The Will to Percieve a New World

Wisdom is to know that all we perceive and conceive is not necessarily wholly true, that to a large extent our perceptions and conceptions are a result of what we wish to see and think about. It is clear, then, as Aldous Huxley points out below, that what we concentrate our intelligence upon is critical to our well-being, for our thoughts and perceptions shape our world.

"Some thoughts are practically unthinkable," Huxley notes, "except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification. Where these necessary instruments do not exist, the thoughts in question are not expressed and not even conceived. Nor is this all: the incentive to develop the instruments of certain kinds of thinking is not always present."

"For long periods of history and prehistory," he points out, "it would seem that men and women, though perfectly capable of doing so, did not wish to pay attention to problems which their descendants found absorbingly interesting. For example," he points out, "there is no reason to suppose that between the thirteenth century and the twentieth, the human mind underwent any kind of evolutionary change, comparable to the change, let us say, in the physical structure of the horse's foot during an incomparably longer span of geological time. What happened," he observes, "was that men turned their attention from certain aspects of reality to certain other aspects. The result, among other things, was the development of the natural sciences."

"Our perceptions and understandings are directed, in large measure, by our will," Huxley notes. "We are aware of and we think about the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand. Where there's a will there is always an intellectual way. The capacities of the human mind are almost indefinitely great. Whatever we will to do, whether it be to come to the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, or to manufacture self-propelled flamethrowers - that we are able to do, provided always that the willing be sufficiently intense and sustained"

[Aldous Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy," p. 17]

Given the atrocities of war, famine and increasing environmental crises we have witnessed in the past hundred-odd years, one can only question why our perceptions and conceptions of the world we have created remain so static. While our scientific understanding of our world has increased a thousandfold and more, our understanding of the inner man, our motivations and collective consciousness seem to have changed but little. What one asks, will it take for us to reorient our collective perceptions and conceptions? We cannot, after all, as Einstein so plainly understood, solve our current existential challenges with the same level of thinking that created them.

What, therefore, do we will? A greater understanding of ourselves and our place in the evolutionary process of the universe, or the proliferation of ever greater consumption and domination over nature? Do we wish to come to "the unitive knowledge of the Godhead" or produce ever more efficient weapons to maintain the status quo bequeathed us by the horrors of the twentieth century? One knows where Huxley, Einstein and other great thinkers would weigh in on these questions. It seems clear that they would evince a will to an ever greater understanding of man and his place in both a new world and a newfound evolving cosmos.

Carl Jung: On Man's Existence

"The decisive question for a man is this: Is he related to something Infinite or not?"

-- Carl G. Jung --

"I tried to find the best truth and the clearest light I could attain to. And, since I have reached my highest point and cannot transcend anymore, I am guarding my light and my treasure. It is most precious not only to me but, above all, to the darkness of the Creator who needs man to illuminate his creation. If God had foreseen his world it would be a mere senseless machine and man's existence a useless freak.  My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says "no" to it."

(Carl G. Jung, correspondence dated September 14, 1960)

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Says the mystic poet, Rumi:

"Consider the difference
in our actions and God's actions.

We often ask, "Why did you do that?"
or "Why did I act like that?"

We do act, and yet everything we do
is God's creative action.

We look back and analyze the events
of our lives, but there is another way
of seeing, a backward-and-forward-at-once
vision, that is not rationally understandable.

Only God can understand it."

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi," page 28.]

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Reflections on Emptiness and the Void

Thomas Merton: On "Desert and Void"

"The uncreated is waste and emptiness to the creature - not even sand, not even stone, not even darkness and night. A burning wilderness would at least be something. It burns and is wild. But the uncreated is no something. Waste, emptiness, total poverty of the creator. Yet from this poverty springs everything. The waste is inexhaustible, infinite zero. Everything comes from this desert nothing. Everything wants to return to it and cannot. For who can return nowhere?"

"But for each of us there is a point of nowhereness in the middle of movement, a point of nothingness in the midst of being - the incomparable point not to be discovered by insight. If you seek it you do not find it, if you stop seeking it is there. But you must not turn to it. Once you become aware of yourself as seeker, you are lost. But if you are content to be lost you will be found without knowing it, precisely because you are lost. For you are, at last, nowhere."

Thomas Merton: On 'Form and Nothingness'

"The perfect act is empty. Who can see it? He who forgets form. Out of the formed, the unformed. The empty act proceeds with its own form. Perfect form is momentary, its perfection vanishes at once. Perfection and emptiness work together, for they are the same - the coincidence of momentary form and eternal nothingness. Form, the flash of nothingness. Forget form and it suddenly appears, ringed and reverberating with its own light, which is nothing."

"Well then, stop seeking, let it all happen, let it come and go. What? Everything - i.e., nothing."

Doing One's Dharma and Finding One's Path

There are innumerable paths to enlightenment - or, perhaps more accurately, the number of paths to enlightenment is precisely equal to those beings who consciously seek that goal - for each of us approaches the goal of liberation from where we are, by working out our karma, by following our own personal dharma, by walking lightly on the Earth and leaving small footprints.

Unlike traditional Indian society with its castes and classes, and with its four stages of life (the student, the householder, the spiritual aspirant, and the renunciate), modern society - East and West - no longer holds tightly to such rigid distinctions, and everyone must come to understand and work out their particular avenue through life and towards personal liberation.

"In his study of the Bhagavad Gita ("Paths to God"), iconic spiritual teacher Ram Dass notes that "(t)here are very few clear, cultural prescriptions that are deeply ingrained in our society to tell us what to do. So we're faced with having to figure out for ourselves what our dharma might be."

"We have to rely on ourselves," he points out, "we have to listen and hear how our individual differences will determine our appropriate duty moment by moment. All of our circumstances feed into that: If you have a certain type of intellect, of if you have certain economic circumstances, it defines certain paths. If you have a husband or a wife, that defines certain possibilities, and it also defines certain limiting conditions."

"Some people," he observes, "might say, "I can only do a job that is absolutely dharmic, and I would rather starve to death than earn money impurely." Others say, "Look - I'll do the best I can, given my circumstances." There's no judgment in either case; each of us has to hear what each of us has do to."

"If you are a sadhu, if you are single and a renunciate, then maybe you can afford to be more of a purist," he points out, "(as) no one is dependent on you. On the other hand," he points out, "if you are a householder and have a family, then you have certain responsibilities, and you've got to do the best you can. If you are a householder, but you are being such a purist that you don't get enough money to feed your baby, in the long run you will have done more adharma than dharma. If you're in that situation and you find that you have to take a job that doesn't feel entirely dharmic to you, do the best you can to bring as much consciousness as possible into the scene. That's all you can do. You work with what you are given."

"You do that with respect to each aspect of your life," Dass notes. "Whatever your part is," he says," you just play it, but you play it as consciously as you can. That's the most basic form of the concept of doing your dharma: to find your little square on the grid, and then to live it out perfectly."

The Only Thing 'Unchangeable' Is the Inevitability of 'Change'

If there is one thing that Einstein showed decisively, it is that there is nothing permanent in this universe. Even time and space, he demonstrated, are relative. Even the order of events may change for two observers, one moving slowly and the other moving at close to the speed of light.

If there is anything permanent at all, in fact, it may be the fundamental axiom that "nothing is permanent." Everything is always dynamic and in the process of change. The only thing that is unchangeable, it seems, is the inevitability of change itself.

The "permanence" of "impermanency" - we all age, sicken and, eventually die - was one of the telling factors that prompted the Buddha to teach, in the first of his "Four Noble Truths," that to the unenlightened mind this (our human experience) is dukkha, a certain "unsatisfactoriness" or "insufficiency" that is conventionally translated as "suffering."

Even our most pleasurable moments are actually instances of suffering, the Buddha taught, as we know inherently that these momentary pleasures will end, and always all too soon. Even relaxing on the beach in a tropical 'paradse' one is liable to think, with a sinking feeling in one's stomach, "Oh, but I have to fly home on Saturday!" At best, therefore, even these most paradisiacal moments are impermanent and insufficient to imbue us with any sense of true and lasting happiness. They are, thus, dukkha.

Recently, author Judith Johnson discussed "Embracing the Permanence of Impermanency" on the Huffington Post. "Emotionally," Ms. Johnson writes, "many of us yearn for permanency by seeking to alter the terms and conditions of our lives."

"We dream of utopias where only good and happy things come our way. We want financial security and happy families, good health, and access to the fountain of youth. When we find a deep and abiding friendship or love, we want it to retain its intensity and deliciousness. Often, we resort to manipulating our loved ones and ourselves to perpetuate the exhilaration. Yet the tighter our grip, the faster its fleet."

"What becomes permanent," Johnson observes, "is often only that which has solidified in our minds -- our prejudices, habits, beliefs and inclinations." And there is the rub. It is how we think, and at what level of consciousness we interact with our "reality," that determines whether or not we we suffer in our lives. But, fortunately, "like rock," Johnson notes, our prejudices, habits, beliefs and inclinations "can be altered if we use wisdom."

To end suffering, the Buddha concluded, one must end this vain, yet continual clinging and craving; both of which center in the mind and its attitudes (or conditioned ways of thinking). To do this, Buddha taught, it is first necessary to have a right understanding of impermanency and the ultimate insufficiency of "things" to provide lasting happiness. Next, one should refrain from engaging in speech, actions and ways of making money that perpetuate craving and clinging, either in oneself or in other beings. ("After all," as one wag recently put it, "it is exceedingly hard to reach enlightenment with a suffering creature on the end of one's fork.")

Finally, one must energetically engage in discriminating between what causes, promotes or prolongs craving and clinging, and what does not. Then with a rigorous meditative and contemplative practice one works to eradicate the thinking and thought structures that cause clinging and craving.

As Ms. Johnson notes on Huffington Post:

"As long as our myopic vision persists, we tend to live in a fixed, uncompromising relationship with the world around us. Those who disagree with us are likely to be perceived as wrong, their viewpoints discredited as inferior and therefore not meriting consideration. Such a dynamic all too often rules our politics and our most intimate relationships. When we live this way it is as though we dance a rigid box step rather than fluidly and expansively expressing our being."

Realizing that our "things," our "experiences" - even our very "thoughts" and long held "ideas" - are impermanent, it is then possible to overcome "our myopic vision." To do so, however, we need to cultivate a proper understanding and view of our life experience, to refrain from engaging in improper speech, actions and livelihood, and to expend the energy we thus preserve in engaging in at least a minimal meditative and contemplative practice, rather than wasting all that energy cursing the perfidy of the gods and the fickleness of fate and our fellow beings.