Intelligent Life

Last night I watched the film Blackfish on CNN; it’s the story of an Orca (killer whale) that had killed its trainer in the course of being held in captivity at Sea World.

Coincidentally I had had lunch with a friend who actually works with Sea World and he made some eloquent arguments that Sea World has actually served a noble purpose in familiarizing humanity with the wonders of whales and dolphins.

While the movie was obviously edited for maximum emotional effect two poignant scenes go beyond any objective “explanation”. First the way that Tillicum (the Orca that killed the trainer in Orlando) was first captured with other calves, and taken away from its mother and pod, was heart wrenching to any normal soul. Second, when the calf born at Sea World was removed from its birth mother to be trained at another park, and the mother’s shrieking and grief, would have to move anyone not completely brainwashed by insensitive materialism.

Sea World shareholders are suffering as a result of the film. My friend has his work cut out for him. On CNN’s site the point is made that the film ignores Sea World’s contributions to research and conservation but what is undeniable is that Sea World’s treatment of Tillicum would have caused any human become enraged. He was treated as an object – not as a sentient being.

What came up for me was a phrase used by G.I. Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher from the 20^th century, who spoke about “organic shame”; this is the feeling (or perhaps lack of feeling) of compassion for other sentient creatures and our responsibility to treat them (pardon the pun) humanely.

At one point in the movie the dimensions of the pens where these large, intelligent animals are kept were described along with the fact that they typically swim 100 miles a day in the wild. It was like a cell in solitary – in prison.

Tillicum was kept in a pen with aggressive females who bit and raked him with their teeth at night because he was not from their “nation,” pod or family. He was also manually milked of sperm and used to breed like a farm animal.

It reminded me of my visit to Sea World with my parents in San Diego when I saw the exhibit with the penguins, with the tags on their fins, and it reminded me of a concentration camp.

(My mother, who knew about this from personal experience, did not enjoy the visit).

So how does this relate to gun violence?

Think about a young man who has been conditioned from virtually birth to objectify women in a certain sexual way but encounters only women in the “real world” who are conditioned to want men of certain status, relegating him to a life of continuous sexual frustration.

Due to his conditioning, a “normal” relationship to a woman who does not come from a Bond movie or beer commercial is impossible. Further he has been abused and/or bullied for years, and his job has been downsized our outsourced.

For CNN to wonder about the “motives” of such an individual when he goes bonkers and shoots up a mall or an airport is what is insane – not so much his behavior.

Certainly only 1% of the population may succumb to these pressures and manifest mental health issues. Since no professional care is available and they have no real family, they go what is known as “postal.”

But that is enough to create sufficient headlines to fuel the fantasies of more of these people.

I would submit, however, that what we have in this country is not so much a gun problem, but a reality problem where love is concerned.

First of all, love is not romantic sexual consummation, as pleasurable as that may be. It isn’t the conquests in a James Bond film or a week in Monte Carlo on a private jet with Fabio, drinking champagne and being “fabulous.”

It cannot be acquired or purchased – it must be lived consciously.

We don’t have a lack of knowledge or information “about love” – we have a poverty of Being.

My parents had their problems, but they knew how to love without Dr. Phil or Oprah. They were loving, they modeled love, and they manifest generosity. They came from a loving community and built a loving home.

Every institution and business in this country claims to be about “love” – and “family” and “community” but for many of us those experiences, when closely examined, feel very empty.

And it’s not just men. Women who have bought into the superwoman myth and tried to “have it all” with the “man of their dreams” also often feel empty and short changed. They are not generally armed, however.

Let’s look deeper.

Every “comedy” show on television has a laugh track accompanying people ridiculing and humiliating one another. Every family comedy is built on deception and duplicity.

Any boy on a little league team who has a coach that suggests that “fooling the umpire or referee” is part of “winning has the same revulsion inside, until it is conditioned out of him.

This is organic shame – or conscience.

Something in us knows better. Something in us knows there is something objectively Higher that we have tacitly ignored. We can discover it in ourselves if we look deeply and honestly, and we can even find it “scientifically” in the world if we’re vigilant and determined.

We know that ultimately we bear responsibility for our own inner world, even if we hide it from others successfully.

And we know that we are not on a random inert ball of rock hurtling through a lifeless universe, but that we are living souls having a human experience that implores us to live truly lovingly – not with lip service or TV segments on “making a difference” but in our daily activities and interactions with other humans and yes, sentient beings.

We cannot continue to abdicate this responsibility and survive. Indeed our oceans are dying and many species on which we depend, due to the far vaster Intelligence of Nature, are also nearly extinct.

Nature does not guarantee us a future – and certainly not one for our children.

It’s time to wake the fuck up.

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.”