- To study the Way is to study the self.
- To study the self is to forget the self.
- To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.
- To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between one's self and others.
Mystical Canapés
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Each human being is a consort of multitudes,
By going inward, we expand outward. Emotion subjugates yet also validates. Dharma is like a slopping corrugated roof and Tao, the path of a raindrop along its surface.
We can formulate this metaphysics: Action = Relationship × Situation². This holds for matter, as in chemistry, as well as for people's lives. An action that changes relationships alters the situation; an action that changes a situation alters a relationship, but to a lesser degree, particularly for people. Results are relative to each unique gestaltic action. As I die, while, I hope, in profound meditative awareness, I would like to listen to certain CD musical recordings. Included are the Beatles' Revolver, their best and creatively their richest; Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians [Ensemble Modern's performance], for this masterpiece is mathematical Bach transformed to the ethos of the late 20th century, my era of societal interaction; hence, a spiritual meditation; and last, Miles Davis' album, Kind of Blue [without the bonus alternate take of Flamenco Sketches]. An attachment to pleasure? No. Because the recording gestalt of genius, time, place, and collaborative unity conveys direct perception of the Creation Continuum. With this background— the soundtrack, if you will—I will release to the religo-yogic return or, if your prefer a biological/physico-chemical metaphor, to reabsorption to the very process and ground of energy-matter-mind. Philosophy at its root is the study of consciousness-mind. A mystic is a philosopher with yogic yearnings, i.e., a religious philosopher. * * *
Ego is guru of which we seek to leave or deconstruct respectfully to become consciousness per se, a total awareness with neither a subject nor separate or independent object. We can indeed experience the return to the state-of-being of unnamed universe, the nameless Tao; however, one cannot humanly, hence biologically, function this way, casting aside intelligence and self-awareness. We cannot survive. Returning neither to the state of zombie insects, nor to the instinctive, environmentally smart reptiles and rodents, but instead to live and to die this way, utterly aware but not in thought, being Tao, is a noble goal. Yet we should let go of even this, allowing the lessons of the experience and our changed being help us and others in the world. [This is the tenth, and last, ox-herding image of Zen Buddhism.] The essence of science is analysis, not the mere collection of data.
The direct, the simple answer to this koan has metaphysical overtones. The philosopher will make a great, long, complex circle of thought and converge on the same point as that attained by the student of Zen. Both paths are equivalent. Still, the scientist–philosopher will have come to accept the limitations of the approach and then, being the explorer, take the adventurous leap into the wordless realm. Great doubt, great attainment. The neurological correlates of idea-thought compete as impulses; dominance being the decision to action. Repetitive neurochemical enforcement, through conscious reflection, can change dominance, or karma. In the mutual feedback of body and mind, momentum, be it material or spiritual, affects decisions and actions. It can break habits and psychological addictions, or it can create them. Cannabis meditation includes "sequential collages" of rapidly changing mental images in associative strings or trains. Here is a tool for examining karma. Cannabis returns us to a more joyful joie de vivre, a youthful, open neuro-mentation that refreshes neuro-noetic processes and neurophysiology. It removes the cobwebs of mind and lifts us out of the rut of numbing daily routines. However, to attain the proper life-supporting effect of the drug, it must be an occasional booster shot, not a daily crutch. Adulthood can be defined as the ontogenetic achievement of semi-homeostatic neurophysiological balance, or relative stability, where one’s cells are less sensitive to chemical and other addictions as well as to public or social peer pressures, i.e., the hallmarks of the teenage years. * * * Each moment is the/this Creation in continuum. The Big Bang, the conversion of proto-energy into the first matter was not the beginning and end of Creation. The rise of complexity, hence creation, is ongoing. When I paint, I continue Creation. If, as in String Theory, the universe exists in 10 or 11 dimensions, cannot those dimensions beyond common volume and time comprise mind? Must it be about shape? What about charge, the power of potential and of chemistry, and an attribute of matter? After all, there is no matter without process, or behavioral patterns of energy. Hence, we should not think of time-space alone but of time-space-mind (or time-space-information) and put aside antique concepts of materialism and duality. Regarding tulkus, or psychoecology as a gestaltic cosmic metaphysic. Like Stephen Batchelor, my Buddhist views draw a line at the concept of so-called reincarnation, which is emphasized in Vajrayana schools. But I see a solution: Karl Pribram’s holographics concepts of cosmos-mind. Each being eventually is dispersed into mind-elements and energies on death. So too the mental, conceptional being is integrated into universal pure mind, where informational ripples of individual deeds and preferences are embedded, as in Sheldrake’s proposed morphogenetic fields. It takes the tuned mind of a person to detect and process the wave of mental momentum. A very young child, yet unconditioned by society and with the correct mind configuration, is more open to receive the information from someone else’s, now deceased, life. I do not accept reincarnation of past ego. I do not accept the concept of soul or atman. I do accept as plausible, but not necessary true, that a person can channel the karma or deeds of an historical person. This is not communicating with such an entity, nor embodying one, but merely demonstrating information about the dead individual without actually having met or having knowledge of the deceased. A dying lama may have the precognitive information that such a unique child may be located in such a region or with some other meaningful characteristic; these are never precise, as information in remote viewing experiments is not typically "seen" in the mind’s eye in exact or complete detail. Remote viewing, precognition, clairvoyance are related, historic, true, and testable information-based phenomena of but which lack scientific explanation because there is no well-developed theoretical model to encompass it. In short, The Standard Model is inadequate: hardly a radical view even among physicists. My father, my nephew, and I have such testable ability. I attended a noetic science workshop where 70% of the participants demonstrated the ability. Scientism has shut out these useful arts known to indigenous peoples from Asia to Africa to the Americas. Horatio’s undreamt philosophy surely most regard mind and matter not as complementary nor correlated nor emergent but as a unity within process metaphysics. * * * "You’re dead!" — a combative warning curse. Reply: "I was dead the moment I was born." On November 3, 2005, I truly and thoroughly recognized and experienced mortality. I had crested my path and now stepped into decline, waste, oblivion, and emptiness of self. The sense of mortality is but the re-cognition of self-less formlessness. I did not like the experience, but previously I had meditatively transcended life and death, whose memory ripple of the event allows a type of faith based on knowledge, not a taught belief. Fearlessness ↔ faith Life
has become a continuous meditation — Horror maximus: fear of loss of self-awareness as the ego faces oblivion, de-existence. On the backslide of life, the body atrophies and is increasingly feeble. The thoughtful mind thereby becomes the last holdout of essential steadfastness. We can eventually accept the decline of energy and coordination, but we fear loss of mental abilities and control of self-awareness. We can deal with cancer, but Alzheimer's disease is dehumanizing. We must find a cure or at least a prevention.
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