regarding illusion, I still find, with people who are not philosophically minded, for undoing the deeply rooted FEELING that we live in an essentially dead, meaningless, unconscious universe, that questioning whether we are awake or dreaming still has a powerful effect, as long as we are not using it to promote illusionism.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Here's how Jan and I go about it:
We take the phenomenon of false awakenings. So I've frequently had 3 or 4, or as many as 5 of these, in a row.
I'll "wake up," (assuming I'm in the conventional "waking" state), get up, stretch a bit, perhaps splash some water in my face, and suddenly, I find myself in bed again, and immediately realize I just had a dream that I had woken up.
No big deal.
I get up again, stretch, and I notice something strange about my iPhone, and realize once again, I'd assumed I had woken up, but was actually still dreaming. Now, I'm not quite sure if I'm awake or dreaming, so I do some checking. I pick up my iPad and see if I can read something (all the scientific literature says it's impossible to read in a lucid dream). I read about a page and everything is clear, I look around me, I feel wide awake and everything I see and touch feels vivid and clear.
I then find myself back lying down in bed, and realize during all that checking, I thought I was awake but I was actually dreaming.
Now it gets a bit edgy - I've just done everything I know how to do to check my state, and I was thoroughly convinced I was awake. But I check again, I look around the room, I try to jump to see if I stay off the floor, I pinch my arm, I start talking to Jan and asking some questions. I can't think of a single thing more to check.
And sure enough, I find myself back in bed. That was a dream.
The last time this happened to me, I think it was almost five minutes (I looked at my phone to check how long it took) before I was convinced I WAS actually awake.
Why is this relevant?
What, conventionally, in our materialistic world, do we mean when we ask, "Am I awake, or dreaming?"
If I am awake, that means I am conscious in a purely material environment that does not have any subjective elements to it. My consciousness is a purely brain produced activity, and all the things in my environment would persist even if all consciousness were eliminated.
if I am dreaming, that means I'm in a mind-constructed (or perhaps, Consciousness constructed) environment.
So, if it's absolutely impossible to distinguish dreaming from waking - at least, by examining phenomena - then perhaps the near universal modern assumption that we live in a material environment is at best, a baseless assumption, and at worst, a dangerous delusion.
SOME OBJECTIONS:
(1) DREAMS ARE "DREAMY" AND OBVIOUSLY DIFFERENT FROM THE WAKING STATE I mentioned this to orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart, and he refused to believe that it would be difficult as dreams are, well, dreamy. This is one of the most common objections, and I don't know if it's possible to convey to people how utterly realistic a lucid dream can be. Recently, I mentioned that Bertrand Russell reported once having a series of false awakenings dozens of times in a row. EACH time, he was unable to find anything which could give him a clue as to whether he was awake or dreaming, and, well, most people who hear this agree Russell was a pretty smart, observant guy.
(2) THE HUMAN BRAIN CANNOT PRODUCE AN ENVIRONMENT AS REALISTIC AS TEH WAKING ENVIRONMENT, WHICH INVOLVES "REAL" EXTERNAL STIMULI AS OPPOSED TO THE DREAM ENVIRONMENT, WHICH ONLY INVOLVES BRAIN-BASED INNER STIMULI. I only heard this for the first time about 1/2 year ago. The person didn't give me any basis for this, and from what I can see even within materialist neuroscience, this is simply not based on any valid research.
(3) IF YOU'RE QUESTIONING WHETHER YOU'RE AWAKE OR DREAMING, YOU MUST BE DREAMING. Obviously, if you're at the tail end of a series of false awakenings and are questioning whether you're awake or dreaming, this objection is invalid.
remarkably, I've heard a number of philosophers give purely intellectual answers, none of which would be of any use at all if you were actually at the end of a series of false awakenings.
Interesting subject! I’ll start with an episode of my own. The alarm clock is ringing. I try to switch it off. It keeps ringing. I examine the clock, take out the batteries. It keeps ringing. Thoroughly puzzled, I dismantle the clock. It keeps ringing. Finally, I think: maybe another clock is ringing? But which, where? Then it dawns on me and my last (first?) thought while waking up is: “Why, it’s so easy! You just have wake up!”
Thoughts: (i) This can be taken as metaphor for: we are all dreaming (or in a matrix-like situation) and that we should the hell wake up (take the red pill). (ii) It might have been the realization that I was dreaming that made me wake up. In this particular situation, the insight that I might be dreaming appears to have caused me to wake up. (iii) The ringing alarm was a glitch in the matrix: reality intruded on the dream world but was at first misconstrued as part of it.
If I am awake,
“that means I am conscious in a purely material environment that does not have any subjective elements to it. My consciousness is a purely brain produced activity, and all the things in my environment would persist even if all consciousness were eliminated.”
It certainly does not mean that my consciousness is a purely brain produced activity. Leaving this non-sequitur aside, it also does not mean that I am in a purely material environment (whatever that means!) lacking subjective elements. *Mental* consciousness is by (Sri Aurobindo’s) definition situated in a world experienced in perspective (cf. Gebser), and so are the other mentally conscious subjects that it *contains*. Nor does it mean that the environment would persist if *all* consciousness was eliminated. It would of course persist if my *waking* consciousness was eliminated. All consciousness cannot be eliminated, since this would mean the elimination of all of reality (waking, sleep, dream, and turiya).
You want to conclude that “we live in a material environment is at best, a baseless assumption, and at worst, a dangerous delusion.” I would not use the waking/dream analogy to reach this conclusion, for one because it grants too much; it leaves unexamined the meaning of “material environment.”
As you will know, the prime objective of my work in physics/philosophy has been to show that the subject-matter of physics is an *experienced* world. If you remove from physics the grammatical structure of *our* language and the spatiotemporal structure of *our* sensory experience (including all its possible *technological* enhancements), what remains is (at best) pure mathematics.
I don’t know about lucid dreams. According to medicalnewstoday.com, “during lucid dreaming, an individual knows that they are not in the real world,” and according to webmd.com, “if you're having a lucid dream, you're aware that the events flashing through your brain aren’t really happening.” So, I don’t know how far your invocation of lucid dreaming helps. For the sake of your hypothetical argument it isn’t necessary.
Thanks for taking the time for this. yes,that’s an especially good point- I have to make much much clearer I’m taking the Dennett/Churchland/Dawkins/Weinberg view, which not only grants too much to the meaning of “material environment,” it’s - as Wolfgang Pauli often said, “Not even wrong.” The whole idea of matter and “physicalist” in the physicalist/materialist world is so utterly incoherent one can’t define the words as the physicalist uses them, and one ends up in contradiction, and utter chaos in trying to discuss them.
Recently, I’ve taken to asking physicalist philosophers (and physicalist physicists) “What does ‘physical’ mean?” (After several exchanges where even the philosophers give something more or less equivalent of ‘why it’s the stuff around us which you touch and see” - the Samuel Johnson rejoinder to Berkeley) they ALL reach the point where they give up: “Ok, you can’t define “physical” as an ontological primitive” and then my favorite part, “but who cares? We all know what it means.”
I’m going to save your reply and add it to the list of cautions when I use the metaphor.
Oh, about lucid dreaming, it’s interesting - Mother and Sri Aurobindo refer to being conscious in the subtle realms, and sometimes simply refer to being conscious in dreams. Unfortunately, the term “lucid dreaming” has been drenched in materialist assumptions in the last 45 years since it was “scientifically” proven, so that’s another good one to be careful of. My masters thesis involved teaching people how to maintain awareness from waking into dreaming. This was 1992, just a bit more than a decade after lucid dreaming was scientifically established, and part of my aim was to take it out of the materialist framework and provide a more “yogic” (though I didn’t use that term) foundation. It’s an interesting distinction that I may actually end up bringing front and center.
This is all in the context of writing about Mother and Sri Aurobindo and using Their language to connect to modern society, politics, government, science, art, etc. So these distinctions are quite relevant. Thanks again!
In *The Unity of Nature* (Farrar Straus Giroux 1980, p 234), the well-known German physicist/philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker wrote:
“matter, which we can now define only as that which satisfies the laws of physics, may be spirit insofar as spirit can be objectified; i.e., insofar as spirit can be questioned in terms of, and can provide answers to, empirically decidable alternatives. This, roughly, is the approach I am trying to take.”
Keep this in mind when you talk to physicists (which I consider a waste of time): matter = that which satisfies the laws of physics! What *that* is, remains an open question. In my papers and my book, I argued that the laws of physics have the form that they do in order to set the stage for the drama/adventure of evolution. They don't direct the drama.
Great point. I'm quite familiar with your writings on the laws of physics related to evolution; i am VERY moved by the simplicity and clarity of them. Weizsacker's point is great, and Marco Masi has warned me steadfastly about not bothering to talk to physicists.
Our "audience" is (1) The IY community, in which, in my experience at least, there is an overwhelming unconscious, implicit acceptance of a naive realist/physicalist view which not only makes understanding IY more difficult but more important, impedes practice. (2) the lay public, following Sri Aurobindo's guidance toward the end of the Human Cycle where he says one of the greatest needs of the time is - MENTALLY! - to communicate to the mind of humanity the fundamental nature of the evolution of consciousness.
I'd prefer to do this without addressing philosophy at all; but my sense for over 50 years is (a) at the implicit physicalism of our time continues to present a serious impediment to accepting the evolution of consciousness and in practice, opening to and being guided by the psychic being and Self; and (b) even worse, in "new age" circles (which includes all too many in the IY community) there is a kind of loose strange mixture of physicalism, occultism (dangerous openings to lower vital realms through channeling and other similar means), quantum physics-nonsense, and an alarming opening to fundamentalist and authoritarian mythic/magical "thinking" - and all of this obscures the beauty, power, radiance and simplicity of IY (I'm sort of hinting at what the theologians call "Divine Simplicity" not mental simplicity; if that makes any sense)
So Jan and I are trying to offer a fairly simple, easily accessible presentation of IY AND to do it in a way which to whatever extent we can avoids all the above pitfalls.
A somewhat impertinent question: How would you define “IY community”? What are the criteria of admission? Initiation rites? Catechisms? Another: What does it mean to “understand IY”? I am trying to understand what the both of you are up to.
If I were to define “IY community,” I would not include people who accept a physicalist view of the world. If you direct your efforts towards the larger group of “lay” people (your second audience), some — remember, “nothing depends on the numbers” — may be disabused of physicalist notions; they might then by ready to join the “IY community.” Insofar as we are dealing with an “Enemy” — for all practical purposes we are — it is this gentleman who inspires the “loose, strange mixture” of which you speak. You have been warned!
Which passage toward the end of the Human Cycle do you have in mind? Is it where Sri Aurobindo speaks of “the true and full spiritual aim in society” (227‒29)?
“Divine simplicity” makes perfect sense. It comes to light once all that intellectual dross is seen for what it is (intellectual dross).
Not sure if I have a definition. Everyone on the planet who has expressed any interest at all in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And I don’t mean a mental idea, i mean, well, myself and everyone I’ve ever met who can relate to the Mother’s comment, made, I think, well into the 1950s, that She would look into her subconscient and see the imprint of a most literal idea of a separate god living in (my words, translated into Buddhist language) an inherently existent “world.”
(Remember, I may be influenced by my decades as a clinical psychologist:>))
Short of perfect Supramental transformation, down to the last cell, my sense is we all live with this collective delusion affecting us in various ways. So i guess it’s not just the IY community it’s everyone and myself. So, no enemies:>))
perhaps a simpler way to put it - there are many *good* writers nowadays (Matthieu Ricard, comes to mind, but there are many others) who seem to be able to write in everyday language, much as the Mother spoke.
Maybe the simplest way to put it is, we’d like to present IY much more in the style of the Mother than Sri Aurobindo’s. I’m a bit rascally and mischievous here, but that might convey a bit.
In any case, we’re not even clear at the moment what we’re up to. we’re listening and trying to follow the guidance. My guideline is, if I’m utterly surprised at some point each day in writing, than perhaps we’re sort of on the right track!
Profound! Thank you for sharing this.
Great quotations, wonderful arrangement.
regarding illusion, I still find, with people who are not philosophically minded, for undoing the deeply rooted FEELING that we live in an essentially dead, meaningless, unconscious universe, that questioning whether we are awake or dreaming still has a powerful effect, as long as we are not using it to promote illusionism.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Here's how Jan and I go about it:
We take the phenomenon of false awakenings. So I've frequently had 3 or 4, or as many as 5 of these, in a row.
I'll "wake up," (assuming I'm in the conventional "waking" state), get up, stretch a bit, perhaps splash some water in my face, and suddenly, I find myself in bed again, and immediately realize I just had a dream that I had woken up.
No big deal.
I get up again, stretch, and I notice something strange about my iPhone, and realize once again, I'd assumed I had woken up, but was actually still dreaming. Now, I'm not quite sure if I'm awake or dreaming, so I do some checking. I pick up my iPad and see if I can read something (all the scientific literature says it's impossible to read in a lucid dream). I read about a page and everything is clear, I look around me, I feel wide awake and everything I see and touch feels vivid and clear.
I then find myself back lying down in bed, and realize during all that checking, I thought I was awake but I was actually dreaming.
Now it gets a bit edgy - I've just done everything I know how to do to check my state, and I was thoroughly convinced I was awake. But I check again, I look around the room, I try to jump to see if I stay off the floor, I pinch my arm, I start talking to Jan and asking some questions. I can't think of a single thing more to check.
And sure enough, I find myself back in bed. That was a dream.
The last time this happened to me, I think it was almost five minutes (I looked at my phone to check how long it took) before I was convinced I WAS actually awake.
Why is this relevant?
What, conventionally, in our materialistic world, do we mean when we ask, "Am I awake, or dreaming?"
If I am awake, that means I am conscious in a purely material environment that does not have any subjective elements to it. My consciousness is a purely brain produced activity, and all the things in my environment would persist even if all consciousness were eliminated.
if I am dreaming, that means I'm in a mind-constructed (or perhaps, Consciousness constructed) environment.
So, if it's absolutely impossible to distinguish dreaming from waking - at least, by examining phenomena - then perhaps the near universal modern assumption that we live in a material environment is at best, a baseless assumption, and at worst, a dangerous delusion.
SOME OBJECTIONS:
(1) DREAMS ARE "DREAMY" AND OBVIOUSLY DIFFERENT FROM THE WAKING STATE I mentioned this to orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart, and he refused to believe that it would be difficult as dreams are, well, dreamy. This is one of the most common objections, and I don't know if it's possible to convey to people how utterly realistic a lucid dream can be. Recently, I mentioned that Bertrand Russell reported once having a series of false awakenings dozens of times in a row. EACH time, he was unable to find anything which could give him a clue as to whether he was awake or dreaming, and, well, most people who hear this agree Russell was a pretty smart, observant guy.
(2) THE HUMAN BRAIN CANNOT PRODUCE AN ENVIRONMENT AS REALISTIC AS TEH WAKING ENVIRONMENT, WHICH INVOLVES "REAL" EXTERNAL STIMULI AS OPPOSED TO THE DREAM ENVIRONMENT, WHICH ONLY INVOLVES BRAIN-BASED INNER STIMULI. I only heard this for the first time about 1/2 year ago. The person didn't give me any basis for this, and from what I can see even within materialist neuroscience, this is simply not based on any valid research.
(3) IF YOU'RE QUESTIONING WHETHER YOU'RE AWAKE OR DREAMING, YOU MUST BE DREAMING. Obviously, if you're at the tail end of a series of false awakenings and are questioning whether you're awake or dreaming, this objection is invalid.
remarkably, I've heard a number of philosophers give purely intellectual answers, none of which would be of any use at all if you were actually at the end of a series of false awakenings.
Any other objections?
Interesting subject! I’ll start with an episode of my own. The alarm clock is ringing. I try to switch it off. It keeps ringing. I examine the clock, take out the batteries. It keeps ringing. Thoroughly puzzled, I dismantle the clock. It keeps ringing. Finally, I think: maybe another clock is ringing? But which, where? Then it dawns on me and my last (first?) thought while waking up is: “Why, it’s so easy! You just have wake up!”
Thoughts: (i) This can be taken as metaphor for: we are all dreaming (or in a matrix-like situation) and that we should the hell wake up (take the red pill). (ii) It might have been the realization that I was dreaming that made me wake up. In this particular situation, the insight that I might be dreaming appears to have caused me to wake up. (iii) The ringing alarm was a glitch in the matrix: reality intruded on the dream world but was at first misconstrued as part of it.
If I am awake,
“that means I am conscious in a purely material environment that does not have any subjective elements to it. My consciousness is a purely brain produced activity, and all the things in my environment would persist even if all consciousness were eliminated.”
It certainly does not mean that my consciousness is a purely brain produced activity. Leaving this non-sequitur aside, it also does not mean that I am in a purely material environment (whatever that means!) lacking subjective elements. *Mental* consciousness is by (Sri Aurobindo’s) definition situated in a world experienced in perspective (cf. Gebser), and so are the other mentally conscious subjects that it *contains*. Nor does it mean that the environment would persist if *all* consciousness was eliminated. It would of course persist if my *waking* consciousness was eliminated. All consciousness cannot be eliminated, since this would mean the elimination of all of reality (waking, sleep, dream, and turiya).
You want to conclude that “we live in a material environment is at best, a baseless assumption, and at worst, a dangerous delusion.” I would not use the waking/dream analogy to reach this conclusion, for one because it grants too much; it leaves unexamined the meaning of “material environment.”
As you will know, the prime objective of my work in physics/philosophy has been to show that the subject-matter of physics is an *experienced* world. If you remove from physics the grammatical structure of *our* language and the spatiotemporal structure of *our* sensory experience (including all its possible *technological* enhancements), what remains is (at best) pure mathematics.
I don’t know about lucid dreams. According to medicalnewstoday.com, “during lucid dreaming, an individual knows that they are not in the real world,” and according to webmd.com, “if you're having a lucid dream, you're aware that the events flashing through your brain aren’t really happening.” So, I don’t know how far your invocation of lucid dreaming helps. For the sake of your hypothetical argument it isn’t necessary.
Thanks for taking the time for this. yes,that’s an especially good point- I have to make much much clearer I’m taking the Dennett/Churchland/Dawkins/Weinberg view, which not only grants too much to the meaning of “material environment,” it’s - as Wolfgang Pauli often said, “Not even wrong.” The whole idea of matter and “physicalist” in the physicalist/materialist world is so utterly incoherent one can’t define the words as the physicalist uses them, and one ends up in contradiction, and utter chaos in trying to discuss them.
Recently, I’ve taken to asking physicalist philosophers (and physicalist physicists) “What does ‘physical’ mean?” (After several exchanges where even the philosophers give something more or less equivalent of ‘why it’s the stuff around us which you touch and see” - the Samuel Johnson rejoinder to Berkeley) they ALL reach the point where they give up: “Ok, you can’t define “physical” as an ontological primitive” and then my favorite part, “but who cares? We all know what it means.”
I’m going to save your reply and add it to the list of cautions when I use the metaphor.
Oh, about lucid dreaming, it’s interesting - Mother and Sri Aurobindo refer to being conscious in the subtle realms, and sometimes simply refer to being conscious in dreams. Unfortunately, the term “lucid dreaming” has been drenched in materialist assumptions in the last 45 years since it was “scientifically” proven, so that’s another good one to be careful of. My masters thesis involved teaching people how to maintain awareness from waking into dreaming. This was 1992, just a bit more than a decade after lucid dreaming was scientifically established, and part of my aim was to take it out of the materialist framework and provide a more “yogic” (though I didn’t use that term) foundation. It’s an interesting distinction that I may actually end up bringing front and center.
This is all in the context of writing about Mother and Sri Aurobindo and using Their language to connect to modern society, politics, government, science, art, etc. So these distinctions are quite relevant. Thanks again!
In *The Unity of Nature* (Farrar Straus Giroux 1980, p 234), the well-known German physicist/philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker wrote:
“matter, which we can now define only as that which satisfies the laws of physics, may be spirit insofar as spirit can be objectified; i.e., insofar as spirit can be questioned in terms of, and can provide answers to, empirically decidable alternatives. This, roughly, is the approach I am trying to take.”
Keep this in mind when you talk to physicists (which I consider a waste of time): matter = that which satisfies the laws of physics! What *that* is, remains an open question. In my papers and my book, I argued that the laws of physics have the form that they do in order to set the stage for the drama/adventure of evolution. They don't direct the drama.
Great point. I'm quite familiar with your writings on the laws of physics related to evolution; i am VERY moved by the simplicity and clarity of them. Weizsacker's point is great, and Marco Masi has warned me steadfastly about not bothering to talk to physicists.
Our "audience" is (1) The IY community, in which, in my experience at least, there is an overwhelming unconscious, implicit acceptance of a naive realist/physicalist view which not only makes understanding IY more difficult but more important, impedes practice. (2) the lay public, following Sri Aurobindo's guidance toward the end of the Human Cycle where he says one of the greatest needs of the time is - MENTALLY! - to communicate to the mind of humanity the fundamental nature of the evolution of consciousness.
I'd prefer to do this without addressing philosophy at all; but my sense for over 50 years is (a) at the implicit physicalism of our time continues to present a serious impediment to accepting the evolution of consciousness and in practice, opening to and being guided by the psychic being and Self; and (b) even worse, in "new age" circles (which includes all too many in the IY community) there is a kind of loose strange mixture of physicalism, occultism (dangerous openings to lower vital realms through channeling and other similar means), quantum physics-nonsense, and an alarming opening to fundamentalist and authoritarian mythic/magical "thinking" - and all of this obscures the beauty, power, radiance and simplicity of IY (I'm sort of hinting at what the theologians call "Divine Simplicity" not mental simplicity; if that makes any sense)
So Jan and I are trying to offer a fairly simple, easily accessible presentation of IY AND to do it in a way which to whatever extent we can avoids all the above pitfalls.
A somewhat impertinent question: How would you define “IY community”? What are the criteria of admission? Initiation rites? Catechisms? Another: What does it mean to “understand IY”? I am trying to understand what the both of you are up to.
If I were to define “IY community,” I would not include people who accept a physicalist view of the world. If you direct your efforts towards the larger group of “lay” people (your second audience), some — remember, “nothing depends on the numbers” — may be disabused of physicalist notions; they might then by ready to join the “IY community.” Insofar as we are dealing with an “Enemy” — for all practical purposes we are — it is this gentleman who inspires the “loose, strange mixture” of which you speak. You have been warned!
Which passage toward the end of the Human Cycle do you have in mind? Is it where Sri Aurobindo speaks of “the true and full spiritual aim in society” (227‒29)?
“Divine simplicity” makes perfect sense. It comes to light once all that intellectual dross is seen for what it is (intellectual dross).
Not sure if I have a definition. Everyone on the planet who has expressed any interest at all in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And I don’t mean a mental idea, i mean, well, myself and everyone I’ve ever met who can relate to the Mother’s comment, made, I think, well into the 1950s, that She would look into her subconscient and see the imprint of a most literal idea of a separate god living in (my words, translated into Buddhist language) an inherently existent “world.”
(Remember, I may be influenced by my decades as a clinical psychologist:>))
Short of perfect Supramental transformation, down to the last cell, my sense is we all live with this collective delusion affecting us in various ways. So i guess it’s not just the IY community it’s everyone and myself. So, no enemies:>))
Yes, that’s hte passage (227-29)
perhaps a simpler way to put it - there are many *good* writers nowadays (Matthieu Ricard, comes to mind, but there are many others) who seem to be able to write in everyday language, much as the Mother spoke.
Maybe the simplest way to put it is, we’d like to present IY much more in the style of the Mother than Sri Aurobindo’s. I’m a bit rascally and mischievous here, but that might convey a bit.
In any case, we’re not even clear at the moment what we’re up to. we’re listening and trying to follow the guidance. My guideline is, if I’m utterly surprised at some point each day in writing, than perhaps we’re sort of on the right track!