"If the doors of perception
were cleansed, man would see everything as it is, infinite."
We perceive experience in the manner of
thread coming off a spool in units that can be measured relative to the
end and the beginning. If no terminus is in sight we assume one. Gray becomes
black on the one hand and white on the other. Absolute black or absolute
white is not the issue. The issue is that we agree on what is given and
what is not. We think in terms of polarities. Definitions are constructed
in terms of their opposite or absence."Six centuries before the Christian
era, the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras set out clearly
a set of dualities or oppositions in a manner similar to those explicitly
or implicitly accepted by most cultures even today. -From THE LAST TABOO, by James L. Brain (Doubleday, N.Y. 1979)
Our senses report the presence
of a stimulus by the firing of minute electrical charges in the neurons
of the brain. In sufficient quantity, these electrically triggered neurons
reach some sort of threshold of awareness and get our attention. Yin and yang, now you
see it, now you don't. In that sense all is vibration; frequencies on the
electromagnetic
spectrum.
| Love - Hate | Approach - Avoidance |
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Dark - Light
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Evil - Good
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Night - Day
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Death - Life
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Women - Men
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Subjective - Objective
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Up - Down
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Caring - Indifference
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It is the absence of stimuli that
gives significance to the presence of stimuli. Without pauses music has
no rhythm or meter, sound becomes noise and speech is unintelligible. It
has been said that in Japan what you don't say or do is at least as important
as what you do.
Contrast enhances detail, visually, as as well as in poetry.
In the classic paintings the figures are placed on what is called background
or negative ground. Interstices delineate form in architecture. For example
darkened interiors in the great cathedrals intensifies both the colors
of the stained glass windows and the sense of sanctuary, the sense of a
place apart from the mundane.
We seem to require polarities not just
as a means of ideation, but apparently our will to live and very existences
derives from a sense of polarity. For example, The Slavic world is an endlesly
fascinating, troubling, dramatic, and dynamic one. Slavic
mythology has a strong focus on the sun, warmth, light, birds, fire
(and firebirds), epic victories, and brightly painted cosmic bird-eggs.
The opposing polarity, the dark, the dead, the cold, the gloomy forests,
snakes, drowned spirits (usually female or children), and ruthless hags
are feared, even demonized (especially under the influence of Christianity),
yet many fairy tales indicate that if this darker world is treated with
cautious respect, one will fare well.
"There are two
brains. Perched atop the brain stem inside the human skull are two
large bulges--the left and the right cerebral hemispheres.....The left
brain, highly literate and analytical, tends to dominate the personality.
It specializes in language skills such as speech and writing, as well as
mathematics and reasoning. The right brain, endowed with special powers
of intuition and spacial perception, is particularly important to creativity,
music, art, and athletics
.....Each can think, learn and remember. And each
is capable of feeling such strong emotions that the two
minds sometimes struggle for supremacy as if they were different selves.
"...There long have appeared to
be two different ways of thinking: some people are essentially verbal and
analytical, while others are nonverbal and intuitive. These two ways of
thinking coincide neatly with the concepts of the
two brains, the analytical left hemisphere and the intuitive right
hemisphere....And yet man's highest achievements seem to stem from the
successful integration of both. .."
"Nearly all discoveries ion every
field appear to involve sudden right brain inspiration. At an idle moment,
maybe even in a dream, intuition makes an intellectual leap--sensing the
solution to a long standing problem, arriving at fresh understanding, reaching
a new level of appreciation in one quich burst of illumination. Then the
left brain intellect laboriously works out the details of this hunch, step,
by step....Without the right brain there could be no idea; without the
left brain, the idea could not be explained..." -From
THE ROLE OF THE BRAIN, by Ronald H. Bailey, (Time Life Books 1975), p.79.
A criminal is a person without boundaries,
and a person with no fear is psychotic. Being uncaring or unfeeling is
menacingly dangerous. But the very complexity of our times seems to leave
us ever more indifferent. The way
we treat each other and even ourselves is little changed from the dark,
anthropomorphic, superstitious
behavior of the Neolithic or Neanderthal. The difference between our
technological achievements and our sociological achievements can no longer
be tolerated since we have in our hands the keys to complete destruction
of our species and our world, as we know it.
"We are faced with extinction
as a species because we cannot stop killing each other. One after another
of our institutions is failing and we cannot seem to stop polluting our
planet."
What is needed is overview. Joseph
Campbell pointed out that the words of the great teachers and prophets
are metaphors about these world views and it has been our failure to understand
these metaphors that has been the root of violence and war. By failing
to comprehend the bigger picture of reality we are stuck with the metaphor.
For example in Beirut, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem are killing each other
over different interpretations of truth, each claiming their interpretation
must needs invalidate each other in no uncertain terms. Mr. Campbell said
that what is needed is that each should understand and carry out their
own metaphor, the "Golden
Rule."
"If we see ourselves as
separate and not a part of each other we may treat one of us badly."
Indeed, at this time in history we have
a unique opportunity to come to an overview of humanity that integrates
differences into a unified whole that completes our individual identity
and is individually and universally healing. A synthesis and interpretation
of a greater reality that inspires us to accept our full potential and
realize who we really are.
War probably began only after cities
were founded. By some estimates civilization really come out of the
dark ages only as late as a few hundred years ago. In many ways, at least
technologically, the world has changed as much since Darwin
as it had in all of time combined before Darwin. But political and sociological
progress lags badly. Perhaps we may now have the means unlock this mystery
so we can to begin to catch up.
In his book, THE LAST TABOO, James
L. Brain refers to a major study called The Authoritarian Personality,
undertaken after the end of World War II looked into the issue of the "fantastically
atrocious acts" committed in the concentration camps, and asks,
"How did people become
that way, and do we have the same potential...What comes out of this study
with complete clarity is that there is a strong relation between discipline
and punishment on the one hand and the development of prejudice and hatred
on the other.... children may be unhappy and frustrated if no boundaries
are imposed...(the authors) believe that the two ways of imposing discipline
on children are by "rules" and by "principles...." Discipline is...a force
outside of the child to which... he must submit...not because it understands
why but because the... "rules" demand... it.... The other way of imposing...
"principles... invites the cooperation and understanding of the child and
makes it possible for him to assimilate it." Thus... the difference between
the two methods of imposing discipline is the differentiation between a
threatening, traumatic, overwhelming discipline, and an assimilable, and
thus non-ego-destructive discipline." The first method...forces the child
into submission and surrender of the ego."
(p.176.)
"...in child rearing rules lead
to prejudice, bigotry and cruelty, while principles lead to rational self
control and tolerance." (p.236)
. "...fear... is often compensated for by a kind of sadistic toughness."
(p
179).
"A rigidly authoritarian upbringing
makes anyone somewhat, if not markedly, masochistic.... The starting point
of masochistic fantasies, Reik claims is "infantile sadism." As a child
matures, gets teeth and muscles, and gains control over its bladder and
bowels, it also develops a desire to hurt those more powerful than itself.
Since this is plainly beyond its physical powers, it seeks satisfaction
in imagining the possibility. However, this satisfaction is thwarted by
the fear that the person the child is attacking in fantasy will retaliate
by punishment for its rebellion. "The sadistic need, eager for gratification,
is replaced by anxiety on account of this gratification which is felt to
be forbidden." says Reik. "The idea of one's own aggression and the punishment
slowly blend.
He sees the total development
of masochism as taking place in three stages:
1. As you do to me, so I do to
you--sadistic phase.
2. As I do to you, so I do to
me--intermediate phase.
3. As I do to me, so you do to
me--true masochism."
"....psychologist Melanie Klein...
saw a progression and development through childhood of (1) a rivalry with
the parents, (2) a wish to outgrow ones perceived deficiencies, (3) a wish
to overcome one's destructiveness and inner badness, and (4) a progression
to all kinds of achievements. The child angered by its helplessness, Klein
saw as wishing to grow tall, strong, rich, and powerful while its parents
grow weak and powerless. As in all these kinds of cases, the line is thin
between the neurotic and the normal for the culture. These kinds of wishes
must be common to all children to a lesser or greater extent. Some children
may develop into murderers, rapists, or torturers. Some, because of guilt
at their feelings, says Klein, "are obliged to remain unsuccessful, because
success always implies to them the humiliation or even the damage of someone
else..." -ibid, (p.173).
"...consider the mode of training
military personnel... The whole intention is to produce a man who is totally
rule-oriented, who will obey without question, who will be prepared to
undergo great hardship and suffering in the name of... honor or patriotism...
and who will, of course be a highly efficient killer of other men whom
the rules identify... as the enemy. To achieve this end the recruit is
treated like a child of peculiarly brutal and sadistic parents who punish
every act which is seen as disobedience, no matter how trivial, and reward
slavish obedience with grudging kindness. Arbitrary changes of plan; fanatically
rigorous inspections of uniform, equipment, living space, lockers; constant
physical demands; petty regulations about every aspect of life--in short,
insistence that one carry out instantly and without reasoning, any orders,
no matter how objectively senseless they may appear to a "reasonable" person....
Some men, like some children, do manage to come through this by shutting
off parts of their minds...." (p.179).
Apparently James Brain believes there
are very many such people. They seem uniquely subject to various forms
of escapism, arrested adolescence, and other problems of animosity to self
and others. They may be excessively religious or militaristic, their personal
sense of identity given over to some system or other that is rigid or harsh,
detrimental to intimacy. He continues:
" A great deal of the book has
been concerned with authority and its perverted servant, authoritarianism....the
critical distinction in child rearing between rules and principles, the
latter leading to rational self-control and tolerance and the former to
prejudice, bigotry and cruelty.... To the authoritarian person, the possibility
of rebellion is always a frightening prospect which must be constantly
watched for...whose potential for danger to other people is enormously
enhanced in complex societies with sophisticated weapons and surveillance
technology.... I would say that the primal enemy for a reasonable future
for humanity lies in our ability to understand and eliminate authoritarianism."
ibid. p.236
B.F.
Skinner's now classic experiment investigating animal conditioned reflexes
laid the foundation for the concept of neurosis in humans. The sheep was
confined in a pen with an electric wire attached to it's foot and there
was also a device that made a noise so that after the sheep heard a signal,
there would automatically follow a moderate electrical shock through the
wire to the sheep's foot. After a time the sheep learned to associate the
sound of the signal with the pain of the shock, so that when the signal
would occur the sheep would stop other activity, recoil the foot and wait
for the shock, then resume normal activity.During a long weekend, however, when
there was no one around, the wire came off so that the shock was not administered.
When the people returned, the sheep was found, immobilized, with foot recoiled,
waiting for the shock. When the wire was repaired and the shock administered,
the sheep was able to resume normal behavior, but with a remarkable residual
symptom. Thereafter, when the sheep was threatened, not just by a noise,
but by any sort of potential danger that any ordinary sheep would
be quite able to cope with. The sheep in the experiment would respond by
recoiling the foot, and cowering in fear, completely unable to respond
in a normal manner to the possible threat of danger. Even more significant
was the fact that this condition was permanent.
Fear of pain can become as debilitating
than the actual pain itself, when conditioned. And in fact it is only the
administering of the expected pain to the conditioned individual that allows
normal activity to continue.
Quoting again from The Last Taboo:
It was a matter of bewilderment
to me that humans could take pleasure in watching the pain and suffering
of others and even take part in inflicting it. There is plainly a link
between this pleasure and a harsh rule-dominated childhood. Cruelty
to a child frequently results in the child's cruelty to it's own child...
Cruel brutal people are usually extremely sentimental. Cruel people not
only enjoy ordering others about, but usually... enjoy being ordered around
by someone more powerful than themselves." (p.180).
"...those societies that provide
harsh and cruel initiation rites have indeed child-rearing practices that
would tend to produce authoritarian personalities, who... delight in being
punished as well as giving out punishment."
A study undertaken by researchers
at Edinburgh University, in Scotland, shows that children of parents
who are too strict are more likely to turn to recreational drugs and take
up smoking, than other children. Principles
build character, while rules deplete it, and character is what we rely
on for the appropriate mode of feeling and behavior, especially under confusing or extreme conditions.
Anguish
of the fear of pain can be worse than the actual experience of pain. This
fear may become an actual need for punishment in order to get on with business
as usual, just as the sheep needed the shock to be free of an alarm reaction
upon the threat of pain. It has also been learned that we can build
up a tolerance to physical anguish at the expense of our tolerance to emotional
anguish, and vice versa. Physical anguish usually amounts to pain, while
emotional anguish usually amounts to threat of pain. We have a threshold
of tolerance to both, but beyond that threshold, there is increasing dysfunction
as a result of trauma.
To understand the difference between what
we feel and what we do is to understand the human condition. We all come
up against the ineffable. What we do then seems to be not only the
measure of who we are individually but collectively as well. We sense
elements of continuity beyond finite mortality which inspire in us a sense
of awe and wonderment. We find great subtlety of meaning in our experience
of the epic, the heroic, as well as in music and art. And through such
subtleties, through dreams and reverie we process values and come to subjective
choices. In fact most of our choices are apparently made on a subjective
level. What you think about something depends on what you feel about
it.
We have made enormous technological progress
with the part of our brain that deals with linear, concrete, sequential,
concepts. Everything else that is not a finite concept to be quantified
or measured is relegated to the other part of the brain so that when we
need to deal with something we don't really understand, the mysterious,
the numenous, the ineffable, the totemic or sacred, we give it a name and
hand it over to a subjective process to deal with it. These concepts tend
to be emotional, connotative, and very much influenced by our attitudes.
Consciousness
is primarily a matter of attention. And it is a process which is automatically
and subjectively directed unless you make the effort of conscious, objective
direction. Theorists estimate we are using so called left
hemispheric, objective reasoning only 10% to 20% of the time at most.
We have little training or education about the subjective self, yet we
spend such a huge portion of our lives in the subjective realm. It is rather
like a neglected stepchild.
Just as we require sleep for physiological
and psychological well
being, we also need some sense of the mythological
in order to catch up and balance what we feel with what we think. In order
to have a sense of who we are we need to picture ourselves in relation
to the totality of experience from which we derive a sense of our entitlement
and appropriate modes of feeling and behavior.
"It may be unpopular to advocate
balance. But it is obvious that this is the only way human beings will
ever come to have any real peace within themselves. If you submit the inspiration
that you have to the problem of giving it clear shape, then you are uniting
the parts and become more of a man. We have to get used to thinking in
terms of polarities and paradoxes as continuous, with no beginning and
no end then you have another image of wholeness.
But if you have this old fashioned sense that either, or must be true this
is to chop one half from the other. If there is something wholesome about
the times in which we live it is the sense that we cannot be so dismembered.
If we can have a sense of the infinite which is the continuum of the polarities,
and if we can balance the excess of Apollonian
deductive reasoning with the marvelous, deep rooted contact with the creative
well being that you find in Dionysus, then the man is made whole."
Rosalyn Holden (from a lecture at UCSC)
So it is that symbolically, heroically,
through the use of ritual and totems and fantasy that we are able to deal
with our unconscious processes and the totality of experience and become
identified in relationship to the whole. Holism, wholistics, the whole
earth movement, etc. is an attempt to secularize that which before
was holy. Secularized
religion is everywhere. The more we get away from the old ways
of magic and religion the more we seek to find ways of identifying ourselves
that are unifying and inclusive.
We are all struggling with a sense of self
as a cog in the wheels of industrialization are daily being barraged with
a plethora of circumstances over which they have no control. It is
said the greatest single demand made on contemporary man is to adjust,
adjust, adjust, among variables that are ever increasing. The greatest
human need is for synthesis and interpretation, for a sense of psychological
continuity and emotional
closure. Herein lies the harbinger of the new age.
When Joseph
Campbell died a few years ago, he was probably the world's greatest
authority on mythology. The following is a quote from his book and video
series, THE POWER OF MYTH:
"The people respond to the environment,
you see. But now we have a tradition that doesn't respond to the environment--it
comes from somewhere else, from the first millennium B.C. It has not assimilated
the qualities of our modern culture and the new things that are possible
and the new vision of the universe.....Myth must be kept alive.....illumination
is the recognition of the radiance of one eternity through all things...
"
"It is within everybody to recognize
values in his life that are not confined to maintenance of the body and
economic concerns of the day....Myths inspire the realization of the possibility
of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and bringing of solar
light into the world. Slaying monsters is slaying dark things. Myths grab
you somewhere down inside.... we learn them as a child on one level, but
then many different levels are revealed. Myths are infinite in their revelation....Follow
your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it.... In doing
that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's
no doubt about it."
The words of the wisest of the wise
men of all nations and all times seem to have been very similar and remarkably
simple. The ancient holy men, the most learned scholars, and the most brilliant
scientists have all told us essentially the same: ALL
IS ONE.
A thing separate and distinct from other
things does not exist. All things are interconnected. Simple as it sounds
this remains an ineffable mystery that few comprehend in any profound sense.
It is that which is beyond names and naming. We are a mystery and we live
in mystery, and we know it, some of us. It is the mystic who seeks to understand
the mystery, for the mystic rejects ordinary reality in order to perceive
a higher reality. The most significant understanding of mysticism
is the fundamental unity of all things. The mystic understands he is both
the question and the answer. He seeks to know oneness with One, as a way
of being at home in the world.
We are children of the universe. We are
at home, and it may very well be that all things are unfolding exactly
as they should be. That which is classic in all human experience is that
which we all have in common. Experiences that unite us all, such as coming
into being, and passing away, the larger cycles of nature, and the elements
of continuity beyond finite mortality that inspire a sense of awe and wonderment.
From the seed, the spark of life (spirit) comes life. However, as with
everything in the physical world, "now you see it, now you don't."
The miracle birth is a mystery as much as the separation of death.
I imagine myself on one side of an imaginary
line from what is not me on the other side. Immediately there is the observer
and the observed. The illusion creates separation. Unity becomes duality.
Perhaps the ultimate experience of separation on the human level is death.
Someone we love suddenly is no more. Words fail to express what we feel.
We are put in touch with a sense of our own mortality. We think about time
and eternity.
Like an amphibian man must live in two
worlds: the temporal, objective world of "reality," and the subjective
world of eternal ideals. Just as there are two ways of thinking:
objective and subjective, there are also two ways of looking at time: as
finite segments that have a beginning and end, or as an infinite continum.
In time it will happen, it is happening,
or it has happened. Metaphysical
references to a "seamless garment," allude to the nature of time which
is without beginning or end. But we seem to experience it in segments like
clips from a film only the film spool is apparently infinite in capacity.
Our sensory channels narrow our view to
what is on the screen at the moment. In the same way an astronomer sees
only the light
focused by the lens of his telescope. This is the light reaching his lens
at that moment though it may have travelled for billions of years to reach
earth. In fact some of the stars the astronomer records have in fact long
since stopped emitting light but because of their enormous distance it
took the light all that time to reach us. From this most ancient
light astronomers piece together a pattern, a concept of the physical
universe, and we speculate on our possible significance as inhabitants
of an insignificant solar system.
In mythology
and literature the philosophical
content is usually thought of in terms of the more enduring qualities
of man that emulate the unchanging, immortal or ideal qualities. These
times offer us opportunity to come to an overview of humanity that integrates
differences into a unified whole that completes our individual identity
and is individually and universally healing. A systhesis and interpretation
of a greater reality that inspires us to realize our full potential and
appreciate who we really are. In the Far East, one of the aspects of unitave consciousness holds that the heart/mind already exists in perfect condition, just waiting to be realized.
The
either/or, old-fashioned, narrow, mechanistic, linear, cause and
effect, dualistic way of thinking seems to be giving way to a new quantum world view
in which consciousness plays a much more powerful role. Classical
mechanics is not capable of integrating consciousness into science and
nonlocality is seen as the direct influence of one object on another,
distant object, both restricted to a particular place or particular
time. In Quantum mechanics, nonlocality
refers to the absence of a local fixed reality since time and space are
one. The quantum framework includes information flows which are not in
spacetime. Consciousness itself appears to be a form of quantum energy if things on a psychological and spiritual level, such as thought, love, insight are nonlocal.
Perhaps the biggest test of our
intelligence and compassion; the most crucial watershed of human development
since the inception of agriculture, even more important than the founding
of cities, is the present issue of war and peace. Yes this is a tremendous
burden and responsibility, but if we fail this may well become another
dead planet like Mars and Venus, rather unimportant planets circling around
a rather unimportant star, in an unimportant part of the galaxy. If we
can find a solution, through understanding, co-operation, compassion, a
new form of morality which takes into account the sacredness of every life
form, then this will be a period remembered very far into the future, as
a legendary time of giants. It is up to us. I think that research has put
to rest the idea that aggression arose because of an aggressive gene that
exists within us, that we are the Naked Apes who killed, as in some currently
prevailing theories.
-Paraphrased from "Bio-cosmology," by Jack Gariss on KPFK FM
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