Posts tagged "thoughts-dreams":

"Do you believe in God?"

Sometimes there is a problem with the way that questions are asked. Those are the questions to which our response is sure to get someone upset. Perhaps they should not be asked? Perhaps they need to be asked differently?

When a response clashes with a person's beliefs, this is guaranteed to create an uproar, because people are highly invested in their belief systems. We tend even to be highly invested in our opinions.

It is as if our whole identity is threatened when these opinions, and certainly our "deeply held" beliefs are questioned.

Why exactly do we feel threatened when these are challenged? Why does it feel so visceral? As if someone is threatening to chop off a finger or wrench out our heart? Indeed, it is as if these are more than material.

If my hand is amputated I can get a prosthesis. If my heart is diseased, I can maybe receive a transplant. I will still be the same person. Will I be the same person if I adopt a different religion or lose my faith?

I think it depends a lot upon what we base our identity.

So, do I believe in God?

I do not believe in a kindly or a wrathful deity sitting somewhere up in the sky, or one bearing similarly anthropomorphic features. I think that most educated, self-respecting contemporary people would probably give this same response whether or not this is really their image of the deity. They will mention a more sophisticated concept of what "God" represents for them.

It is necessary to dig a little deeper. If there really is an entity called God, Allah, Elohim, Siva, Ahura Mazda, Amida Butsu or whatever, this is going to have to be infinitely powerful and all-knowing. Above and beyond everything else. Anything less would be too limited. If our deity does not exceed all limitations, why do I need him / her / they?

Yet even if we think of God as limitless, omnipresent, omniscient and omnivalent, this remains a conception or a concept in our minds. As humans, We understand reality through such concepts, all of which are highly subjective and culturally conditioned. For example, according to Wikipedia, a banana is a a kind of berry produced by a large herbaceous flowering plant. A cucumber is a fruit that grows on a vine and people in some cultures would see it as blue.

Concepts are used to tame our anarchic reality and make it manageable. We take a feature of this reality and assign to it a definition. To define something means literally to place it within limitations, to limit it.

Do we wish to place limitations around God? If there is a God, could we? This is the entire reason that Jews and Muslims refuse to create images that represent the deity. Jews go further and refuse to "name" God. They replace the word with epithets. When pressed for a name in the Biblical tale, God's response is only "I will be who I will be" (the meaning of "Yahwee") - and Jews refuse to speak or write even that name. Muslims disallow even the artful representation of God's creation. They see this as blasphemy.

When religions, such as Hinduism, do allow for such representations, they have highly sophisticated responses to the issue of the implied limitation - they understand the problem very well. This is even built into folk traditions so that not just the savants will understand it.

Ultimately, the question of God's existence is less important than what it reveals about ourselves and our way of understanding the world.

The meaning of purpose; the purpose of meaning

Purpose or lack of purpose is something that exists in the human plane. To escape suffering that is caused by war, famine, climate change, a person risks his life with the purpose of reaching a better place. Purposes relate to cause and effect; to agency. A subject acts and an object receives the action. By virtue of our lived experience, we interpret the universe in terms of separation; we see causes and effects and we look for purpose. If we find it, we decide that there is meaning to our lives, to the universe. If we do not find it, we may decide to believe in a supernatural or an unknowable purpose: "mysterious are the ways of God…" Or contrarily, we decide that there is no purpose, neither meaning. It's all a blank.

This is all from our human point of view, the perspective of individual subjects existing in a universe of objects. You can say that indeed this is all that matters: whether our experience of reality is valid or not, we are stuck in it. This is what we know and perhaps all that we will ever know. We suffer, we struggle to find meaning, we search for a purpose to our lives.

And yet it is still important to understand the limitation of our manner of looking at the world, and to admit that there is another way of seeing reality, even if this is not currently accessible to us. In this other reality, there are no subjects or objects, because there is no one to stand "outside" or "apart" from the universe and observe it. There is just an all encompassing unity in which every particle of the cosmos is a full expression of the whole, in which everything is in perfect sync. Because it is all one, there is no agency: there is nothing separate to be acted upon. So, indeed, there is no "purpose" and no "meaning" that exist independently of the whole. There is no consciousness that is separate from existence.

The purpose, if you will, is therefore intrinsic.

I am stuck in an inflatable dinghy on the open sea. The craft is losing air and taking on water. I have no life jacket, and am unable to swim. My dreams of a better life, or any kind of life, have ended in failure and will soon end in death. Shall I be thankful for the short time I was able to spend with my mother and siblings? Shall I die with feelings of immense bitterness at the broken promises, the greedy smuggler who betrayed me, the foolishness of my venture, the loss of everything I hoped for, the cruelty of my fate? Shall I look from the dark ocean to the sea of stars, and think that I am one of them; that they are my brothers. That I am somehow a vessel for this cosmic radiance that comes to me across the aeons, and will continue to shine far into the future; a continuum of life. Shall I come to terms with mortality and immortality, perfection, beauty, frailty and power?

A good citizen; hamsin; musical performance

Our truth and our persona

Are we just who we think we are, or do we always represent something - some group; some nation; some identity? There are things we would like to say, but then we remember that as a "privileged white male" or as a citizen of a former colonial power, or something else, it is probably better to keep our mouths shut. That's what I'm reflecting on now, with regard to that Israeli film director who raised a furor at the Goa film festival (see my previous post). What he said, regarding the "vulgarity" of the film ("The Kashmir Files") may (or may not) be true. On the other hand, if one is a foreigner and, on top of that, speaking about a highly sensitive issue - well, maybe there are places you might not want to go.

But besides even those aspects, there is a question of one's own identity. The director, I assume, sees his podium to be that of a filmmaker, given the honor to chair a prestigious panel of judges. His professional credentials are the source of his courage in speaking out. However, those who hear him are no doubt aware of other aspects of his identity - perhaps more aware than he?

Being an Israeli Jew carries a certain excess baggage in the world, that is added to the baggage of just being a foreigner. Among its sources are, on the one hand, the history of persecution against the Jewish people, including the Holocaust of the last century; modern-day antisemitism, and, on the other hand, the perpetration of terrible injustice towards Palestinians today. These heavy bags cannot easily be left behind.

No matter which group we belong to, even when we are eager to rid ourselves of this group identity, we can't, because this does not depend on us. We will always represent more than ourselves to the other. If we disavow, say, imperialism, or chauvinism or Zionism or whatever identity we want to disassociate with, we cannot shake off the attibution. So we had better be aware of it in our speech and our behaviour, and do our best to compensate.

Our sense of identity has to include both what we see in ourselves and what other people are likely to see too. This is only fitting. We are speaking about persona, whose original meaning was "mask" (the mask that was worn by actors), yet we cannot function in this world without one. It's a Greek tragedy, but still just a play. The error, and the source of our confusion, is in taking the play, or our role in it, too seriously.

The Kashmir Files: Israeli director sparks outrage in India over ‘vulgar movie’ remarks | Kashmir | The Guardian

Israel condemns Netflix film showing murder of Palestinian family in 1948 war | Israel | The Guardian

Israel strips Palestinian-French rights lawyer of Jerusalem residency | Palestinian territories | The Guardian

Diary; thoughts of the day

Spent some time reading through my fediverse stream and catching up on various kinds of terminology, gender relationships, human relationships… Sometimes it seems like I've been hiding in a cave all these years… words like swerf and terf were new to me, and what's harder, understanding them often requires going more deeply into what people say about them, and then trying to make an evaluation. Then I learned, also from my stream, about Glenn Greenwald's mutual embrace with right-wing media, and the acrimony between him and Micah lee and others. Again, hiding in a cave.

But that's exactly why I make the effort to follow alternative social media, in order to become familiar with ideas, attitudes and happenings that I might not pick up in my normal reading of the news, where I often read just the main stories or those in my special areas of interest.

Meanwhile, even following just 45 people from my Mastodon account, I'm growing weary of all the back-and-forth resulting from the minor exodus from Twitter and the major ripple it's causing for all the Mastodon people.

Part of my weariness comes from the fact that I don't relate to Mastodon as a well-loved community. For me, it's mainly a source of information. On Hubzilla there was a greater sense of community, actually. Maybe I should go back there, because although theoretically it's all one Fediverse, some of those I knew on Hubzilla don't interact much with the Mastodon crowd; in fact don't particularly appreciate Mastodon at all. And since ActivityPub is just one of the protocols that Hubzilla can interact with, there isn't the conception that ActivityPub itself constitutes the Fediverse. I like that.

Anyway, getting back to those gender words, I think I choose to be liberal… and catholic (in its older definition): two much-maligned terms. I don't really care how people choose to self-identify. Their gender-identity is their own business; their sexuality, or lack of it, is their own concern too. From one of the articles I read, I liked one of the definitions for "queer", i.e. we are are all "queer" - in that, to a greater or a lesser extent, our gender-identity and sexual responses are all located at different places on various spectrums, such as kind, quality, degree, taste, quantity, etc. and as such we are all unique: based partly on our genes, partly on our conditioning.

We can ask questions, as some radical feminists apparently do, about why a trans person might mimic and reinforce ingrained feminine or masculine stereotypes. We can wonder, for example, how men often adopt sexual behaviour that demeans women (or vice versa). Maybe we should add a subclause that "our sexuality is our own business - but only as long as doesn't cause harm"?

But it's hard to make such categorical statements about an area where we are all hurting each other constantly, either physically, emotionally or psychologically. Who can actually say that they have never hurt another person as a result of a love relationship? All we can do is expand our understanding, tolerance and compassion. Also our vigilance: because pedophiles, rapists and other abusers do still need to be locked up or rehabilitated - that's for everyone's safety.

Returning to the question of those ornery journalists; it's like with other professions. There are ideals, and then there are various forms of pollution like money and ego, pride and prestige. It seems that all you need to do to create poison is to add a billionaire or two to the mixture. That's sure to wake up all the sleeping demons. The Midas touch.

On daylight-saving time

Twice a year, there are lots of comments in social media about the stupidity of daylight savings time. Israel has DST too, and keeps in step with Europe and North America with regard to the date of the change-over. But many nations, like India and China, don't bother with DST. Those two huge nations also impose a single time zone from east to west, regardless of the inconvenience it must cause to areas distant from the capital.

In Israel, achieving D.S.T. on those dates was a hard-won battle fought by the secular parties against the religious parties in the Knesset, who made many of the arguments being made today by Europeans and Americans, whereas actually they were interested in making it more convenient for early morning prayer times.

My own opinion is that if DST saves energy and emissions, even by a little, then DST is worthwhile. But research seems to be inconclusive, with most studies pointing to a small saving in lighting in the evening hours, when DST begins in the Spring. Obviously more work needs to be done.

I sometimes think about trying to live my life more in tune with daylight, because really, what's stopping me? One way to do it would be personally to instate universal time, and break the connection between local clock time and bedtime. If I know that sunrise comes locally at a certain hour, even if it's non-intuitive like currently 04:00 U.S.T. (06:00 local time, after moving the clock back), then that's the time to begin my day. In order to get 7 hours sleep, I need to get to bed by 08:00 U.S.T. (22:00 local time). That gives me eight hours, because I usually wake up for an hour in the middle to do some writing or reading. The only thing stopping me is that it's inconvenient to be on a different time zone from everyone else, or even to go to bed earlier than they do. For example, my kids call me to do baby-sitting once or twice a week - which means staying up till about midnight locally.

Walks, thoughts

It being the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the roads become quiet and the sounds of nature come to the forefront, I enjoyed my afternoon walk through the woods and fields, without the distant roar of traffic.

Earlier I had seen part of an episode of The House of the Dragon series and read the final chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future . Probably these influences were in the background of my thoughts. The Dragon series is about in-family rivalry over the struggle for the throne and dynastic succession - itself rather a boring plot-concept, but one that is well-rooted in our history and culture. One of the characters, thinking of his legacy, says that history remembers "name" rather than "blood[line]". The interest in how one will be remembered is, according to vedantic thought, a projection of sat (existence), and the longing to live forever; the instinctive wish for immortality.

The Ministry of the Future also circles around these ideas of mortality and legacy; of the meaning and possible influence of a single human life and of the survival of the species in the time of the climate crisis. Taking the risk of venturing into new-agey territory it celebrates nature and urges human self-restraint in terms of population growth, resource use and territorial expansion.

I already feel like I've lived a long life and when I die can hope to be forgotten. But most likely I will go on living for awhile, so I sometimes feel a need to assess the use of my time. Influenced by yoga and eastern philosophies, I have always understood life and human evolution as the striving for the attainment or rediscovery of our true nature. Besides the aspect of sat (existence) mentioned above, this is said to include also chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss, or joy). We have a voracious interest in acquiring knowledge and experience on account of sat and chit, and a hunger for pleasure on account of ananda. All three of these basic instincts are infinitely insatiable. So we want to live forever, accrue knowledge, experience, money, material goods and sensual gratification, while fearing suffering and our mortality.

Indian philosophy says that the only way to "quench / to extinguish" these drives is through inner/integral (not solely intellectual) understanding of our true nature as already immortal, omniscient and joyful. Thereupon, according to both Buddhism and yoga, we attain nirvana (which means literally the action of extinguishing).

So how to do that? Not, I think, by denial of these instincts (asceticism). That has no meaning. Not by diminishment. As we approach death, we experience the extenuation of the physical and mental faculties. This morning I read that dear old Shraddhavan recently died at the age of 80. This English woman was one of the founders of Auroville and for years and years held study circles on the meaning of Sri Aurobindo's poem Savitri. The obituary said that since the end of last year, she began gradually to "fade away". Whether or not that is true I do not know, but my hope is that this was just how it looked. My hope is that, rather than diminishing, we grow, i.e. expand into the cosmic, the universal, the infinite. From the outside, this can also look as if we are "fading" because the attention has shifted.

In the final pages of The Ministry of the Future Robinson mentions the statue of Ganymede and the eagle on the lake shore of Zürich. His character surmises that the bird may really be the phoenix, which constantly rises from its own ashes, and that the bronze human statue is making an offering of himself, and all that is, to it, for the sake of immortality.

At the end of the day, we die. The atoms that made up our bodies, our brains and the wisps of consciousness that gave meaning to our lives, seep out into the ether. They are carried on the cosmic wind, to recombine and make new bodies, new souls. We may hope to leave a legacy, to live on through our children or our good deeds. But the fear of death and the longing to continue at all costs, even with senses and bodily functions impaired, seem to express doubt.

If we want to die instead with an intimation of our immortality, with awareness of the universal, and with the feeling of deep joy that are our birthright and inner-nature, we need to consecrate our lives to expansion, rather than fear extinction. But why wait for death, if we can seek to do this already? That's the purport of vedantic philosophy.

This still does not really answer the how. On my walk, perhaps with Robinson's Ministry resonating still in me, I began to think that one approach could be to live more closely to nature. From the perspective of climate action, this is a little counter-intuitive. The best arrangement for humans is to inhabit small to mid-sized communities or towns that provide most of their needs within walking or cycling distance, without the need to commute or import. Ideally goods would be shared rather than owned. If we are fortunate to live in a place where heating and air-conditioning are less necessary, the carbon footprint can be further reduced.

But there are communities that fulfill these requirements while still being close to nature. That's why I looked again at Auroville (and discovered Shradhavan's death). From their newsletter I also learned about the latest developments regarding the internal strife that they have been experiencing within the last year. But like the Aurovillians themselves, I believe they will eventually overcome those difficulties, since their lives there really depend upon that.

As human beings in our world community, the lives of our children and grandchildren depend upon overcoming the enormous challenges of our era. It's the dire necessity of doing so that underlies the optimism in Ministry of the Future. As Robinson says, "we will cope no matter how stupid things get" and "the only catastrophe that can't be undone is extinction."

I would add that something of ourselves survives even extinction. Matter, energy and consciousness are never truly destroyed - they simply recycle to make something new. Seeing this can lead to an understanding of the inseparable interdependence between ourselves and our biosphere. If as a species, we begin to get, to really grok, this interdependence, we will surely take all the steps that are necessary to safeguard our planetary home.

Free speech

PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

… PayPal just doesn’t like free speech, which is why it has shut down the FSU [Free Speech Union] account … There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine. Dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in any of those areas is no longer permitted.

This is the new front in the ongoing war against free speech: the withdrawal of financial services from people and organisations that express dissenting opinions on those topics. And not just those who express them, but those who defend them, too, like the FSU. That‘s what makes this an escalation in the war on free speech. Until now, companies like PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon and CrowdJustice have only demonetised individuals and groups whose views they disapprove of. Now, PayPal has closed the account of an organisation that defends people’s right to free speech, without taking sides on the issues they’re speaking about. Even that is no longer allowed, according to this Silicon Valley behemoth.

I don't know anything about the above website, though the author's framing of the "five issues" leads me to suspect that I might not agree with him on some of these. But I think the action taken against him should bother us. Not because our own opinions stray from the orthodox, but because we need to reserve the right to think differently and to express opinions that differ from those of the mainstream. It's been pointed out elsewhere that there are gaps between European and US interpretations of the meaning of free speech. (For example some European states outlaw the expression of Nazi sympathies.) But here the US corporations seem to be closer in their approach to the Europeans.

In so far as Western countries differ from authoritarian regimes, it means that whereas adopting a wrong opinion on Ukraine can get you incarcerated in Russia, it can get you demonitized or demonized in the West.

Orthodoxies and the rules for enforcing them change and vary from place to place. The boundaries and the buffer zones between the acceptable and the forbidden shift, or expand and contract. It's always more or less painful to be situated outside of the mainstream, whenever and wherever we live. But without pushing up against those boundaries, social change and reform would be impossible and societies would remain static and rigid in their orthodoxies.

The main problem with opinion is its association with identity. Defending our opinions is confused with a defence of the self, and, in the same way, people are loved or demonized for their opinions. Politicians who change their opinions are accused of expediency, though Gandhi was famous for reserving the right to inconsistancy. An anarchist friend of mine said that being able to change opinions was a sign of sanity, while holding rigidly to the same views was insane. Most of us would admit to modifying our opinions over time, often to accord with the prevailing wisdom of the times. When I was growing up, I unconsciously absorbed so many of the orthodox English working-class views of my parents and grandparents, from which I was only gradually able to liberate myself over the years. The problem is that we continue to be influenced by the false arguments of journalists and influencers, while staunchly believing in our intellectual autonomy. That's why it's necessary to listen to, if not learn to tolerate, divergent opinions and arguments. If our press, our financial services or our regime don't allow them, we're in trouble.

Salman Rushdie

I read about the attempt on the author's life and his wounding in the attack. I've read only one of his books - Shalimar the Clown, and a couple of short stories, which I enjoyed. Satanic Verses I once tried to read, but it didn't hold my interest. I find something irritatingly affected about the man that keeps me at a distance. Maybe more than other authors, his personality seems to infuse itself into the writing. But my judgment is only cursory - I can't really claim to understand Rushdie from reading one novel and listening to a few interviews. And it's just a personal bias. Still, I obviously know him better than his would-be assassin - I suppose religion was the motivating factor and Rushdie was just a symbolic target. What an idiot, what a presumption, by an ignorant 24-year old, to harm one of the great writers of our era.

I think the irony at the heart of all religions is that real religion is not something that one can "follow". Every religious tradition has its geniuses, but the greatness of most of them stems from the fact that they themselves weren't followers. They were people who put their lives on the line, searched for truth, tried to go to the heart of existence and made a direct connection with the divine. In their boldness, uniqueness, and willingness to escape convention, they had more in common with Rushdie than with those who revile him and want him dead.

A good guide to religion and ideology is that wherever there are attempts to trap us in prescribed practices and ritual, such as prayer or meditation at regular intervals, we need to reject them. Whenever they take away our power to think for ourselves, require us to differentiate ourselves from others, wear identifying clothing or symbols, we should reject them. True religion is about freedom of mind and vision: we can't understand any of the secrets at the heart of existence as long as we subscribe to set rules of behaviour or thinking.

It's a funny thing; the religious geniuses were themselves, by the standards of ordinary 21st century society, crazy fanatics - they had to be - it's just that they weren't followers.

Animals

There are two or three cats that pass at every hour by the pateo screen door, on what look like regular patrols. Their pace is unhurried, as if they have all the time in the world. If the door is open behind the screen, they take a moment or two to peer in; no doubt if they could enter they would do so. I don't want to discourage their patrols. One day on the path we found a dead snake; perhaps that was their doing.

Reflecting on their manner of living I compared my life to theirs. Animals seem never to question the purpose of their existence. As far as we know, they never wonder if they are making any kind of contribution, whether they are being lazy or over-zealous, kind or mean. They just exist.

When humans exhibit the same behaviour, I'm the first to grow judgmental, and I try to watch my own, worrying that I too am just a burden on the earth, despite my decidedly low-key way of living.

Yet the existence of human beings is much more expensive to the planet, in terms of resource use, than that of animals. Maybe there is a reason to look at the time spent as if we are here on an expensive scholarship?

But I've got it all wrong. A vagabond who sleep-walks through life does less damage to the earth than an accomplished technocrat. A person who achieves nothing beyond procreating and taking out the garbage is much less of a drain on resources than a wealthy stockbroker. In fact, the poorer and simpler our lives, the better for the planet and the future of humanity. If we could just live like those cats…

Journal

2022-4-26 - olives, loquats | dealing with complexity | web fonts

The olives are in bloom, meaning many people will have allergies. It looks like there are many flowers this year: does that mean there will be many fruits? (Olives are famously biennial bearing).

Low-hanging loquats: the birds leave us a few.

2022-04-25 - bookmarking | music | dream

2022-04-14 Collective fantasies

I've been thinking that, considering the unreality of the world, or worlds, that we inhabit, it may be more intelligent to spend as little as possible time with what seems to be “the hard reality”. Children, when they are given the freedom to be somewhat detached from a need to earn a living or take an active part in their parents' world, grow wings. They have the ability to dream, to engage in fantasies of their own making. We all think that this is wonderful. Yet, when children “grow up” they are gradually expected to conform to the hard realities of the adult world, where engaging in fantasy is excoriated and shunned. Collective fantasies especially are reviled, such as QAnon, by people who are not part of that, and vice-versa. Half of society is accusing the other half of engaging in fantasy, and there are sub-groups and cults: political and spiritual.

The phenomenon is not as new as we tend to think that it is. Thinking back a little, we remember the “flat earth movement”, Nazism, the Inquisition, and historical cults. So that it looks as if engaging in collective fantasy is fundamental to the human spirit. The world that intelligent, informed, mainstream humanity currently inhabits, where opposition to the exploitation of women, castigation of “war crimes” (by our adversaries only), religious tolerance, LBGT acceptance, concern for the environment, etc. are the norm, is historically abnormal, and artificially constructed. The values we share today may be seen as baneful in the future.

So to what extent should we avoid the “collective fantasies”, when accepting that we already inhabit one ourselves? Collective fantasies contain elements of community that are important for our mental equilibrium. Perhaps the test is when they cause harm to others? For example, if my fantasy involves the genocide of all Jews, of Ukrainians, of the elimination of Muslims from my country, then it can be said to be harmful. If it comes into contact with people who embrace an opposing fantasy, do we greet them with guns, or with tolerance?

Despite the benefits of community found in the collective fantasies, my tendency, at this stage in life is to try to avoid them and to find my own way. I hope I will be strong enough.

2021-11-27 - Distraction

Reality

Up at sunrise again. Actually I was up twice in the night too, so my days and nights are similar periods of rest and wakefulness. I'm still reading "The Earth of the New Sun", and am enjoying Wolf's conception of a universe where space and time and creatures inhabiting these worlds are highly flexible, and tend to flow into each other. Genders, strange creatures, androids, all are in a fluid mix. I could well imagine a similar combining of time periods in our own world, where wisdom from past times augments the knowledge of the present, with intimations from the future. This is very much the universe of science fiction writers, an embracing of all that is possible, and a refusal to reject anything outright.

We are a little stuck in our conception of what constitutes reality, in our mainstream culture. reality is actually quite a free-for-all. I am maybe too tough on the people around me and myself. For example, when A. embarks on his fantasies, I tend to close off; but that is because, in his real life, he constrains himself ridgidly, and is unable to conceive of even minor adjustments to his reality. So his fantasies involve only a superabundance of what he already has; more possessions.

Freedom of imagination does not have to involve hankering after goods, experiences, but instead can involve the realignment of one's current reality, in ways that had not been previously conceived; just as small children do not relate to the rigid world and constraints fixed by grown-ups. A chair isn't just something to sit on, but is an object to be climbed over; they see many more interesting possibilities in their environment. An adult can become a wild animal or a monster; they lack the conviction that the world is a safe, reliable space and don't really know where the boundaries lie. Anything could happen.

In the world of adults, we are shocked when the stock market falls or a new pandemic changes everything we know.

In my life, I have been doing some things right; my journeys to India, my time spent alone; of course I'm still a fairly ridgid person, but not as much as many of those around me. I'm able to adapt to new realities without too many difficulties, and tend to accept the present moment. I dont' dwell much on the past. Perhaps it's just that the patterns of my life do not change much.

I should read more poetry, as poets, like science fiction writers, are capable of seeing our existing reality in alternative ways. Sri Aurobindo was amazingly skilled at this too, actually. Instead of turning up my nose at his ideas, I should actually be awed at his courage to transform reality through the power of his imagination. Why shouldn't there be a downpouring of divine energy that can transform the brain and the body, to the level of the cells? Who can say that our ordinary humdrum reality is not simply a mass illusion, constantly reinforced by the constraints we put upon it? Why not assume completely different interpretations of this reality? Religious people of all hues operate from a different set of assumptions to those that are prevalent in secular society.

I don't think the reality we witness is a mass delusion, but the interpretations we put upon it are. For example, the furniture upon which I am sitting may be seen as "elegant" by me, but ugly / outmoded / uncomfortable by others. A person with no cultural knowledge of chairs would probably see a chair in a completely different way. And if this is true of simple, solid, human-created objects, it is all the more true for more complex aspects of our reality. How would a person from a patriarchal society relate to a woman president? Or someone from a homophobic society relate to the gay rights movement? How would someone who knows only tribal villages relate to nations, courts, constitutions? Or someone from the future relate to these things? A whole lot of what we simply take for granted is normalized by our culture, and alternative understandings can be imposed upon it. In order to function properly within this reality, we have to be familiar with the conventions of seeing it. We have to learn how to relate to it, and how to behave.

happiness

Flight to Tel Aviv: I have been reading Sapiens, and reached almost the of the book now. I have just finished reading his discussion of happiness; in which he writes particularly of the Buddhist understanding of the concept. It is close to the one I find in Yoga philosophy, though I would phrase it differently. I think that happiness is the state normally found when consciousness rests in the present moment and is not in a condition of resistance to it. In other words, the mind is at peace. In a moment that we are caught off-guard by beauty, such as when one opens the curtains to behold a golden sunrise, the mind is "enraptured", if only for a moment, perhaps. Something comes between our thoughts of the past, our memories, regrets; and our plans hopes and desires for the future, so that we know peace, for a fleeting moment.

Similarly, when we satisfy a desire or fulfill a dream, we touch on our peace by being focused on the pleasure, rather than thinking of the past or the future. Conversely, if the present moment is full of pain, and we resist the pain, we amplify it. But if, on the other hand, we are able to feel pain but also accept it, then we can still be at peace. Buddhists would say that we should simply observe the comings and goings of painful and pleasurable thoughts. The issue I have with this is that it then becomes a mental process, and is based on the division of subject and object. But here there is a problem. Except through an analytical process, it is not possible to achieve true equanimity while there is this rational discrimination.

July 1, 2020

Well, it is subtle. I'm not sure that the Buddhist attitude is so different. There is a slight difference in attitude between saying that the self (or anything) is "empty of a separate existence" and saying that "the (individual) self (atman) is the self of everything (brahman)". My axe to grind is that our observation is flawed, because it fails to take into account that there is a substratum in which the existence of one "thing" is the existence of the whole, so that the objects or separate selves are only superficially separate. And so our observation of the universe is flawed at the most fundamental level: it does not take into account the most important factor. So even Sapiens, as a book, though it speaks of our speciesism and our failure to take into account the environmental concerns, does not see as a basic truth that it is simply impossible not to take into account the connection between the self and the other.

It is not exactly that the self (me) and the table are "connected" or (heaven forbid) one and the same, but that we share a common basis, a common existence, that gives "life" to both of us. The table is "illusory", so long as I do not take into account the observational fallacy and the underlying common existence; because otherwise what I see is only part of the truth, and part of the truth equals a total lie. Not practically, because I am in fact using the table in order to rest this notebook on and write these words, but philosophically, existentially. Existentially, it changes everything: my stance, my attitute, but also, something much more fundamental and beyond our subjectivity. It is the way in which the universe functions. A universe of separate objects would never actually work, could not exist.

Harari speaks, for example, of the absence of an intelligent designer.He speaks of a lack of purpose behind the universe. This is inaccurate. There is no designer who stands outside of it - that's true, but there is, absolutely, intelligence and good design in the universe. The universe is a manifestation of intelligence. A human who tries to design a better variety of corn, or an automobile, will fail miserably if he is unable to take into account the natural "laws" of physics, chemistry, or biology, which are his palette. And, anyway, to the extent that he fails to take into account the full environmental impact of his "creation", he will cast a fly in the ointment, a spanner in the works, of the total design.

Harari is right that environmental "destruction" is a misnomer. It is actually "change", but, in so far as this species is concerned, destruction of the biosphere will be the end of the road. Some other species may come along, perhaps, to take our place, and the place of countless other species that we have made extinct. Or not. The real universe, that which exists behind this one, is like a child's magnetic toy that constantly recombines in new ways. You knock down the cathedral you have so carefully constructed, and the pieces recombine to make a spaceship. Nothing is destroyed, but conditions are changed. Does it matter? It matters greatly to homo sapiens. The species can only function within a certain habitat.

Our failure is in not understanding how to coexist within our habitat in a sustainable way. We don't have to worry about the universe not being able to put right any mistakes that we make. It will, but not necessarily in a way that is favourable to our species. Since, despite our bluster and self-importance, the universe will go on anyway without us. Not entirely without us, because we will continue. Just not in a form that is recognisable to us.

The question is whether or not our progress towards self-destruction (or change) is inevitable? It may be inevitable according to our nature as human beings. But Harari points out that civilization is cultural. The culture can be changed. The energies that drive us can be harnessed in completely different ways. We can change the way in which we live on the planet if we want to, so the apocalpyse is not inevitable.

Journal

Finishing up my time here in the US. I think I will miss the quietude of being at home alone, and will not enjoy the bustle of being in a full household again. Coronavirus cases are sky-rocketing in Israel again, so I won't want to go out even after the period of home-isolation. I think I just want to live the rest of my life in quiet places; Neve Shalom or Auroville. There isn't much on offer outside of solitude. It's true that I need to keep my body more active, so that it doesn't grow weak and inflexible, but there are solutions for that.

I'm also finishing Sapiens, which is consistantly interesting.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with Andrew, and in the evening he spoke extensively about our parents and opened up about his grief […]

I'm coming to understand how much we are not just free actors but are also products of what we ingest. In order to be free, we need to be able to break free of our addictions. They are deadly, or deadening. Culture, too, is a word that carries more meaning that that to which we ascribe to it. My parents were terribly trapped by their culture. My mother, particularly, had all the characteristics of a person who is continually trying to escape humble origins. She had internalized Britain's caste system, grown up in poor conditions, not received a complete education, and spent the rest of her life trying to live like role models who were probably from the film world, or at least a "well-to-do" person. Yet she felt completely insecure, could never settle in a place happily. Both my parents tried to escape their origins and yet constantly harked back to them, in a kind of love-hate relationship.

In some ways, I perhaps acquired some of the same traits, in that I too feel that I don't belong in the country-mentality of the place where I live. Yet with me, it is not that I secretly long to be in a "home country" because I don't really have one. I'm pretty much my own person - no doubt a product of various conditioning, like everyone, but my national identity is cosmopolitan I don't feel that I belong to a certain nature or place of origin. My attitude is also "exclusive", since I feel critical of the mainstream secular culture from a "spiritual" point of view, and critical of religions and cults from a secular point of view. I don't really want much to do wiht the world.

Popular culture of our era is a turn-off. I tried watching another American TV series on Netflix but decided again that it was too much for me - too extreme, too disgusting, I suppose. There's a certain I don't know what about our contemporary culture. Perhaps the producers of fiction make too many assumptions about what readers or viewers will like. The best way to avoid nasty surprises is just not to consume popular culture. Yogis always advise against it anyway. This is something that I already know, so I should just internalize it.

[…]

I hear trains only at night, when it's quiet, though the railroad seems to be quite near. The terrain here is flat, so there is no sound from the nearby busy main road as such, as in Neve Shalom. But sounds there are , certainly, more as a distant rumble; sometimes of planes. Sitting outside with Andrew a coupled of nights ago, he embarked on a sort of running commentary of the varioius sounds he could hear; about 70% of which were unheard by me, yet he showed his skill in being able to identify them; the kind of engine belonging to the kind of place, etc.

[…]

Registering auditory or visual impressions in this way is not what I was referring to when I wrote that we need to bring the full physical and historical context into our awareness in order that the consciousness of the moment will achieve depth. But it is the opposite of Arjuna's "I only see the bird". I suppose it's a matter of attitude, of appreciation and empathy. Each passing train, plane, June bug or fox is also Narayanaya. We are in this cosmos together and the Lord is in each of us.

Journal

I was reading in the Guardian a story about failed art restorations; a statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, in which the infant was restored to a kind of monkey; a similar painting of Christ in which he comes out looking like a plump gremlin; and finally a tower in Istanbul that, according to social media, resembles a giant Sponge Bob. I actually don't know about the character of Sponge Bob, but this had me doubling over in laughter anyway.

It is hard to know what triggers laughter, but it normally leaves its influence for some time. The world seems like a less serious place for awhile, and one is convinced that this too is the nature of reality, or a legitimate aspect of it.

Then I went back to reading Yuval Noah Harari, in the chapter that he mentions that anaesthetics were discovered only in the mid 19th century, and that battle wounds to limbs were normally treated by amputation, in order to prevent the onset of gangrene. The part was simply lopped or sawed off, while four soldiers held the patient down. The majority of people died by age 25 - 40, if they managed to survive childbirth or their first year.

It is interesting, the question of suffering, and pain. In such a world of pain, physical and emotional, Buddha came along and said that suffering results from craving or desire. I wonder that people had time to suffer from desire, when they were so busy burying their dead children, or themselves suffering from horrible incurable diseases. It seems almost a luxury to be worried about something beyond the existential problems that they already had, and one can believe that someone born into such a world would learn to be resilient almost as a matter of course. Was it because Buddha was born a prince that he considered the problem of suffering as he did? - today it seems almost modern. We are shielded from pain, have solutions to diseases, live long lives, don't have to worry much about hunger; and yet we continue to suffer. It seems as if the Buddha is speaking directly to our modern problem, in our world of comparative luxury. And yet, as a religion, Buddhism took hold, and swept through Asia, so it evidently did speak to the people who lived 2,500 years ago. It means that though people did face so much pain, and even saw it as inevitable, it was still hard for them to accept it. They still grieved their loved ones as we do and hankered for a better life; they still found it difficult to live in the moment without dwelling on the future or the past. And evidently this was true both for princes and for paupers.

Journal

What I have to admit, from the beginning, is that I know nothing, and yet I know too much. I know nothing, on the basis that I’m poorly read. I have read little of the great western philosophers. But also because the state of our knowledge, in the first quarter of the 21st century, is also very poor, compared to what it will be fifty or a hundred years later. On the basis of what we knew, in the 20th century, we have committed terrible errors and vicious crimes against humanity. On the basis of what we currently know, it is clear that we are destroying our biosphere.

I know too much because my knowledge interferes with my ability to see the world afresh. I have adopted biases that determine how I relate to my world. The prejudices that we acquire are far ranging and pervasive. Knowing this is not necessarily the answer to the problem. Sometimes knowing more can expose one to different ideas that can knock down our suppositions. A person with a narrow grasp of the underlying philosphical bases behind the mechanisms that drive our society is less likely to question them than a scientist who knows them better. Knowledge can be dislodged or challenged by new knowledge. On the grand scale of things this is what happens.

Either are in the playing field or the market of ideas, or one attempts gradually to deconstruct what one thinks one knows, without taking the route of adding new knowledge to challenge the old knowledge. These are opposite tracks. My tendency is towards the former, reduction by reduction, rather than through accumulation. But it is a path where one must forever be admitting one’s own weaknesses and deficiencies; a path of humility and humiliation. A Taoist path.

Yesterday Ilan sent in an article that debates the matter of what constitutes truth in an era of fake news; he looked at the matter of truth through the prism of various historical thinkers, eventually concluding before a matter can be admitted as truth, it must be open to wide discussion, that no authority could have the ultimate say. Instead the truth of a matter would be determined after being debated by the best minds. In such a process, my opinion counts for very little. I cannot “compete” in an arena where the qualifications depend on knowing the history of philosophical thinking and I would not contest the opinions of others in such an arena. It is true that I know a fair bit about the philosophical thinking of Eastern philosophical systems, perhaps, but there too I do not think it is worthwhile to contend. The area that is more interesting is that of learning and knowing from observation; discovering through silent communion with the universe, meditation. I have always thought that the keys to understanding are there to be discovered directly and must not depend upon academic learning. There are scriptures and holy books that claim to hold the keys to salvation and enlightenment. There are philosophers who have pursued truth through reason. There are scientists who have tried to discover the physical laws upon which our universe is constructed. All of these have their value and their place in our human civilization. But, without much basis other than belief or intuition, I continue to hold that the truth of our existence is there to be discovered by every denizen of the cosmos directly, without recourse to scripture, philosophy or science. Not every kind of knowledge, of course, but the particular knowledge of the identity of the self in relation to the universal. I think that the basis of this belief is present in the scriptures themselves. And it does not contradict reason. It cannot be negated by science, as far as I know.

This thinking is very democratic, because it extends the possibility to every one of us to understand, independently, our position in the universe, if we put into it enough effort. It only depends on our willingness to give all we have to the project, and not be afraid.

The knowledge of the self in relation to the cosmos, the nature of the self, our true identity, the nature of the other, the meaning of our lives, the inner purpose and the relation of this purpose to that of the universe, the act of observation, what constitutes happiness, the reason for our restlessness, the ability to confront and understand suffering, the movement of thoughts, moods, desires, attraction and repulsion, emotion, indifference, and the relation and mutual influence between our minds and our bodies, the ways in which we affect the world and interact with it and with others; our dreams and the subconscious, the obvious and the latent, the sources of our inspiration and energy, the ability to tap into the energy of the universe; the question of our mortality, the observation of time and its subjective velocity; the nature of experience, the various states of consciousness, the integrity of our knowledge or its partiality, the understanding of what is truly important and what is of less importance, the question of what is real and what illusion; the question of self-mastery or subservience to basic instincts, the question of belief in God or the supernatural, the matter of empathy, the ways in which egoism manifests, our aesthetic sense, the ways in which we lie to ourselves; attachments, the nature of peace, and many more questions, qualities, understandings, are all matters that we can resolve for ourselves without any necessity to go to a book or consult with a teacher. They are matters that can be understood through direct experience, aparoksha anubhuti.

Looking through my father's photo albums

There's something inexpressibly sad about looking through these old albums. My father, as he grew older, no longer looked at them. Most of the people there were already dead - he had simply outlived them all. And now I have outlived my father. But that is not the reason I find it sad. It's more because seeing these images, many of them representing “peak" moments in life like weddings, vacations, and time spent with children, can make the whole of life seem pointless. It's true, of course, that the memories thus enshrined, the majority of them, were not my own. But recently Dorit sent photos of me with my children and I felt something similar. It was as if the persons there - my children and me - were of someone else. I hardly recognized them. Who was that person?

Writers often pose questions about memory and its relationship to identity. Max Frisch in “Stiller”, Phillip K. Dick in his writings, W.S. Sebald in his own way. In the film “Blade Runner” particularly (based on one of Dick's books), the characters have to deal with the fact that their most meaningful memories may actually have been computer implants of someone else's memory, and not really their own. To whom did these moments, frozen in time, occur? What consciousness lived them? What happened to that consciousness and where is it now?

Then there's the problem of fatality. Seeing my mom and grandmother, cigarette ever in hand, knowing that smoking is what eventually killed them. And one watches as the happy, hopeful person, grows into the dour jigsaw-puzzle-devotee of old age. All of life begins to look like a sham, the life lived utterly meaningless. Moments that capture the playing out of The Ignorance, as Sri Aurobindo calls it.

The Vedantic vision, which interprets life as a construct of Maya, is never far from my thoughts, and begins to assert itself when I look at old photos. That's true. But whatever the validity of memory, or the value of capturing these frozen moments in a picture (and one remembers that in an earlier time, a photograph was such a rare occurrence that one put on good clothes, combed one's hair, stared at the camera and looked grim) … whatever the importance of the photo to the subject, that value has now largely past. It may have been important at one point to bring out the albums when a few people gathered, to reminisce. To laugh at them together, feel wistful, or contradict one-another about what happened when. But regarding the photos now, when the context of these moments is now lost, is a completely other experience. The way in which I look at them is different; the thoughts and emotions that are invoked are different.

Mostly I think that life is there to be lived, without pausing to check on its validity. meaning, or importance. That's not a place we need to go. Trying to freeze life suddenly in order to examine it later, inevitably causes us to question the value of experience, revealing the transience of joy or the undercurrent of suffering. Go ahead and have a good time, but don't try to capture and immortalize the experience, preserve it in formaldehyde, linger on, thou art so fair. It isn't that this particular character lived life in vane. It's that life as we live it is a vanity, when seen from a particular philosophical angle. When viewed as a sequence of experiences, it does not stand scrutiny. The act of observation changes it, murders it. Life must be lived always in the present moment, and every moment must pass in order to make way for the next one. It's a roller coaster ride that doesn't let up till we die. If we stop, it is not to reflect on the vacuity of these particular experiences, because experience is unconditionally vacuous. It is to reach out to the perpetuity of the underlying consciousness that transcends and is not touched by experience, the wall upon which all the shadows play.

Foreign workers

“Foreign workers are particularly vulnerable, with a weaker support network and language barriers that prevent them from seeking government help…”

Seems like an enduring universal truth.

(https://gu.com/p/dnkfp/stw)

Reality versus our vision of it

So I was thinking that spiritual teachers so often see a version of reality that corresponds with their natures. Describing reality in one manner inevitably leads to the disparagement of alternative ways of describing it, which seem to have a different or opposite vision. It is not so different from the flaw in our everyday vision, according to which we define objects by their function or usefulness to us. In many languages gold or silver have come to mean “money”, while our word “salary” indicates a measure of salt.

In Islam, God has 99 names or attributes. But it would be an error to define God by any single one of them. In order to be able to see reality, we must discard all limiting notions and theories about it. Understanding can come only through a spirit of openness.

They always say in Hinduism that if we want to describe a faint star in the sky to a friend, we point instead to a brighter star and say that the star we mean is just to the left of that one. But in reality the attributes we use are not very helpful and bring us no nearer to understanding. To say that God is peace, or harmony or love inevitably conjures up notions that have little to do with what is actually meant. These are simply impositions from our egoistic human experience.

False views

The universe was never created. Matter, energy and consciousness are one. There is no center, no periphery, no end to time and space. Seeing is interpretation. All statements about ultimate truth, including this one, are a lie. There are multiple ways to apprehend reality But not taking into account the error of our seeing, and not glimpsing the unity in the diversity, Leads us astray.

The problem is that almost everything that is written, fiction or non-fiction, philosophical or scientific is based on fallacy. It either assumes a reality that is incomplete and prejudiced, or it tries to speculate absurdities. It isn’t necessary to understand everything, or grasp the whole truth, but only to be deeply humble; with a reserve that permeates our consciousness and the way we express. I find it painful to read books that are based on wrong assumptions, or presume to express truth. Gurus and writers of “spiritual” books are usually the worst offenders, because they cast aside all humility. Without humility, we will never understand anything. There is absolutely no guarantee that we ever will, in any case, but a full guarantee that false understanding closes the door to new learning.