell,our skin and the homeostatic processes of our bodies, and we live in an age of moderate temperatures, not an age of boiling oceans, enormous volcanic eruptions and constant asteroid bombardments which were the conditions of the early earth when all of this "accumulating" was supposedly taking place) and how this self replicating molecule could not only replicate its chemical composition but it could replicate this relentless desire to replicate which continues in its progeny to this day; all of this is never explained. And not only is it not explained, but if it is questioned, then the questioner is considered to be someone who is insufficiently educated or too blinded by deep seated religious prejudices to accept the truth of Dawkins' teaching.

If you think this is how life began, it may be time to think again (please see my posts ORIGIN OF LIFE and IMMACULATE REPLICATION). Yet however you think life began, whenever it did begin, along with it began the desire to survive. Before life, there was nothing that cared whether it survived or not. Certainly atoms didn't care if they turned into a gas or a liquid or a solid; if they combined with other atoms to form molecules or separated into individual atoms again. No one and no thing cared. It was simply, in Dawkins' vision, a mechanical universe, with every action caused by a reaction and those actions and reactions determined by specific, unalterable physical laws (with matter, nothing matters).

With the advent of life we have something completely different. We have a revolution on several fronts. First of all, regarding the unalterable physical laws (gravity, electomagnetism, strong force and weak force), these did not change, but with the advent of life came the advent of metabolic systems. What is a metabolic system? It is a system in which energy is borrowed and directed to accomplish a purpose. Replication, or any biological process, cannot take place without borrowed energy. Life processes still operate within the four forces of physics, but life forms are metabolic systems that use energy to overcome these forces to accomplish a goal. On a behavioral level we use energy to overcome these physical forces and the energy used to overcome these forces we call desire. On a biological level, energy is used to overcome these forces in order to operate biological processes and we call that energy will. The purpose of will is to survive. But what is trying to survive? Certainly not the atoms and molecules of the body. Why would atoms and molecules suddenly care about what form they were in? What wants to survive is the being that experiences the world and that fulfills desires through this body. We want the biological processes that serve us to keep going so that we can continue to experience the world and to some degree fulfill our desires through this body. When survival attempts fail, the being that imbues the body with purpose and that experiences things through the body leaves and the lifeless physical body, suddenly devoid of purpose and no longer the ground of anyone's experience, yet still containing all its molecules and atoms, remains.

Along with metabolic systems and the will to survive, the advent of life brings with it the advent of experience. Suddenly, there is a self, there is a 'that' which experiences that. Please note that I did not say that the first known life forms, primordial bacteria, had souls. The idea of a 'soul' is connected to the idea of someone's ability to contemplate their place in the universe. Do I believe in contemplative bacteria? No. Do I believe that bacteria have self-consciousness in that they carry around some idea or some picture of themselves? No, of course not. I am simply saying that bacteria experience things in a way that non-living congregations of molecules do not.

Bacteria are equipped with a light sensitive membrane. What is the purpose of this membrane? It allows the microbe a level of discernment that enables it to distinguish to some degree what there is in the environment that it should avoid (predators, toxins, etc.) and what there is in the environment that it should pursue (edible materials, water, etc.) Now if we agree that microbes are equipped with a system whose purpose is discernment, then we must ask what or who is it in the microbe that is doing the discerning? What or who is it that is using this information to decide to move toward this perceived object or to move away; to eat or not to eat? You may say, no, the microbe just automatically goes toward the nutrients it needs and automatically avoids predators. But what is that automatic process? We know that negative and positive charges will automatically attract each other like the opposite poles of a magnet. Is this the same thing? Are bacteria drawn to nutrients in the same way that iron filings are drawn to a magnet? If so, then why have any system of discernment at all? You have probably read in the Darwin section of your biology textbooks how the light sensitive membrane is the pre-cursor of the human eye and you have probably seen charts plotting the gradual, step by step perfection of organs of vision (absolute nonsense, by the way. There is no step by step genetic process leading from a light sensitive membrane to a human eye. That would be like going from a doll house to the Taj Mahal, by adding on to the doll house and along the way having it turn into a lean to, a hut, a bungalow, a ranch house, a mansion, a palace, and voila..the Taj Mahal. If you ever get a chance to build a Taj Mahal you'd probably want to start from scratch, not by building add-ons to your doll house, although you might want to use some ideas that you gleaned in the process of creating and designing all those earlier structures when you set about to build the latest one). But still it is indicative of the obvious understanding that light sensitive membranes allow the bacteria (again, not the body of the bacteria, but the being that inhabits that single cell) to determine where to go. Now I am not saying that bacteria have free will or that they spend any time wondering what they will do at any given moment. Bacteria are driven, but not by automatic forces, like a robot, but by powerful desires, like living beings. In other words, bacteria go toward nutrients because they are attracted to those nutrients. But that attraction is an experienced attraction. It is not the passive, unexperienced attraction of iron filings moving toward a magnet; it is the experienced attraction of a living being moving toward something that attracts 'it.' For this to take place there has to be some biological equipment that reacts in some way to environmental signals and there has to be an 'it', which is a living being, which experiences this biological reaction as an irresistible desire. Do bacteria have free will? Do they have any choice in the matter? Probably not, but that is not because they are automatons, it is because the desires that they experience are irresistible and overwhelming.

Now let's look at where biology ends and desire begins. Biologists think that we eat because our body needs nourishment; we sleep because our body needs restoration and we have sex because we need to propagate the species. But biologists look exclusively at the equipment that we use and not at the experiences we actually have. In reality we do not do any voluntary actions for biological reasons. Yes, involuntary processes are driven by biological survival needs, but our voluntary behavior is completely different. We have little to no idea and no control of what is going on inside our bodies. If the great majority of us in the twenty-first century are basically ignorant of what is happening within our bodies on a biological level, then, certainly, primordial bacteria had no idea either. We don't eat and bacteria don't eat eat because our blood sugar is too low or some other chemical is depleted; we eat because we are the recipients and the beneficiaries of an amazing system whereby the nutrients we need to ingest seem pleasurable to us when we need to ingest them. We eat because we find food to be delicious. We eat because we want to. And the more our bodies need the nourishment, the more delicious it seems. We sleep not to biologically restore our bodies, but because the idea of sleeping seems pleasurable and appealing to us and the more we need it, the more appealing it seems. We eliminate waste not to reduce toxins but because the build up in our bladders and intestines is uncomfortable and the release is pleasurable. And, of course, we have sex because we desire it, not to propagate the species. While our bodies 'need' certain things, we, not as bodies, but as beings, do the things and take in the things that our bodies need because we 'want' to, and we want to because it feels good. Every life form inherits a complete and utterly amazing system (that is never even discussed or considered by Dawkins and his ilk) whereby the things that it needs to survive are pleasurable to it and the things that threaten its survival are painful to it. Please think about this. This elaborate but uninvestigated system is so much a part of every life form that we may think of it as inevitable; that it is just the way that it is. But it is not inevitable. Because there are certain electrical and chemical processes in your stomach and intestine and in certain areas of your brain does not automatically translate into hunger and a desire for nutritious food. The fact that there are other chemical and electrical processes in your body during puberty, does not automatically translate into the desire for sex. Hunger and the desire for sex are carefully designed coded responses to these electrical and chemical activities. This is an entire system, above and beyond the visible, electro-chemical biological systems that we are used to studying; an incredibly specific and balanced system whereby what we 'want' is exactly that which will deliver our survival and our replication. And we cannot possibly imagine such an amazing and intricate system 'evolving.' For any life form to exist beyond the first few minutes, it must want what it biologically needs, and want to avoid what will biologically destroy it. You cannot imagine generations of life forms evolving by any random gradual process to be able to be aware of these chemical and electrical responses that we now call thirst, and then evolving randomly to the point that they can identify that "thirst" sensation as a desire to drink, and evolving generations later to learn that that sensation will be satisfied by water and then still later evolving a method of finding the water and then still later evolving a biological method of drinking it. This is all absurd. Darwin's principle of natural selection is based on the idea of nature selecting from a group of competitors the one's best able to adapt and survive; but there can be no living competitors to select from, at all, unless these competitors are already metabolizing, growing, replicating, digesting, eliminating and sensing their environment; and unless they already have in place an entire system whereby they are attracted to the nutrients and the water and the temperature changes they need at the time when they need it.

You may say that these behaviors and attractions are genetic. You can even see how these behaviors become distorted and self-destructive when genes are damaged by radiation mutations. This is true. Yes, the perfect balance of our behaviors with our biological needs is connected to our genes (connected but not 'caused' by genes. Bodies and human behavior are not caused by genes anymore than letters 'cause' novels or numbers 'cause' equations). I am saying that these basic life sustaining systems and behaviors could not have been 'learned' by the genes; that this could not have been evolving knowledge over any period of time; that it had to be there right from the inception of life forms or there would be no evolution and no survival at all; that it had to be part of the original design of life forms, and, if you prefer, I am happy to say the original genetic design of life forms (although genetic designs are like blue prints, or recipes; they don't write themselves; they are the materialization of creative ideas that are then written down in letters, numbers, diagrams or in the case of living bodies, in nucleic acids).

I want to say some more about this amazing system whereby the biological needs of our bodies are connected in perfect complementary balance to our desires. Very conservatively, there are at least ten quadrillion electrical and chemical processes taking place in our bodies at each moment. That is a lot of processes. If there are close to seven billion fellow human beings on this planet, that works out to well over a million processes for every man and woman and child on the Earth, all occurring within each of our bodies at every moment. How many of those processes are we in any way aware of? How many translate into any kind of experience whatsoever? An infinitesimally small amount. Not only do we (the great, great majority of us) not know anything about what is going on in our bodies, we are not even 'aware' of what is going on. Peristalysis, blood flow, enzyme production,every one of our one hundred trillion cells a beehive of frenetic molecular and electrical activity and we feel nothing. Let's say we felt, or were aware of 1%of these processes on some level. That means that we would be bombarded with one hundred trillion sensations at each moment. If we had any awareness of one billionth of what was going on that would leave us with several billion simultaneous sensations. In terms of my own experience, I may be able to handle and compartmentalize three or four conflicting sensations. Anything much more than that and I am paralyzed, a basket case. So, another aspect of this beautiful system, is that none of these processes, in any way, intrude upon our consciousness except when some behavior is required on our part. And exactly the same thing must be said for the primordial bacteria whose tiny one-celled body is host to hordes of molecules and countless electrons. Even in that microscopic body only a miniscule portion of electrical or chemical processes can be translated into any kind of microbial awareness or the result would be paralyzing.


Please don't take this for granted. Please don't say something senseless like, "That's just our stomach telling us it wants food," or "That's just our body letting us know it needs some sleep." Why is it that people who consider themselves so intellectually superior to "superstitious" concepts like cosmic consciousness or universal intelligence,or God, have no problem babbling such thoughtless drivel about hungry stomachs and talking bodies. Folks, your stomach is not hungry. Your stomach doesn't care whether you eat or not; your stomach doesn't care about anything. It's a stomach. It doesn't feel better when you eat; it doesn't feel worse when you don't eat. It doesn't feel anything at all. It's a stomach. And there is no such person as "your body." "Your body" doesn't want to sleep. Your body never feels tired and it never feels well rested. You feel tired; you feel well rested. Your body feels nothing at all. It's a body. Please understand that I am not demeaning this fabulous physical equipment that we have been given. The body is endlessly complex and endlessly amazing; and the more you study it the more complex and amazing it gets. But the body is not a being; it has no intentions; it doesn't experience anything; and it doesn't care about anything. It is your instrument that allows you, not your body, to experience the physical world and manifest your intentions in the physical world.

And it is not inevitable that a chemical and electrical reaction in your stomach should translate into an experience of hunger. There is no inevitable connection between electrons and chemicals and experience. If there were you would be reacting at every moment to your ten quadrillion chemical and electrical processes. Good luck with that! It is a system, an amazing, precise, selective and coded system. Basically the same electron flows at the same voltage and the same chemical deposits in the brain record every aspect of our entire human experience, intellectual, emotional, artistic, sensual, etc. There is no inevitable relationship between any electrical and chemical pattern and any experience. A Masai warrior uses basically the same system of neurons and the same electron flows and chemical deposits to record his experiences and help define his life that a Kalamazoo orthodontist uses to record his completely different experiences and help define his completely different life. Just like with other codes: there is no inevitable relationship between the code and what it is coding for; there is no inevitable relationship between the shape of the letters l o v and e and the experiences we associate with the word love; there is no inevitable relationship between the following shapes: p i r and 2 and the area of a circle. There is no inevitable relationship between a particular sequence of nucleic acids (genes) and a particular sequence of amino acids (proteins). They are coded that way because they have been organized that way. Codes are organized by intelligent beings (or, in the case of biological codes, by intelligent Being) as a way of communicating intelligent ideas and constructs from one being to another. They are intelligently conceived, intelligently organized, intelligently translated and intelligently experienced.

Why do we even say things like, "My body is telling me to lie down?" Because we can sense from the way these sensations impinge on our consciousness and from our ever beating hearts and our ever breathing lungs, that something or someone cares about us; something or someone wants us to take care of ourselves and survive. Why attribute that caring to feelingless and intentionless organs and tissues. Doesn't it make much more sense to attribute that caring to the Being whose limitless intelligence, limitless creativity and limitless caring supplied you with all this precious equipment in the first place? It is not your body that wants your body to survive. It is the Cosmic Conciousness or God whose boundless intelligence designed this amazing body and this remarkable system whereby you are alerted whenever you need to do something to help protect and sustain your body and its biological processes. It's not the body that wants you to get enough to eat. It's God that wants you to get enough to eat. It's not the body that created the amazing system of pain that alerts you whenver you are injuring yourself; it's God that wants to protect you and wants your body to survive so that you can experience the world and learn the things that you need to learn. And if you have negative associations with the word God because a nun was mean to you or a priest flirted with you or a rabbi was callous to you or a televangelist was seen at a peep show, or some pompous cynic like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or Bill Mahr told you it was old fashioned and superstitious, GET OVER IT! What anyone ever did who called themselves religious has absolutely nothing to do with the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Creator Who pervades every atom of this universe, and without Whom, despite all the desperate efforts of twentieth century science to avoid it, the Universe, our lives, how we got here, how the planet got here and how the galaxy got here, make absolutely no sense.

I have to mention two more things that, by Dawkins' world view, must be initiated by the arrival of that first 'replicating molecule.' The first thing, or two things, is good and bad. In a purely material world there is no good or bad, there is only indifference. If something explodes, if something contracts, if something heats up or cools down, it is of absolutely no difference to the atoms and molecules involved; and if there truly was, prior to the arrival of life forms, nothing else but particles, then what happenned was of absolutely no difference at all. With the arrival of life forms all that changes. Life forms want to survive and life forms need things from their environment in order to survive. If a life form gets what it wants then that, from the point of view of that life form, is good. If a life form does not get what it wants and does not survive, or can feel the end of its survival approaching, then that is bad. With life, then, there comes about points of view and good and bad outcomes. Life cares; if not about anyone or anything else, it cares, at least, about its own survival.

There is a lot of talk that you may have heard or read about the beginning of altruism and morality. Is it genetic or cultural; do animals have morality, etc.? But, for there to be altruism there has to be selfishness, and for there to be selfishness there has to be a 'self' with a self-interest and a point of view. When altruism appeared among life forms is another matter; but if you study gene swapping among bacteria, it's hard to imagine anything more altruistic (and more intelligent) than that process (see my post EVOLUTION). The point is that when life forms began, if we follow Dawkins' scenario, then, at that very moment, selves, points of view and good and bad began. So, this is yet another revolution, unexamined by Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists, that had to have begun with this 'accidental' accumulation of a molecule that 'makes copies of itself.'

And finally, the arrival of life forms, again from Dawkins' perspective, marked the arrival of intelligence. Those of you who think of intelligence as one of the advanced bells and whistles of the human brain may understandably gasp; but let me first explain what I mean by intelligence. Intelligence, like life, has eluded a solid definition by the scientific community. Like life, intelligence can be observed by its results in terms of behavior, speech and creativity, but it cannot be observed directly. Let me suggest that intelligence is not a thing that can be quantified or measured but an attitude. When a living being looks or listens or in any way attempts to read its environment to determine whether it is safe or dangerous, whether it can, at that moment, provide the food or water or rest or temperature change or safety that it needs, that 'attitude' is intelligence. Let's distinguish between intelligence and intellect. Intellect may be the sole province of human beings and may require language, numbers and other symbology. Intellect is the attempt to read and understand environments other than the one that is immediately facing you, including both real environments and conceptual environments. Intelligence is the attitude of attempting to read the environment that one is confronted with in the present moment in order to get one's needs met; and intelligence is the province of all of life. Are some species, and some individuals within a species better at getting their needs met than others? Yes, but the difference has to do with their biological equipment, their musculature, reaction time, sense organs, etc. Certainly, the more complex the sense organs, the more distinctions can be made and the more sensitive a read on the environment a life form has; and there is a very wide variety of equipment that a life form has in terms of fins or feelers or legs or wings, etc. to act on the information that it receives, and bigger brains allow more information to be stored and remembered and the ability to make more subtle distinctions among a variety of environmental cues. But the attitude is the same; the attempt to read the environent is the same; the readiness to marshall resources to respond to the received information is the same; and that attitude is intelligence; and it is something we share with all of life.

To re-iterate, life then is that which experiences and initiates and life has the characteristic of caring and intelligence. The last part of the definition that I would like to discuss is the 'that which' part. I said in the beginning that defining something as 'that which' is not entirely satisfactory, but in this case it will have to do. The reason we must settle for a 'that which' definition is that life is not really a thing, at all. Life is not content, but context. All through this post, with each characteristic of life I prefaced the discussion by saying that 'according to Dawkins' view' these characteristics: having a self, having desires, the ability to experience, intelligence and caring, all began with the beginning of life forms, and that beginning happenned with the chance accumulation of a molecule that could make copies of itself. But this is, of course, nonsense. Life forms did not begin with a randomly accumulated molecule, and caring, intelligence and purpose did not begin with the beginning of life forms. Before there were life forms there was life formless. Life formless or what we call cosmic consciousness or God included unlimited caring and intelligence before there were life forms and even before there was matter. It is out of life formless, out of unlimited intelligence and caring, that the physical laws came that engendered the material universe, and that the whole system of genetic reproduction, translation and transcription was conceived, that allowed not life, but life forms, life with a limited and specific perspective to manifest. Life itself is context, not content; it is not a thing but it is the invisible bowl within which you experience 'things' and it is the non-physical milieu out of which comes your desires to manifest things in the physical world.

Matt Chait - Saturday, March 14, 2009

EXPERIENCE

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I would really like your feedback on this post. I am making no assumptions here. I am writing simply about my experience. What I imagine is that your experience is very much like mine and I would like to find out from you if this is true or not. Now I am not going to be writing about the content of my experience. I know that the content of my experience is quite a bit different than the content of yours (thank God, or we would all die of boredom) and by content I mean not just the facts and memories that I have experienced, but the attitudes and the beliefs that I have about this experience. No, what I am talking about is a bit more subtle than that. I am talking about the context of my experience; not the experience, but who is experiencing the experience.

Now I realize that we are not a very reflective society, but I am asking that you reflect on my words before you give me feed back. I am not interested in what your biology teacher thinks or what your pastor thinks. I am not interested in your 'researched' answer. I am interested in you searching, not researching. Just ask yourself as you read this post, if this an accurate description of your actual experience, or does your experience differ in some way. Again, not what you have been taught, but what and how you actually experience things. And I know that in our society we are taught by experts, both scientific and religious, not to trust our experience. Scientists tell us that we, as layman, lack the knowledge to understand our experience, and that we must be guided by the latest research; also, that there are many things about our experience that we do not yet know, but that must await future research which may take several generations. Some pastors, rabbis, priests and imams, also tell us that we, as layman, can be easily deceived; that experience can be misunderstood and we can be led down a dangerous path. But again, I am not talking about the content, but the context of experience. I am not talking about anything that can be observed or researched, and I am not talking about any attitude or idea about how to relate to the physical universe. I am simply talking about us, not the content but the context of our experience.

The first thing that I want to say about my experience (and possibly yours) is that I am not my body. I am that which experiences my body. I can move around my body; in fact I can move any place along my brain/nervous system that I choose to. But I am not my brain/nervous system. I am that which is moving around my brain/nervous system. Often I choose where I want to go. If I want to remember something, I go to that part of my brain where I have stored those memories; those memories are stored in a coded system of neural pathways and chemical deposits. When I go there, I translate that code; and those neural pathways and chemical deposits become the memories of what I had previously thought or experienced. If I want to enjoy the taste of something I go to the taste buds in my mouth and the chemical interaction of the food in my mouth and my tastebuds becomes the delicious experience that I was seeking. If I want to feel something pleasurable I go to where my skin is touching that surface and I have a pleasurable experience when I attend to it. Until I get there (and by the way, I am not travelling by bus, my mode of transportation is my attention) all the above are electrical and chemical reactions. It is only when I attend to them that they become an experience of pain or hunger or pleasure or memory.

Now many scientists will tell me that when I feel hunger, it only feels like I am experiencing it in my stomach, and it only feels like I am experiencing tastes in my mouth. That what is really happening, is that those chemical sensations are being translated into electrical patterns and these are travelling to my brain and my brain, at the hunger center, and at the tasting center, is what is really experiencing these sensations. Before I respond to this objection, I would like to discuss vision. The complexity of the eye and the optic nerve have been a hot topic of debate among Darwinian evolutionists and intelligent designers. How could any structure with the exquisite and coherent complexity of a human eye possibly be constructed by the blind, random system of genetic mutations? I am going to quote something here from Michael Behe. Have you heard of him? He is an intelligent designer and a biochemist. Here is his explanation of how we see:

Here is a brief overview of the biochemistry of vision. When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in the shape of retinal forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior, making it stick to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into activated rhodopsin, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with activated rhodopsin, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)
GTP-transducin-activated rhodopsin now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to activated rhodopsin and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the ability to chemically cut a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, like a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub.

Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

My explanation is just a sketchy overview of the biochemistry of vision. Ultimately, though, this is what it means to "explain" vision.

Pretty complicated, eh? And notice that he says that this is just a 'sketchy' overview of vision. Now I am about to criticize Michael Behe, and in criticizing him I feel a little like a Democrat criticizing President Obama. Obama has enough criticism to deal with at the moment coming at him from the right; he doesn't really need criticism from the left. In the case of Michael Behe, it is not a criticism of left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative. With regard to Michael Behe, he is taking a daring and heroic stand as a career biochemist and is under a constant barrage of attack from the Darwinist establishment. This is not a criticism from the left vs. the right, but from a spiritual spiritualist, me, criticizing a spiritual materialist, Behe, who is under siege from material materialists, the Darwinian scientific establishment (please see my post MIRACLES).

But I do want you to notice one very important thing about Behe's explanation of vision: although I am sure that all the impressive details of his explanation are accurate, it is NOT an explanation of vision. It is an explanation of how photons of light are translated into electrical impulses in the optic nerve. What about actual seeing? After this entire complex and detailed description of how photons are translated to electrons, all he says regarding vision is the following:

The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

That's it. That is his entire explanation, after all that biochemistry, of how we translate those electrons into our actual experience of sight. To explain the translation of photons to electrons, three incredibly complex paragraphs which is only a 'sketch.' To explain the translation of electrons to the actual experience of vision, four words "interpreted by the brain." Okay, so where? Where is this brain interpretation taking place? Not where the optic neurons are located, but where the translation is located, the organ, the process, that translates the neural electrical patterns to vision?

And the answer, of course, is that there are no such organs or processes, electrical or chemical. When I focus on looking at something it seems like I am looking at it through my eyes, from just behind the retina, at the tip of the optical nerve. It seems that way because it is that way. That is where I experience vision from. That is where I, a non-physical being, am when I see. I see through and at my eyes, I hear through and at my ears (at the tip of the auditory nerve, just behind the cochlia), taste at my taste buds, and touch on my skin. All the endless discussion about an eye evolving by 'itself' makes absolutely no sense. An eye is of no use unless there is an intelligent being looking through that eye; and by intelligent I do not mean intellectual. The purpose of the eye is discernment; to distinguish one thing from another, and most simply, to distinguish what is harmful from what is needed. Intelligence is the ability to read one's environment to be able to distinguish what is needed from what is harmful and to adjust one's behavior correspondingly, or adaptively, so that one's needs can be met and one can survive. I appreciate the dilligent work that has gone into the enormously detailed analysis of the mechanisms of the eye, but what sense does it make without including, in one's understanding, the non-physical being with his or her non-physical intelligence, that is looking through that eye?

So why do I always have this corresponding neural activity in my brain when I am looking at something? Two reasons: The first is that my brain is RECORDING everything that I experience; but the brain is recording what I experience; it is not recording what my brain experiences (the brain, like the rest of my body is matter, and experiences nothing). The second reason, and the reason that I have a brain connected to my consciousness in the first place, is that I use the memories and thoughts and insights that I have recorded in my brain to help me DEFINE my experience. When I see a tree, I see those sensations of green and brown against a blue background, and my brain lets me know, by automatically conjuring associations that I have previously made, that those sensations are called a tree, that it is located in our backyard, and that it needs trimming.

Which brings me to another point. I can be in more than one place along my brain/nervous system at a time. I can be focussed and focussless. I can only focus deeply on one place at a time, but even when I do I am also receiving background information. So I am experiencing something and defining my experience simultaneously. Why do I do that? Because I want to. At a very early age I discovered that I didn't like bunking into things and falling into holes, so I decided, whenever I was moving, to be continually aware and interpreting peripheral visual signals even while I was focussing on something else. But besides peripheral awarenesses, my focus of experience, be it my eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or whatever, become the focal point for a whole raft of defining information and connected thoughts. These associations that I make are guided by the structures of my brain and by my desires; I automatically understand what I am experiencing because of the memories of related experiences that I have had and have recorded in my brain. These definitions allow me to establish and deepen my relationships to the physical world, my society and to other beings.

I am the seer of my sights, the hearer of my sounds, the thinker of my thoughts. I am that which experiences that. My fantastic sensory equipment and my fabulous brain assist me in defining what I am seeing and hearing and thinking, but all of my actual experiencing is not taking place on the physical plane, because I am not part of the physical plane. Matter does not experience anything; and matter does not initiate anything. Matter does not initiate anything because matter does not want to initiate anything. Folks, it's just matter. As amazingly complex and intricate as my eyes and ears and brain are, they are, still, just matter. They neither experience nor initiate. Me, a non-physical being, does that. What about you?

Your comments are most welcome.

Matt Chait - Thursday, August 7, 2008

THE GAME OF LIFE (A PARABLE)

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I am going to tell you a story. Actually I am going to tell you two stories, one is a fictional story and one is a real story; at least I think it's a real story. Let's say that it is as real as I can make it. The make believe story may sound realer than the real story, but I want to tell it to you to help you understand the real story. Hopefully, that will make more sense as we go along. Also, the make believe story begins before the real story begins. I start there so that you can better understand where the real story begins. Confusing? Sorry, but just bear with me. Here we go.

The make believe story is about us, you and me. Let's suppose that a very long time ago we were good friends, really good friends. Suppose that we became such good friends that we lost our interest in doing much of anything besides being with each other. And when we were with each other, since we knew each other so well, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between where one of us ended and the other began. I seemed to know how you would respond to something at the same moment that you actually responded and you knew the same about me. We developed our own secret language and we didn't even have to use it that much because as time went on we could just tell what the other was thinking by the subtlest movement or gesture.

Was this a sexual relationship? No, not really. A sexual relationship is based on separation and coming together. In a sexual relationship there is a feeling of desire, and a consummation of that desire. In this relationship, yours and mine, there was no real separation, therefore no real desire. Being together at this level did not feel like sex or the consummation of sex; it was not pleasurable in that way. If anything, it was more like the peaceful, bonded feeling that you would experience with a lover after sex; that sense of no desires and no barriers between the two, of oneness and complete openness.

As time went by we lost interest in all activities, even in the activities that we would normally do to maintain our bodies. We ate and drank very little and got almost no exercise. What did we do? We dreamt. At first I would explain to you what my dreams were like, and you would tell me about yours. And we would share these things in our own secret language that I mentioned before. We talked less and less. It seemed that just by uttering a few words, you would know exactly what I had been dreaming and vice versa.

As I said, we were eating and drinking very little. We had almost no desire, no energy in our bodies to do anything. But we did feel energy, not our own, but a kind of energy that was coming to us, that we were receiving. We first felt it as a tingling on our skin and especially at the top of our heads. At that time our dreams were normal dreams populated by the people and animals and objects of every day life. But then, as our own energy continued to diminish and the energy we were receiving became stronger and stronger, and we began to feel it, not just on the surface, but all through our bodies; after that our dreams, in a sense, became more primitive, more essential. Instead of imagining objects we started imagining fields and patterns of energy and color and sound and these seemed to underlie and contain all the objects that we had been dreaming about before, but in a more essential form. Not only our dreams but our actual perceptions of the world around us transformed into these patterns as well, and soon it became hard to distinguish our dreams from our reality. At that point we could no longer feel the contours of our bodies, just this rich flow of energy passing through us. Our bodies began to feel like indistinguishable parts of an endless and boundless energy pattern, so that it became impossible to tell where your body ended and mine began or where both of our bodies ended and the surrounding environment began. And as we continued to dream, the separate colors of these patterns that surrounded us consolidated into one color, and that color was white; and the separate sounds of these patterns consolidated into one sound, and that sound was AUM; and the separate energies of these patterns consolidated into one energy, and that energy was love. And all the colors of the world were contained in that white color, and all the sounds of the world were contained in that AUM sound, and all the energies of the world were contained in that boundless love. And where we ended and where the light and the sound and the love began was impossible to tell. There was no longer a separate listener and a separate sound, a separate seer and a separate sight, a separate lover and a separate beloved. There was only One.

.......And now I have to interrupt this story, which, as I said before, is a fiction, to let you know, just for a moment, that this is actually the beginning of the real story, which I will get to later.......

How long we stayed in this place of perfect peacefulness and unity is impossible to say, because there was really no way to judge the passage of time. But at some point, which I assume (and I may be wrong) was a very, very long time later, something strange happened. We began to get bored. As perfectly peaceful and comfortable as this existence was, and it was far, far beyond anything that we had ever experienced before; nothing ever changed. From within this perfect peacefulness began to grow a little restless seed. It was a kind of nameless desire, a desire not for anything specific, but more like a desire for desire. We wanted the excitement, the up and down, the satisfaction and even the frustration of having any desire at all. And this desire formed a separate squiggle of energy that was separate from the endless energy that we were swimming in. And with this new separate energy we began to do things. The first thing we did was eat. First we ate anything that we could just pick with our hands, like fruits and leaves. When we ate the fruits and leaves we still felt the universal energy, but it had receded to the surface of our bodies and our separate energy had gotten stronger. It was then that we noticed that the world had broken back down into the separate patterns and colors and sounds of energy that we had seen before. Then with this extra energy we built a fire and started cooking. Now we were able to eat root vegetables and grains. When we ate these root vegetables and grains we could still feel the universal energy, if we focused on it, and we felt even more separate energy in our bodies. It was then that we noticed that the world had returned to being solid shapes and forms, although we could still sense the energy running through it. So now that our bodies were strong again and we had all this energy, we needed something to do.

So we decided that we would play a game. It didn't matter which game we played. It was a long time ago and games had different names then, but they were games just like the games we play now: checkers, Monopoly, basketball, foot races, ping pong, etc. Whatever the game, we divided ourselves into two teams. I was black and you were white. I was skins and you were shirts. I was East and you were West. I was male and you were female.

Now our early attempts at playing these games were a complete failure. For instance in the case of basketball, as soon as you would get a serious look on your face, or push into me with any intensity as you dribbled past me, or let out with a victory yell when you made a basket, I would look at you, you would look back at me, and we would both devolve into giggles. No matter what game we played as soon as one of us got the least bit passionate about it, got the least bit involved with trying to win, even got a determined look on our faces, the other would do something to remind the passionate one of how silly he was being, and we would get weak-kneed at the ridiculousness of it all. Whatever intensity there was in the game would disappear. For a while this kind of superficial dabbling was great fun, but we grew weary of it. We longed for the experience of real involvement, of passion, of real victory, even if that also meant, which it invariably did, the experience of real defeat.

So we came up with something. The best way I can describe it is a kind of hypnosis, or a self-induced forgetfulness. We found a way to convince ourselves that we were really strangers, that we had no connection to each other at all. Then, when we played our games, we began to play with unbridled passion. We were no longer two inseparable beings, one of whom happened to be on the black team, and one of whom happened to be on the white team, one of whom happened to be on the male team and one of whom happened to be on the female team, one of whom happened to be on the rich team and one of whom happened to be on the poor team; we became in our own minds simply black or white, male or female, rich or poor. And since we had erased any memory of who we really were or where we had really come from, our complete identity, our entire sense of ourselves, revolved solely around how many victories or how many defeats we had managed to accumulate. (I should note that at this time as we were trying to conquer each other, we began to conquer animals as well. When we started eating lots of animals we became filled with even more of this separate energy, and competitiveness. Our separate energy got so strong that we could no longer feel the universal energy coming into our bodies, or sense it as it flowed through our surroundings. All we could see was physical objects.)

After a while these games proved unsatisfying too. No matter how many games I won, you never seemed, ultimately, to be defeated. You would always find some way to eke out another win. And I, also, perhaps goaded by the sting of a humiliating loss, would try that much harder and eventually turn the tables on you. We yearned to settle this thing once and for all, so that one of us would enjoy an ultimate and permanent victory and one would suffer an ultimate and permanent defeat. So we invented a new game, and we called that game war. But when we played that game a funny thing happened. At the end of a long battle, when we were locked together in mortal combat, as I was trying to wrest from you the knife that you had pressed against my throat, our eyes locked. As we were looking, not so much at each others eyes, but at the being that was emerging from behind those eyes, we both sensed, albeit dimly, a whiff of recognition of our common past and the love that we once had shared. All the energy that we had mustered to lock each other in a grip of death, at that moment, instantly drained from our bodies, and we stepped back in bewilderment. Who was this other person? Were you my enemy or my brother? Did I hate you or love you? Were you really this fearful stranger or just another aspect of myself?

As we looked at each other, not with hate or competitiveness, not with the objective of trying to detect vulnerabilities that we could exploit, but with unfettered and deep curiosity, we began to see in the other a whole new person, and these new perceptions, the way that you smiled and moved, the way you sounded and smelled and felt, each characteristic reverberated in another rusted tuning fork deep in our memories, and from behind the veil of our self induced forgetfulness (that nowadays we call the subconscious) came stirrings, vibrations, and each of these carried with it more memories of our mutual love. So we rushed at each other again and locked each other, not in a death grip, but in a loving embrace. And instead of devolving into giggles, as we had once done, we devolved into tears. We wept for all the injuries that we had caused each another in our attempt to defeat an enemy who wasn't an enemy at all. We wept for all the injuries that we had caused ourselves as we drove ourselves mercilessly to earn the respect of someone who had loved us from the very beginning. We wept for our inability to not find a way to participate and compete enthusiastically in this life without having to forget that we were really one and that separation is a game that we play, and that in honoring our competitors we honor ourselves. And we wept for the waste; the wasted time that we spent worrying and fretting and driving ourselves into despair about a competition that was really no more than a game; the wasted energy that we spent in arming ourselves and protecting ourselves from an enemy whose only reason for trying to harm us was because he thought we were trying to harm him; and we wept for the insanity of it all, the deluded sense of self importance and entitlement that we enjoyed briefly when we experienced a few tawdry victories, and the intensity of our shame when we suffered a few trivial defeats.

And when we had repented all these past mistakes, and rekindled the love that we had once felt, we tried to figure out a new way forward. Should we give up our games? Give up all competition? Well, certainly the war game, and any game whose goal was to inflict injury on the other, had to go, but we realized that through these years and through all these competitions we had gotten much stronger, sharper and more alert than we were in our dreaming days. We had learned many things and had many amazing adventures. We didn't want to go back to the lethargy and passivity of our dreams any more than we wanted to go back to the violence of war. The question was, how could we stay in the knowledge of who we really were, knowing that we were one not just with our competitors but with the entire universe, and still participate and compete with enthusiasm in the world of separation? Then we realized that these two things were not at all contradictory. In fact, when we knew we were playing a game, when we knew that it was really only just a game, then we actually had more enthusiasm and energy then when we took ourselves and the outcome of our competitions too seriously. In the old days when we had laughed at our silliness, we came to understand that what had made it ridiculous was not the competition itself, but the life and death seriousness that we had imagined it had. We were laughing not at the game, but at the distorted importance that we put on the outcome of the game. Remembering that it was a game actually liberated us to put more focus and attention on each moment instead of splitting our attention between our participation in the moment and our worry about the outcome of our participation.


And finally, we came up with a trick, a trick that is still in use today. We learned how to watch ourselves. Just like today, when we get very caught up in an intense moment of trying to eke out a victory or avoid a defeat, when we are about to do something that we might later regret, we are often able to suddenly step back and look at ourselves and in so doing change the course of our behavior. But in those days we didn't step back and remind ourselves that we shouldn't behave that way because we were Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, or Muslims, or Buddhists, or family men, or mothers, or respectable members of our community. In those days we had no such identities, no such labels, no such sense of ourselves. Way back then, in that more primitive time, we would simply remind ourselves that we were each other.

So that is the end of the make believe story. It really doesn't have an end, because this balancing act between unity and separation, between the spiritual and the material, between being and doing, never ends. The moment we pride ourselves in coming up with a final answer, an ultimate strategy for negotiating the shoals of life, is the moment that we are punished for our pride.

And now here's the real story. I told you that I will try to make it as real as I can, but that is only from my limited human perspective. The real story was not written from a human perspective; it was written from God's perspective, from the cosmic consciousness' perspective. And that is something that we can think about, that we can contemplate, but it is far, far from our ability to comprehend. For instance, the beginning of the story, which I mentioned above. In my make believe story two humans were experiencing the Ultimate, but from their perspective. They were lost in the Ultimate, they were immersed in the Ultimate but they were not generating the Ultimate. It's like sunlight. An infinitesimally tiny piece of it comes in our window, and that is real sunlight. It has real warmth and real light and it fills our room and we can enjoy it, we can even immerse ourselves in it. But we are not generating it. And if we were much closer to the generative source of that power we, in our human form, would not enjoy it at all; we would instantly be overwhelmed by it. And keep in mind that I am not talking about being spatially close. The metaphor of the sun is useful but only to a degree. The Divine is beyond space and time, so this generative intensity that I am talking about is everywhere. A more useful metaphor might be the power of the atom. We are surrounded by countless atoms each of which contains within it an enormous force. That force is undoubtedly there but, fortunately for us in the case of the atom, it remains in a latent form.


Some people, due to their training, their devotion, their constitution or their karmic destiny, are able to get a lot closer to that generative source than others. Master Kirpal Singh, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Chidananda, and Werner Erhard transmitted an energy that was palpable and undeniable. If these people were your teachers, it wasn't so much that you were studying with them; it was more like you were absorbing them. If being next to God was too much for our body/brain to take, being next to a step down transformer like Kirpal Singh, was the closest we could come to it in this life. And those are just the people that most strongly impacted me when I was ripe to receive such knowledge. All great religions are always producing saints (that's what makes them great) and you can always find one if you sincerely desire it.


When the two friends decided to play games, and divided themselves into teams, black and white, male and female; that was a way of humanizing an event that Taoists refer to as the bifurcation of Infinity. It is also, I believe, the meaning of the biblical phrase, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," (the actual physical planet Earth happened later). It is a separation into two opposing, but really complementary, forces. It can be called yin and yang, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, heaven and earth, in and yo, etc. And in the endless interactions between the two, the physical world is formed. Yin and yang oppose each other but they cannot exist without the other. We cannot conceive of anything without its opposite. In another post I discussed the impossibility of a fish understanding water until it was lifted out and had an experience of 'no water.' The same is true for hot and cold, light and dark, front and back, up and down, time and space, etc., etc. These things only come into being in duality, in pairs. The concept day only has meaning if there is also night. There can be no concept of hot unless we have an experience of cold to contrast it with. Hot and cold, male and female, strong and weak, light and heavy, space and time, etc., etc. are all known only in relation to each other. It is important to remember that none of these qualities existed in the unity before the bifurcation and do not exist in the Unity that we experience as the Self now. All of these qualities manifested, came into existence, with the bifurcation and the resulting interplay of yin and yang. This occurrence, the separation of unity into duality, is often thought of by devotees of eastern religion and thought, as a physical event. Some physical thing or some kind of energy that was unified separated into two physical things that were opposite but complementary. But this is not accurate. The unity predates the physical universe. The unity was and is spirit that contains the physical in a latent, non-physical form. The act of bifurcation was an act of will. Spiritual unity created physical diversity because spiritual unity WANTED physical diversity. The creation of the physical universe was and is an act of will.

Well, how could this possibly be? To try to understand it let's look at it the only way we can look at it, from our human perspective. Everything that we do and everything we accomplish on our human level is also an act of will, a movement from the spiritual to the physical. I was sitting with someone at a barbecue recently. Through a mouthful of potato salad she scoffed at the idea of 'manifestation.' "Manifestation, manifestation", she said, "what is this manifestation that everyone talks about? I've never seen it." I asked her how that potato salad happened to wind up on her plate. She said that she wanted some, simple as that. But where in the physical universe is that simple 'wanting' located? Through what instrumentation could one observe this 'wanting?' Yes, you might be able to pinpoint electrical and chemical excitation in the brain that preceded that wanting, but without a non-physical being to translate that excitation into a desire, and without that non-physical desire to galvanize the brain into a plan of action, to martial her nerves and eyes and bones and muscles to find that potato salad and the plate to eat it on, it would never have eventually made its way into her mouth. To find a manifestation she had to look no further than the food that was sliding down her esophagus and the skeptical words that she was forming with her lips and her tongue. And if humans have created whole empires from nothing more than a dream (and every empire is nothing more and nothing less than a manifestation of a dream) than why is it hard to imagine the Almighty willing a universe?


How could we get bored with the ultimate experience of love, peace and oneness? Because we always had it; because it never changed. We (and understand I am using We to refer to all of us that were part of the Unity that preceded the diversity) realized that we couldn't fully appreciate it, just like dark and light, and hot and cold, unless we had an experience of not having it. So we decided to create separate beings that felt separated sometimes and united other times. But we didn't just create those beings. We became those beings. From the universe's perspective, the games that the two friends were playing, are actually life times as different beings. We had to first create a physical universe to house those beings, to give them something to enjoy, to interact with and play in. We did this by setting in motion a series of inviolable laws, which through their interplay, generated and continues to generate the physical universe. When the physical universe was prepared, when it was ready to host the simplest of creatures, some of our unity temporarily separated and became microbes.

Now this seems like an insane thing to choose to do, to choose to go from being an inextricable part of the Godhead to being a microbe, but that is because we are looking at both the choice and the experience from a human perspective. As humans we choose to go on roller coaster rides, to see how long we can hold our breath, see what it's like to eat a whole garlic, swallow a goldfish, run barefoot in the snow, etc., etc. We subject ourselves to all kinds of experiences simply for the experience of it. Of course we wouldn't do it if it was going to last for a very long time. We do it knowing that it is only going to last for a moment. And in that knowledge, that it will only last for a brief time and that it will not damage us in any permanent way, we feel free to indulge in all kinds of crazy experiments, JUST FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF IT. To decide to go from being a god to being a microbe would be insane if it were forever. But to go on the microbe ride at the Divine Amusement Park, knowing that whatever happened you would get off the ride being the perfect being that you were when you first decided to go on it, well that doesn't seem crazy at all. That just seems adventurous. Also this is the Divine Amusement Park. All the rides are built and maintained by the Almighty. You have the Almighty's guarantee that whatever happens while you are on this ride, whatever you become and whatever you think you have become, you will always return to being the inextricable part of the Godhead, which you always were anyway, but simply chose, while you were on this ride, to forget.

Our judgment as to the craziness of this decision is also based on what we think a microbe's experience might be like. As humans we can never know for sure, but we can speculate. First, there would probably be no thought. And this seems like a terrible loss, but only if it's for a long time. From the point of view of eternity, the life span of a microbe is an eye blink. From this perspective, then, a brief respite from thinking may seem welcome, even exciting. But what could you experience? You probably have only the sense membrane of one cell to experience anything with. True, there would be much less variety, but would there be much less intensity? If I prick you with a pin does the fact that that pin only touches one point on your body diminish the sensation that you feel? What about a pleasurable taste on one taste bud, or one skin cell? And we are talking about a sensation that we feel that is distributed throughout our one hundred trillion celled body. What if our body was only one cell and a substantial part of that cell was a sense membrane? And a microbe has needs. It may not have many complicated needs, and it almost assuredly doesn't have any emotional or social needs, but who needs those every moment of eternity? No, these would just be one or two very basic survival needs.

The satisfaction of our human needs is extremely pleasurable. With food and drink, the hungrier and thirstier we are, the more pleasurable the satisfaction of those needs become. This is the way we are set up; or this is the way that We (before we were separated) set it up. Desire and the pleasure that we experience in the satisfaction of that desire is the system that guarantees that all of us get enough to eat and drink, or at least, that we are always trying to get enough to eat and drink. And this has to be the same system for all creatures including plants and microbes. Searching for food, receiving and digesting food all takes energy. Why would plants and microbes and animals keep expending that energy if they didn't want to? The relentless way that lower forms pursue nutrition leads me to think that what they experience is even more overwhelmingly pleasurable that what we experience. Beyond desire and the pleasurable satisfaction of desire is a third experience that I think all creatures including microbes experience, and that is the experience of no desire. No desire is not the same as no experience. No desire, and especially when one is in the environment to which one is so perfectly adapted, is not pleasurable in the same way that desire satisfaction is, but it is a feeling of peace and connectedness, of quiet rightness with the world. The universal energy that I was talking about in the fictional story, and that we begin to feel when our own personal desires are reduced, and feel most strongly at moments when we have no desires at all; this energy flows through all of us, microbes included. The motivation for satisfying desires is not just the pleasure that the universe has built in to the satisfaction of desires, but we, all living beings, look forward to that state of no desire, of returning, of being reconnected to the universal energy. It feels good. And that is why, when we are near plants and animals that are not needy (that are not experiencing a famine or a drought, and that are not fearful for their safety) we feel their peacefulness, their happiness, their connectedness, and it makes us feel happy and connected. Again, these are only my human conjectures, being neither, at this moment a god or a microbe, but it makes perfect sense to me and I hope it does to you.


And the last thing I want to say about the microbe ride, and I say this with perfect confidence: From the perspective of the universal consciousness, which is beyond space and time; size definitely does not matter!

All the rides at the Divine Amusement Park are made from proteins. We picked proteins because they are the best transmitters of electrical and chemical signals that allow the rider to stop, start and steer the ride when he desires to. But proteins are somewhat delicate. It took us a long time to get the park ready so there could be any rides at all. The temperature and atmosphere had to be just right, and the ground had to be stable enough for even the simplest, hardiest rides. As time went on and we were able to stabilize and moderate the temperature and atmosphere and ground and water ( we have many underwater rides, too), we were able to add more and more complicated and delicate rides because we wanted to provide a more exciting experience for ourselves.

The simplest rides are on tracks. The rider can start or stop, move faster or slower, but that is about it. He may collide with another ride and his direction may get changed, but the track changes direction too, so he is never really steering himself. The more complicated rides don't have tracks and riders are free to move in several directions along a surface. The most complex rides have many directional possibilities in all dimensions and the possibility of joining with a wide variety of different riders, thereby creating new directions for both. And these most complex rides even come with the possibility of the rider contemplating the ride itself. On these the rider can even choose to leave the ride in the middle of the course, or the rider can discover that he can be with us (the park administration) in spirit and physically stay on the ride at the same time. Those riders who manage this feat report a much smoother, more enjoyable experience.

You may think that I am trivializing the importance of microbes, that without them higher life forms could not exist. For starters, their metabolic actions are what oxygenated the planet, and that's not a game. But it is. If we continue looking from this perspective, their vital function allowed the development of more sophisticated life forms which allowed the possibility of more complicated games. I am not saying that these functions are not important. I am just wondering why we can't enjoy ourselves in the process of performing them. The most important thing I ever did in my life was helping make my children, and I hope you want fault me for having a good time while I was doing it.


Does this perspective, even if it is basically accurate, lead one to a very casual attitude toward this life and an indifference to the suffering of others? No. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. If you think that this life is your entire existence, then anything that can be construed as negative is a tragedy. With age usually comes a wider perspective, if not an eternal one. But in observing children you can see the pitfalls of a limited perspective. When a child's ice cream cone drops on the ground, this is, for that child, a horrific tragedy. Why? Because from her limited perspective that is the only ice cream cone in the universe! There will never be another ice cream cone! There will never be another moment when she will enjoy the taste of ice cream again! Adults, even the kindly ones, are gently amused by this distortion and try to reassure the child that there are many more ice cream cones in the universe and in her future. We have a broader perspective and we know that life is a lot longer and more varied than this child imagines it to be at that moment. But with something like a chronic illness or a lifelong debility, we lack the perspective to give this sufferer the same kind of reassurance. When we are clear that we are not our traits, but the timeless divinity that enlivens our traits, and the sufferer is not her traits, but the timeless divinity that enlivens her traits, then we are able to give this sufferer the exact same assurance that we gave the little ice cream lover. There are many, many more experiences to be had, and many more arrangements of traits and experiences through those traits. And the end to having traits and having a separate existence, is not the end of existence, but the end of separation.

Also, believing that we are nothing more than our mortal and one time only traits, leads us to the endless obsessive comparing and contrasting of ourselves with others; the categorizing of our traits; and the arranging of them in hierarchies, and the arranging of our society in rigid hierarchical structures based on the values that we ascribe to these different traits. All of this is a shallow, joyless game in which, ultimately, there are only losers. In our trait obsessed and over competitive society, it is literally only perhaps the first hour after birth that we, the parents, experience the true miraculousness and divine nature of our children. Then the charts get whipped out. We find out that our baby is an inch shorter or an inch taller than the norm, a pound heavier or a pound lighter. We discover, to our great delight, not that she took her first step, but that she took her first step a month sooner then little Tommy down the block took his, or, God forbid, a month later. And how is her speaking coming? Is she in front of the curve or behind the curve? And what about her IQ? Will she be 'identified gifted' and of great value, or unidentified and, by default, worthless? Now, hold on there! You say she's gifted, okay. But is she 'highly gifted'? Is she? Is she? Huh? Huh? Huh? Maybe she's not all that valuable after all! Compare and contrast. Compare and contrast. Where does she fit in this hierarchy or that hierarchy, in this ordering or that? And in the whirlwind of all this frenetic evaluating, in the midst of this fear and this boasting, this demeaning and being demeaned, in the middle of all this sheer and complete insanity, what happened to that little newborn who we knew was as conscious and willful, as intelligent and full of love as we were? What happened to that perfect being who looked out at us from behind her perfect eyes and who we knew was perfect regardless of anything that she would ever do or not do, and regardless of anything that any other child on this planet ever did or didn't do? What happened to her? Well, let's wait and see how she does on her SAT exams!

So this is not a trivial distinction. It is not merely the subject of an interesting philosophical debate. It goes to the very nature of our society and the quality of our experience here on this planet. Do we consider ourselves to be merely a collection of traits, and a random collection at that; merely part of the world of duality, of good and bad, of better and worse? Or are we at base beyond duality, an inextricable part of the One, miraculous and incomparable? Many traditional, pre-industrial societies had this understanding. Only twenty years ago, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in Nepal (where one dare not go now for fear of being kidnapped, or worse, by Maoist rebels!) when encountering a stranger one would be met by, what was for this Westerner, an uncannily open and warm look directly into one's eyes and the greeting, 'Namaste!,' which means, 'I salute the God within you.' And that is the perfectly fitting one word summary for this entire post. Namaste!

Let me hear from you. I welcome your feedback.

Matt Chait - Tuesday, July 22, 2008

COMMUNICATION

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Let me first say that this is the second post that I've written directly in response to comments from biologists objecting to other posts. The first was 'Self vs. Sense of Self' which was written in response to a comment written by an anonymous biologist to my post 'Survival of the Fittest.' I am writing this post in response to another anonymous biologist (do biologists no longer have names?) who had an objection to my post 'Who Does What.' And this is precisely what I would most like to be happening. A great teacher, Michio Kushi, once told me, as other great teachers have told their students through the ages, to love my enemies. By that he meant that enemies, or rivals or competitors, force you to be stronger, to work harder, to clarify your thinking, to explain more clearly and compellingly. They goad you to greater heights and levels of understanding.

I sincerely welcome comments from like-minded seekers. These sustain me, and being a mystic in a materialist world can be lonely sometimes. Writing this kind of blog is like shouting into the wind. I have a counter, so I can tell how many hits I am getting, but how many are really hearing me? How many are really getting it? When I receive a supportive comment or any written show of enthusiasm, it has enormous meaning for me. Thank you so much.

But I also want to give equal thanks and encouragement to those biologists or religious fundamentalists who would want to challenge my thinking in some way. Please, I sincerely urge you to go for it. Your objections force me to think, to go deeper, to clarify and make more tangible that which I have known, felt and intuited for many years but never articulated with this level of specificity. So, please, I beg you, bring it on!

As I have said in earlier posts, I have no objection to biologists and their enthusiasm for understanding how living things work on the physical plane. Biologists make observations and how can you argue with an observation? I don't. But I do argue with the assumptions and inferences that they make based on those observations. Case in point is the comment I received in response to 'Who Does What.' This biologist had just been studying cell to cell signaling and he objected to my statement that the cells in our bodies do not communicate with each other; that it is done for them. He thought that I must not have known that this signaling existed. But I do know about signals that move from cell to cell. I also know about the over ten quadrillion biological processes that happen simultaneously in a human body that are all perfectly synchronized and coordinated. So there is an amazing amount of communication going on, it's just not the cells that are doing it.

To understand this, we have to ask, what really is communication; what do we mean by this word? In my responding comment I mentioned that when we talk on the phone there are signals that move from my phone to yours and back again. The important thing to realize here is that it is not our phones that are communicating. We are communicating. Our phones are devises that assist us with that communication.

And what is it about us (the two telephone talkers) that is actually communicating? Of course our tongues are moving, our mouths are opening and closing, our vocal cords are vibrating, the pitch and cadence of our voices is rising and falling; but all of these things, while they assist the communication, while they are necessary devices that enhance and enable the communication, they, themselves, are not communicating. The real communicator is the one who initiates this process. Everything else helps relay the communication of this initiator. And the initiator is not any physical part of your body. Your tongue, your lips and your vocal cords do no want to speak. YOU want to speak. Communicating starts with a desire to communicate and the seat of desires is the Self. Right now, for instance, my desire is to get you to understand my thoughts in the hope that that will deepen your understanding of not just communication but of life and the limits of biology.

Now I can hear the biological wheels turning. Biologists are saying, "No, no. It starts in the brain." And of course they can rattle off a long list of centers in the brain: thought centers, speech centers, visual centers, memory centers, etc., etc. Yet how did they come to this understanding? How were they able to pinpoint the location of these centers? Because they noticed with their sophisticated instrumentation that at different times these different areas of the brain 'light up' with electrical and chemical activity. But when? When do these different areas light up? One area lights up when YOU WANT to think; another lights up when YOU WANT to speak; another when YOU WANT to look at something, and another when YOU WANT to remember something . The YOU that wants to do these things is not in the physical universe, so it cannot be observed. Therefore, for biologists, it does not exist. But it is the very reason why these different areas light up. Your brain and your body are the instruments of your desires including your desire to communicate. Your brain and your body assist you in putting these communications into words and relaying them to another being, but communication does not begin with your brain, your body or any of the proteins within it. It does not begin with matter, at all. It begins, as all human initiated action begins, with YOU and your desires.

Now as soon as biologists hear words like non-matter or spiritual or not physical, they run for the hills. If you happen to be sitting near one, could you grab him before he takes off and remind him that I am not talking about archangels or devils; I am not talking about auras or ESP; I am not talking about fairies or elves or demons or leprechauns. I have never seen or experienced any of those things, so I have no opinion about them and, frankly, not much interest in them either. I am talking about the Self, about desires and about experience, none of which can be observed, but all of which I experience at every moment of my existence. And since my Self, my desires and my experience are at least as real to me as anything that I read in a biology text book, I do have an enormous interest in them. And if our biologist friend would slow down for a minute, turn off the microscope and look inward, if he would mix a little 'search' with his 'research,' he might become very interested in them too.

The problem with biology is that it never begins at the beginning and it never ends at the end. Biologists may trace a process back to the enzyme that initiates that process. They may even trace the production of that enzyme back to an electrical charge. But what they will never get back to is the desire that creates the polarity, which creates the charge, which creates the electricity, which stimulates the production of that enzyme. And they will never discover the Self which is the seat of desires, the non-physical milieu from which those desires emerge. And they will never observe your moment to moment experience, your actual life, which is the result, the purpose, of all these ten quadrillion processes. Yes, they will see electrical and chemical patterns on the brain, but they will never see the sunsets and hear the concerts and taste the fabulous dishes and touch the intoxicating touches that you experience when those electrical and chemical patterns are translated into your experience. And they will never observe that amazing non-physical organ that translates those patterns into the delicious and insufferable, beautiful and ugly, stimulating and boring, refreshing and enervating fabric that is the actual experience of your life. We call that non-physical organ YOU.

Anyway, communication happens between beings. Whatever equipment is between those beings, whether the biological equipment that helps shape that communication into words and physical expression, or the mechanical equipment that helps relay that communication over long distances, the real communicators are the being who is sending the communication and the being who is receiving the communication. When I want to express my love to you I may speak those words which require myriad series' of biological processes in my brain, vocal chords, lips, jaw and tongue. But however rigorously and minutely we examine the streams of electrons, the chemical releases and the muscular constrictions that enable those words to be spoken, I am still the sole communicator. All those biological processes serve my communication. And if I type that message onto a keyboard and send it to you via e-mail, all the muscular movements of my fingers and wrists and the movements of my eyes as I type, and all the activity that can be observed and analyzed in the minutest detail from the conversion of those typed letters into computer code and the journey of that stream of electrons as it passes through transformers and inductors and capacitors and mother boards and processing units and USB ports, etc., etc., through all of that, I am still the only communicator, and everything else, everything on the material plane, whether it's physical movements, electron streams, sound waves, light waves, the whole panoply of material and biological equipment involved in sending you that message; all of it is assisting me, but there is still only one lover, only one communicator. The processors don't love you, the electrons don't love you, my vocal chords don't love you and my finger and eye muscles don't love you. I love you. And in all that equipment on your end, including all the equipment of your computer that translates those electrons from computer code into letters, and your biological equipment including your eyes that help you read those letters, and your brain that helps you organize those letters into meanings, and your ears that help you hear those words, there is nothing there that can receive that communication, that can either comprehend or feel my love, besides you. You, your self, the non-physical entity that occupies and uses your body, is the sole receiver of that communication and everything else, physical and biological, mindlessly relays that communication.

It's important to remember that this entire process, both biologically and mechanically, was engendered by a desire; my desire to communicate my love. Everything in the human made world, including communications, buildings, arts, writings, artifacts, ideas, everything, begins with a desire. Everything that ever got done in human civilization got done because someone wanted it to get done. Desire is the bridge between the non-physical world (you) and the physical world. Desire creates polarity between the desirer and what is desired. Polarity creates electricity which creates chemical processes which create thoughts and plans and actions.

So, let's talk about automatic biological processes, processes that happen willy-nilly, whether you want them to or not. These would be all the myriad processes that guarantee your moment to moment survival and that produce the equipment (your eyes, ears, nose, sense organs, etc.) that allow you to fulfill the desires that you have. There are modestly ten quadrillion such processes happening in your body at this very moment as you read these words, and all of these are perfectly coordinated and synchronized to bring about your survival and the richness and quality of the consciousness that you experience in this body. With all this activity that not only is synchronized but continues to be synchronized over the whole length of your life and that finds a way to reproduce itself so that even though the recipes for the basic ingredients change (gene sequences in sexual reproduction) the amazing way all these ingredients are produced and sequenced and combined with other ingredients and the way all these literally quadrillions of processes continue to be perfectly synchronized in a slightly different way with each new generation; who, or what, is synchronizing and sequencing all that? Just like in the example above, when we trace back all those myriad processes of communication we got back to one communicator; with a million relayed messages of love, there was only one lover. Now in the infinitely more complex jumble of processes that keep all of us alive, if these are traced back, is there one initiator, one being whose intention it is to keep us alive, to keep our descendants alive, to maintain this unfathomably complex equipment that allows us to be conscious and see and hear and walk and feel and smell and touch and think and contemplate? Is there one being whose desire, whose will, provides the endless energy and unlimited intelligence, the spark that keeps us living and breathing and metabolizing and growing and learning? Is there one being whose desires have created the natural world in exactly the same way that our human desires have created the man made world?

Of course there is. Obviously there is. What or who else would be capable of such an undertaking? A few submicroscopic specks of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine? Be serious! That's not God. If anything, that's God's channel changer.

Yet the title of this post is communication. We discussed human to human communication but in what way is this God, or cosmic consciousness, to living being activity a communication? We are the recipients, the beneficiaries, of all this work, but where is the communication? It only begins to be a communication when we are aware of it, when we listen for it, when we develop our love and gratitude for everything that is being done for us. That's when we feel the love of the creator, the love of the universe, filling us; and, then, the communication is complete.

And let me suggest that in this completion lies our greatest fulfillment. Yes, our bodies and minds are the servants of our desires. We have this separate existence because we want to experience desire and fulfill our desires in this physical universe. But when we forget who we really are or where we came from, when we begin to think that at base we are no more than separate competing entities, and that all satisfaction comes from our being victorious, from coming out on top, that's when we harm ourselves and others and plunder our planet in endless, joyless, competition. True fulfillment comes through the realization that you are not a separate entity, that the Universe moves within and through you, that the ultimate reality is One and that separation is an experiment, a game for us to play and enjoy until we come together again.


Your comments are most welcome!

Matt Chait - Monday, August 4, 2008

MY DAD, MY GURU AND ME

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This post will be a little different from the other ones. Please consider this post more as a part of my profile than an actual post. I didn't write anything in my actual profile because I didn't want it to have any bearing on the way in which you considered the ideas expressed in the blog. The ideas should stand or fall on their own merit and when or how I came up with them is irrelevant. I hope you read and enjoy this post, but I will not be publishing any comments about it. There's nothing here to agree or disagree with. It's just my life.

In 1968 I was working as an actor and I was on a tour up and down the East coast. My girlfriend was back in New York and I would call her regularly (although, to be quite honest, I cannot remember now if she was actually my girlfriend at this exact time or not. Keep in mind that this was 1968 and relationships were.....perhaps the best word would be ephemeral.) Anyway, I was speaking with this woman with whom I had some sort of relationship, and she told me, very excitedly, and I do remember these exact words, that she was doing "exercises that made you high." What? I had never heard of such a thing. I had experimented very minimally with some drugs but was not really enthusiastic about any of them. Back then, I considered acting to be my drug of choice, but the idea of 'exercises that made you high' really intrigued me. They were called yoga, she said, and I resolved to take some yoga classes as soon as I returned to the city.

I wound up at a place called the Integral Yoga Institute on West End Avenue in Manhattan. The classes were taught on one of the upper floors of an apartment building, and, yes, those classes did make you high. At least they did for me. It was not just exercises. The class began with chanting in unison, then physical exercises, then breathing exercises, a deep relaxation, a brief meditation and some closing chants. The classes were taught by disciples of someone by the name of Swami Satchidananda, who the teachers referred to as Swamiji. I hadn't met Swamiji yet, but from the way these teachers spoke about him and from the effect these classes were having on me, I was very anxious to do so. Swamiji taught every Friday night, in those days, at a church on Central Park West, and after a few weeks of classes I decided to go.

Now I was not a child at this time. I was a fairly sophisticated adult in my twenties who had lived most of his life in a huge city (New York) and had attended an excellent university. But in all that time I had never met a radiant human being. Swami Satchidananda was radiant. And he was radiant in a way that filled that large church on Central Park West and made it literally impossible for anyone sitting there to entertain a negative thought about themselves, about life or anything else. And, of course, I was enthralled. In short order I had received a mantra from Swamiji, was eating a vegetarian diet as he prescribed and practicing yoga and meditation regularly. And, of course, every Friday night, religiously, I would attend his lectures and sit as close as I could, so that I could absorb not just his words, but the energy and love that was always emanating from his presence.

I was pretty estranged from my father at this time. He was not thrilled with what he perceived to be my bohemian life style or my choice of pursuing acting as a career. And I, in turn, was not taken with what I perceived to be his rigidity and his center right politics. So I was surprised when he expressed an interest in coming to the church to hear one of Swamiji's Friday night lectures. I consented, but I was ambivalent. I wasn't completely ready to share Swamiji with him and felt a bit like he was encroaching on my territory. I don't remember for sure, but it was probably at my insistence, that we sat separately; I, up front with my fellow long-haired and beaded regulars, and he, in the rear, in his white shirt and tie (he was a pharmacist and had come straight from work).

Swamiji's talk that night was about Oneness. His actual words escape me now, but it was, of course, as all his talks were, simple and penetrating, humorous and enlightening, and I was managing to enjoy it almost as much as I had enjoyed all his other lectures, except that I was a bit distracted by the fact that my Dad was also present, and taking everything in at the rear of the church. At the end of the lecture I met Dad as we were both emerging onto Central Park West. "So, what did you think of the lecture?" I asked. "It's just like Judaism," he replied. That stopped me in my tracks. "How do you mean?" "You know, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."

I was livid, incensed. Here I had introduced him to this amazing man, this saint, and all he can say is, "It's just like Judaism;" as if it's nothing new, as if it's something that he's heard a thousand times before. How dare he compare the tawdry, middle class, corned beef and cabbage Oneness of Judaism, with the exotic, transcendent, jasmine and saffron Oneness of Hinduism!

So after standing all day at his pharmacy, waiting on customers and filling prescriptions, after wolfing down a lonely dinner and racing to the church in the hopes of re-establishing some rapport with his son, as a thick cloud of gloom and separation descended between us, he went his way and I went mine. He to his apartment in Queens and I to my place in Greenwich Village.

Dear, dear Dad. How can you forgive me? How could I not see that my behavior was exactly the antithesis of everything that we had just heard in that lecture that night?

My father died suddenly a few years later when I was living in Boston. Perhaps he can hear me now. I really don't know. But what I want to say to him is this:

I loved Swami Satchidananda. He was a great, great treasure in my life, and he inspired in me a ten year spiritual oddysey that changed me forever. Love flowed out of him effortlessly, like an endless fountain of the Divine. But what I realized was that the love that you had, which you were often too shy to express and which was held in check by my adolescent anger and was often buried beneath the cigar smoke and mustard stains, was every bit as deep and profound and knowing as Swamiji's. This was almost forty years ago and I still remember Swamiji with great affection. But when I think of you, when I think of your quiet, non-complaining, patient love, and your great wisdom that went, for the most part, unrecognized, my heart explodes with love. I wish I could have told you this a long time ago, but Dad, you were my guru all along. I just never realized it.

And that, dear Reader, is why I have no patience for the idiotic parsing of religions by theological scholars and fundamentalists. Oneness is Oneness. Saints are saints. God is not a thing, and it is not a concept. Different religions have used different language and different concepts to try to communicate the ineffable in a way that is meaningful to different cultures at different periods in our history. 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One.' Not one religion as opposed to another, not one people, or culture, or society as opposed to another. Not even one God as opposed to another. The Lord is beyond opposition. The Lord is One!

Matt Chait - Wednesday, September 10, 2008

YIN, YANG AND BEYONG!

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The observer stands at the center of modern physics. Quantum theory has discovered that the smallest particles of matter, including electrons, photons and even atoms, behave like waves of energy when we are not observing them and behave like particles of matter when we are observing them. It seems as though the electron particle materializes from a wave or cloud of negative energy, but only when we are looking for it. Somehow the act of observation collapses a wave into a particle. The theory of relativity also puts the observer at the center of the physical equation. Einstein discovered that our perception, our experience and even our measurement of time and space are altered by the speed and position of the observer relative to what is being observed.

The actual study of this observer, one would think, would be the province of biology and evolution (the study of life and the history of life) since observers are found at the center of living beings. Oddly, though, when we leave the study of inanimate objects (physics) and move to the study of life (biology and evolution) the observer disappears as a concept or even a consideration. Since the observer cannot be observed by anyone, not even himself, he does not exist for modern evolutionary biologists and especially for their press agent, Richard Dawkins. Can it be that one's observations have an effect both on atoms and subatomic particles and on time and space, but not on one's very own cells and genes?

Without this observer, biology and evolution become a laundry list of biological activities and traits; a fascinating list, an extraordinarily complicated list, but a list never the less. Now we can wonder who created this list, who designed all these amazing biological activities (ten quadrillion perfectly synchronized ones at every moment of a human life); and some can say, although it makes absolutely no sense to me, that all these purposeful and synchronized activities evolved accidentally from a purposeless, random and uncoordinated world. But can anyone really say that there is no one observing or even experiencing these activities? Is this really a matter of belief? Is it not the most obvious truth that I observe and experience my life? That there would be no life if there was no being to observe or experience it?

People with spiritual insight are attacked because they question some of the tenets of evolution. They are told that they are rigid, superstitious, that they have mindlessly accepted the religious dogma of their parents and cannot get past that to see the obvious truth. But to deny the existence of the being that observes and experiences our life; to reduce life to a laundry list of activities without considering who is experiencing this laundry list, is to shut yourself within a materialist bubble and within this bubble to fearfully refuse to consider your very own existence; a close-mindedness that rivals in its rigidity the most extreme excesses of religious fundamentalism.

Evolutionists and biologists have supposedly fostered within themselves a scientific curiousity. Why is that curiosity always limited to what is found at one end of a microscope and never questions who or what it is that is looking through the other end of that microscope? With each passing year the observations of physicists, and their conjectures based on these observations, are finding more and more common ground with the mystical traditions of all the great religions, while evolutionary biologists motor on and on in an ever hardening bubble of rigid materialist thinking.

One biologist who managed to burst through this bubble was Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a prominent brain scientist. She accomplished this not by an acid trip or a chance encounter with an Eastern sage, but by becoming the sudden victim of a brain hemorrhage which instantly flooded her left cerebral hemisphere with blood and made it impossible for her to continue the left brain analytical chatter that we are continually engaging in. Dr. Taylor, in her fascinating book, 'My Stroke of Insight' describes how she was plunged into an awareness of the inter-connectedness of all things and her oneness with the universe. She writes,

"Because everything around us-the air we breathe, even the materials we use to build with, are composed of spinning and vibrating atomic particles, you and I are literally swimming in a turbulent sea of electromagnetic fields. We are part of it. We are enveloped within it, and through our sensory apparatus we experience what is."

In other words, 'what is' including the shapes and solidity of objects, the contours of where one object begins and another ends, what is background and what is foreground, color and dimension, are all functions of the way that we are perceiving and constructing this field of energy. The world is an unbroken, continuous pattern of energy, of waves, if you will, and it is the way that we observe this field of waves that divides it into separate objects, foremost of which is the separation of ourselves from our surroundings.

An often used metaphor in Hinduism to deepen one's understanding of life is the image of two birds in a tree. One bird is in constant motion. It gathers twigs, builds nests, lays eggs, eats, sleeps, sings, grows and does all the things that we observe birds doing. The other bird is absolutely still. The only thing it does is WATCH. It is the observer. The first bird is referred to as the self with a small s. The second bird, the one who never changes, who doesn't even grow old and die, is referred to as the Self with a capital S.

Now we can understand this at one level which is, in itself, profound. That is that the Self is the unchanging witness of all our activity, thoughts and emotions. It is the ground of our experience. But beyond this is an even deeper understanding. That is that the Self (the witness) creates the self (the relative world of duality, of time and space, matter and energy, front and back). It is through the act of observation, using the God given instrument of our brain/body/nervous system, that the Self materializes the relative world of the self.

This brings us to an interesting question. If each of us, every living being, has a different way of experiencing and perceiving the world, what is it that is actually real? If you take away the organization imposed on the energy field by our biological equipment and take away, in the case of humans, all the ways that we have learned to define our surroundings; what is left? What is really out there?

According to modern physics, not much. Where is the soil in which to plant the flag of materialism? At first, it was in the obvious solidity of objects, as they appeared to the naked eye. Then came the idea of networks of atoms that underlie this seeming solidity. Atoms were then found to be really force fields at the center of which was a tiny nucleus and at the perimeters were infinitesimally small (even in relation to the nucleus and the distance to the nucleus) electrons. The pole that supports this flag of materialism would have to be very slender indeed! But more recently even the solidity of the nucleus, of protons and neutrons, and even the solidity of the minute electron has not withstood the scrutiny of our most advanced instrumentation. These formerly 'fundamental' pieces of matter have now themselves dissolved into force fields each with a bewildering array of particles including hadrons, leptons, bosons, fermions, mesons, baryons, quarks and anti-quarks, up and down quarks, top and bottom quarks, charm quarks, strange quarks, virtual quarks, valence quarks, gluons and sea quarks. All of these particles cannot be isolated and observed because they are supposedly embedded in force fields. Rather, they are inferred by the way in which the force field as a whole responds to various experiments.

The question is: do these particles really exist or is there nothing but force fields; in which case the flag of materialism would have no place to be planted at all? Some physicists vehemently insist that these particles do exist. The reason for their vehemence may be related to the equally vehement way that evolutionary biologists cling to the gene (a submicroscopic string of nucleic acids) as the source of the creative power that engenders all of life. By making the quark, the last remaining particle, if it is a particle, of the material world, the source of all the forces that engender the inanimate universe, they cling to a material explanation, however far-fetched, of the existence and functioning of the universe. The laboratory justification for the existence of these particles is that they have a measurable mass, give off a quantifiable amount of energy and seem to have clearly defined boundaries. But what if they were not particles, but a different kind of energy? What if there was one kind of force that moved in waves, moved out and up and dispersed, and another kind of force that moved down and in and contracted? The downward force of this second energy would create what we call mass and the inward force when it stabilized with its surroundings would create the boundaries that we ascribe to a particle.

I bring this up not because I am a scientist. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, I am not a scientist. I have a very limited background and understanding of physical theories. I started writing this blog not because of discoveries that I had made or read about in my research, but because of an understanding of life that I had come to and been experiencing for several years. I arrived at this understanding with the assistance of a few very great teachers, who were not scientists or even academics. They were saints; and by saints, I don't mean that they would 'give me the shirt off their backs' or that I could 'always count on them in a pinch', or any of that sort of thing. By saints I mean that they had realized something about who they were and what life was, and the effects of that realization were clearly evident in their behavior and in the energy and love that emanated from them. Some of these men came from a Hindu tradition, some from a Sikh tradition and some from a Taoist tradition. The philosophical underpinning of all of these, however, as well as the philosophical underpinning of most great pre-industrial societies, is monistic dualism. When Swami Satchidananda (one of my teachers) was asked a question about yin and yang, he said, "Yes, yin and yang, but also BEYONG!" What he meant by this was that the relative world is governed by yin and yang, by dualism, but, more importantly, the Self lives beyond duality. And it is interesting that the Hindu tradition has emphasized the transcendence of the material world while the Taoist tradition has emphasized the understanding and balancing of the two forces of the dual world which Taoists refer to as yin and yang. Other traditions call the two forces of duality in and yo, vata and kapha, Tawa and Takpella, father heaven and mother earth, etc., but the understanding is the same.

Here are twelve laws of monistic dualism:

1. One Infinity manifests itself into complementary and antagonistic

tendencies, yin and yang, in its endless change.

2. Yin and yang are manifested continuously from the eternal movement of one

infinite universe.

3. Yin represents centrifugality. Yang represents centripetality. Yin and yang together produce energy and all phenomena.

4. Yin attracts yang. Yang attracts yin.

5. Yin repels yin. Yang repels yang.

6. Yin and yang combined in varying proportions produce different phenomena.

The attraction and repulsion among phenomena is proportional to the difference

of the yin and yang forces.

7. All phenomena are ephemeral, constantly changing their constitution of yin and

yang forces; yin changes into yang, yang changes into yin.

8. Nothing is solely yin or solely yang. Everything is composed of both

tendencies in varying degrees.

9.There is nothing neuter. Either yin or yang is in excess in every

occurrence.

10. Large yin attracts small yin. Large yang attracts small yang.

11. Extreme yin produces yang, and extreme yang produces yin.

12. All physical manifestations are yang at the center, and yin at the

surface.*

Physicists are searching, and to my mind somewhat desperately, to find any matter in the universe what so ever. Taoists, or monistic dualists, are convinced that there is none. Physicists have discovered four universal forces : gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong force and the weak force, and they are searching for one, unifying, overarching force. Taoists believe that they found that force thousands of years ago. I am not saying to physicists that you are wrong and Taoists are right. I am saying that there may be a different way of looking at your observations and your experimental results. I am suggesting a CONVERSATION between western physicists and serious experts of monistic dualism, the understanding which has been at the center of Asian culture, science and medicine for thousands of years.

The purpose of this post is not to convert you to Taoism, but to give you a different way of looking at familiar questions. Let's look at a few of these. One of the questions that has perturbed physicists is: what keeps the electron, or what is now referred to as the electron cloud, at a distance and in an orbit around the nucleus? If the electron is negative and the nucleus is positive, and, according to the laws of electro-magnetism, they both attract each other, why shouldn't the electron cloud collapse onto the surface of the nucleus? If we look at the electron not as negative but as yin, and the nucleus not as positive but as yang, the question is answered. Yes, yin is attracted to yang, but yin is also expansive and centrifugal and yang is contractive and centripetal. The electron stays in orbit because there is a balance between the attraction of the yin electron cloud to the yang nucleus and the centrifugal force of the yin cloud which makes it want to fly out of its orbit and disperse. The yang nucleus is also in balance with it's centripetal force pulling it in and away, and it's attraction to the yin force of the electron cloud pulling it out.

Another question that physicists ponder is how do waves of energy seem to form particles upon observation and how do particles, electrons, photons, even whole atoms, seem to dissipate and function as waves at other times? If you look at a wave as a more yin form of a particle and a particle as a more yang form of a wave, then the problem becomes more understandable. With the addition of light, which is yang, which you must use to make your observation, the light yangizes the yin wave and it reforms into a particle. When the light is removed it returns to being a wave.

The great thing about studying yin and yang is that it purports to explain ALL phenomena. So something that is observed can also be experienced. In this case, since our bodies are also made of atoms, we would also expect to undergo and experience this transformation of particle to wave to particle. And we do! Don't you sometimes experience your body to be a solid wall (a giant particle) behind which you are imprisoned, making any intimacy and even relationship with the people and objects outside that wall impossible? And don't you, at other times, experience your body as having no mass at all with a completely free flow of communication with others and a free flow of energy with your environment? And then it switches back again? And then it switches back, yet again?

Or let's look at spiral formations which are repetitive patterns that occur all through the animate and inanimate world. Many of us are familiar with the spirallic patterns of the shells of mollusks, the nerves of the cornea, the arms of galaxies, and the arms of hurricanes. Variations of spirals are found all through the human body. There are spiral indentations that center on the tip of every finger (fingerprints). The human fetus when curled in the womb can be looked at as a compilation of several spirals. There is the spiral starting at the shoulder and curling into the fist. There is the spiral of the spinal column curling into the brain and the esophagus curling into the intestines. From a yin/yang perspective, the spiral is a combination of a line (yang) and a circle (yin). If we look at our movements over time, everything is moving in spirals. We stand on the earth and circle around its axis. But the earth is moving forward on its orbit. So our movements, tracked over time would be spirallic; as would the movement of the moon; as would the movement of the earth as it circles the sun and follows the sun on its orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Now this spirallic movement can also be experienced as well as observed. Time is yang and space is yin. When we are too yin we become too spacey. We are stuck in a pattern of circular thoughts and make no forward movement. When we are too yang, we plunge ahead too agressively to accomplish things. We are so conscious of our precious time that we experience no space in which to include other people or be responsive to their needs. The Taoist aims for balance, a healthy spiral which includes a forward momentum, not as a plunging line, but rather as a spiral, a circuitous path that includes constant adjustment depending on the needs of others.

When I had suggested above that the subatomic particles were not particles but a different form of energy that contracted rather than expanded, whose downward force is what we call mass, I was, of course, referring to the yang force. So, would these particles, these quarks, be an example of pure yang? No! One of the principles is that yang does not exist in a pure form. It would still be a mixture of predominantly yang with some yin. The revelation of the details of those impossibly minute force patterns within the parameters of quarks must await the development of even more sophisticated instrumentation.

The closest the universe ever came to pure yang, according to this thinking, would be that little speck of matter whose explosion created the Big Bang. That is what happened at the end of a great universal crunch, where yang predominated. At the extremes yin becomes yang and yang becomes yin. The Big Bang began a period of universal expansion, of yin predominance. And when a point of extreme yinness is reached, we can expect a reversal, another Big Crunch, leading to another Big Bang and the cycle goes on forever. But how would we have a crunch if matter is disippating as the universe is expanding and therefore the pull of gravity is getting weaker and weaker? Don't forget that I am arguing from a yin/yang perspective, not a gravity/ thermodynamic perspective. Yes, the universe in general is expanding, but there are black holes that are vortexes of extreme yang that are pulling matter into them. Yang doesn't grow in size. It contracts and grows in strength. So as the universe, in general, becomes more dispersed, there are black holes that are becoming not bigger but more powerful. The crunch will happen when the black holes reach enough strength, enough yang intensity, to collapse into each other and then to suck back the universe.

It's fascinating, isn't it? The study of monistic dualism, or yin and yang, aims not just to study physics and chemistry and astronomy but to find ways to balance our own yin/yang forces to achieve health and peace of mind. Tai chi, acupuncture, yoga and ayurvedic medecine are all based on these same principles of the balance of opposing forces. Anyway, there are real experts out there (not me) that have dedicated themselves to understanding life and the universe from the perspective of monistic dualism just as there are physicists who have dedicated themselves to the same study from a western perspective. I have some ideas as to why they are not communicating with each other, but for whatever reason; it is, I think, a great loss to our society that they are not.

Allow me to express this using the vernacular of my good friend Tyrone. You have a group of first class contemplators and a group of first class calculators. Now the calculators are trying to do their own contemplating, but there's a problem. Something doesn't quite work. They need one set of calculations for tiny subatomic phenomena (quantum), one set of calculations for what we would call normal size and normal speed phenomena (Newtonian) and one set for giant mass and gargantuan speed phenomena (relativity). And then we have the contemplators, who are top notch contemplators but have never shown much interest or talent for calculating. They do have the good sense, however, to not even try to calculate. But if the calculators would get their framework for their calculations from the contemplators, then, I am convinced, they would wind up with one framework, and one set of calculations that would be applicable in all situations. Doesn't it make sense? If you want good calculations go to the calculators who have been calculating their whole lives. And if you want good contemplation, go to the contemplators who have been contemplating their whole lives. But the calculators are so good at it that they have become arrogant. They think that because they are first rate calculators they must be first rate contemplators as well. But, this is not true. Because they have been, for the most part, indoctrinated in a materialist philosophy, their contemplations are limited to the physical universe. When they attempt to determine cause they look at the physical or energy world for their answers and not at the intentional world that underlies these. And their contemplations are always formed by trying to reconfigure their old framework to include the baffling results from the latest experiments. Their contemplation is always backtracking to find a way of adjusting their theoretical framework to accomodate the new data. At this point the framework has been broken up into three frameworks. The contemplators, on the other hand, don't start contemplating because of troubling new data. They start with a basic curiosity about themselves, about life and the universe. And the interesting thing is that the very best contemplators in all the great societies, when you look past the metaphors and all the attempts to make their findings understandable in material or animal or human terms, so that the people of their respective cultures could get some sense of it without having had the same insights that the contemplators had experienced, then you realize that they all came to basically the same conclusions. What more scientifically validating process could you find then mystics, serious contemplators from all ages, spread over thousands of years, and from all societies, from every continent on this planet, having reached the identical conclusions?

As I write these words, physicists are initiating a series of underground experiments in Switzerland. The apparatus for these experiments is the CERN particle accelerator and has been assembled over the last twelve years. It has the capacity to hurl particles and collide them with each other at speeds and forces that were previously unimaginable. What will happen? They claim to be confident in the safety of the outcome of these experiments. But they are experiments! If they were so sure of the outcome, why have any experiment at all? The purpose of at least this initial series of experiments in Switzerland is the search for the Higgs boson particle. According to Wikipedia, "The Higgs boson, popularised as the "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics.....An experimental observation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles cause matter to have mass." So, just as we have God particles in evolution (genes) to which we attribute the development of consciousness, intelligence, love and the wondrous complexity of life; we now have God particles in physics (bosons and quarks) to which we attribute the mass, shape and power of all the objects of the physical universe. Isn't it odd that the same people who dogmatically reject the omnipotence and omnipresence of a spiritual God or cosmic consciousness, eagerly subscribe to the notion of omnipotent and omnipresent particles, which are (in the case of both genes and quarks) too small to ever be actually seen but can only be inferred? Yet, from the spiritual perspective, there are no particles; there are only forces. Forces create the illusion of solid particles. Particles don't explain forces; forces explain particles.

Whether it is this CERN experiment or another, physicists are now unleashing such awesome powers that I feel the urgent need for them to seek out serious contemplators, and undergo some serious contemplation themselves, before they continue. Blowing up a laboratory is one thing. You say "Oops!" and all is forgiven. But who will even be around to hear anyone say "Oops!" if you blow up the planet?

Anyway, I used to think of yin and yang in the same way we think of electro-magnetic energy, that it was a quality of 'things.' Some things were positive or negative, and some things were yin and yang. It was a property of matter. Force fields were like when you put two magnetized pieces of metal near each other that are both positive or both negative. You can feel that force in the space between them but it seems to be emanating from the matter (the two pieces of metal) on either side. Western science still holds on to that idea. The atom is a force field but it emanates from the solid thing that is a proton and the solid thing that is an electron. Now that the solidity of those particles has been fractured, the idea still holds, but now we are down to force fields emanating from unobservable quarks and bosons. In other words, vast force fields emanating from impossibly tiny specks of matter. Gravity, too, is a materialist concept. It is a force that supposedly emanates from the mass of an object.

What I hadn't realized, even though I had thought about yin and yang for years, is that yin and yang, as opposed to gravity and electromagnetism, are not qualities of things. There are no things. Yin and yang are the things themselves. There is no solidity from which these forces are emanating. Matter does not generate forces. Rather, forces and the laws that govern forces generate the illusion of matter and solidity. The universe is an uninterrupted patchwork of yin and yang. Matter is yin and yang with a stronger yang component, and energy is yin and yang with a stronger yin component. Force fields do not exist between pieces of matter; they exist between forces. A solid is an impenetrable force field; gas is a penetrable force field; and liquid is a semi-penetrable force field. Atoms are not composed of solid particles, but are accumulations of energy, with yang at the center and yin at the surface, sometimes acting like waves and sometimes acting like particles. Gravity cannot be at base a function of mass. There had to be gravity, or a law similar to gravity, from the very beginning or the Big Bang would not have been possible. The law precedes mass. Mass does not create the law. The law creates mass. Gravity, then, would be a measure, not of anything solid, but of the inward force of the yang component at the center of objects; which we would experience as a downward force from the perspective of someone on the surface of the earth. Yin and yang are the four dimensional pixels whose endless combinations form the universe.

If you don't agree with me, fine. But even if you have a Western point of view, you must realize that, if there is any actual matter at all, it is absolutely minuscule, and that the vast, vast majority of what is out there is a field of forces. If you think these forces operate by the laws of gravity, electro-magnetism, the weak force and the strong force, or if you think they operate by the laws of yin and yang, these are just different names. The best names are the ones that most accurately describe the phenomena that we can observe and measure. But by whatever name you call the laws that govern these forces, what are they? They had to be here from the very beginning. If you believe the beginning was the Big Bang, there would be no Big Bang if these laws were not already in place. So, even if you believe that the Big Bang started the whole thing, it was really these laws or forces that were already in place that made the Big Bang possible. Whether we have the correct names for these laws or if future research or contemplation will yield more accurate ones, that is not the point. The point is that the physical universe was begun and is operated by forces obeying very specific laws. The question is, if these forces have no material substance, what are they, and from where did these laws that govern their operation come from?

Let me put this another way. There are forces and there are the laws that govern those forces. If we separate out the laws from the forces themselves, just what exactly are we left with? Take away the Law of Gravity from gravity, take away the Principles of Electromagnetism from electromagnetic energy, take away the Laws of Change from yin and yang, and what remains? What is the actual force that is the force of gravity? What is the force that expands yin and contracts yang? We know basically how they work, but what is the force that causes them to work? Where is it, and how can I taste it, touch it, measure or observe it; not the things that are moved and effected by it, but the force itself?

To help answer this, let's look at our human laws. Human laws create the boundaries and consistencies that make life safe and functional. Their force comes from the fact that everybody agrees to obey them. If a physicist from another planet was trying to determine exactly what the force was that was emanating from all the red traffic lights here on Earth that was powerful enough to stop hundreds of tons of moving vehicles, what could he possibly find? There is no force accept the force that we earthlings agreed to give it. What is the force coming from the white line in the middle of the road that is able to push all those vehicles to the right side of the road and that, mysteriously, in England, is able to push those very same vehicles to the left side of the road? It's agreement. It's just the way that we agreed to do things. And these laws were created because someone realized that we could not function with any safety or efficiency without them. In other words, there is no force; it's just the way that it is, and it's the way that it is because we decided that that's the way that it is, or some leader decided, and we agreed to obey.

When we look out at the universe and we see a world of things, we know that the solidity of those things is an illusion; that they are really the interplay of forces. And whether we call them gravity and electro-magnetism or yin and yang, we are just looking at the way that God or the universe decided to set it up. From a yin/yang perspective, God or the universe knew that two antagonistic but complementary and endlessly interacting forces would create the entire visible universe, so it was set up that way. Everything that we see in the observable universe is formed by and functions within the parameters of these laws of change, and that includes our bodies,brains and nervous systems; so that when we participate in the physical universe we are subject to those laws and must obey them. In short, there is no matter out there, there are just forces, and the forces are only forceful because the universe said so. So, if there is no matter out there but just forces, and if the only force behind those forces is the force that we or God decided to invest them with, then...... there's nothing out there!

If you find this news depressing, let me remind you that we are not yin and we are not yang. We are 'beyong'. We are that which experiences yin and yang. Yes, the relative world is an illusion, but it is an illusion that we have chosen to play in. And we are playing in it for the excitement, the thrill, the ups and downs of experiencing it. But what is real is us, the Self, the experiencer. The Self is beyond duality, beyond space and time, beyond yin and yang. And when we pierce through the veil of separation and experience oneness, whether with another person or animal or plant or activity or with the universe, that is a real experience. If the relative world of up and down, of front and back, of good and bad, is an illusion; the infinite world of oneness is not. Everything that emphasizes differences, hierarchies and distinctions is part of the illusion and is transient, and everything that emphasizes unity, oneness and the experience of oneness, that we call love, is true and provides a taste of the ultimate and eternal reality. Peace.

Any comments? I sincerely welcome your feedback.

*Michio Kushi, The Kushi Institute

Matt Chait - Thursday, May 1, 2008

SELF VS. SENSE OF SELF

http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/

Some readers of this blog confuse the 'self' with a 'sense of self.' An anonymous commenter writes "presumably you do not feel the need to assign a 'sense of self' to the thermophilic bacteria of which you write." Richard Dawkins dismisses the entire notion of the self with the idea that animals developed a 'sense of self' because it made them better survivors (of course that is exactly the same reasoning he uses for the development of love, brains, consciousness, altruism, the human eye and the opposable thumb!). But the self is not the same as a 'sense of self', and this is far from a semantic quibble. That Richard Dawkins, a man whose entire reputation is based on his supposed expertise as to the origin and evolution of life, cannot distinguish between the self and a 'sense of self' is really quite pathetic. The self, as I will explain later, is life it SELF. All of Dawkins' discussions, then, are not really about life. They are about the equipment that life uses, and the biological processes that serve that life. Actual life, that is the user of this equipment and the recipient of all those biological services, is the very same 'self' that I am referring to. Again, I am not referring to a 'sense of self' which is a construct of thoughts, images and feelings about who you think you are. I am referring to the self, the you, that thinks about and considers these constructs. The self is that which has a sense of self. Or, in the case of animals or other life forms that do not have a sense of self, the self is that which does not have a sense of self. The self is no more and no less than who you really are as opposed to any thoughts that you may or may not have about the matter.

Now the self is the most frustrating concept to communicate precisely because it is not a concept. Normally, when we are introduced to an idea we consider it, weigh it, see how it measures against what we already know, see if it seems to have any relevance to us or not; and then either accept it, reject it or ignore it. But the self is not a concept. The self is what is doing the considering, weighing and measuring. It is not an image, but what is looking at the image. It is not thoughts, but what is thinking the thoughts. It is not memories, but what is remembering the memories. It is not your body, but what is experiencing your body. Now you may consider this gobbledy-gook or psychological mumbo jumbo, but that is, again, precisely because you cannot conceptualize it. Intelligence and intellectual training are no help in grasping this idea, which again is not an idea. The self is not a concept; the self is!

If there are thoughts, there must be a thinker of those thoughts. If there are sensations there must be a 'feeler' of those sensations. If there are no thoughts but just sensations, there still must be a feeler of these sensations whether that feeler is capable of thought or not. If there are desires (i.e. to survive or to replicate) there must be a self, a he, a she or an it, that has that desire, whether or not the desirer is capable of thought or sensation. And whenever we say: he wants or she wants or it wants; whenever we say that he, she or it does or desires or feels anything at all, it is not brains or bodies that we are really talking about. Brains and bodies don't desire, feel or do anything. They are matter. We are spirit. We desire, feel and initiate actions. Intuitively we know this. This is the self that people have been vainly searching for through their microscopes for centuries now. And this is the self that they will never find, because the self cannot be seen. The self is the looker, not what is being looked at. These dedicated researchers are looking through the wrong end of their microscopes!

Why do academics who claim that their specialty is 'life,' like Dawkins and his ilk, find it so impossible to grasp this idea, which is life itself. Any discussions about life, its origins, its evolution, its function, its adaptability, make no real sense without an understanding of self. Without self your research and conjectures are really about the electrical and chemical processes that serve us and the physical bodies that conduct these processes, without considering the life that is enjoying and experiencing the world through these bodies and is being supported by these processes. It's like analyzing every nut, bolt, beam and piece of plaster in your house, without acknowledging you, who is living in that house, for whose benefit that house was built, and without whom that house, the way it was designed and the way it functions, really makes no sense at all.

The self is nothing that you can point to. The self is the pointer. The self is the context, not the content, of your experience. Is it too subtle to be worth discussing? It is as subtle as the difference between a living being and a corpse, between a healthy baby and a still born baby. It is what you mourn when someone passes on. It is what you celebrate when someone arrives.

Is the self a hallucination, a part of some sort of belief system, as Dawkins would have it, adopted by people who couldn't get accepted into a micro-biology PhD program? Unlike Dawkins' way of thinking, which is based on the following beliefs:

1.The belief in the supernatural powers and overarching ambitions of submicroscopic pieces of nucleic acid (genes).
2.The belief that life evolves from simplicity to complexity, even though we do not understand in any depth and certainly not in any way that we can reproduce it, even ONE function of this 'simple' beginning of life, whether we consider that beginning to be a single cell or a replicating molecule.
3. The belief in the gradual accretion of knowledge over hundreds of millions and billions of years, even though we know of no being, no molecule, and no particle that accrues this knowledge.
4. The supremacy of human intelligence even though our only measure of human intelligence is the extent to which we are able to understand life and the universe, which supposedly contains no intelligence.

The self is not part of any belief system and it is not a hallucination. If there were such a belief system the self would not be the belief system but the one who is experiencing the belief system, the one who is having the hallucination. The self does not require any belief system. It does not require any mythology. It does not require any religious stories, either biblical or otherwise. It does not require a sales pitch. It is not something that is 'understood' only by a small cadre of elite 'professionals' who tell you, when you complain that it doesn't make any sense, that you cannot understand it because you are insufficiently educated or insufficiently intelligent. It is not a concept that you have to learn to understand. It is not a belief that you have to learn to accept. It is an EXPERIENCE, and once you have had that experience the way you view yourself and your life is instantly transformed.

It is like trying to explain to a fish what water is. The fish has no framework for understanding water because she has never experienced 'no water'. Water is the milieu of every moment of her experience. To her mind, water is a myth. But lift that fish out of water for a few seconds and when she goes back in her understanding of water is transformed. Now she understands water and she needs no reminders to be grateful for it. A person doesn't realize there is a self because he is so constantly attaching his self to his thoughts, perceptions and memories that he comes to believe that he is the content rather than the context of his experience.

The reason people are attracted to meditation, yoga and spiritual practices is not, as those great philosophers, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, would have it, because they want to avoid reality; it's because they are tired of avoiding themselves. Meditation, chanting, yoga, tai chi, fasting, prayer, all of the varied spiritual practices are designed to provide that 'no water' experience; to give you an experience of yourself separate from the things you are thinking, wondering and worrying about. Can you separate your self from the things you are thinking about, the thoughts from the thinker? What happens when, even for a moment, you stop thinking, stop dreaming, stop focusing on the outside world of things or the inside world of thoughts and feelings? Then you have an experience of the self instead of an experience of whatever it is that the self is focusing on.

What you discover when you realize that you are not the things that you are thinking about, not your body or even your relationships, is that you are not a thing, at all. You are not even molecules and atoms. You are not even muons or neutrinos. You are spirit, not matter. And, as spirit, you have not changed. Your body has changed. There is probably not one cell in your body that has not died and been replaced by a new one since your birth. Your thoughts have changed. The things that you desire and that are important to you have changed, but you, the context of all that experience has not changed. You are exactly the same as you always were and always will be. And there is nothing in you that can change because you are not a thing.

I should interject here that I am not saying that you are doomed to being the same idiot that you always have been. If you consider yourself to be an idiot, your idiocy is probably due to your goofy ideas about what you have to do and how you have to be in order to get your needs met. But you are not your goofy ideas or your idiotic behavior. You are that which has the goofy ideas and the idiotic behavior. You can change all that and have sane ideas and decent behavior and still be exactly the same you, the same context. In fact, the more you understand who you really are, the less desperate your needs become, the more connected and less isolated you realize that you already are, and automatically, the less idiotic your behavior. And the first thing you can do is to stop calling yourself an idiot. You may have done idiotic things and have unfortunate habits of thinking, but you, your Self, is not idiotic.

What you also realize is that the context, not the content, of your experience is exactly the same as the context of my experience. The content of our experiences, of course, can be very different. I filter my experience through the medium of my body, my culture, my relationships, my entire point of view. And your filter may be very different from mine. But the context is the same. We are one context attached to two different mind bodies. And this is also true of other species, genera, phyla, whatever. The experience may be radically different with huge variations in richness and complexity, but the context, the ground of being, is the same. And this is the ultimate bond. We go through this life wearing many different bodies, having many different experiences, many different points of view. Some of these experiences may even be without any thought at all, but never without desire. Desire is what holds us to our bodies. We all want to survive. And by that I don't mean that we want our bodies to survive, not really. What we want is to be able to continue experiencing the world through the bodies that we are currently inhabiting. When our bodies can no longer conduct the biological processes that allow us to experience what we want to experience, we move on. But again, as our bodies change, and our perspectives and environments change, the self, the context, remains the same, exactly as it was and as it will be.

And with this realization is the realization of the ultimate bond, the realization that separation is really an illusion, a game we play. What we really are is context, not content, and your context, my context, all of life's context and the context of God or the Cosmic Consciousness is one unbroken spiritual fabric that supports the entire universe. To the extent that we grasp this as individuals, as societies and nations, there will be peace and harmony in the world. To the extent that we believe that we are really separate entities locked in a struggle for survival or that life is founded, as Dawkins & Co. would have it, on ruthless, mindless, replicating molecules, we are doomed to ceaseless competition and mutual destruction.

If you ever had the experience of meeting a true saint, and they are few and far between in our society, what amazes you is the intensity of the love that emanates from them directly to you. How could this be, you wonder, since you never feel that much love coming from even the people that you have spent your entire life with? It is precisely because the saint recognizes YOU, not your perspective, your nationality, your politics, your gender, your accomplishments or failures. The saint may or may not have a sense of any or all of that. But the saint looks through all that baggage that you have accumulated and that you lug around with you at all times, and sees YOU, sees the SELF that we have been talking about. And she recognizes herself in you, literally. She sees and experiences you as yet another aspect of herself. All the other stuff, your past, your opinions, whatever, she may learn later, or she may not. The point is that no matter what niche you were born into and what path your life has taken, she recognizes that you are part of the unbroken spiritual fabric that supports you, her and the entire universe.


Let's come at this from a completely different direction. Astrophysicists now tell us that 94% of the universe is invisible. What they have discovered is a world of neutrinos, particles so small that they cannot possibly be seen. Neutrinos are also neutral; they have no charge. So they are not attracted or repelled by anything in the visible universe. They just flow right through all matter and space (including all of interstellar space) unimpeded. Neutrinos were discovered because, even though they are unimaginably tiny, their cumulative mass, since they occupy all of space, is enormous and has a marked effect, a drag, on the expansion of the universe. The discovery of this invisible plane was predicted by Albert Einstein. He also said that there were probably several more planes even subtler than the neutrino plane. Now suppose there were a plane, as Einstein suspected there might be, that had no particles, no mass what so ever. That plane could never be measured or detected.

Now hold that thought and bear with me for just a moment while I bring in one more conjecture from the world of physics. Einstein also gave us the speed of light, roughly 186,000 miles per second, and that is considered a constant, the C of E=MC2. It is the fastest speed at which a particle could possibly travel. But what if we didn't look at the speed of light as a cosmic speed limit, but as a cosmic threshold? What if the speed of light were the point at which a particle stopped being a particle, stopped being a thing and became no thing. Then if this no thing kept accelerating it could reach infinite speed since there would be no thing, no mass, to impede its acceleration. No thing traveling at infinite speed would be every where at the same time since it would take no time to travel the entire universe and return to the same spot. So no thing would be infinitely fast and absolutely still simultaneously. Also, there would be no divisions between one part of no thing and another part, since there would be no thingness to separate one part from another. So no thing would not really have any parts. And because of it's infinite velocity and zero mass, no thing would take up all space and no space simultaneously.

Okay, so if this no thing has no mass and is neither attracted nor repelled by anything in the physical universe, why worry about it? Aside from an interesting intellectual exercise, what possible effect could it have on us? The answer is that it does not effect us because it IS us! It is exactly the same no thing that I was talking about in the first half of this post. No thing is the plane that we come from. The self is 'no thing' focussed on and committed to a particular set of genes, which of course becomes a particular body and brain. So our self, being not a thing, and being neither attracted to nor repelled by anything in the physical universe, is ultimately not effected by the physical universe. As I said before, we are exactly the same as we were and as we always will be. But we choose to have this experience, this commerce, this interchange with the physical universe that we call life. The choice to have this experience is called will. The energy that we create to effect the physical universe is called desire. The instrument that allows our desires which begin in the spiritual world to manifest in the physical world is called our bodies.

I do hope the light bulb went off. If it hasn't but you are intrigued please read some more posts, meditate, chant, do yoga, read any of the great spiritual books from any of the great religions, and, at the least, begin to treat the spiritual life of human beings with the respect it deserves. Peace!


Any comments? Please let me hear from you.

Matt Chait - Wednesday, April 9, 2008

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

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Survival of the fittest is a central tenet of the theory of evolution. It is based on the verifiable observation that every living being is trying to survive; that some do survive, at least until the time they are able to replicate and leave their progeny behind to carry on; and some do not. Those life forms that are not able to survive until replication eventually disappear and are replaced by other forms that are better adapted and more able to survive.

Well, no one could have any problem with this. As I said, all this is verifiable. In fact, the more we study and the more that is revealed through our increasingly sophisticated equipment, the more we see that not only each life form, but within each life form there are thousands and millions and billions, and in the case of advanced life forms, trillions and quadrillions, of coordinated and synchronized simultaneous biological processes whose sole purpose is the survival of the life form that they serve.

Here, however, is the sixty-four dollar question that is never posed and never examined and that sits right at the center of this whole idea. When we say that all life forms are trying to survive, WHO is it that is actually trying? Now in the case of every living being there seems to be at least two 'who's'. The first who is the who that provided us, and by us I mean all of us, from the microbe all the way up to the human being, with this amazing equipment that allows us not only to survive but to satisfy our desires. Perhaps you think that there is no such who, that this bafflingly complex and astoundingly precise equipment that operates in a way that we humans are just beginning to understand(and that just barely) just arrived here by some sort of a fortuitous accident. Okay, I won't push that point for now. Let's just focus on the present time and on determining who or what it is that is trying to survive.

Let's consider for a moment that non-living things are not trying to survive. Atoms combine making molecules and molecules separate into atoms without any concern what so ever about their survival. Whether an H2O molecule winds up in a liquid state as water, a solid state as ice, or a gaseous state as water vapor, may be of concern to the commuters who have to negotiate through these molecules as they try to get to work, but it is certainly of no concern, what so ever, to the water molecules themselves.

Richard Dawkins an evolutionist who is more myopic than he is intelligent, calls life forms 'survival machines'. What are machines? They are materials assembled and designed to gather a force and use it for a purpose. In human made machines the purpose is, of course, not in the molecules of the machine, but in the conscious creator of the machine who wanted to build something to accomplish a certain goal. It is also in the conscious user of the machine who has the purpose of wanting to accomplish something that the machine will help her accomplish. But the machine itself has no purpose within it, within the molecules of the machine. The creator and the user of the machine may have an interest in its survival and maintain and repair it, but the machine itself has no concern as to whether it is functional or non-functional, in mint condition or rusted out.

Now what about these living 'survival machines' that Dawkins talks about? Is it the machine, itself, our bodies, that want us to survive (and by our bodies I include the proteins in our brains and the nucleic acids of our genes)? Absolutely not. Our bodies are made up of the same atoms and molecules as non-living matter. Although protein molecules are very complex, they are still made of combinations of simple elements; to be specific: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. Even the genes, those sub-microscopic specks of nucleotides that are deified by Dawkins and modern biology, are merely a type of nucleic acid, with a somewhat different grouping of elemental atoms. Although these molecules are organized in living beings into incredibly complex systems and in living beings they conduct myriad sophisticated and precise processes, they are merely the passive conductors of these processes. Take away the living being and the body becomes just that, a body, with no biological processes, no desires, and certainly, no interest in survival. So it is certainly not the body that wants to survive. In fact, when our survival attempts fail and we die, it is not our body that disappears. If we had enough ice or any other way to preserve it, our body could last for centuries after death.

So who is it that is trying to survive? It's an interesting question, isn't it? This idea of survival of the fittest has been used to try to eliminate God or spiritual beings, or intelligence, from the whole equation of creation. Yet right in the center of this central tenet of evolution, in the center of the center, is this huge gaping hole that cannot be filled with matter. You see, when evolutionists glibly say that the oak tree, the amoeba, the platypus and the human being are trying to survive, they cannot possibly mean, if they thought about it (and usually they are too busy trying to advance their careers to stop and think about it) that it is the physical bodies of each of these creatures that is trying to survive. Although proteins are manufactured only by living beings, and are much more complicated structurally than any other molecules found in the inanimate world, they are still composed simply of elements and there is nothing in any element, or any molecule, that wants to survive, that cares what form it is in or what form it changes into, or that has any desires what so ever. And certainly that is also true of the salinated water, fats acids and trace elements that make up the remainder of the non- protein parts of our bodies.

The point is that if something is trying to survive there must be an IT, a something, that is trying to do that; and if that something is not your body then what is it? Well, then, it must be your brain that wants to survive. But the brain is, like any other organ of your body, a collection of proteins. It has no more will, no more desire, no more interest in anything than any other part of your body. Yes, the neurons of the brain (proteins) conduct countless electrical and chemical impulses that fire whenever we think, see, hear or remember, but that doesn't mean that the brain is thinking, seeing, hearing or remembering. Is that how you think, see, hear and remember, in electrical impulses? That does not sound like a recipe for a very exciting life. Those electrical and chemical patterns are codes that you translate into thoughts and sounds and sights, into the whole rich, beautiful and ugly, delicious and repulsive, fascinating and boring texture of your experience. Just like a speaker translates her experience into a code of words, we translate these electrical and chemical patterns, or codes, into our experience. Sense organs, translate light waves, sound waves, tastes and touches, into a pattern of electrical impulses in your brain. The organ that translates those impulses into experience is not a physical organ, at all. We call that organ 'you'.

Now I know that some of these ideas fly in the face of the materialist assumptions that we have all been indoctrinated in. Before I drop the final spiritual bomb, indulge me for a moment, and let me do something that will soften the blow. Close your eyes and watch your breath. Watch it from a place inside your nose, feeling the coolness of the inhalation and the warmth of the exhalation. Good. Now bring your awareness to your right foot. Just feel your foot. Okay, now tighten all the muscles of your right foot and then release and watch the foot relax. Okay, now do the same thing with your left hand. Tighten all the muscles, then release and watch your hand relax. So, that's it. Thank you for indulging me.

Now I have a question. When you were moving from inside your nose to your foot and then to your hand, what part of you was moving? Now I know we can have a long discussion about whether you were really moving to those different parts of your body or you were moving around the surface of your brain where you experience those different parts. But irrespective of whether you were traveling through your whole body, or just your brain, what part of you was traveling? Certainly it wasn't the brain. The brain was not traveling to different parts of the brain. When scientists study brain scans and they see different parts light up, it is not the brain that is moving to those different parts. The brain is stationary. You are moving to those parts, and that you that is moving is not a part of you, that IS you.

So, now, here is the spiritual bomb. The you that wants to survive, the you that wants anything, the you that is the seat of all your desires, the you that is not your thoughts, but the thinker of your thoughts, not your sights, but the seer of your sights, not your memories but the rememberer of your memories, that you is consciousness, and consciousness is not part of the physical universe.

Are you still there, or have you run off shrieking into the night? Atoms have no desires. Molecules have no desires. Things have no desires. But you are not a thing. You are not made of atoms or molecules. You are not even made of neutrinos or subatomic particles. You are context, not content. Whatever you say you are, you are not that. You are that which experiences that. Every thing changes, but you are not a thing. You are that which experiences things, which experiences change. And, as such, you are part of the immutable spiritual fabric of the entire universe.

And you don't know that. I know you don't know that because that is how this whole system is set up. Survival of the fittest depends on a delusion. It depends on us not knowing that. Oh, I know it when I think about it, but I don't experience my life that way. I, like you, am attached to my body, to my memories, to my relationships, to my experiences, and I don't want this whole system, this whole package that I call my life, to end. So I cling to this life and I protect myself from anything that threatens this life and I embrace anything that enhances this life. And so, I, just like everyone else, and every other being, struggle to survive, struggle to keep this particular mind/body experience going for as long as I can.

Now let's get back to Western materialist science and theories of evolution. Is survival of the fittest the mechanism that drives actual evolution, the reason we human beings are here on this planet today? Of course not. The fittest life form is unquestionably the microbe. There are quintillions of them for each human being on this planet. There are even extremophile microbes that can endure and even thrive in temperatures above the boiling point of water and below freezing. You would think that it would have taken "evolution" millions of years to develop such an amazing adaptation, but you would be wrong. Extremophile microbes are considered to be the oldest species on this planet and date back to the very time, four billion years ago, that conditions on this planet had stabilized enough to support any life at all. The greatest survival machines were also the first survival machines. If survival were the only purpose of evolution it would have been over as soon as it began.

Survival of the fittest is based on a delusion. The delusion is that we, that is all life forms, are not life, but the forms that life takes. It is our attachment to this form, to this body, and to the particular way of experiencing the world that we have through this body and the particular relationships that we have made while we have had this experience, that makes us cling to this particular form of life, and that makes us struggle and compete to survive. But if you espouse 'survival of the fittest' as such a key ingredient in our evolution, then at least think about it deeply, and realize that it makes absolutely no sense unless there is a spiritual being, a consciousness, at the center of every life form that enlivens it with the will and energy and intelligence to survive. To imply that this 'survival of the fittest' idea has somehow supplanted God, or eliminated the need for a non-material explanation of existence, is just silliness and it should be treated as such, no matter how many degrees the person has who is espousing such nonsense. He is basing his thinking on his observations of biological processes. Our thinking is based on an understanding of the being without whom these biological processes make no sense what so ever.


Your comments are most welcome.

Matt Chait - Saturday, June 28, 2008

WHO DOES WHAT?

http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/

"Do you think that I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next."
Rumi

Our mothers taught us to chew our food. But after we chomp down a few times on whatever it is that is in our mouths, we don't really digest that food, do we? It is done for us. And when we want to make a baby, those little gyrations that we do together, as profoundly satisfying and bonding as that experience may be, we are not really making babies are we? At most we are turning on the switch, or, perhaps more appropriately, plugging in the plug. It is done for us. Aside from the occasional times that we perform for our doctors, we don't really do breathing, and we certainly don't oxygenate our blood supply which is the result of that breathing. It is done for us. Really, we are being breathed. We don't circulate our blood and we don't grow ourselves. It is done for us. When we have an overwhelming desire for a piece of cherry pie, we don't put that desire in our bodies, that desire whose satisfaction simultaneously gives us intense pleasure and supplies us with vital nutrition, do we? It is done for us. And when we find the smell of that fresh baked pie absolutely intoxicating, we don't put those sensors in our nose that allow us to have that experience, do we? It is done for us. And when we race over to the pantry to grab a plate and fork and seat ourselves at the table, we don't provide ourselves with all that equipment (our muscles and bones and nervous system) that allows us to move wherever our desires take us, do we? It is done for us. And when we find the taste of that pie, as we are chomping down on it, to be too delicious to adequately describe, we don't put those taste buds in our mouths that allow us to have those sensations, do we? It is done for us.

For the last two hundred years or more, we have learned about many biological processes that take place in our bodies. Everyone now knows that we digest, we reproduce, we eliminate, we metabolize, we grow, etc., etc. But all of these are misnomers. We do not actually do any of the biological things that are happening in our bodies. We may, acting on our desires, do things that initiate certain processes. But even those desires, the ones that are integral to our survival, like the desire to eat, to drink, to sleep, to have sex, come from urges put in our bodies that we automatically react to. Everything that happens biologically within our bodies, is being done for us.

Now let's get much smaller. Our bodies contain one hundred trillion cells. And over the last one hundred years we have learned, thanks to the microscope, and many sophisticated forms of chemical analysis, about many biological processes that happen within these cells. One of the important functions of cells is growth. Our bodies grow as various cells replicate. But the cells know no more about how they biologically replicate than we know about how we biologically reproduce. It is done for them. And when they replicate the cells don't say, "I think I'll replicate now, because little Joey needs a bigger arm." When they replicate and how often is not coordinated by the cells, it is done for them. Cells don't really 'figure out' how to make anti-bodies to protect them and us from a wide variety of viruses and bacteria that might invade their cell walls and harm them, do they? Cells know no more about producing antibodies than we know about producing blood, sweat and saliva. It is done for them and for us. And enzymes are manufactured in the cells, enzymes that keep us alive and keep all our biological processes working. But our cells don't decide, "Hmm, I think Dr. Dawkins needs a little more glyoxalase. Let's see, where among these three billion genes did I put that glyoxolase sequence? Ah, yes here it is. I'll just copy it, move the copy over to my ribosome and manufacture a little." Cells don't really know how to manufacture enzymes, do they? It is done for them. And although all the ten quadrillion biological processes that are taking place at each moment in the cells of our bodies are all synchronized and coordinated, it is not our cells that are synchronizing and coordinating these processes with each other, are they? You don't think that same cell of Dr. Dawkins calls five hundred million of his neighbor cells on his phone (a cell phone) and says, "Listen Molly(or Dora, or Irving or Stinky) I was thinking of making a little glyoxalase this morning. Are you making any, because I don't want to make too much?" Cells don't communicate with each other. It is done for them and for us.

Cells have multitudes of molecules within them, just as we have multitudes of cells within us. Cells know no more about what their molecules are doing than we know about what are cells are doing. If we, who are the supposed pinnacle of evolution, know nothing about our cell's activities, how can we imagine that our cells, which are supposedly only the beginning of evolution, know anything about what their molecules are doing? They don't. The knowledge of our cells' activities and the coordination of our cells' activities are not known or coordinated by us. They are done for us. The knowledge of a cell's molecular activities and the coordination of those molecular activities is not known or coordinated by the cells. It is done for them and for us.

Now lets get a whole lot smaller than that. Thanks to the electron microscope, and ever more sophisticated instrumentation and analysis, including DNA microarrays, X-ray chromosome analysis and single molecule sequencing, we now know that each human cell contains some three billion pairs of nucleotides. Some twenty thousand stretches of these nucleotide pairs are arranged in codes which are recipes for enzymes; the basic building blocks of all the physical ingredients that make up our bodies. Do the nucleotides arrange themselves into codes so that the body can manufacture enzymes? No, of course not. Do letters form themselves into novels? Do numbers form themselves into equations? It is done for them and for us. Do these genetic sequences or the cells in which they are housed figure out when to copy these different sequences to provide the body with its moment to moment needs? No. It is done for them and for us. Do these nucleotides control the construction of our bodies, so that the enzymes that are manufactured are combined with other enzymes to form proteins and then shaped and imbued with function and purpose to create the organs of our bodies? No, of course not. Not even Michaelangelo could come anywhere close to creating and molding such precise shapes; how could we be insane enough to imagine submicroscopic pieces of nucleic acid doing any such thing. It is done for them and for us.

Modern science's understanding of life begins when a DNA molecule, or a molecule similar to DNA, containing a genome, an entire set of genes, which it supposedly had accumulated by an amazing series of fortuitous coincidences, including thousands of week long lightning strikes and its thousands or millions of organic components somehow bonding and staying in tact for millions of years; when this molecule replicated, or, as Richard Dawkins says, 'began to make exact copies of itself;' that was the beginning of life and evolution. But this, of course, is also a misnomer. A replicating molecule does not replicate itself. It is a molecule. It has no self. It does not replicate. IT IS REPLICATED. Replication is done for it and for us. Even if you accept Dawkins' perspective and his time line, you must say accurately, that life began when a DNA or a DNA type molecule was replicated. And if it was replicated, who replicated it?

Dear God, dear Allah, dear Cosmic Consciousness, dear Tao, dear Brahma, dear Atman, dear Great Father: please forgive our scientific brothers and sisters. In their enthusiasm to find out all the things that You have been doing on this physical plane, they forgot that You were the One that was doing them.



Please feel free to comment.

Matt Chait - Wednesday, September 17, 2008

REMEMBERING JERRY

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In a recent issue of Newsweek Magazine (September 22, 2008) in an article entitled "Mysteries of Memory" I found the following:

"UCLA neuroscientist Itzhak Fried and his Israeli colleagues measured neural activity in the brains of 13 study participants as they watched short video clips of shows like "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons." Afterward, while their brains were still being monitored, subjects were asked to describe whichever of the video clips came to mind. The same neurons that had fired as they watched a given clip fired again when they recalled that clip. In fact, researchers were able to predict which clip a subject was about to remember, as corresponding neurons flared up seconds ahead of actual remembering. The findings offer the first proof of a long-held assumption-that reactivation of the neurons initially involved in an experience forms the basis of human memory."

So if this is the first step toward understanding the 'mysteries of memory,' how far can we expect to go, using this method of research, toward unraveling these mysteries? Without wanting to appear like a spiritual killjoy, the purpose of this post is to try to explain the obvious limitations of this type of research.

The brain is matter. It weighs approximately three pounds and it is made up almost entirely of proteins. These proteins are organized into cells called neurons. The average human brain has approximately one hundred billion of these neurons. Neurons, like all cells, are amazingly complex, but neurons have one central function: they fire. When they fire an electric charge passes through them and that charge is transferred to another neuron through a connection called a synapse. Most neurons have approximately one to five thousand synapses, or connections, to other neurons; that means that there are roughly 100 to 500 trillion synapses in the brain and the possible number of paths that an electrical charge could follow through these various synapses is a number so huge as to be incomprehensible.

Now understand that no matter how many neurons there are and how many different paths through these neurons that a charge can take, what happens when each neuron is fired is basically the same. A charge, a measurable change in electricity, in voltage, moves through that cell. There are also some chemical changes that occur, but those seem to be relevant only as they stimulate or inhibit the firing of the neuron. Keep in mind that no matter what has been or will be discovered regarding neurons, subtle differences in chemical traces and electric charges, or the complexities of the firing patterns or the circuitousness of the routes of these paths, they will never be anything more or anything less than electrical and chemical changes.

The charge moving through pathways of neurons is commonly referred to in scientific circles as 'information.' When these neuronal pathways connect to the musculature and the electrical charges result in the contraction or release of muscles, or when they connect to the endoctrine system and result in the secretion of hormones, then the understanding of the charge as a transmitter of 'information' is clear (although the source of that information is not). But what about memory? What about thought? What about sights and sounds and tastes and touches? What about feelings? What about your entire moment to moment experience of your life? How do these electrical and chemical reactions relate to one's actual experience? As Fried and his colleagues continue to explore and tinker with these firing neurons will they eventually stumble upon Jerry and George? Will they run into microscopic electronic three dimensional and technicolor miniatures of Elaine and Kramer? Will they suddenly spy Newman and the Soup Nazi? I think we can say with confidence that they will not.

So, what is the relationship between this 'information' which is always, no matter how circuitous the path and how complex the timing of these firings, simply an electric current, and the endless variety, richness and texture of our experience? Obviously in relation to consciousness, neuronal firings are not information, in and of themselves, but they are part of a code. Perhaps that code, like computer code, consists simply of ON (high voltage) and OFF (low voltage) neurons, with each neuron functioning as a kind of brain pixel. Or, perhaps the code is also related to the timing of these firings and the location of the neurons in different areas of the brain. Again, as some scientists now think, it may be related to the electromagnetic field or cloud of energy surrounding the brain which is effected by all the firing neurons. The question is: How is that code, whatever it is, translated into the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touches and thoughts and memories of our actual experience? Where is the equipment, the apparatus, that does that amazing translation? That equipment has never been seen or detected by any scientific instrument. And science, which deals only in what is observable, will never detect that equipment. The reason that science is doomed to fail in this regard and the reason that you may consider me a spiritual killjoy (even though my message is joyous), is that the equipment that translates these patterns into experience and the experiencer of that experience is you and you are not part of the physical, observable world.

Now if that last sentence doesn't raise your materialist hackles, nothing will. But before you get too excited, just consider this idea for a moment. Your experience cannot be observed by anybody but yourself. (And what may be even more upsetting, from a materialist perspective, is that the self that is observing your experience is not observable even to itself!) You cannot be seen! Your body can be seen, yes. But what about you, that is experiencing your body, that looks out and observes the world from the vantage point of your body? You are not observable. Yet that is this very you that is the initiator and the doer of all your activities. The eye does not take in light by itself. It only lets in light when you want to look at something. It is your focus, not the eye's focus, which is based on your interest and needs, not the eyes interests and needs, that directs the eye toward where you want the eye to do it's job. The eye takes in the light waves that you directed it toward and translates them into patterns of neural firing, but the eye does not see. You see. The brain stores information coded in chemical and electrical patterns but the brain does not remember. You remember.

Let's suppose that brain research progressed beyond contemporary scientists wildest dreams. Let's suppose that they were able to 'crack' this code of consciousness in the same way that they have begun to crack the genetic code. Suppose they could look at these patterns of excitation in your brain and tell not just that you were observing something, but that you were observing something amusing. Suppose these researchers could even tell that you were watching a Seinfeld show and that they could even determine the specific episode that you were watching. Would they then be able to experience your experience? Would they then be able to think your thoughts or remember your memories? Of course not. They would still be relying solely on their own experience and memory of the Seinfeld show to make any sense of your experience of it. They would be no further along than if you had simply told them about it or written your reactions on a piece of paper. No matter how diligently researchers work; no matter how thorough their experiments, how complicated their calculations and how complex their equations, they will never get any further than the most subtle chemical or electrical interface between your body and/or brain (the physical plane) and you (the spiritual plane).

Let's go back for a moment to the beginning of this experiment. Thirteen participants were asked to watch video clips. Through various scanning devices the researchers were able to locate which neurons were firing when these clips were being watched. But why do these neurons fire in the first place? The scientific answer is that sensory neurons have a receptive field which is a space in which the presence of a stimulus will initiate or alter the firing of that neuron. Receptive fields have been identified for neurons of the auditory system, the somatosensory system and the visual system. But just as those patterns of firings that we discussed above are not really the end of the process (the process ends with your actual experience of the Seinfeld show), the stimulation of sensory neurons is not really the beginning of the process either.

The process begins when you want to hear something; when you want to touch something and when you want to look at something. This experiment really began when thirteen people decided that they wanted or were willing to watch these videos. The initial, the causal reason that those neurons lighted up was because those thirteen beings directed their attention to the Seinfeld show. Please really consider this. I am not just splitting hairs. The eyes do not see. The ears do not hear and the skin does not feel. Eyes, ears and skin are our equipment; they are the instruments we use when we want to see, hear and touch. We turn them on. They only work when we bring our attention, our focus, through our eyes, ears and skin because we want to experience something about the outside world. We focus our attention where we are interested in focussing our attention. Our desires and our focus are also not part of the physical universe. We may be able to get a sense of where someone's focus is by seeing which neurons are lighting up, but it is our interest that directs the focus that initiates the process. Interest and focus can be inferred or deduced by observing which neurons are firing and also by observations of our speech and behavior, but they cannot be observed directly with the naked eye or with any scientific equipment. Again, this is because interest, or desires, and focus, or attention, are aspects of you, of your self, and are not part of the physical universe. We direct our attention to an object or a person or a television show. That particular pattern of light is coming through our eyes because that is the object that we want to look at, or touch or listen to. This sensory equipment with its amazingly complicated system of neuronal firings is not working by itself. You are working it. It is serving you. It is the servant of your desires; and neither you nor your desires are part of the physical universe. They are unobservable and therefore never part of the equation when brain scientists or all biologists, for that matter, study the processes of the body.

To my way of thinking, the idea of studying memory without considering 'attention' is nonsensical. What we remember is a function of what we are attending to. Let's take the example of three people walking down a sidewalk in New York City. One is on his way to a jog at the local track. He looks up at the sky and notices that an ominous gray rain cloud that he saw earlier seems to have gotten darker and closer. He tries to stretch the muscles in his calves and shoulders as he walks along and wonders if he should have worn his sweatshirt. Another person, walking the same sidewalk at the same time, is someone who has lived in this neighborhood all her life. Today is her day off and she is on her way to the local coffee shop. As she saunters down the street she looks into the two Ukrainian owned shops (she is Ukrainian) and sticks her head in the doorway to say hello. The wife of one of the shop keepers (an old family friend) has recently passed away, and she notices that the shop keeper still seems to be in mourning even though he attempts a friendly greeting. A third person, a tourist, has never been to New York before. She has heard so much about this neighborhood (the East Village) and as she walks down the street taking in all the urban sights and sounds and smells, she thinks about all the poets and artists that lived here previously.

The point is that each person, walking down the same street, is having a very different experience and, of course, their subsequent memory of that street will depend on where their attention was as they walked down it. My wife is amazingly observant of her surroundings. We can visit a friend that we haven't seen in two years and she will walk into the house and say something like, "Oh, you re-upholstered your sofa. I love it." I, of course, would be hard pressed to remember that there ever was a sofa in that room, much less what the upholstery was like. On the other hand I may have a vivid memory of their cat and the distant and perfectly serene way that the cat observed us when we walked in the last time. Even when several people are attending to the same event, like the Seinfeld show, each person is watching a somewhat different episode. One person is a fan of the show and watches with enthusiasm. One person hates the show and the only reason she volunteered to be a subject in this research project was that her brother-in-law was one of the researchers. One person loves George and thinks that Kramer over acts. Another person thinks that Kramer is the best thing on the show and never takes her eyes off him when he is on camera, etc., etc., etc. Our attention goes where our interests and our desires lead us. This results in different experiences, different memories and different sets of neurons firing for each person.

Just as much as a person's interests are shaped by their experience, a person's experience is shaped by their interests. To my mind these interests are connected to a whole set of desires, of things that you want to or need to accomplish in this life. Your desires are not part of the physical universe but they are what connect you to the physical universe, and they precede our physical bodies. We choose our birth and we do that by choosing a set of genes that will develop into the body/brain that best suits what it is that we are trying to accomplish. Being born, from this perspective, is choosing to come from an unlimited, out of time and space experience, to a single space time continuum that is connected to a particular set of genes which develops into a particular body/brain. Even the intra-uterine experience is very different for each fetus depending on the interests and desires that the fetus brings to it. So it's not so much that you are the passive victim of the genes you happenned to be born with and the particular structure of the brain that you happenned to inherit. It's that you chose your genetic inheritance to accomplish whatever it is that you wanted to or needed to accomplish in this life. The neurons of the brain are simply neutral recording devices. You record on them the experiences that you are interested in and you imbue those experiences with the emotional meaning that you want to imbue them with. There is even brain research now that shows that we actually grow more neurons in the place in our brains that is associated with a certain kind of thinking or perceiving. If you are drawn to drumming, let's say, the more you learn, the more you are able to distinguish different sounds and rhythms and qualities of drumming. You actually grow more neurons or imprint pre-existing neurons with the impressions of these separate aural experiences that enable you to draw so many distinctions. Your interest also controls the growth and direction of the axons which lead from the neuron to a synaptic connection with another neuron. These axons can be very long (in relation to the cell body of the neuron) and can connect with any other neuron in the brain. Again, it is your interest, the way that you experience your experience that is causing the growth and direction of those axons and is imprinting not only these experiences but the way you connect them with other experiences. In short, then, a great drummer is not a great drummer because he happenned to have great drumming neurons. He's a great drummer because he arrived here with a passion for self-expression which found an outlet through drumming. In the process of pursuing his passion to become a great drummer, he grew and developed the great drumming neurons and synaptical connections that he needed to realize his dream.

Some people feel, in a sense, at odds with their brains. They are trying through therapy, or some other means, to restructure the way that they think or organize their experience. So how could they have chosen that? Because the lesson they learned or are now learning which brings them to this desire for change, is the very lesson that they wanted to learn in this life-time. And with patience and guidance and perserverance they can change pathways, grow new neurons and reprogram old ones. When we first made these choices regarding the kind of things we want to experience and accomplish in this life, we were not doing it from the encumbered place that we are in now. Our judgement was much different then. We were looking at it from a perspective outside of time; of endless time. And we were not dazzled by the superficial values of any society. We ultimately want to experience and understand EVERYTHING and we come to such understanding only through the experience and understanding of the negative as well as the positive. If you are wondering what it is that you are supposed to be accomplishing in this life, just look at your life at this exact moment. What ever it is that you are doing, whatever it is that you are wondering about or struggling with, that is exactly what you are supposed to be wondering about and struggling with. If your path does not yet appear clear to you, it is not yet supposed to be clear. If you know what you want but can't seem to reach it, the frustration that you are feeling at this moment is the frustration that you are supposed to be experiencing. You are the author of your experience. And if these words that you are currently reading cause in you a paradigm shift and alter the context within which you hold your experience, then that was what was supposed to happen; and if you reject these words, or if they do not make any sense to you at this moment, then that is what is supposed to happen, too. I am just doing my best to do what I am supposed to do.

Now let's look at the memory part:

"Afterward, while their brains were still being monitored, subjects were asked to describe whichever of the video clips came to mind. The same neurons that had fired as they watched a given clip fired again when they recalled that clip." The way it is explained it seems as though these neurons just happenned to fire by themselves and then they just happenned to fire again. But that is not the memory part. The way they describe it, it seems as if there is no memory part at all. The memory part comes because they (the subjects) were asked to describe what came to mind. Memory happens when they locate that same exact spot in their brains where the coded impressions of their first experience was stored. Obviously they are locating those neurons. It's not the neurons that are locating the neurons; that doesn't make any sense. Memory is their (not their neurons) act of location. Keeping in mind that there are one hundred billion neurons, the ability to re-locate those exact neurons is pretty amazing. When you are 'trying to remember' something, you are trying to locate those coded neuronal impressions. The brain with its one hundred billion neurons is a recording device, an amazingly complex and vivid recording device, but a recording device none the less. Memory is you locating where, among those billions of neurons, you stored that impression.

So at every step of this process: the subjects focussing on the show; the subjects translating the sensory neural firings into their actual experience of the show; each subject's unique way of experiencing the show and subsequently each subject's unique memory of that show; the subject's re-locating those firing neurons and the subject's once again translating these neural impressions into their experience; through all of these, the self with it's interests and attention is front and center. In fact with every biological experiment, the self is the elephant in the room (or the laboratory). It seems that the thrust of modern biology is not only to ignore this elephant in the laboratory, this self, but the long range goal seems to be to eliminate the entire concept of the Self. (Unfortunately for them, the self is not a concept. The self is that which is entertaining the concept that the self is a concept. Whatever you succeeded in eliminating, it wouldn't be the self, because you would need your self to eliminate whatever it was that you thought you were eliminating!)

Trying to look at or describe the process of memory in purely chemical and electrical terms without including the self is like trying to describe a baseball game without including the players:

A cork and rubber ball covered in cowhide flies through the air about sixty

feet where it comes into contact with a rapidly revolving stick. The ball

bounces off the stick in many different trajectories and eventually finds its

way to a leather glove. The ball then flings itself from the glove to another

leather glove in the vicinity of a white canvas square.

All of this is true, in a way, but the entire point is missed. The ball, the bat and the bases are not playing baseball. They are the equipment that the players use. It is the players not the equipment that are actually playing the game. And exactly the same thing holds true with memory, thinking and perception. The brain and it's one hundred billion neurons and it's many trillions of synapses are the equipment that we are using when we remember, think and perceive.

So, what am I saying? That all brain research is futile; that it is just the non-physical you that is doing everything, so why bother? No! Not at all! I am saying that our brains and our bodies are not us. They are our precious equipment and should be treated and studied as such. The brain and the body are the passive conductors of the ten quadrillion biological processes that enable us to experience the world through this brain and body. If we get clear on that, and that our health, our responsiveness and our sensitivity depend on the unimpeded flow of all these chemical and electrical processes, then the main thrust of our research will be on how this equipment works and what environmental factors, what foods and chemicals, and what ideas and emotional messages about the world and about ourselves, inhibit the flow of these processes and what factors enhance the flow of these processes.

But you, not biological processes but that which experiences these biological processes, are not observable, recordable or researchable. It seems that the thrust of modern research is to attempt to eliminate you, to make you explainable in chemical and electronic terms. This will never happen. The best that science will ever do is to get to the electrical or chemical interface between the physical universe and you. You will never be understood in those terms. Yes, we are seeing the electrical and chemical activity that supports our memory, our thinking and our consciousness, but we are not seeing memory, thinking or consciousness. We are at a strange point in our understanding of the world. We continue to learn more and more about the physical universe and how it operates, and in our enthusiasm we think all will one day be known and that the self and consciousness are delusions that will be dispelled as soon as we unearth the proper formula. We think of researchers in the same way we think of medical doctors, that they will eventually be able to diagnose love, consciousness and the self, to reduce these things to some kind of physical formula that will dispel any mystical notions that we may have about them. But the self has no physical bases what so ever. Whatever physical bases is found, the self is not this physical bases, but what experiences this physical bases. What we will discover, and what physicists are already further along at discovering, is that as you look more and more deeply into the world of matter it dissolves into the world of energy, and as you look more and more deeply into the world of energy it dissolves into the world of intention and as you look more and more deeply into intention you arrive at being; being which is the origin of intention, which creates energy, which creates matter.

Let's continue to investigate with great curiosity and diligence the physical universe in ways that lead us to improve our lives and enhance our experience; but let's give up this dark and depressing fantasy that research will one day explain away and eliminate the Self, the Creator and the creative mystery of life. No matter what we discover about the ways that neurons assist us, remember that we, not our neurons, remember Jerry.



Your comments are most welcome. Thanks.