MindWalk: Ab origine, ad idem, ad infinitum

Collective Effervescence

2011-05-21T13:56:00.003-04:00

I find it particularly disheartening that Mr. Haidt's argument in his May 7th New York Times Op-Ed article “Why We Celebrate a Killing”, based on the distinction between individual and collective social sentiments, was used to defend the position. The basic claim is that Bin Laden's death provided an opportunity to experience collective unity, and that collective unity is healthy for a society. Fair enough. I don't argue with the fact that unity is a good thing for an in-group. Americans have generally breathed a deep, collective sigh of relief in knowing he is gone, and this is a very healthy thing.

However, the author's choice to regard both tribal religious experiences and celebratory responses to Bin Laden's death as "collective effervescence" is a red herring fallacy of association. Just because celebration is involved in both instances does not make the two situations the same. This is a typical fallacy made in evolutionary psychology...just because a modern behavior can be explained in terms of evolutionary development does not mean that we should accept the behavior as "right because it's natural". This latter part is a naturalistic fallacy, which evolutionary psychology is plagued by. While it may be "natural" for us to celebrate the death of an enemy, as we have done for thousands and thousands of years, I believe the modern age has brought us to a new-found respect for life that represents a new evolutionary development.

In Perceptual Control Theory, the highest level of cognitive development deals with values. As I see it, we develop and redevelop our value sets through experience. For example, our understanding of love as a value changes with age. It is very black and white in youth, but becomes more flexible with experience. It is difficult for a youth in the throes of romance to reconcile the fact that they are in love but that it is unhealthy...thus, "but I'm in love" is the vague explanation used by so many young women to explain their dedication to an abusive man. With experience, this changes. The value set expands and adapts to embrace the gray areas of life. One comes to recognize that love is not one thing alone....it involves many things, including other values such as respect, compassion, and patience.

The evolutionary development of communal values works in much the same way. We have developed a value set involving "respect for life". This is an outgrowth of our communal values of "freedom" and "equality", and may be contrasted with a more primitive concept of "justice" that was codified in Hammurabi's "eye for an eye" concept and has become less black and white over time. The gray areas have slowly evolved, as the evolution of law reflects. Furthermore, it is not a "respect for our lives" as opposed to "their lives", but a holistic respect for the process of living. This is not embraced by all community members, but a large portion does abide. Our highest level value set is expanding, evolving if you will, into a new cultural perspective. This is the tie between individual and social evolution: what we learn in our cultural environment informs the decisions we make, which in turn alters the course of that social history which impacts our biological evolution into the future. Our cognitive processing becomes more complex as our range of value-based concepts becomes more nuanced...and great complexity is all about the gray areas.

Evolution is not static. We are not the same as our ancestors. We are evolving in a direction that is of our choosing. It is vital that we recognize where we came from and what our primitive predispositions are in order to alter our decision making and actively direct our evolutionary course...our personal creation. "Collective effervescence" does not explain away the choice of so many to celebrate the death of a human being. Just because celebration brings solidarity makes it neither "right", nor "healing", nor "unifying" in and of itself. The context, or mitigating factors, which lead to the celebration must be considered. We could choose to rally around a great many unifying causes and events. Why this one? It is a primitive reaction, and we are capable of far greater celebrations. To choose this one simply marks a lack of positive progress in a portion of this society.

I Weep

2010-04-24T21:46:00.007-04:00

For the innocence lost, teardrops in an ocean are mine.
So many children, wandering, alone, in search of embrace.
For the lapse of time, the body's decay.
The mind ages so slowly.
Wanting only to be loved, and to love, without conditions.
The mother's gentle reassurance, warm voice calling us home.
The father's steady guidance, calm vision pressing us forward.
In the hope for a better future, generations seek solace in dreams,
place faith in the coming age, their own forgotten.
For the human condition, blessed and damned to live by choice alone,
instruction manual not included.
For angst of spirit.
Anger a ruse to cover bleeding wounds of the heart.
Arrogance to obscure uncertainty of mind.
Aimless lust to veil impotence of power.
For the beauty of hope.
For the call to place faith in visions unseen.
For the stars above, the earth below, and the air we breathe in between.
For the womb, the grave, the laughter, the sorrow, the pleasure and the pain.
For the glory of this strange experience we call life.

A Dream

2010-04-08T22:33:00.013-04:00

I glimpsed the infinite last night. As awareness shifted in the gap between dreamspaces, I found myself trapped within the confines of a prismatic, cylindrical room some 20 feet high and ten feet wide. Although the blue hued walls were opaque, tall window spaces made the outside world available to my senses. Clear lavender skies loomed large over an equally infinite expanse of deep blue seas, the soft sheen of its surface more reminiscent of a dense plasma than water.

As I turned my attention back to the strange room in which I stood, I found before me a tall glass column filled with...something. Seemingly nothing, but certainly something. It ebbed like an apparition, distorting the light ever so subtly, but never apparent in any relevant sort of form that my mind could define.

A deep rumble erupted from the base of the tall column. No motion accompanied the heavy echo within the chamber until, quite suddenly, a record player appeared before my eyes. Sealed in a glass frame and attached to the column by a thick bundle of black cords, a single record was lowered onto the already rotating platform.

Stealing a glance through the tall window, a vision of gracefully leaping dolphins met my minds eye. Yet no such thing was to be seen out the window itself. It was almost as though the room had elicited the vision from deep within me. The discrepancy made me uncomfortable, and so I turned my gaze back to the room's interior, only to find that the column itself was now filled with an indescribable pulsation...an upwelling of energy with barely visible hints of pastel coloration.

And then it began....

I found myself desperate to escape. Looking out the window I was greeted by an inversion of my previous vision, with purple seas above and deep blue skies below and enormous, tumultuous waves heaving and colliding. Before I could return my focus to the room, a creeping sense of overwhelming warmth gripped my chest like a vice, paralyzing my body even as I became aware of the low tone emanating from every corner of the room. My ears went cold. Panic rapidly set in.

Somewhere in the depths of my being, or perhaps beyond it, a wispy voice spoke: "You are not prepared for this". The paralysis relaxed its grip only enough to allow my head to turn, bringing to awareness the all-enveloping cascade of colors, sharp and brazen, within the now bulging confines of the glass column. Each spectacular ray of light seemed to erupt from its center and tear through my mind, leaving in its wake a combination of awe and utter disorientation. The voice then spoke again, as if a world away: "prepare". My breath caught in my throat.

The record spun and the music began, softly at first, simple and terrifying. The depths of its discord resonated within my being, mingling with fleeting images of colored skies, graceful dolphins, and a nearly imperceptible vision of myself standing frozen and aghast. The chamber walls were no longer perceptible; there was nothing but the dense, elaborate tapestry of light and sound.

A deep chord struck, its magnitude deafening. My panic reached a crescendo. This was the beginning of the vision of that which may not be looked upon.

The light spoke this to me even as the sound showed me. My body shook under the weight of its omniscient force. My spirit quivered in the face of its eternal glory. My mind recoiled with the recognition that it was too expansive to possibly comprehend. The voice begged me to flee this scene, to preserve my being.

The chaos was eternal.

Its beauty was infinite and terrifying.

I was not prepared...and so I awoke.

Or perhaps I am only now dreaming.

Sinclair's Insight

2010-04-08T09:15:00.001-04:00

"And at that point the realization suddenly burned me like a searing flame: For each person there was an “office,” but for nobody was there one that he was permitted to choose for himself, to define, and to fill according to his own wishes. It was wrong to desire new gods, it was totally wrong to try and give the world anything! There was no duty for enlightened people, none, none, except this: to seek themselves, to become certain of themselves, to grope forward along their own path, wherever it might lead. - I was deeply affected by that, and for me that was the profit from that experience. I had often played with images of the future, I had dreamt of roles that might be meant for me, as a poet, perhaps, or as a prophet, or as a painter, or whatever else. That was all meaningless. I didn't exist to write poetry, to preach sermons, to paint pictures; neither I nor anyone else existed for that purpose. All of that merely happened to a person along the way. Everyone had only one true vocation: to find himself. Let him wind up as a poet or a madman, as a prophet or a criminal – that wasn't his business; in the long run, it was irrelevant. His business was to discover his own destiny, not just any destiny, and to live it totally and undividedly. Anything else was just a half-measure, an attempt to run away, an escape back to the ideal of the masses, an adaptation, fear of one's own nature. Fearsome and sacred, the new image rose up before me; I had sensed it a hundred times, perhaps I had already enunciated it, but now I was experiencing it for the first time. I was a gamble of Nature, a throw of the dice into an uncertain realm, leading perhaps to something new, perhaps to nothing; and to let this throw from the primordial depths take effect, to feel its will inside myself and adopt it completely as my own will: that alone was my vocation. That alone!”

-Hermann Hesse; from Demian

Socrates and the Pursuit of Truth

2009-03-18T13:22:00.007-04:00

Positively Puzzled by Norman Fischer

Bewilderment has been a lifelong experience for Norman Fischer - and has spurred his urgent search for the truth.

Whenever anyone asks me how I came to be a Zen priest and abbot I always say it was an accident. This is really the truth. While I admire people who seem to have a religious destiny and interest - and now I know many people like this - I am afraid that I am just not such a person. Mainly I am, and have been most of my life, bewildered. I mean this in the literal sense: 'bewildered', meaning being aware of the many situations there are in any one situation, the many ways there always are of looking at anything, of understanding anything, the basic perplexity inherent in being human and living in a world that we make with our senses and our minds.

The dictionary tells me that the 'be' of 'bewilder' means be, as in 'to be'; but it also means 'completely and utterly'. 'Wilder' means to be lost in a place where there are so many paths you can't tell where to go. It means to be in the wilderness where there aren't any paths at all - just open spaces or filled spaces with no clearings. So to be bewildered is to see many paths and also to see that the whole world is open and wild, and there aren't any paths. Wherever you are, whatever happens, is a path, and also a question: a path that leads to a new path.

I started my Zen practice not as a spiritual person but as a poet. I was born at the very end of World War II, when the soldiers were returning home from the battlefield with a great hope that things could now be normal and life would be better than it had been before the war. People in general are admirably able to find hope, no matter how hopeless things might seem. This is something to remember and to count on in hopeless times.

But although everyone in those days was trying to be hopeful, they in fact were traumatised by what had happened in the war. As a child I felt this universal trauma as a kind of coating on top of things, like dust that was constantly swirling around and would inevitably settle on whatever you brought into the room. I could feel it but no-one ever spoke about it or even seemed to know it was there. But children always know what's there, even if they can't say what it is. Instead they feel it mythically, and are bewildered by it. This is, I think, fairly normal.

Being bewildered in a traumatized world, I was constantly forced to doubt the world as it was presented and to try and understand it on my own. I began writing poetry as a way to understand what I otherwise could not, because thinking could never get me there. I could see how limited thinking was. Although poetry has never helped me understand anything, it has helped me to keep on trying to understand by giving me a method larger than my own mind and personality. But poetry also makes it clear that the gap between how things are and how we live is immense. So poetry can make life seem a lot worse.

This was what happened to me, so I could see I needed to close the gap by finding a way to turn the whole of life into poetry. This was the only hope. I was feeling this when I first encountered Zen books, which seemed to provide what I was looking for. This is how I understood Zen then - as a way to live so that all of life could be poetry, so the gap between the way things are and the way people live and think could somehow be closed. And you could live life whole and true; it could be beautiful and purposeful, even if things were difficult, and even if you never really discovered the purpose of your life.

So my motivation to practice Zen wasn't really spiritual. You could say it was aesthetic and practical: I wanted to find a sustainable way to live. When I found out about zazen practice it immediately struck me as desperately important. I don't know why - possibly because I sensed that to do what I wanted to do I needed to approach things from an entirely different angle. As an iconoclast by temperament and upbringing, I didn't like Buddhas and bowing and robes; that all seemed faintly ridiculous to me. But I really liked both the idea of it and actually doing it. It was never boring. I could never figure it out nor tire of it because it was so simple it was almost nothing at all.

I started doing zazen each day and I have continued ever since. It just so happened that doing zazen intensively required me to bow to Buddha figures and, eventually, to wear robes and take ordinations. Of course I had a lot of resistance to that but it was small compared to my certainty that it was necessary to live in a way that kept me trying to understand life. The resistance was only me and my little preferences and conditioning, whereas the necessity to continue with zazen was much broader. So I persisted. This may sound nobler than it actually was. In fact I was terrified not to practise zazen, not to live out this desperate quest for the truth. I imagined I would not otherwise be able to bear life. I could imagine no other possibility. So I was willing to do whatever it took.

We all have theories of course - to be human is to theorize - and our theories are autobiographical. My theory is that humans need to live a life that's whole and meaningful and beautiful, a life devoted to pursuing the real. It seems to me that all human beings want and need to make this kind of effort, which is why art and religion have evolved in human culture. From childhood we have dreams, images and longings; these ripen into a vision of life that we need to understand for ourselves, uniquely and experientially.

This is why there is such a thing as a spiritual path. To me, a spiritual path isn't separate from ordinary life, not an alternative to emotional life and material life. The spiritual path is simply a way to stay true to what arises during a human lifetime, whatever that may be. It's true we need some methods and rules, some techniques and teachings. These are practical matters, like food and clothing of the soul. There are many kinds of good food and appropriate clothing - there can also be foods that are bad for you and clothing that is uncomfortable or wrong for the weather. We need to find what works. But, in any case, the teachings and techniques of a spiritual path aren't themselves the spiritual path.

Spiritual reality, spiritual truth, is always bewildering, never entirely knowable. We can know some things. For a little while we can feel we know something that is true. Mostly we can be surprised by a feeling of wonder - or gratitude or gentle perplexity. But we never really possess the truth. It's a kind of madness to think we know the truth. My favourite line in the Zen ordination ceremony is: 'The path is vast and wide. Not even a Buddha can define it.'

I believe everyone without exception wants and needs to live with spiritual integrity, but I know there is not much evidence for this. The vast majority of people are not concerned with spiritual integrity. Even if they say they are, they actually probably aren't. They are concerned with economic well-being, with their families, with social status, power and so on. Or maybe they are just concerned with survival. It is today, and has always been, a minority of people who devote themselves to a thoroughgoing exploration of Reality.

Nevertheless I believe all human beings share that need, and that everyone has some native sense of its importance. Anyone is stopped short on entering a silent meditation hall or a cathedral. Taking a minute just to sit still there, anyone can feel something greater and wider than the literalism of mundane life. Something similar can happen when you read a poem or see a great picture. We know about this because we all realise (whether or not we think about it) that we've come here from nowhere and that when we are done we'll return to nowhere. The minority of people devoted to a thoroughgoing exploration of Reality - to spiritual practice of whatever kind - do so on behalf of the others. In the end this is the only way it can be done.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer is the former Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center. His new book of poetry, Slowly but Dearly, will be published later in 2004 by Chax Press

Ram Dass - Desire

2009-03-13T15:15:00.006-04:00

"Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires."

Ajahn Brahm (Opening the Door of Your Heart)

Joseph Campbell - Follow Your Bliss

2009-03-05T22:17:00.004-05:00

GRANT ME

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be
fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the
heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to
my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but
hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be coward, feeling your mercy
in my success alone; but let me find the
grasp of your hand in my failure.

-Rabindranath Tagor

Synchronicity in Fractals

2009-02-28T18:49:00.011-05:00

“Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.”
-Jean Cocteau

“Secret forces are bringing compatible spirits together. If the man permits himself to be led by this ineffable attraction, good fortune will come his way. When deep friendships exist, formalities and elaborate preparations are not necessary.”
-I Ching

“The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.”
-Carlos Castaneda

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."
-William Blake

Ghost Song

2009-02-24T09:04:00.005-05:00

Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
the day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach and cooled jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
the time has come again
choose now, they croon
beneath the moon
beside an ancient lake

Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
everything is broken up and dances.

Indians scattered,
On dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s,
Fragile eggshell mind

We have assembled inside,
This ancient and insane theater
To propagate our lust for life,
And flee the swarming wisdom of the streets.

The barns have stormed
The windows kept,
And only one of all the rest
To dance and save us
From the divine mockery of words,
Music inflames temperament.

Ooh great creator of being
Grant us one more hour,
To perform our art
And perfect our lives.

We need great golden copulations,

When the true kings murderers
Are allowed to roam free,
A thousand magicians arise in the land
Where are the feast we are promised?

-Jim Morrison, The Doors

Evil: Not Quite So Cut and Dry?

2009-02-22T21:49:00.011-05:00

Carl Jung calls upon our evolutionary heritage as an explanation for our current state of consciousness and, in tandem, unconsciousness in terms of ‘archetypes’[http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/archetypes.html]. So what is the relationship between the Evolutionary Environment of Adaptedness (EEA) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology] and the creation of these archetypes?

The EEA represents all that we have been. It is the ancestral foundation, the experiential truth, of our tendencies and impulses. We have developed, this strange human race, based upon fundamental determinates. There is no particular randomness, no unnatural discord, within our current circumstance. ‘Madness’ is as much a part of Culture and Being as rationality. These ideas of normalcy are merely shortsighted responses to the process of our natural, evolutionary development.

We continuously regard our fellow man based upon our limited temporality. Our comprehension of time is restricted to the span of an individual life and, all the more recognizably, to the span of fleeting day to day moments. Obvious, meta-systemic behavioral patterns are obscured by this temporal distraction…by this primal drive.

He who fits the mold, in effect, defines the consensual system. He who does not fit is necessarily categorized and thereafter perceived as outside of the norm…as not quite worthy of equal recognition…as abnormal. Without knowing where we’re going, without knowing where we’ve been, we seek comfort in the form of well defined norms…and systematically alienate all alternatives. ‘Universalize’ the consensual perspective, deem it “righteous”, and thereafter one may reaffirm one’s superiority in terms of differences. In terms of variations from the norm.

These are some of the ultimate 'in-group' conceptualizations: Religions. Nations. Cultures.

Code words for consensual relations. Moral imperatives based upon behavioral patterns manifest. Standardized recognitions of the status quo. All who qualify…come into the fold. Otherwise, you’re not quite so real as we are.

Not that anyone is to blame for this conundrum. On the contrary, it is the natural human tendency. We seek in-groups to mold and affirm our perspectives as social beings. This was an adaptive mechanism in the EEA. We identified with those who we knew, through proximity based experience, through blood lines, who we could trust, and developed various rituals which bonded us to those individuals. We found common ground. We set unique boundaries that formed the foundation for our collective identities.

We danced together. We sang together. We lived together and we hunted together.

We also fought together.

We fought against the alien groups…those who outwardly appeared to be so similar to us, but were not of the fold. They were different. We fought for what was ours…just as any animal does. We still fight for what is ours…just as any other animal does.

We all do this. Now, today, we all do this. Each and every one of us does this. We construct our personal boundaries based on collective values, define our in groups based upon these values, relate to these in groups as the foundation of our identities, and then objectify others in terms of our differences. We all do this.

And yet, as human beings, our similarities are still regarded as less relevant than our differences? This is what happens when one has no alternative point of reference. We have more in common than we have the consistent vision to recognize. This is the preposterously obvious concept that has somehow eluded us for so long. This is what so many spiritual and religious ideologies have attempted to illuminate since the beginnings of “civilized” societies. We are so much more similar than different, in fact, that even our self-declared differences are based upon the same fundamental determinants, the same underlying constructs. It is our attachments to the particulars that lead to devastation and blind destructiveness....to rage, to hate, to chaos. Entire societies, collective identities, founded upon variation from the 'other'. Sub cultures too, straying from the more powerful, diffuse, and thus influential cultural identity, claim uniqueness despite their origin as a reaction to the norm. Trapped within the confines of our limited temporal existence, to the emotions and beliefs which we attach to particular moments, we seek comfort in that which is identifiable.

We all do this.

What of the archetypes? These are the universal constructs, the guidelines if you will, within which our evolutionary development has occurred. They represent the primal, developmental points of reference which have consistently touched us on an emotional and intuitive level, affecting our cognitive schematics. These archetypes are what unite us. We currently exist as biological entities only insofar as our genetic lines were sustained despite the enormous difficulties our ancestors faced. We are the beasts that survived. Yet survival is not simply a physical contingency. It carries with it a multitude of psychological repercussions. We are the bearers of the strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, that allowed for the survival of our ancestors in a cruel and inhospitable world.

This is something to embrace.

This is our inheritance.

This is our legacy.

Why should we be afraid of it?

What will it take for us to accept it?

And what might occur if we were so bold as to embrace that which we seemingly despise?

Rhythm of Moments

2009-02-20T16:56:00.002-05:00

The Witness

2009-02-20T13:24:00.001-05:00

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest in a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

- Albert Einstein

Video of Ken Wilber stopping his Brainwaves via Meditation

We experience feelings, we experience thoughts, we experience a sense of self in this physical body. Yet it is possible to observe as one's thoughts works to legitimize and validate themselves. "Am I thinking? Of course I'm thinking!....and yet I'm capable of observing my thoughts as I think...so am I thinking at all, or just observing the mind as it thinks? What's the difference? I mean, am I the thought itself or the observer of the thought?"

Well to begin, we are experiential beings and we must assume this current experience is real. To question this point would render us ineffectual skeptics in the vein of the late Platonic Academics such as Carneades, a uselessly individualized and inactive combination of nihilism and hinayana-style principles. It is not that our thoughts are not real. To the contrary, they are quite substantial. However, they are not you. You are the will, the Witness, which may observe, guide, and direct the thoughts which you observe within yourself as they appear.

Since I can observe my feelings, thoughts and subsequent attachments, it is reasonable to claim that I am not these appearings. I experience them, but I am not them. This is the Taoist observation method of "no, not that". I am Mind beyond attachment to appearances. I have always been and shall always be Mind. Our current condition within the confines of this mortal coil is what one might call the great Forgetting.

We are caught in an "ego vs. object" complex, having become attached to black and white, this and that, self and other understandings of phenomenal experiences. In constructing values and beliefs we are utilizing our natural human tendency of opposites (and the linear continuum in between) to define our place in the world. As such, I am only a man because I know I am not a woman, a human only insofar as I am not a dog, etc. This is the expression of "ego vs. object". As such, appearances are relative, despite the fact that an individual may consider them to be absolutes. Individual opinions are thus relative constructs...but we typically, and mistakenly, regard such opinions as absolute truths. This allows for an unhealthy attachment to appearances, resulting in pain and suffering.

The only true 'absolute' is the Witness which observes this ego, these feelings, these thoughts in any form of consciousness.....that which is absolute because it is Every-thing and it is No-thing. One may choose to attach oneself to feelings, thoughts or ego at will, or one may choose not to. There is no inside or outside of oneself as Witness. The human condition allows for the appearance of an inside and out. However, it is only an appearance, the Vedantic Maya, the great illusion...and may be overcome by moving beyond the attachment that allows for it. Not to say that attaining this is some stroll in the park, by any means. However, there are tested methods by which such recognitions may become manifest realities.

This is what Ken Wilber, one of the world's most influential modern philosophers, attempts to convey in the video above. The little mind is in perpetual motion, endlessly flittering from one thought to the next. Not only does this occur without the conscious consent of the individual, but we come to define this flittering in terms of our distinctive and separate sense of "self". It is through meditation that these thoughts may be constructively altered by the individual. One may come to dissolve the "ego vs. object" conundrum by stilling the mind. Don't believe the mind is capable of stillness? Then watch the portable EEG monitor as Wilber steadies his brainwaves via several different meditation techniques. It's pretty remarkable...and a scientific testament to the power of these ancient methodologies.

To learn more about Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute, go to:

http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/public/about/multiplexmap.aspx