From that time on, to greatly oversimplify, you can talk about two main streams of Buddhist activity.  The heart of Buddhism is the monastic tradition, monks and nuns so dedicated to achieving enlightenment for their own sakes and for the sake of others that they devote their entire lives to living in ascetic conditions and practicing meditation and prayer.  The other main stream is the beliefs of the common people, in essence, that the Buddha was some kind of god, or at least had supernatural abilities, as the monks and nuns also do to various degrees.  These people were too busy trying to survive and  earn a living, and so could not meditate very much themselves, but they could earn merit, which would go toward improving their future lives, by worshiping the Buddha and by supporting the monks and nuns with alms and other donations.  I'm speaking very generally, of course, and you can find many variations on these themes.

As Buddhism moved into cultures that were radically different from the Indian culture Buddhism originated in, it often had to make various and sometimes major adaptations to fit into its new culture.  One of the major adaptations some teachers of Buddhism are making in bringing Buddhism to the modern world, particularly the West is to try to reconcile it with what we know from science and psychology.  This has interesting results, some of which will probably make Buddhism more effective in the long run, and others which can greatly undermine the historical form of Buddhism.  In terms of the latter, I'm especially thinking of the way science is so frequently equated with an overarching philosophy of materialism.  It's not essential to equate science with materialism, of course – see my "The End Of Materialism: How Evidence Of The Paranormal Is Bringing Science And Spirit Together" book-  but science has had, by far, its greatest successes in learning about the material world.  We all like success, so an attitude of materialism, only what is material – known physical objects and physical energies – is real, pervades most of modern life.

From this materialistic perspective, Buddhism may be psychologically effective in reducing individuals' suffering, ultimately through meditation's physiological effects on the brain.  But it carries an enormous amount of superstitious baggage with it.  There are no divine beings, Gautama Buddha is not some kind of god, e.g., or bodhisattvas may be real historical people who reduced their own suffering and helped others, but they have not become minor gods that are worth praying to, or worshiping the Buddha is a useless and misleading thing to do except insofar as it may psychologically sooth you – albeit at the cost of having a fundamentally wrong belief about the nature reality, which will probably lead to a variety of negative consequences.

Incidentally, I have nothing against materialism per se as a philosophical approach to the world.  What I object to is the shortsightedness and arrogance that allows too many believers of it to believe that all truth is encompassed by this view, and thus that there's no need to actually check in with reality to see how well this kind of explanation actually works.  Many things can be explained completely and controlled effectively by material means, and I'm all for progress continuing on these fronts, but many important things can't be.

What led me to these thoughts today is thinking about the idea that traditional Buddhist monasticism is tremendously threatened by an attitude of materialism.  If you're very rich, of course, it's no big deal to help to support a few monks or nuns.  But for the majority of people, why should they spend significant amounts of their very limited resources supporting people who sit around trying to get enlightened and pray, when prayer is one of those superstitions we need to discard?  From a materialistic point of view, praying is talking to yourself.  Perhaps psychologically the monks praying is good for them, even if it involves a major illusion about the nature of reality, but why should we give donations for them to pray for us?  Wouldn't it be better to spend our money on socially useful projects, building schools and hospitals, e.g., or on our own security and pleasure?

My own understanding, drawing from my 50+ years of knowledge of research within scientific parapsychology, is that we have very high quality, scientific evidence that, for example, our minds are more than just the material functioning of the brain, that some things like prayer and psychic healing can sometimes have real effects in the real world, or that telepathy could be a mechanism for prayer to have real effects beyond the person praying, and so materialism is only a partial view of what reality is, it's foolish and unscientific to discard everything spiritual in a wholesale manner.

All religions, including Buddhism, are undoubtedly full of superstitions that are factually wrong, but to totally throw them out, to assume that anything about the spiritual is inherently nonsensical, is a major mistake.  It's not only a mistake in scientific terms – you don't ignore or irrationally reject data just because it doesn't fit with your other beliefs – it's something that psychologically harms many people.  That's because many people have various kinds of spiritual experiences, and to then have scientific Authority Figures say this is all error and nonsense on their parts is to devalue and reject some of their most essential aspects of their lives.  I've spoken and corresponded with innumerable people who have had this happen to them.  It hurts!

I'm hardly the first person to notice that these two extremes of uncritical credulity for anything labeled spiritual on the one hand, and total rejection of spirituality for materialism on the other hand, are not very healthy for the human spirit.  Too many of our values are based in our spiritual and religious views, and to declare them  all superstition is to reduce us to the level of animals.  If we think we are nothing but animals, we are more likely to act that way, with the consequences of such actions.  The founders of the Society for Psychical research in England, more than 125 years ago, saw this problem and advocated that the methods of science could be used to start separating the true from the false, the wheat from the chaff in the sphere of religion.  I'm sad to say there has not been much progress yet.  We have slowly accumulated high quality, laboratory evidence of the reality of things like telepathy, so I have argued in my "The End Of Materialism" book, that it is scientifically invalid to simply throw out all spiritual and religious ideas without examination.  But there is so much more we need to know, so much more that research about the spiritual could clarify!

The basic theme running through my career has been to try to build bridges between the best of science and the best of spirituality.  Both these fields have much nonsense in them, although science has vital self-correcting mechanisms usually not found in religion and spirituality.  I have basically proposed that the testing methods of essential scientific inquiry be used to refine and clarify religious ideas, but I suspect that this proposal is too threatening to many people.  For those who have a strong investment in some religious or spiritual path, they may well see science as the enemy which has ridiculed their beliefs, and so want nothing to do with it.  Further, because spiritual beliefs are so important to our emotional well-being, the idea that some of them might be wrong, or that all are subject to examination by scientific method, might be very threatening to people.  Many scientists, on the other hand, have actively rejected religion in favor of a materialistic, but apparently scientific, worldview, and do not like the idea that they have been making a major mistake by not actually examining the phenomena of religion scientifically.  Or they have not so much made an active decision to ignore or reject the spiritual so much as this attitude has been conditioned into them by modern life and their conventional scientific education.

Coming back to traditional Buddhism, Western ideas, with their heavy materialistic bias, are spreading more and more over the world.  Traditional Buddhism, which supports monastics for the supposed benefit of their prayers, may go on for a long time in some parts of the world, but have little power to establish itself in the more modern world.  Personally I think this would be a great loss.  My best understanding of the parapsychological evidence to date is that monks and nuns praying for us may actually be doing something useful in reality, it's not simply a form of delusion.

As a scientist, that view is, of course, always subject to further test.  Some of what I believe along these lines may turn out to be correct, some research may produce further evidence supporting it, and, even more importantly, as we gain a better scientific understanding of what, for example, makes prayers (or psychic healing in general) more likely to be effective, we may be able to greatly increase the usefulness and efficacy of monastics (and us ordinary people) praying for the world.

Is there much chance of applying the essence of science, "essential science" as I called in my book, to improve our knowledge of and efficacy of spiritual work?  Good question!  I've worked to promote this idea in many rational ways, and I pray for it, in the hope that my prayers are somehow effective in reality, not just a psychological phenomena within me.  The chance of success?  Good question!

Finally I will note that my understanding of Gautama Buddha's ideas is that they were compatible with a basically scientific approach to reality.  In his Sutta to the Kalamas, for example, he constantly tells people to check ideas and beliefs against their experience, against what actually can be observed to work, rather than simply whether they are popular or supported by authorities (including himself), etc.  That's probably the most important part of essential science: all ideas must constantly be checked against observable, experiencable reality, and must be modified when new observations require us to go beyond the current conceptions.  Unfortunately I often get the impression that as Buddhism as became an established institution for many centuries, this call to check ideas against reality has been turned into a too fixed belief that Gautama Buddha's understandings were the last word on ultimate reality, he was omniscient, and so new observations and ideas are simply checked back for doctrinal compliance with what the Buddha thought about things, rather than against a wider observation of reality.  This is one of the things that I'm sure will have to change as Buddhism becomes more important in modern culture and tries to be more compatible with science.

Some modern teachers promote an atheistic kind of Buddhism.  Meditation practices have effects on your brain which make you happier.  I am all for anything which makes people happier in a healthy way – but if you reduce the effects of meditation to brain functioning then, as a scientifically inclined Westerner, my response is fine, the drug companies should be able to develop a pill to produce the same happiness, I hope they develop it soon as all that meditation can be pretty tedious……  But all I know, my "best estimate" as a widely-informed scientist, is that there's more to spirituality than nothing but particular electro-chemical patterns in the brain, and we need to understand that "more" to really benefit others and ourselves…..

(added 1-28-12)

A while after posting the above, I had a "vision" (small v, image arising, rather than big V, Vision from Above) of where Buddhism without any reality to the spiritual, Materialistic Buddhism, could go with the right research.  It's a sarcastic, critical vision in some ways, as well as humorous – but insofar as it could reduce human suffering, I'm all for it!  As long as it doesn't further distract us from the vitally needed research on what's real about the spiritual and how to optimally live with it…..

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Notes on an event in a 50+ year attempt to learn and benefit from spiritual practices….

For some years now, I have been trying various meditation techniques from many world traditions, particularly techniques which meditation teacher Shinzen Young has modified in various ways to make more sense to and be more doable by modern people.  A month ago, I was participating in one of Shinzen's monthly telephone retreats.  For these, 20 to 50 people telephone  into a conference call number and Shinzen leads us in some guided meditation for 2 to 4 hours.  There's time for reports and questions at the end, and often individual phone consultation with him during a break in the middle of the period.  These "mini-retreats" are a very useful way to stay connected to intensive meditation practice, and much more convenient, inexpensive and practical than flying off to some residential retreat site.

On this particular day, I was participating in a two-hour guided meditation session on a technique Shinzen calls "Do Nothing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6cdIaUZCA).  The basic instruction here is that you don't attempt to do anything in particular, to have any kind of particular meditation experience, or to "correct" or guide what happens in your mind during the meditation.  Indeed, the instruction is that if you sense that you intend to change something, relax that intention.  You're not actively looking for such intentions – that would be doing – but, if intentions are noticed, you drop them, relax them.

This is a technique I have not tried much and which I find rather difficult.  But I also find it quite interesting, as I think becoming aware of intentions, especially subtle intentions, as they first well up my mind, is an important factor for my spiritual growth.

Fairly far along in meditation, after a little period of quiet, Shinzen instructed us that the search was over, we didn't have to do anything, we didn't have to try to make anything happen or not happen.  As he said that, a deep feeling of sadness suddenly welled up in me and tears came to my eyes.  I realized that I have never stopped trying! My entire life, from childhood on, has been spent trying to do the "right thing" at practically every moment!  Even though I appear to be a relaxed and easy-going person, even though I think I'm actually quite relaxed compared to people in general, in the background I'm always trying to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do it.  Not that this was and is a "bad" thing to do, but I just suddenly realized how very, very tired of trying I was!  I hoped that someday I would be able to stop for a while and get some rest.  But it was a very faint hope, I was always, always trying, why would anything change?

After a few moments the feeling passed, the tears dried, and I went back to the do nothing practice.  At the end of this telephone meditation retreat I didn't think anything special about it, other than that this insight about how tired I was of always trying, had happened.

Rancho Palos Verdes Retreat – Flow

Two weeks later, my wife Judy and I are at a Catholic nunnery and retreat Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, for a 12 day retreat with Shinzen.  While I know he will present a variety of techniques for people to try, with the aim of finding what works well for you or simply making your mind more flexible, I've already decided that I'm going to concentrate on meditation procedures for sensing "flow."  That is, whatever sensory channel I'm paying attention to, input from the five classical senses or the actions of my mind (visual imagery or internal talk), I'm going to try to be aware, with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, not only of the particulars of the content at any moment, but of the way it changes from moment to moment, its flow.  Flow is Shinzen's modern term, which he thinks covers most, if not all, understandings of the crucial concept of "impermanence" in Buddhism.

If I happen to be meditating with my eyes closed, for example, observing visual imagery on my inner mental screen, I might notice that it's relatively restful at this moment, mainly black-and-white or faintly colored dots flickering on and off, like looking at static, "snow" on a TV set tuned to a channel which has no broadcast on it.  But the flickering on and off of these dots can actually be seen as flow, one momentary pattern changing into another.  Indeed, more specific imagery will almost certainly appear as I continue to pay attention, and one image will morph, will flow into another and another and other.  A brief image of a car driving along a highway, e.g., morphs into a forest, which morphs into clouds in the sky, which morphs into a wall, etc., etc.  Keeping aware of these changes, with equanimity, concentration, and clarity, is what Shinzen describes as meditating on flow or impermanence.

Peace – Resting in the "Nature of Mind?"  Or?

To my surprise – except I didn't really feel surprised at the time – I had five or six experiences, each 5 to 20 min. or so long, that were, from their own internal perspective, nothing special, but, from the perspective of my ordinary mind activity, were extraordinary!  I didn't do anything that had the intention of bringing these specific experience or states on, or to maintain them, or to prolong them.

While there is much formal meditating in the zendo (meditation hall) during Shinzen's retreats, one can attend these or not, as one wishes, and I often skip a number of these formal sessions in order to meditate outside in nature.  The retreat center is very pleasant that way, located in the hills above Los Angeles, and having a relatively undeveloped area off the parking lot with bushes, pine trees, etc. as well as more formal gardens and lawns.  In these "extraordinary but nothing special experiences," I would be sitting in a chair, looking off into the distance or at nearby pine trees or bushes, and practicing the previously described observation of flow meditation.  With my eyes open there was always flow in the sensory world: the movement of tree branches in the wind, occasional people walking at a distance, changing automobile noises from cars passing on a nearby road, etc.  With my eyes closed there was always plenty of flow in terms of morphing body sensations, morphing internal visual imagery and morphing internal talking.

Then I would notice, usually when my eyes were open, that I was "at peace."  That phrase doesn't quite describe it accurately, but I'm at something of a loss for words here – which is unusual for me, a champion talker.  I would be just sitting there, looking at the pine trees, for example, and find I was just contentedly sitting there looking at the pine trees.  I was awake and alert, but no longer doing any kind of technique, I was not wishing for anything in particular to happen or not happen.  I wouldn't say I was practicing the "Do-Nothing" technique, rather I wasn't striving to do or not do anything at all, I was just here, and now.  There was no effort, no striving involved in maintaining this feeling of peace, of calm presence.

I'm tempted to describe this as an experience of Peace, capital P, but from the inside it simply wasn't any big deal.  It's only from my ordinary perspective of knowing how incredibly rare an experience like this is in my life, especially one lasting more than a few seconds, that I realize how extra-ordinary it was.

I think I have experienced something like this only once before in my life.  Several summers ago my wife and I were on a Dzogchen retreat with lama  Tsoknyi  Rinpoche at his country center, Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, in northern  California.  After one of the teaching sessions one afternoon, we found ourselves just sitting on the hillside, watching the clouds move, feeling the wind blow, and the touch of the sun on our skins.  It was just so very peaceful and natural.  Again I make that statement as if this were very special, a retrospective judgment, but at the time it was just natural to simply be there for a few minutes, enjoying the sun, the wind, and the sights.

Although Shinzen's was a silent retreat, I did have my little pocket voice recorder with me, and since I was far enough away from others to not disturb their silence, I dictated occasional notes, trying to capture something of the essence of the experience.  Here's one dictated after several previous occurrences of this sort.

A moment outside that I think of as a Dzogchen moment.  I'm relaxed and enjoying the touch of the sun on my skin, the warm temperature.  The sound of a chain saw being used nearby is just the sound of a chainsaw, I'm not taking it as annoying, "What a horrible noise spoiling this peaceful place!"  My mind is spacious.  I'm not particularly trying to improve things.  I wouldn't say I'm Here and Now in any profound sense, I'm just here and now, quietly enjoying sitting or walking around.  I didn't do anything in particular to bring it on, except perhaps expected it, as it's happened several times already on this retreat.  I was doing a meditation, mainly on flow, a few minutes ago.

Rigpa, or Resting in the Nature of Mind?

Although I've been a student of lama Sogyal Rinpoche for many years, primarily trying to understand and practice his Dzogchen teachings about rigpa, the ultimate nature of mind, I've always had trouble, though, understanding what "rigpa" means, what "resting in the nature of mind" means.  Sometimes I think I basically understand it, sometimes I'm not at all sure that I understand any aspect of it.  The last few years I've felt that any intellectual attempt of mine to evaluate whether a particular experience is indeed "rigpa" or "resting in the nature of mind" always has the answer, "No."  If I'm trying to intellectually pin it down, I am in an ordinary intellectual state, not in rigpa.

As Sogyal Rinpoche's translation of a Tibetan prayer, Dudjom Rinpoche's Calling the Lama from Afar puts it,

Buddhahood is not attained by fabricated Dharmas;

Meditation made by the mind, fabricated by the intellect, is the deceiving enemy.

During these periods of peace, I felt that this was it, or at least a small manifestation of resting in the nature of mind…..

Because I hadn't done anything specifically aimed at bringing these episodes on, one of my notes concluded:

So an important part of "resting in the nature of mind" is not wanting it to be anything in particular.

Thoughts

As I understand it at this time, one of the clearest understandings Buddhism has is that our thoughts often run wild and both delude us and create all sorts of unnecessary suffering.  In my experience, though, this insight is linked to other teachings in many sources about thoughts that make it sound like a state with no thoughts at all is the ideal one.  I know intellectually this is an extreme I think is wrong, for as Sogyal Rinpoche has often taught it's not the arising of thoughts that's a problem, it's the "running after them," getting identified with them and tangled up in them in maladaptive and crazy ways that's the problem.

As I noted during one of these episodes at the retreat,

It's not like I don't have any thoughts.  Thoughts come occasionally, but not steadily, not all the time.  They're not terribly "loud," they don't automatically dominate my mind.  I still maintain some touch with the world around me, and can easily let the thoughts go.

Physical Pain

One of the reasons I had decided to focus on meditation on flow on this retreat was that I thought developing more skill at it would be helpful in dealing with my chronic, daily headaches.  If I could focus on various aspects of pain with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, and then see how these characteristics continually changed, either slowly or rapidly, I think the physical pain would create less suffering.  And indeed, I have found this to be true to some extent, although I'm not that good yet at meditating on flow.  The suffering is definitely reduced during a headache while I concentrate on observing flow.  Unfortunately, as soon as I stop doing the formal meditation technique, the headache comes back with its previous intensity, but Shinzen agrees with me that there will probably eventually be carryover from developing skill in meditating on flow that will reduce headache pain.  Here's a note I made on this during one of these peace episodes.

As I sit here, mainly just being present, looking out at the trees and grounds, I feel a headache coming on.  I can feel that the pain that kind of "squeezes," contracts my head is also kind of "squeezing," contracting my consciousness, reducing its clarity and scope.  I don't know whether it's "squeezing" it directly, or just triggering worries that the pain will get worse, so I worry that I should hurry to take some medication.  But it will be interesting to see if I can stay in this nature of mind – dare I use that phrase?  …..   Wow, the pain still builds some…

It's a few seconds later and I'd say yes, I can stay in this "nature of mind," at least temporarily.  I say that because it's easier to just relax, to just let go of a train of thought and come back to the present moment.

Comparison of Peace and Self-Remembering

This is not like Gurdjieffian self-remembering, sensing looking and listening (SLL) usually is for me.  SLL involves a deliberate distribution of attention, a small part of my attention keeping track of body sensations (usually those of the arms and legs), more devoted to listening to the qualities of whatever sounds occur, and, since vision is our dominant sense, most devoted to attentive looking at sight qualities.  For SLL, there is a small effortful quality to it, you have to do it, and when you stop doing it, it's effects (usually but not always aliveness and sensory clarity) stop.  These peace experiences, though, were spontaneous.  I didn't "start" them, I didn't "end" them.

What's amazing to me now is how it (this state) just goes on relatively continuously, rather than being (when I make deliberate attempts to rest in the nature of mind at other times) just sort of a second or so long, being rather undefined, being hard to see whether I've made any change as a result of my making an effort to turn my mind inward.  I guess I'm blest!

Dzogchen teachings, as I understand them, typically say that when you are resting in the nature of mind, there's no need to do anything else, no need to apply some specific meditative technique, but that if you do engage in such a technique, it is more effective than if you are in your ordinary state of consciousness.  I recalled this during one of these peace states, and decided to try a specific technique.

I just did the hundred syllable mantra, intending it as a blessing on the world, while I was resting in this nature of mind.  It's different than when I do it normally, it just flows more naturally, without being such a big deal.  Yet it takes away from the resting in the nature of mind to some degree to try to do it deliberately, to do a directed practice like this.  Perhaps it would get easier with practice, with "getting used to."  There's that wonderful phrase that Sogyal Rinpoche uses all the time, "getting used to."

Cessation of the Experience of Peace

Anything that starts also ends, and so

I'm now feeling, maybe half an hour after this clarity began, that it's starting to fade.  It doesn't particularly matter to me, it's just change….

But given how satisfying these experiences were, wouldn't I very much want them to continue?

One of the curious things about my experiences of peace is that I'm not particularly attached to them.  I sort of hope they will occur once in a while again, but it's no big deal!  It's nice to know I can be like that.  I don't think I'd want to be like that all the time, though, I don't think it would be very good for doing my primary work on bridging science and spirituality, writing, and so forth.  Curious that I'm not feeling attached.

Knowing With Words and Intellect, Deeper Knowing

Finally I should note how intellectual knowledge can long precede direct knowledge.  That's not bad, but it's not the same thing at all.  

Many years ago, intellectually I had the understanding that it was good to develop an "observer" separate from the ongoing content of experience, as it increased your freedom, but that this observer could indeed ossify and turn into something rigid itself, which prevented freedom, so you later had to break loose from this.  Perhaps I'm now ready to see it on a deeper level than just intellectually

And So……

All this reminds me of Gurdjieff's admonition to work as if everything depends on work, pray as if everything depends on prayer.  Do what I can and do it well, and be open to "gifts."  My intellectual mind that likes to understand things (on its own terms!) can't see a clear reason why these peace experiences happened.  Oh a vague one, yes, all these years of a variety of psychological clearing and spiritual development practices laid the groundwork, but that's not at all specific.  So perhaps I should just relax and accept that, in some deep sense, this was a gift?  And while I want to continue my work of bringing science and spirituality closer, knowing that it's possible to be at peace like this sometimes is indeed a great gift…..

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 8 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: And that’s the problem with concentrative meditation. With concentrative meditation, some people can develop an enormous amount of concentration power, and they can get rid of pain because basically they’re focused here, and the pain’s there, so it’s gone. They’re all here.

But what else are they missing if they’re all focused here? That’s why the Buddha, who had mastered concentrative meditation, realized this was not a real end to suffering. When you were in these concentrative states – these jhana states – you got away from all ordinary pains, but eventually you had to pee, to come back from your abstracted, concentrated state to the ordinary, bodily world, and the same chronic problems were still there waiting for you. That’s what spurred him to develop Vipassana, the insight kind of meditation.

Student: I got food poisoning a few years ago, and I actually tried to go into it briefly. Instead I ended up whining like a baby for several hours. So with something really intense like that, I’m just curious. What if the pain is driving you to delirium; is that still handle-able?

CTT: I’d say head to the ER instantly so somebody can be checking you from the medical side, and meanwhile you can be doing your internal practicing. In the case of chronic pains, where you know it’s not a medical problem that needs external attention, then sure, the internal approach is fine. But I mean, common sense would suggest that when you get some sudden, strong pain, that says something is wrong! Maybe something is badly wrong. So, again, we’ve got a lot of experts around here in modern life, doctors, who can check that for us.

Student: This discussion has made me think about – I haven’t been through this experience, but I can imagine childbirth is incredibly intense, and there’s a –

CTT: My women friends told me my kidney stone was like childbirth.

Student: Oh, is that right?

CTT: It’s a much smaller baby, but it’s a much smaller “birth canal!”

Student: I can only imagine.

CTT: And they routinely give twice the analgesic Demerol for kidney stones that they do for childbirth.

Student: Yeah. Yeah. Okay –

CTT: But I’d just as soon leave these woman’s mysteries to you ladies!

(Laughter)

Student: I can only imagine. But there’s a whole movement now around the mindfulness technique. Obviously a lot of women opt for natural childbirth, but now there’s this newer component of the mindfulness training – mindful birthing.

Apparently, if you are really present with it, the oxytocin rush after the contraction is just, like, really blissful. That is, you can actually feel how good it is after the contraction. Because if you’re resisting the pain the whole time – this is apparently the premise, and the people who have gone through it have said that it’s true – there’s resisting, resisting, and that’s your posture through the whole thing.

CTT: Yes.

Student: Whereas if you’re really mindful and get through the contraction, then you actually enjoy the – you know, your little gift after each one.

(Laughter)

Apparently it’s the chemical part, which it’s really interesting how so many people go through it and the whole thing – three, four, or six hours, however long – is really painful and difficult. Whereas just the shift of being present with it allows your body to actually experience what the chemicals are trying to help your body experience.

CTT: Oh. Yes. In Buddhist cosmology – and don’t ask me to check this against Gurdjieff’s various levels in all this, because I don’t know if this is true; it’s just interesting – they talk about different realms of existence, which some Buddhists take them as literally existing: the god realm, the demigod realm, the hungry ghost, the hell realm, things like that. Other Buddhists talk about them as if these are really psychological analogies. You know, you can find the warring “demigods” on Wall Street, struggling desperately against each other to make more money and all that.

But Buddhism does teach that the human realm, here, where we are, has the right balance of happiness and pain to be the optimal place to seek enlightenment. There’s enough suffering here to motivate you to want to do something, but there’s enough opportunity here to be able to do something effectively about it.

Pain is one of those inevitable things, you know. You’ve got a body. You’re going to get some pains occasionally. We can’t really forget about it – not that we have any choice, since we’re all here in the human realm – so let’s make the most of it.

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One of the first ways this became clear to me was when I began training in the Japanese martial art of Aikido back in the 1970s.  I had been impressed with a demonstration of the art, and invited a black belt instructor, Alan Grow, to come to UC Davis twice a week to give instructions.  I started a student club, of which I was faculty adviser, to justify getting space on the mats in the gymnasium for this.

To my surprise and consternation, I could immediately "explain" Aikido far better than my black belt instructor.  As I would later put it, I had a "Black Belt in Talking" by the time I was twelve!  That's an amusing way of saying I was very glib.  But while I could verbally explain Aikido better than my instructor, I couldn't do anything, whereas he could toss me across the mat with what seemed a flick of his wrist.  It took me several years to learn how to learn in a different way.  What was required for Aikido was body-instinctive intelligence, not intellectual, verbal intelligence.  Eventually I learn to pay attention from my body, as it were, and actually begin to really grasp what Aikido is about.

Emotions were even more difficult, as, like most people, when an emotion arose it tended to hijack all of my consciousness, and then make all my perceptions and thoughts centered around and reinforcing that emotion.  If something had aroused a fear response in me, for example, I saw things as more threatening than they probably were, I had thoughts about other times I was afraid, and, of course, my body sensations reinforced the fear.  A fearful stimulus that may have lasted only a few seconds produced a self-reinforcing reaction that could go on for minutes or hours.

I engaged in many personal growth activities in the 70s, 80s and 90s, aspects of the Humanistic Psychology movement as well as a spiritual quest, and gradually learn more about what my emotions were and to be accepting of them.

I would not claim to have become particularly emotionally intelligent, but at least I was no longer really dumb and neurotic about emotions, and, similarly, because of Aikido training and meditation training later, I became more aware of what my body-instinctive intelligence was telling me at a particular time.

This morning I had a particularly clear example of how emotions ought to work when they are reasonably intelligent, rather than undeveloped or neurotic.  My wife Judy and I were having a silly quarrel on a topic we've had silly quarrels about many times over the years, and she mentioned that if she died before I did, I wouldn't have to do the things she expected me to do.  I responded, from an intellectual stance, that this was indeed true, but, on balance, the gains from this would be nothing compared to the loss of her.  To my astonishment, before I could finish that sentence I was all choked up and crying!  And a few seconds later, it was all over!  My emotional intelligence had risen and taken over my consciousness, reminded me of what was really important in my life, and, having perceived that I got the message, had then become quiet again.

This is my understanding of what Gurdjieff had to say about the intelligent way for emotions to function.  Emotions give you a different perspective on situations than intellect or body-instinctual intelligence, they come on powerfully to make sure you notice that perspective, and then, if you've got it, they quickly cease.  On the other hand, undeveloped emotions not only force a message on you, they kick off associations to all sorts of things that have ever felt like this, and you could easily have what I've called in the title of this note, "emotional seizures."  That is, instead of you getting the message right away, so you can act more appropriately, you go on and on with the emotion kicking off thoughts which reinforce the emotion which generate appropriate body sensations which kickoff more related thoughts which reinforce the emotion, on and on and on.  Your mind is seized!  Modern neurological research about emotions talk about how the emotional part of the brain "hijacks" the thinking part.

This is not to say that there are no long-lasting emotions which are useful, necessary and realistic.  Some aspects of life require long consideration, emotionally as well as intellectually and bodily-instinctively.  But most ordinary emotions, when they become intelligent, can indeed, from Gurdjieff's perspective, only last a few seconds, just long enough for you to get that message clearly.

It amazed me that in less the second I became so deeply emotional and was crying, and that it was all over a few seconds later.  But I'm glad to have had this very clear example to share some of my understanding about the nature of personal and spiritual growth, and hope this might be useful to others someday.

These ideas will seem quite sensible and have practical implications when you are in a calm state, and probably be forgotten when a strong emotion takes over: it happens to me that way a lot.  A strong emotion screams "This is the Truth, you feel it, it's Real!!!"  When that happens I try to note what the actual message of the emotion is and also remember about emotional hijack.  It's like a very loud alarm siren is shrieking and it's hard to think, but don't feel too bad about yourself during that alarm….

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 7 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: I think at this point we can open it for discussion about the review, your current experience, the readings – what have you. But do try to stay focused in the present. It’ll make it more fun.

Student: My experience right now is in something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Right after meditation like we just did, I’m much more aware of my bodily movements. For example, sitting in class, I adjust all the time. I think I wasn’t aware when I was adjusting, yet it happens all the time. You just move a part of your body, don’t even think about it. But right after we did that, I moved my arms up to my legs and felt like I knew it was happening the whole time.

CTT: Mm hmm.

Student: That’s it.

CTT: If you look at other people, or if you begin to see yourself, we fidget all the time! Constant movement. You begin to think it must be really uncomfortable to be a human being in a body, judging by how we’re constantly adjusting ourselves to get more comfortable.

And yet when you sit still for a few minutes, it’s not that bad. I mean, there’s the occasional itch that you know you’ll die from, but by and large, it’s not that bad.

I heard that given as an example of the Buddhist emphasis on suffering the other day, that this is one of the subtle signs of how pervasive suffering is in our life – constantly fidgeting and adjusting, trying to make things better. Or maybe we’re desperately seeking the optimal pleasant position.

But if you’re here, in the vipassana sense, it’s not so bad.

Student: During my experience just now, I had an itch that I chose not to go into. However, I have a pretty strong body reaction to itches. There was a time in Marine Corps boot camp when itching was not allowed, and sometimes we’d be standing at attention for –

CTT: Itching was not allowed?

Student: Well, if you’re standing at attention, you –

Another Student: Scratching.

Student: – don’t do anything. So –

CTT: I would think scratching was not allowed. They can’t give you an order not to itch.

(Laughter)

Soldier! Don’t itch!

(Laughter)

Student: So I developed the ability to legislate that I would not itch, and used my will to do that. I can see a difference between just accepting that feeling and seeing where it goes. So I can see the difference between those two, and yet I still have this intense body reaction that surrounds itching – that seems to be experiential and historical – and I was curious of how –

CTT: Is it like you were traumatized in some way by having to ignore prolonged itches?

Student: Yes.

CTT: Yeah. Maybe you can sue the government on it.

(Laughter)

Probably not.

Once you see the many – I want to say the suffering in human life, but let’s make it milder – the many sources of “discomfort,” you can see the usual way of dealing with discomfort is to try to actively fix it. When you have an itch, you scratch it. When you get cramped, you stretch. When you’re tired, you sleep. When you can do things, and they’re effective, that’s pretty good. Most itches go away when you scratch them.

But there are a lot of circumstances in life where we can’t do anything about something that’s bothering us. You know, like we’re all going to get old and sick and die at some point, and not much we can do about it. Not to mention many other discomforts along the way.

So how do you deal with those things? You can deal with them as Bob illustrated in his story, by developing a kind of willpower. “I’m going to power my way through this and not show any reaction!” And that’s a skill, and it develops willpower, and it’s something we all need. Because there will be emergencies where it’s the only thing you can do and it may save your life. You know? Don’t move, because that will attract the attention of the sniper.

You can say, “Oh, but I itch. I’ve got to scratch.” Not unless you want to get killed.

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When I become the Czar of Worldwide Words, I'm going to abolish the word "meditation."

Isn't that an odd way to start a blog on meditation?  Gets your attention, though.

I will write mainly from my role as a scientist, as a psychologist, as one of the founders of a relatively new branch of psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, although as a student of meditation and spiritual paths all my life, my perspective is "inside" and well as "outside."

As a field, mainstream psychology pretty much accepts the materialistic assumptions that dominate in most fields of science today, that only what is material is real, matter and physical energy.  The physical matter and electrical and chemical processes of your brain are real, consciousness is nothing but a secondary derivative of those physical processes.  From this perspective, all those things called "meditation" are indirect ways of controlling your physical brain's functioning, and so someday you won't have to spend all those (too often boring) hours sitting, because science will develop a pill that directly puts the brain in the best "meditative" state.  "Spirit" or "spirituality," from the materialistic perspective, is simply old fashioned nonsense, superstition, and best dispensed with, as it interferes with our rational functioning.

There certainly is a lot of nonsense associated with the spiritual, as there is with all fields of life, but in Transpersonal Psychology we think, to use that powerful old image, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.  We believe that there is something real to the spiritual, and that its recognition and development are vital to individual and societal welfare.  Denying this hurts people.  If we totally accept materialism, there is no inherent meaning to life, and the only "sensible" thing to do is get as much of riches and resources for yourself as you can to maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain.  Then we all die anyway, and it means nothing.  (See my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together for elaboration and evidence about this, and why genuine science actually shows the spiritual has reality to it.)  Where is culture going, when greed is a primary motive and nothing really means anything?  If we are really some sort of spiritual beings, though, and mystical experiences of, say, our inherent unity, the power of love, etc. are about realities, our relations to our fellow beings are quite different.  As just one example, what hurts you hurts me in some real sense, and cooperation and kindness are natural things to do, not some "should" imposed from outside.

Transpersonal Psychology is not a religion which thinks it knows the answers to all of this, but believes that applying the tools of (a more enlightened) science and scholarship to the spiritual can result not only in a better understanding of what's real and what's not, and how we can evolve, but in more effective ways to help people have genuine spiritual experiences and integrate them into their lives in a healthy way.  Yes, this is a noble goal, and yes, my life has been and is dedicated to promoting it.  Too, in contrast to a common belief in some spiritual systems that we were once much more spiritually evolved, I believe in and try to promote progress: we can evolve forward, not just hope to go back to what it was like in some more enlightened past time.  Who knows, perhaps there are even more spiritually evolved states than "old-time enlightenment?"

So what does all this have to do with my opening statement that I'd like to abolish the word "meditation?"

One of the questions I like to ask my friends and colleagues in various religions and spiritual traditions – and I must admit there's a certain impish quality behind it – is "Has there been any progress in spirituality in the last couple of centuries?"  There's been enormous progress in the various sciences.  In areas like physics, chemistry, medicine, we know enormously more, and can do enormously more than we could a couple of centuries ago.  So, are more people who enter a particular spiritual path today getting "enlightened," "saved," or whatever?  There is usually an embarrassed silence in reaction to my question.

One of the primary ways that has allowed scientific pursuits to progress so much has been clear communication.  In chemistry, biology or physics, for example, whenever the word "water" is used, it is quite clear that what is specifically meant is a molecular compound made up of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen, which is liquid in a certain temperature range, vaporous in another temperature range, turns to ice in  another temperature range etc.  Nobody confuses coffee, tea, battery fluid, brandy, or anything else with water simply because they are liquids.  But, when somebody uses the word "meditation," what do they mean?

Within the particular teachings of the Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Buddhist Rigpa organization, for example, there will be a relatively specific meaning attached to words like "meditation," "consciousness," "attention," "mindfulness," "awareness," etc.  But as soon as you go outside that particular teaching, all these words may carry different explicit and implicit meanings.  Now if we knew that all the time, it would not be too much of a problem – "Ah, we are talking about type 3 attention now as a basis for type 5 meditation" – but most of the time people are not too sensitive to the different meanings of the same word within different traditions.  But we think we know what is meant because the words are familiar.

Thus when someone tells me, for example, "I meditate each day," I really have almost no idea of what they actually do or mean.  At a minimum, it probably means that it is something they consider different from their ordinary life activities, but that's about it.

As a transpersonal psychologist and scientist, looking at how "meditation" is taught and practiced across many traditions, there are many, many definitions of what it means, and often no clear definition at all of what it means.  Further, the actual techniques for particular forms of meditation may be described in certain words, but any practice is learned within a context, and the subtle hints and cues and expectations in that context may greatly change the meaning of the particular words for a learner.  So the same set of instructions in terms of words, in different contexts, may mean people do entirely different things.

Another of the main reasons science progresses is that it looks at data about things from a wide variety of perspectives, then looks for essential commonalities to get at the essence of things.  But if you look at "meditation" to try to find such commonalities, you may find a few – sitting still, e.g. is quite common – but probably almost none that are universal -some "meditations" involve standing and movement – and many that have concepts and practices that are contradictory to other traditions.  You can't, to go back to our example, make a lot of progress in understanding the chemistry of water if some people who report the results of their study of "water" are using battery fluid, others are using coffee, and others are using brandy.

Now, fortunately for the world, I will never be appointed as czar of anything!  That's good, giving me too much authority tends to go to my ego, and I use authority badly.  Practically, I have gone on what I call "semantic crusades" several times in my career, trying to introduce more precise terms in psychology and parapsychology, and only occasionally been successful.  So I know that, realistically, nobody's going to stop using the word "meditation."  And usually using it to mean what they want it to mean!  So what I'm advocating, is that if you want to learn something about meditation in a particular tradition, try to get clear what's meant by the terms within that particular tradition, and try to put that meaning aside when you study in a different tradition.

The situation is further complicated because meditation is often defined in terms of words like "attention," "mindfulness," "concentration," etc., yet while these words are in common use, they often mean different things to different people.

If this is starting to make your head hurt to think about how complex this gets, I'm with you!  The important thing is not the words per se but learning how to direct your attention in specific ways, and what you see as a result of that, but, as in so many areas of life, words can help us begin to use our attention in the desired way.

The things these words refer to are important and vital realities, and it helps us if we can have clear definitions of what we're doing or trying to do, but I suspect with some of these very basic things like "mindfulness," are never going to be able to totally defined in logical and grammatical terms.  The old Zen saying, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the Moon," is so true!  But the finger pointing at the moon may be helpful.  If the moon is in the west and we're looking toward the east, the finger pointing toward the west may get us turn around, and that certainly increases our chances of seeing the moon.  Or we may stare at the finger……

Here's an example where I have particular problems with words.  This problem may be more acute with me because, as a transpersonal psychologist, I have to look at a lot of different spiritual traditions and techniques, but many people may have a similar problem.

Sogyal Rinpoche teaches about three components of meditation.  The terms he uses are "mindfulness," "awareness," and "remaining spaciously."  He's talking about three aspects of your mental functioning in trying to do the Rigpa system of meditation.  He is giving them specific definitions in terms of the Rigpa process of meditation, which is very good.  But I get "mindfulness" and "awareness" confused all the time unless I make a special effort to get them straight, because I hear these same words used with different meanings in other contexts.  Indeed, unless I go back to my notes, I may make a mistake in the next sentence about what he means by "mindfulness" or "awareness."  But one of them means "What is the meditation object that is focused on?"  That might be an external object, such as a picture of a spiritual master, or an internal visualization, but it's the focus point you try to keep in mind.  In my own mind I translate it as the "focus point."  Another part of your mental process, which may be what he calls "awareness," is a monitoring of the process:  "How am I doing?  Am I actually paying attention to the focus point, or has my mind wandered off on something else?  Am I successful in bringing it back to the focus point, or do I have to do it again?"  Rinpoche speaks of about 25% of your attention being on process monitoring, about 25% on the focus point, and the balance restfully remaining open.

I had been trying to meditate in various ways for many years before hearing this particular way of describing how to meditate, and I find it very helpful, and use it when I teach basic meditation.  But, as I said, given my background, I have to translate the terms he uses into "process awareness" and "focus point" in order for them to make sense for me, and to not get confused by the many other meanings of these words in both ordinary and psychological use.

So perhaps the moral of this post is as you begin to read any particular post or article or book about "meditation," figure out as soon as possible what the author means by key terms like "meditation," and it's probably a good idea to write those definitions down right away and keep them in front of you as you read on.  This won't guarantee that you become extremely good meditator, but will certainly avoid a lot of wasted time brought about simply through unnecessary confusion.

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 5 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now once in a while, the transpersonal does get through to us. So one way to grow is to hope to have an overwhelming transpersonal experience that will force a new way of looking at reality on you, that’s going to be such a revelation that – wham! – it’s got your attention, and you feel a need to try to center your life around it, to live in accordance with that.

Probably the most certain way to induce that – more certain than all the usual mystical paths – is to have a near-death experience (NDE). Most people who have a near-death experience find their life tremendously changed. They’ve been talking with God for a while. Even the atheists. They have an especially hard time when they’ve been talking with God in terms of reconciling what they are experiencing with their belief system…..

The trouble is, the near- part is very tricky! So it’s not a method I recommend at all.

(Laughter)

Most people who get that close to death don’t tell you about a fantastic transpersonal experience. They get buried. So you don’t want to go that way. If life pushes you that way – okay. C’est la vie. But the more gradual spiritual paths are attempts to induce transpersonal experiences that can break through. That’s one of the routes.

The other route is what you might call the noise reduction route. The quieting down of the cocktail party so there’s going on in your head to give you chance to “hear” those higher kinds of things, and that’s what the mindfulness techniques do. That’s what certain kinds of psychotherapy do. They try to produce space between your thoughts and feelings and images, so that you can hear more subtle kinds of things

That’s the thing we’ve been focusing on. None of the stuff I teach in the mindfulness course really has anything to do with directly trying to induce transpersonal experiences, per se. It has an indirect effect of making it more likely that such an experience might happen because it cuts that noise level way down. That’s where we’re focusing. But if the higher experiences come, learn from them.

Student: I was wondering if your concept of noise here is analogous to Gurdjieff’s concept of the number of forces that are acting in a particular plane, or realm. He advocates cutting the number of forces by half, making the material world less dense. I’m looking for the connection to that thought.

CTT: You can make that connection if you want. It's interesting, but I didn’t make it.

Student: Okay.

CTT: Gurdjieff’s idea of the number of laws acting at various levels and all that – that always struck me as intellectually interesting, but something I would have no idea of how to find out whether it was true or false.

I mean, it’s true in a general, psychological sense. The more neurotic you are, the more restrictions there are on your experience and behavior. The more laws you’re limited by, in a sense. But whether these are specific laws – you know, whether there’s a book somewhere that states what these particular laws are and that they divide strictly by halves or – I don’t know, and I don’t know how to figure it out.

So if you find that sort of stuff useful to help you move along, great. But I don’t know what to make of it. Sometimes I think Gurdjieff made it all up to get Ouspensky, who was so compulsively intellectual, off his back!

(Laughter)

You know, Ouspensky was such an intellectual. Oh, he wanted everything explained in precise intellectual terms, and sometimes I think this laws and forces stuff was a sop Gurdjieff threw to Ouspensky…..but probably not. Probably he thought this was the real stuff……. and maybe it is.

Student: My impression in reading it is that he was creating a symbolic representation of an individual, just like you alluded to in answering my question.

CTT: Yeah. It’s certainly true psychologically, that the more neurotic and conditioned you are, the more laws restrict your behavior, even if they’re nonspecific. Well, they’re specific for you. You may be conditioned in a certain, specific way that, say, closed doors make you nervous. That puts a restriction on your ability to use rooms in an efficient, comfortable kind of fashion. When you have some therapeutic insight into what’s behind that, and kind of let go of that mechanism, it’s like you gained another degree of freedom, because now closed doors don’t bother you.

Student: Whew. Thank God he opened that!

(Laughter)

So that’s the little review I wanted to give you. Okay? We’ve been working with the three boxes in the left and upper part. The fourth one is there. We hear more about the fourth one in other kinds of courses. If any of you take the altered states course next quarter, we’ll be talking some about altered states that have some things to do with these higher sorts of things, but I’m functioning as a “noise reducer teacher” in this particular class.

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One of these paths, centered around the vipassana-type meditations I've learned from Shinzen Young, is about exploring the deeper nature of my mind.  On it, typically I'm sitting still with my eyes closed, observing some set of internal reactions.  If I'm paying attention to external sensations, like sound, still, my primary interest is in the internal reactions that are created, and in learning how to observe them with concentration, clarity and equanimity.  On this path, I learned a lot about how my mind works, either in response to sensory stimuli, or how it functions when it's not being driven by external stimuli, not being engaged in coping with the external world, but running on its own.  For example, I've learned how difficult it is for me to follow the simple instruction to simply pay equanimous attention to the qualities of sensation X, without getting lost in acceptance or rejection, or trying to change X, or trying to prolong or shorten it.  One of the most insightful things I see, even after years of practice, is that there are usually subtle biases to try to make my experience be of such-and-such quality, rather than simply observing it as it is.

I feel like this exploration of the inner workings of my mind gives me a deeper understanding of myself, and I have some faith that, as Shinzen says, paying equanimous and clear attention to these internal processes eventually clears out a lot of junk in the way the mind functions.  It also trains the skills of concentration and clarity.

The other main line is centered around my Dzogchen practice with Sogyal Rinpoche.  Now I should qualify what I'm going to say by noting that I consider myself a "poor" student in terms of what I think is the standard model of a "good" Vajrayana student.  I don't do the various sadhana, mantra-type practices, simply because I have no real faith that they will somehow make me acquire a lot of merit which will automatically up the quality of my spiritual life.  It would take a lot of time and energy to do 100,000 of this, that, or the other practice, and I think that, for me, that time is better spent in my work advancing knowledge as a transpersonal psychologist.  These kind of practices undoubtedly work for other people, but they just don't appeal to or resonate with me.  At times I worry that this means that I'm never going to make much spiritual progress because I am a "bad" student and I'm not following the basic instructions.  At other times I remember, because of course I'm motivated to remember this, that Sogyal Rinpoche says he offers a lot of practices, and while he recommends them all, he also strongly recommends that you find the practices that inspire you and work for you, and concentrate on them.

I should also add my usual qualification that my feeling of whether I understand the basic Dzogchen approach varies wildly, ranging from "I think I basically understand the main practice" to "I have no idea what they are talking about!"  So I need to occasionally evaluate what I think I do or don't know, but not get too attached to such evaluations…..

The Dzogchen practice which is of most concern to me is that of suddenly turning the mind inward, instead of being lost in the ongoing contents of mind, lost in one's "story."  This is based on the traditional teaching that samsara is mind turned outward, lost in its projections, nirvana is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  When I take a moment to turn the mind inward, there is usually a brief moment to a few seconds in which the ongoing stories and reactions I was having to various content before, my "story," dies back down, and I'm simply here, now.  The vast majority of the time, my experience is that it's nothing "special."  I'm just here, now.

This is, in one way, a great disappointment to me in terms of my expectation that Dzogchen, touted as a fast path to enlightenment, would produce all sorts of wonderful spiritual experiences that would reassure me that I was on The Path and doing the right thing.  But I've decided that, in general, I'm not the kind of person who has extraordinary experiences, but I am a sensible, grounded person, able to be somewhat helpful to others.  Whether this is a rationalization for my inability to practice in a way that produces "spiritual" experiences, or whether it's the truth, I don't know.  Again a concept that is useful in some ways, but which I had better not got too attached to…..

On the other hand, since my usual state is to be lost in my thoughts and reactions to external situations, samsara, these occasional moments of simply being calmly here and now are rather extraordinary, extra-ordinary, outside or beyond the ordinary.

I'm seeing my current spiritual practice, then, as following these two main paths.  Usually I sit for 20 minutes or so each day to do eyes closed, vipassana-type meditation, and sometimes when doing this I learn something new about the nature of my mind.  Usually it's just a calming, restful period of time.  As to its long-term "purification" effects, I'm not sure, I hope that's what's happening, as Shinzen believes.  The Dzogchen practice of turning the mind inward, on the other hand, I find useful primarily in the midst of ordinary life.

Although it would probably be a mistake to totally equate them, I find this Dzogchen turning inward practice ("resting in the nature of mind" or "rigpa") to be like Gurdjieffian self-remembering practice.  In both cases I deliberately use my attention and intention to stop being caught up in the ongoing, unceasing story of reactions of my mind and come to the present.  As I've written elsewhere, when I first began doing this Gurdjieffian practice, for many years the immediate effect was a feeling of not only being here-and-now but of being much more alive, much more in contact with my environment and with myself.  Now it seldom seems that special, it's just here-and-now, but that's still quite good!

Okay, this is all very nice, but I must remember that the primary point is learning to be in the present, here-and-now, accurately perceiving what's happening outside and inside, rather than coming up with more and more clever sets of words and concepts about what's going on!

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I knew this to be true from modern psychological studies.  Our common sense model is that perception is accurate, seeing, e.g., is like taking a picture with a camera, whatever is actually in front of your eyes registers on the film, and we think a picture never lies.  "Seeing is believing."  Of course with modern digital cameras and software to edit photos, we now know a finished photo may be very different from what was actually in front of the camera.  Similarly psychological research in the last century has shown over and over that perception is seldom a simple registration of what's actually there, it's much more a form of high-speed (you think it's instant), automatized thinking, a construction that's a guess as to what's there.  But presented as an obviously real perception, with no "best guess" label attached.  For us digital types, it's better to see the eyes, e.g., as a digital camera and there's Photoshop type processing automatically going on before we perceive the picture.  How this biological Photoshop alters the picture has a lot to do with our emotions, our personality, and our cultural conditioning.  Believing is seeing, or at least has a lot to do with what you perceive.

I notice this once in a while in myself.  Sometimes I look out my bedroom window at night, e.g., and notice a tree in a neighbor's yard is underlit by a floodlight, it's very pretty.  Except as I look more closely I realize I'm seeing a patch of partly lit night sky through the trees, not an underlit tree.  I've seen this many times, but still often at first see the illusion, then suddenly it switches – my biological Photoshop changes its functioning – and it's a patch of dim night sky.  I can almost never switch it back, but next time it may happen again.

In spite of intellectual knowledge about "Believing is seeing," though, I seldom think that this is something that applies to me.  After all, I'm a scientist, I strive to perceive accurately and like to believe I'm good at that!

So I was somewhat startled, then pleasantly surprised when I had a strong personal demonstration that "believing is seeing" this morning.

Our neighbors are having their kitchen remodeled, and I looked out our living room window and noticed that a couple of workers were rolling a very heavy looking machine across the street toward the kitchen.  I wasn't quite sure what the machine was for, but I thought it was a tile cutting machine, something I know is heavy and massive.  A few minutes later I looked out our kitchen window, and could see their truck parked across the street, which I figured would give me a clue as to what kind of machine it was.  The distance was sufficient that it was somewhat difficult for me to see clearly, but I could make out a company name and, by squinting a little, underneath the company name it said "tile floors."  The figure below gives you an idea of the level of clarity I could see with from a distance.

I went and told my wife that it was now clear that our neighbors were installing a tile floor on their kitchen, and we would probably hear a fair amount of noise during the day as they cut tiles.

Imagine my surprise a few minutes later when my wife told me that our neighbors had had a hardwood floor put down yesterday, and the machine I had seen was a large floor sander!  I now went and looked at their truck from closer window and, as the figure below shows, the words below their company name clearly says "hardwood floors!"

I can't say there were any powerful emotions driving this, but what a clear example that "seeing is believing!"  I had decided a tile floor was going down, and under somewhat difficult seeing conditions, I saw my proof in the words on the side of the truck.  I think this is especially amazing, as the word "hardwood" is twice as long as the word "tile" would be.

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Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

Stopping once in a while, turning mind in

No big deal

Yet I don't add my crazies to my ongoing crazies for Big Crazies….

Less samsara in my day…..

Elaborating….

Samsara:  Buddhist term for ordinary consciousness, which is seen as a badly distorted form of consciousness.  Our perception of world and self is badly distorted by the three main driving forces of greed/attraction, aversion/rejection and ignorance (of reality and of one's true Buddha nature).

Sixth Consciousness:  Traditionally each of the main five senses is considered a kind of consciousness, and (ordinary) mind is considered the sixth kind of consciousness, a consciousness which takes the input of the senses at any one time and simply and objectively names their object and perhaps brings up some immediately relevant, objective information about them.  Right now, my sixth consciousness says "computer screen" as I look straight ahead, "coffee cup" as I look to my left, "bookcase" as I look to my right.

Seventh Consciousness: This is an almost completely conditioned, automatic elaboration of the simple perceptions of sixth consciousness into our personal "stories," our hopes, fears, etc.  So there is a feeling as I notice the computer screen in front of me of satisfaction, of pride, I'm a writer, I'm good at it, and an undercurrent of anxiety – this monitor has been acting a little flaky lately, suppose it breaks, it will be expensive to replace it…..That coffee cup, I need to take it to the kitchen and wash it, I'm so tired of washing out coffee cups, maybe it I just leave it out my wife will wash it for me, oh damn, how can I think that, I'm a lazy person, why can't I be more responsible?  Ah, the bookcase, look at all those books!  I'm so smart to read so many books, I'm happier thinking about how smart I am rather than how lazy I am…..

According to Buddhism, greatly supported by the discoveries of modern psychology, we almost never stay with simple sixth consciousness perception, automatic seventh consciousness reactions take over almost instantly and can be strong enough to effectively blot out or distort simple, objective perceptions.  I've used mild illustrations of this here, but the emotional dynamics and psychological defenses of our individual selves can have us dwelling in our "stories," our dramas, most of the time.

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

A perception, my like or dislike, which triggers associated likes and dislikes, which triggers more, on and on and on, the original sixth consciousness perception lost in the drama.  New events, new stimuli which are strong enough to get our attention are often almost instantly distorted by the seventh consciousness to fit right into our ongoing story…..And our illusory existence, samsara, continues and builds…..

Many brief moments: In Dzogchen turning the mind inward to notice what's there, in Gurdjieffian terms self-observation or self-remembering.  Succinctly expressed in Buddhism as samsara is the mind turned outward, lost in its projections.  Enlightenment is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  Rigpa is one of the names for the true nature of our minds, our Buddha nature.

So I'm in samsara, then I turn mind inward for a moment.  A sensory event, a stimulus comes along then and it's just sixth consciousness perception, it's just a bookcase, no activation of my personal "story" about how wonderful I am, how much I know.  I glance at the bookcase again, notice a book sticking out, close to falling off the shelf, I'll push it in next time I go over that way, back to the moment.  Here's my mind, here, now, nothing "special" about it, just calmly here – but that's pretty special compared to the usual ongoing, self-stimulating drama of ME!

Radiance of rigpa:  It's not that the goal of Buddhism is to stay forever in a state of mind that's absolutely calm, where nothing ever happens.  That's not our nature.  Our nature of mind, our rigpa, moves, thinks, creates, like the sun radiating light and heat.  But to have it stay close to sixth consciousness perception, not get twisted into my story…..that's something!

I called this a small song of small realization, question mark.  No big deal, yet very fundamental.  Coming back to the moment every once in a while during my day, I don't get so carried away, I don't have fantasy building on fantasy, amplifying samsara.  Perhaps not a big deal insight, but I like it….

So once again:

Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

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The first level, what we might call the level of not particularly dealing with an emotion, is the ordinary level of simply and automatically identifying with the emotion as it occurs.  This is the automatization of ordinary consciousness.  The emotion then mobilizes most or all of your consciousness to fit in with it, brings up related material like memories and similar emotions, and creates a "story" centered around the emotion that can take you far from reality, and that can goad you into doing things which will create a lot of karma, which you will later regret.  An emotional "storm" may go on for minutes or hours after the original stimulus arousing it has ended.

The next level of dealing with emotions would be trying to detect them as they happen but then keep them from rising to a strong level, where they take you over.  This could be done by concentrating on something else, by deliberately pushing the emotion down, by getting involved in some other activity to take your awareness energy away from the emotions.  This is useful if it keeps you from acting on emotions in a way which would get you into trouble or create bad karma, and/or reinforcing particular emotional triggers and reactions.

The next level of dealing with emotions, which I have heard Sogyal Rinpoche  stress the last couple of years, is when you realize that emotions are rising, direct your attention to the qualities, the nature of the emotion itself, rather than to the object the emotion has been aroused by.  If a person makes you angry, for example, stop focusing on that person, and try to note the qualities of anger itself.  From my own experience with Gurdjieff type work, I would say that means paying a lot of attention to body sensations, and, from Shinzen Young's vipassana work, paying attention to the internal talk or internal imagery that's associated with the emotion.  The big emphasis is on the ongoing, moment-by-moment qualities of the emotion, not the object of the emotion.  If Bob Smith, e.g., says something that gets me angry and I let the anger take me over, I will be focused on my negative perceptions and on that bastard Bob Smith, the anger will continue to run in an automatic way, etc.  Focusing on the qualities of the emotion itself will keep the story from developing and take the wind out of the sails of the emotion.

The highest level, what I think of as the Dzogchen level, will involve looking inward to try to perceive "who" is feeling the emotion.  This strikes me as the ultimate way of transcending the emotion, and I have some experiential feel what it is like, although it's difficult to describe.

All of these ways of dealing with emotion strike me as useful, at a minimal level as tending to inhibit the expression of negative emotions which will probably generate negative karma, reactive consequences, and, at a deeper level, of cutting down identification with emotions and stories that are associated with various emotions.

What I find missing from Buddhist approaches, as I have been exposed to them to date, is Gurdjieff's idea of emotional intelligence.  Gurdjieff taught that emotions, properly trained, are forms of intelligence.  They alert you to possible realities in your ongoing situation that may require your attention and action.  An intelligent, well functioning emotion then would grab your attention with its quality and power, you would then look more closely at various aspects of reality to see if there is something you need to do.  What you need to do might be take some external action or investigate some specific aspect of the workings of your mind.  Having alerted you, the emotion quickly dies away.  That is intelligent emotions, according to Gurdjieff, are very brief, rather than starting stories which go on for minutes or hours after the event that stimulated them.

I don't think I've been exposed to teachings in a Buddhist framework which talk about making emotions more intelligent.  Rather the general attitude that I think has been there is that emotions are a source of suffering, they drive our samsaric existence, and so we want to disempower these motions.   Compassion is the big exception, as the development of it is an essential part of enlightenment.

As usual, I qualify the above thoughts my noting that I'm not a Buddhist scholar, so I'm sure there are some forms of Buddhism that are different from what I've said above.

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I saw the show and it was fascinating, although I think the great graphics tended to be wonderful visual entertainment rather than really explaining any of the science.  But much better for me, at least, than empty abstraction.  This is a series – try to catch the rest.

But what is "dark" energy and matter?  Does it really convey some sort of spiritual quality?  Or that certain truths are part of the mystery of God and forever veiled from us?  The necessary faith and confidence for doing science – or for living life, for that matter – is that we are smart and will be able to figure most things, if not all things, out.  When one's arrogance is high, we'll be able to figure it all out.  When we get stuck and frustrated we may admit that perhaps the human brain maybe can't work it all out, but can still do great things…..  This is necessary "faith," for if you start thinking "I and we aren't very bright, we probably can't learn anything," that is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  To quote, as I'm sure I have before, Henry Ford, "Those who think they can and those who think they can't are both right…..

"My colleague seemed to think that the postulating of dark matter and energy was a refutation of what I've described in The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together as scientism, the materialistic philosophy overwhelmingly dominant in most areas of science that says everything can and will eventually be explained in terms of physical matter and physical energy.  Because "dark" energy and matter are not matter as we know it?

But that's not the case.  Scientism is a philosophy of materialism, everything is made of matter and energy.  If we can't explain something now in terms of known forms of matter and energy, then it's an item of faith that, as we discover new forms of material matter and material energy, we will then be able to explain things in expanded materialistic terms.

As I'm sure I've said many times before, scientism is not science, although most people, including most scientists, think it is.  An essential part of a genuinely scientific theory is that it is capable of disproof, of making observations which are quite incompatible with the theory.  When scientism encounters something inexplicable in terms of current materialistic theories, though, it keeps the faith by saying someday we will explain it in physical terms, including a wider understanding of what "physical" means.  This is what philosophers long ago named promissory materialism, as you can't ever disprove that someday they won't explain it in terms of material entities and forces (or little green men or angels or devils or aliens or whatever you prefer). I try not to fall into scientism, even though it's a prestigious thing to do as it leads to more social acceptance.  If I had wanted to be very successful in conventional terms I would never have followed a career that kept looking into things that were taboo, that were heresy in materialistic terms.

Essential science – see again my The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together book – always puts data, observations, experience first and foremost, and if your theories to explain them, materialistic, mathematical, socialistic, religious, whatever don't actually work, too bad for the theories and beliefs.  Study the data more closely, see what you can learn.

In our times, though, we spiritual beings – I think that's what we all essentially are – have our spirituality badly repressed and rejected because of scientism.  But we try to find some means to justify being more spiritual, justifying, rationalizing by trying to find scientific reasons to be more spiritual.  So we can take developments like dark energy and matter as pointing toward a mystery beyond human understanding, as pointing toward God or Spirit.  It's commonly done all the time in New Age, as well as other spiritual movements.  Quantum physics has been used this way for decades now.You can certainly take new scientific data and theory that way, and I sometimes do, but I don't think a "proof" of the existence of God because of our ignorance is very powerful.  "This is beyond our understanding, so there must be a God who understands."  I'm much more impressed by people's mystical experiences, not to mention all the scientific investigations surveyed in my book that show we humans sometimes do things we think spiritual beings would be able to.  By "spiritual" here I mean of a nature very different than contemporary physics and reasonable extensions of it allow to happen.  Telepathy as a possible "mechanism" for transmitting information and requests in prayer, as just one example.

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