Category Archives: Uncategorized

I opened my eyes from my morning meditation and on the nearby Persian rug, my cat was similarly reposed in her Sphinx position.

Our eyes met briefly and I was moved to think of what my friend Michael Jeffreys says so often, that “what is looking out of your eyes is the same thing that is looking out of mine.” I had never completely bought into this idea because clearly our emotions and thoughts (the content of what we might call consciousness, even between twins) are clearly different.

But of course the deeper question is: what is thinking? And what is aware of our thoughts? (Another thought (can’t be thinking…), or perhaps “something else” entirely?)

We understand that our brains (and perhaps even our cells) record these experiences as memories, but how does all of this happen? And how is it that my cat and I seem to have experiences (live, as it were) and yet the laptop on which I write this, as intelligent as it may be, has never had a thought or presumably an experience?

These are questions that conventional science generally ignores as “unknowable” but with advances in neuroscience, biology and quantum physics, we seem to be getting closer – at least in terms of noticing that these issues form the very boundaries of our ability to know anything for certain.

And yet certainty, as a result of investigation, is the basis of our science, despite the fact that what we knew for certain only 50 years ago has changed or been proved wrong.

I believe that the next frontier of science is precisely what Eckhart Tolle calls “no thing” – nonmaterial energy or even, dare I say it, pure intelligence.

To me the true nature of Life, what some call Consciousness, Being, Awareness or even God, is the most interesting and compelling subject of all. I have always sensed that there is “something else” besides what we can tangibly see or understand, and most recently I have discovered numerous other teachings that suggest that it is Everything (David Bohm) and it is also “Me.” (Mooji)

This Thursday I will be privileged to attend an event that brings together some of the greatest minds in this field. SAND, or Science and Nonduality in San Jose, held this year at the luxurious Dolce Hayes Mansion will be a forum for discussion of these issues from a scientific perspective.

And what is “Nonduality”? Duality is the structure of our minds – we judge and think in zeroes and ones, opposites, hot and cold, yes and no, etc.

So Nonduality is whatever might be the basis for our minds, beyond that structure, and therefore beyond the conditioning that separates us from truth.

This again is the area that conventional science avoids so it will be fascinating to approach these issues, which have turned some scientists (Einstein) into mystics who have refused to simply use the word God, or supernatural theories, to explain what is.

There are those who say that the ONLY thing we know for sure is “I am” – we are here – and that there seems to be something which we call “Mind” which knows this. Everything else can be “deconstructed” logically or disproven.

A close friend introduced me to the work of Ernest Holmes, who actually started a teaching called, literally, the Science of Mind, which describes a power present in nature that we can use.

Others talk about energies, “the Force” and of course others (Tao, Christ, and so on).

One of my favorite authors, Eckhart Tolle, writes that there is an intelligence far greater than the one we attribute to our thoughts which runs our breathing, digestion, circulation and for that matter, all of life. In fact we have discovered this as a code far more complex than anything humans have programmed –DNA.

But again, conventional science has avoided all of this until recently, and organized religion has claimed to have the “answers”. This week in San Jose I will get what Michael calls “the latest.”

I will be writing about this conference for Collective Evolution and sharing my own thoughts, and I can’t wait to get started.

Perhaps the biggest challenge one faces is to remain conscious in the face of unconsciousness.

Consciousness, characterized by openness, discernment and empathy can quickly dissolve when the violence, irrationality obtuseness of another person or bureaucratic system trigger deeply rooted automatic responses to protect and assert one’s deeply conditioned “identity.”

Noticing these instances repeatedly can begin to create a space in which everything is recognized as “naturally perfect” and the degree of unconsciousness experienced begins to abate.

In this space, rest, relaxation, silence and attention to breath serve to gradually envelope the remaining unconscious energy—or not. Some manifestations of unconsciousness are impervious to the influence of reason or love; they are best avoided, ignored or finessed. Sometimes unconsciousness must even be met with conscious force, but never out of fear or “personal” anger but simply as a means of survival of the present form.

How does one recognize the existence of consciousness in contrast to its opposite? Trick question: it has no opposite. As Eckhart Tolle says, “the opposite of death is not Life, it is birth.” Life, Consciousness or Reason has no opposite.

True consciousness is apparent in its impartiality and impersonality, its support of life and natural functions, and its mirroring of the intelligent aspects of Nature — including the mathematical principles of Phi (growth – Golden Mean – Fibonacci sequence) and symmetry (Pi). Another way to express this is a conscious movement toward love over fear.

But consciousness operates beyond the thinking brain—it is felt when every cell of every organ works harmoniously with the external world, and no differentiation begins to emerge between what is “within” and “without.” The individual self still functions as part of this dynamic but only to serve reciprocal energies passing through within the moment, and in sacred submission to a much higher Intelligence.

This equilibrium is a state of joy – as opposed to the conditioned “happiness” one anticipates in the fulfillment of an externally programmed “goal.” It comes with the acceptance of the moment as it unfolds without judgment.

What is eventually noticed is that this nameless quality of consciousness precedes Everything; without it Existence could not Be. In the face of this traditional science crumbles in the same way that rationality simply surrenders when one looks up as an infinite night sky.

One does not need to know it as “God”. One only need feel it as Awe.

“God gently reassures him [Man] that the deepest contradictions of human life are not to be solved but to be lived in full consciousness of their contradictoriness.”

— Jacob Needleman writing in “Money and the Meaning of Life” (226) quoting Isma’il Al-Faruqi, “On the Ethics of the Brethren of Purity” – Muslim World, July, 1960

Needleman continues “What is most necessary for man and what is given to him in abundance are experiences, especially experiences of the forces within him. This is his most essential food, his most essential wealth. If man consciously receives all of this abundance, the universe will pour into him what is called life in Judaism, spirit in Christianity, light in Islam, power in Taoism.”

To me, the key word here is “consciously” — to “consciously receive” does not mean to hungrily seek and acquire (or to visualize material wealth) — but rather to accept what IS with gratitude and awe. In Needleman’s terms this is the true meaning of conscience, to maintain attention in both the outer and inner worlds—in deference to the struggle between them.

This level of consciousness may serve to reconcile the contradictions — but Life is to be trusted, certainly beyond the intellect and what Life offers is beyond the judgment of the human mind—and if one looks at the heavens at night—beyond its capacity to comprehend.

Needleman: “I would say that one needs money to live and survive in the outer world, to fulfill one’s obligations to the community and to nature, but that above and beyond this, the role of money is to serve as the instrument for getting understanding. We come to the bottom of civilization if instead of understanding we are going after ‘information.’ Information is the plastic version of understanding. Just as bank cards stand to gold, as easy and deadly credit stands to honest need, obligation and giving…”

Money and the Meaning of Life (excerpt)

When I opened my eyes from meditation this morning my cat Eva was sitting silently by my left foot.

As I looked down at her in wonder I realized that in her stillness she was in perfect harmony with the natural world, her ears attentively taking in frequencies I could only imagine, and in her own way probably meditating as well. In that space she was also attuned to Life itself and I was grateful for how she had shown me to accept what is instead of what I thought should be – and the wisdom that I had accumulated in the three years we’ve been together…

And then she yawned – and I realized that once again my mind had tricked me into believing a bunch of crap.

I laughed out loud, and in that moment, I was free.

Recently I was introduced to the work of Robert Lanza, a respected biologist and researcher in stem cell therapy who is also an executive with Advanced Cell Technology, a biotech company in Massachusetts.

Although he may not refer to his concept as “biophysics,” Lanza effectively opens the floodgates to a scientific discussion of the main obstacle facing science, philosophy and psychology today:

“There is nothing in modern physics that explains how a group of molecules in a brain creates consciousness. The beauty of a sunset, the taste of a delicious meal, these are all mysteries to science — which can sometimes pin down where in the brain the sensations arise, but not how and why there is any subjective personal experience to begin with.

And, what’s worse, nothing in science can explain how consciousness arose from matter. Our understanding of this most basic phenomenon is virtually nil. Interestingly, most models of physics do not even recognize this as a problem.”

Deepak Chopra refers to such aspects of experience as “qualia”, and echoes Lanza’s remarks in terms of conventional science’s reluctance to address the subject of consciousness – or the ground level of our actual experience.

Interestingly the TED conferences, where Lanza has also spoken, recently removed two lectures by other speakers who speculated about the nature of human consciousness in ways their colleagues deemed “unscientific.”

Of course, even a cursory knowledge of Quantum Physics tells us that experiments on a molecular level have shown that our measurement or observation of a phenomenon is an integral part of its manifestation – we cannot take ourselves out of the process and view it “objectively.” (Lanza discusses the famous “slit experiment” also seen in “What the Bleep” that demonstrated that an electron can act as a particle in one situation, and as a wave in another, depending upon observation).

I addressed this issue in a blog I wrote some time ago proposing, lightheartedly, a new theory of “Bio-Relativity” where reality is based on a formula such as M = C/P – where Mind is a function of consciousness based on physiology. I made the point that it is easy to speculate on the different reality experienced by a dolphin, that “sees” through sonar, or a dog, that “sees” through nostrils thousands of times more sensitive than our own.

Dr. Lanza uses the term “Biocentrism” and argues eloquently for an opening within the scientific community to accept the obvious fact that our own consciousness is the lens through which we see everything – so that the religion of scientific objectivity is unfortunately revealed as flawed.

Everything is truly open to question when this reality “lands”, as my friend Michael Jeffreys likes to say.

Michael goes so far in “deconstructing” what we think we “know” by showing that all we really see are colors and shapes—calling something a “pen” for example already introduces “an overlay” of conceptual judgment that the pen itself is not.

In fact, what IS really out there, or “in here”? Michael tells the story of watching a video of a young boy singing “Amazing Grace” on YouTube, as a tribute to his mother who died of cancer, and how it brought tears to his eyes.

When he “came back” Michael realized that the “reality” of what had happened, and evoked such emotion, was the movement of a set of pixels on his computer monitor—nothing more.

All of the emotional content was really supplied by himself. Someone else might have reacted to the video completely differently or not at all.

I recently had a similar insight through a different set of pixels. Financial advisors have convinced me that without taking a bit of risk in the stock market, I will die poor if I live past a certain age. So, I have made some small speculative investments in companies represented by letters like “AAPL” and now, every morning, I can watch how my mood can be affected by seeing the numbers next to those symbols—if the color is green I am happy. Red, not so much.

In this way it becomes obvious that we literally (and I say that deliberately because language is such a key part of it) – we LITERALLY create our own word and the judgments about it that form our “qualia” or experience.

In therapy I began to understand my conditioning, for example, around money being safety, such that a set of numbers on a computer screen could make me feel secure or anxious.

If I pulled back, and observed my “Self”, I quickly realized that my day to day (or present) experience is no way reflected by that number on a computer screen – just as Michael Jeffreys had us realize that we our “selves” shaped our own reaction to a set of pixels moving on a screen.

Taken to a logical conclusion, everything and I do mean EVERYTHING is truly “us” – or our “Consciousness.” This is what mystics mean when they “merge” with the All – by deconstructing their selves they are left with only one Mind or Intelligence that is EVERYTHING.

The common reaction to this is, “but how can you live like this?” To me it is enormously helpful to objectively begin to witness how my conditioned “I” shapes my experience, like the suffering I can endure if AAPL goes down. But the world itself has not changed one iota. If I hug my cat and put my attention on her, the stock market is no more.

A famous quote that gives context to these realizations is “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot – from his work, “The Wasteland”.

That is the problem for this kind of work – when we begin to see the “overlay” we begin to lose interest in what is “out there” and like Dr. Lanza, focus our attention on our “Selves”.

Others may see this is self-absorbed; often they want us to take great trips or go on adventures, but to us, the greatest adventure is to discover, as Eckhart Tolle says, the “structure” of our thoughts instead of working with their “content.”

Some have called Dr. Lanza one of the great scientific minds of our time, and with his impact on biological research, and the work of others in the area of neuroscience, I do believe that inroads can be made in truly understanding “the nature of Consciousness” – even from the “inside.”

In the meantime it is helpful, when stressed, to remember the immortal words of the comic strip Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

(This is an excerpt from Presence of Mind: Journey to a New Operating System discussing Consciousness as a verb – a concept brought up by Deepak Chopra in last night’s live broadcast with Eckhart Tolle)

For my cat, an object or toy that is of absolutely no interest when stationary, becomes an item of intense examination and attraction when in motion. A hat dropped to the carpet, or a fake mouse tossed across the room elicits a spring into action and energetic attention.

David Bohm, a famed physicist and thinker, whose work attracted the admiration of both Einstein and Krishnamurti, suggested that our study of reality became flawed with its initial focus on things, or atomism.

Echoing some of Eckhart Tolle’s insights into the importance of both the structure as well as the content of thought, Bohm says that “the subject-verb structure of language, along with its world view, tends to impose itself very strongly in our speech, even in some cases where some attention would reveal its inappropriateness. For example, consider the sentence ‘it is raining.’

Where is the ‘It’ that would, according to the sentence, be doing the raining—in the same way we might suggest we are running?

Bohm suggests that it would be more accurate to say, rain is going on. And the same is true of running—the “I” is similarly an assumption.

Expanding on this concept, and bearing in mind the significance of the observer in quantum physics, Bohm goes on to say that our structural view of a separate observer and an observed object is similarly prejudiced by the language we use to consider its meaning.

In reality, according to Bohm, there is only a process of observing going on with whatever the object is – or may be doing.

Moreover he suggests a new experiment with language and thought he calls a “Rheomode” that puts the emphasis on the state of being – or the verb – rather than our structurally predisposed tendency to give primacy to the subject – a noun or a false sense of “I”.

Just rain is happening, running is happening, you are happening and I am happening, all as part of a greater complete Whole that Bohm calls the “Implicate Order,” and of which all of our thoughts and experiences are necessary fragmentations.

Above all, I would submit, Life is happening, and in many instances we operate under the illusion that we are in control. Occasionally, what happens may indeed correspond to our thoughts or expectations and we feel more powerful—the “I” which we assume to exist according to our mental conditioning takes the credit.

But what did the “I” actually “do” if the ego is a purely habitual mental construct? And what does this say about our negative emotions that pummel our inner “I” with rejection, humiliation and shame?

So, now that we also know that our own software mimics the activity of life on the level of genetic code—DNA is based on a set of coded instructions like software that tells genes how to express—let’s examine more closely what that actually means.

If we go back to the simple example of macro code cited earlier, which turns a rectangle red in Microsoft Word:

Sub red()

‘ red Macro

ActiveDocument.Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeRectangle, 93#, 43.5, 117.75, _

141.75).Select

Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(192, 0, 0)

Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.Visible = msoTrue

Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.Solid

End Sub

What is “happening” here is that based on a user input (click of the mouse), a subroutine (sub) “named red” will “run,” executing this code in the same way the geneticist (Juan Enriquez) said that an apple executes its (DNA) code and falls from the tree.

Two active verbs form the basis of this simple subroutine—Selection, which puts the attention of the Program on the shape whose color will be changed, and Fill, the activity which will ensue based on the coded instructions.

But there is no Subject doing anything.

Fill is happening to the Selection.

It is the result of data processing (happening) just as Life is simply being.

Remember, this is how Life and DNA also “work.”

The difference here is that rather than “data process” with chemicals in our body, for example, like proteins and amino acids, in our macro this simple set of coded instructions works with a property of silicon that puts those concepts into action programmatically, in this case to create text and graphics on a page.

If we examine our own lives and the conditioning that shapes us, it turns out that our automatic functions (habits) work exactly like the macro described above.

If you can “be the scientist,” as suggested by my friend Michael Jeffreys, and observe yourself carefully, as my therapist had me do early on, you will see that changing a habit comes down to three essential steps, as outlined in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg.

Each habit has three components – a trigger, a routine and a reward.

Performing an experiment with life –like changing a habit –you find that these steps conform perfectly to a simple computer program like a macro:

First, in a macro, the trigger an “event”–is “On Mouseclick” — the routine has the same name in programming — subroutine — and the reward is getting the desired result—like filling the rectangle with a new color.

Like a habit, the programming macro lets you run the same program again and again with just one keystroke (trigger)).

The first step toward changing a habit or conditioned response is observation and noticing – and then altering the reward with something that provides the same feeling (fulfillment) but is not self-destructive.

But consider the meaning of this – changing the conditioned responses of your brain (and its structure—neuroplasticity) involves rewriting (or rewiring) internally coded instructions— inner alchemy is reprograming your software.

This ability to mimic life through the coded instructions of symbols or language is why I consider the development of software an evolutionary event in our history.

Incidentally I take this opinion again directly from geneticist Juan Enriquez, who has suggested that we (our species) is now in a position to effect (if not control) its own evolution through our knowledge of DNA sequencing.

But I suggest that this aspect of software—its ability to actively mimic our intelligence symbolically as an active force in the world, and thereby demonstrate how life actually operates, makes it the most significant human achievement since the construction of the Great Pyramid.

Why is Mind a necessary primary attribute of these processes?

If we go back to our macro, a mind needed to “decide” on some level that the rectangle “should be” red.

Or rather, within the activity of a human mind, Redness will happen to the rectangle.

So “whose” mind contemplated the various purposes behind DNA?

The problem here is the again the structure of any sentence, if we go back to Bohm, the very assumption of a subject-object structure for it to be “understood” by our thoughts or language—solely the left brain.

Based on my personal experience (Life) it has become apparent that through meditation, it is possible to occasionally step into a “space” where “I” am not thinking, but thinking is happening within being, and an observing faculty or notices this.

As soon as “I” identify with the observer, the Subject returns to thought, the space and my state changes. Thought happens, the space disappears, and “I” return.

But within that space I can sense that Life happens through me and without “Me.”

As soon as “I” identify with the observer, the space and my state changes.

But within that space I can sense that Life happens through me and without “Me.”

“I am” – but what I am is Life, energy, movement—genetic code running –all beyond and besides my sense of who “I am” as a thing, group of words, set of stories, beliefs or attributes.

Any “thing” that I think “I am” is wrong.

As Buckminster Fuller titled one of his works, “I seem to be a verb.”

Where does that leave me?

Unfortunately, at one point I became isolated and separated from the majority of my fellow humans who live according to an entirely different set of beliefs.