driftwood (a short poem)

What is this drifting question? Who am I?

The river bends like an infinite question mark.

When was this winter? Where did all those ice floes go?

Listen to the sea. To the sea. To the sea.

A Beautiful Yogic Bone

A new enlightened paradigm for the western mind to counter its scientific materialist conditioning: this is what I appreciate about Young’s ‘Reflexive Universe.’ The mind may hear the Tao that can be spoken is not the real Tao, but it still thinks it hears the ground when it falls on it.

(Speaking of which, is there a better said description of the unsaid than what Nisargadatta says:

In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling. Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the immovable background of motion. Once you are there you are at home everywhere.

Beautiful.)

Like I replied in a comment: i find something like this to be a beautiful yogic bone thrown to the western scientific mind that's always in the background barking incessantly about the material universe it thinks it knows in order to keep it somewhere in a corner chewing at it contentedly and quiet. While we listen to the light.

As for the seventh stage in that heroic journey of light, Consciousness: I thought Wilber’s ‘Atman Project’ would supply the key, but after further review, and although it may do so for the early psychological stages, it fails to truly understand the turn involved in what must be the crucial egoic fourth substage: disillusionment and suffering.

Wilber follows the western psychological belief in an integrated ego without questioning the possibility of integrating anything into an insane dream state. Rather, after the self, or consciousness, passes through the membership phase of its social conditioning, and the so-called ego becomes entrenched, something called suffering and disillusionment occurs. That is the critical turn for consciousness.

It has condensed out of the material aduality, only to identify itself with the body, then the mind, and then an image supplied by its conditioning: three prisons of the seventh stage. Now it begins to see and feel that’s something is entirely wrong. And I would posit that the seeking phase becomes the aftermath of that turn. And what it seeks, of course, is itself.

And it’s in the fifth substage, if it ever gets there in this lifetime, that the yogas of wisdom, love, and being, introduced to itself by itself, will begin to vaporize that egoic fog and its social conditioning, leading inevitably towards, after the subsequent awakening stages rid it of the remaining twin bondages of mind and body, the Light that it always has been.

Consciousness to Consciousness

Arthur M. Young built a helicopter and in so doing came to an understanding of process and evolution. That’s the short story. Science and the laws of nature become a longer one. Purpose: an even longer one. In the end, he came to an understanding with the number seven in creation mythologies. And then there was light.

Evolution is a purposive process, with a reflexive shape. The first half is a fall into material determinism. Then there is a turn. And the second half is the return to freedom. Rather than laws, there is this freedom. Rather than statistics, there is individuation. Rather than objects, there is action!

The seven stages are: Light, Nuclear, Atomic, Molecular, Vegetable, Animal, Dominion. That first stage, Light, is completely free. Since light travels naturally at the speed of light, it’s outside of space and time, and has no mass. Spirit needs no church; consciousness is its own god. Its power is Potential.

The second stage, Nuclear, loses one element of freedom, and things are Binding. There is substance; there is force. But there is also the fog of probability. Wave? Particle?

Next, Atomic, loses another element, and Identity is gained. There is center, order, property. Chemicals have moved in. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Iron. Oh my!

Then, in the midpoint, the Molecular has zero degrees of freedom; Combination has been attained. There appears to be determinism. Classical physics lived here. Not to mention DNA: the holy book of life appears in its final act.

A lengthy interlude:

“The seventh substage, DNA…requires cells for the completion of its function, and cells belong in the next higher kingdom. It will be found that all seventh substages require the next higher kingdom to function. For example, the flowering plants depend on insects for pollination.

…What would this mean to the dominion kingdom? Since it is already the highest kingdom for the solar universe, we are led by this and other evidence to expect yet higher stages - a super arc which deals in galactic evolution. In other words, the dominion kingdom requires something beyond itself, which may help to explain why all human cultures, with the possible exception of modern man, depend on a belief in higher orders of beings, gods.

This dependence of seventh substages on the next higher stage is one of the most difficult concepts to accept because it suggests that process, at the seventh substage at least, anticipates its own future.

But there’s a turn in the molecular, at the fourth substage, with functional compounds, the organic chemicals, important to life. And sex hormones. Separation has occurred. Freedom will return.

Then, in the Vegetable, there is Growth, Organization. Reproduction. Negative entropy! Flowers. A rose is a rose is a rose.

Next, in the Animal, there’s Mobility, action, satisfaction, seeming choice. The nervous system makes it appearance. Turn it up! Also, in addition to DNA, now there is the animal soul. The birds in planetary flight and the importance of the queen bees will attest to that.

And then appears the individual soul, Atman. On that stage of the Monad, the actor we call Human Being, there’s Dominion. And the road to Consciousness.

Finally, Atman is Brahman.

The Reflexive Atman

I wish to write some words concerning two books that I’m in the process of reading: ‘The Reflexive Universe” by Arthur M. Young and “The Atman Project’ by Ken Wilber.

Young’s book considers the manifested universe as a reflexive process of light manifesting into the material and then ascending back to light. It is a seven stage process, each stage incorporating seven stages.

Each stage itself is one of four states of freedom, each stage on the descent becoming less free, and each stage on the ascent becoming more free, the fourth (no freedom) stage, the molecular, containing the all-important turn.

Light is Consciousness. It is timeless and not of the manifested world. Therefore it is nondual. Our mind, though, sees a material universe. In that vein, and understanding that duality is an illusion created by the mind, the entire process still can be seen as one great metaphor for consciousness knowing itself.

Wilber’s book can be viewed as the process of consciousness waking in the human being. It too is reflexive, in that there is an outward arc and an inward arc. Wilber incorporates the insight of psychology with that of the wisdom traditions in tracing the human being from birth to self-realization.

Before I begin, I’d like to place some caveats here. Although Young’s book is brilliant, it is not transcendent, in that Young’s analysis of the seventh and final stage, that of the human being, or what he refers to as the monad, appears to me to be limited by his own limited realization.

This is where Wilber’s book comes in: as a substitute for Young’s seventh stage. But one caveat here as well. I’ve never been a big fan of Wilber; he appears too cerebral in instances. But this book is, to this point, although dense sometimes, and sometimes overly technical, eminently understandable, and possibly transformational, but definitely emblematic.

the immutable center

some quotes from a crucial chapter in Nisargadatta's 'I Am That:'
72. What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real;
previously formatted as tweets for Nisargadatta_M
and now separated into basic triads for clarity.

Find the immutable center where all movement takes birth.

Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always at the axle in the center and not whirling at the periphery.

Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle—with light.


It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts.

It is all quite simple. Turn away from your desires and fears and from the thoughts they create and you are at once in your natural state.

Nothing stops you from being a jnani here and now, except fear. You are afraid of being impersonal, of impersonal being.


There is nothing to renounce. Enough if you stop acquiring.

The problem is excessive interest, leading to self-identification. Whatever you are engrossed in you take to be real.

The 'I am' in movement creates the world. The 'I am' at peace becomes the Absolute.


I am not concerned with the universe. Let it be or not be. It is enough if I know myself.

Pity the self that is, not the world that is not!

All these attributes; being, consciousness, love and beauty are reflections of the real in the world. No real—no reflection.


Change the current of your desire from taking to giving.

The passion for giving, for sharing, will naturally wash the idea of an external world out of your mind, and of giving as well.

Only the pure radiance of love will remain, beyond giving and receiving.


In love there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to separate, to make distinctions.

The world has only as much power over you as you give it. Rebel. Go beyond duality, make no difference between east and west.

You are eager to separate right from wrong, because you need some basis for action. You are always after doing something or other.


It is right to be oneself, it is wrong not to be. All else is conditional.

Awareness is dynamic, love is being. Awareness is love in action.

By itself the mind can actualize any number of possibilities, but unless they are prompted by love, they are valueless.


Love precedes creation. Without it there is only chaos.

Chaos is movement for movement's sake. True action does not displace; it transforms.

Just remember, nothing perceivable is real. Activity is not action. Action is hidden, unknown, unknowable. You can only know the fruit.


Through the film of your mind you project a world and also a God to give it cause and purpose. It is all imagination—step out of it.

Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not existence which is limited. All limitation is imaginary, only the unlimited is real.

To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future.


First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.

the sun

in the ultimate
metaphor
that is manifestation,

that star,
our sun, is
the great 'i am,'

its light is pure
living love,
and i am

the sun.

light—action

and then there was light—action!
and the light turned to certain
particles; and the particles, solid

bound matter; which evolved towards
the living heat of movement in mind,
that found itself lost in the thought of illusion,

of objects and subjects in memory that’s time,
then saw in a dreaming that all is always
awareness—and now there is light

final concept

the final concept:

see
the conceptual
as conceptual,

knowing
the nonceptual
is not

a concept.

precipitating

i am nothing
but light
precipitating

into thought
creating laws
with which

its universe
obeys allowing
order for

the thing
it really
isn't.

said equation

in a subject
without meaning,
the order of this

said equation
holds all
the meaning

in its subject:
i am not god;
god is me.

of nothing

when you
become aware
of nothing

but awareness,
you become
nothing,

as awareness
is you
becoming nothing

but aware.

in your ocean

i am thinks
therefore i forget
i am.

is that a wave
in your ocean
or are you just glad
to be 'me'?

deep sleep is
the closest one is
to being wide awake.

belief is easy;
nothing is hard.

you are not i.
are you?

stop believing

the real cosmic
breakthrough comes
not when you,

a human being,
stop believing
in god,

but when you,
god,
stop believing

in the human being.

only consciousness

there is no universe
in which
a body-mind has
consciousness;

there is only consciousness
that has a body-mind
in which there is
a universe.

to know

to know
that i know
is to know everything
that's knowable;

to know
that i don't know
is to know
the unknowable.