In the Buddhist tradition, meditation practice reveals the stable reference points we can hang on to for a sense of peace and security. These are called the “three marks of existence.” These concepts shape the basic context in which human existence unfolds.

The three marks of existence may be termed (sometimes they are called differently by the different branches of Buddhism):
1. Impermanence,
2. Egolessness, and
3. Suffering

For many Westerners these are negative aspects of our existence which we would sooner put out of our minds. This act of denial, itself can lead to psychological problems. Buddhism requires its adherents to embrace these concepts, learn to live with them and then hopefully to transcend them. Let us examine each of these marks of existence and see how their acknowledgment might benefit us.

The first mark of existence is impermanence. When we look about us everything is forever changing. We change. We grow older. We learn new ideas. We have new thoughts. Our environment is continually changing. We cope with a diurnal cycle of day and night. We are faced with the annual cycle of the seasons. Our physical environment is in constant flux. As I write, I am sitting in my office looking out the window. The avocado tree is flowering. Soon it will set fruit. My roses have had their first flush of blooms and my lawn is bespattered with the petals of the aging flowers. But on each bush there are new shoots. The sunbirds that I haven’t seen for months are back feeding off the nectar from the flowers of my male pawpaw tree. Even the landscape can change massively. The lagoons that were almost dry a year or two ago are now brimming full. Flying into the airport last week I noticed that one of the mangrove creeks that forms part of the Fitzroy River estuary has cut through one the loops in its circuitous course and has formed a new waterway. The grasslands that were so abundant early in the year and now beset by fires. So there we have cyclical change and linear change – but always change! Things change, die, proliferate, merge and separate to form the tapestry of our existence. That child you loved is now a fine young woman. That man you revered has passed away. That great idea you had now seems so trite. That work you found so difficult comes second nature to you now.

On the death of the Buddha, Sakka, the chief of the deities, is said to have uttered the following:

“Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.”

So then nothing ever stays the same. Our bodies and the physical environment are in a constant state of flux. But our minds change too. Our mental and emotional states are ceaselessly shifting and passing away. Every mind-state brings with it a new take on reality, only to be replaced soon after with a somewhat different interpretation of reality.

As the Buddhist psychologist John Welwood wrote, “No state of mind is ever complete or final.”

The second mark of existence that I have chosen to call “egolessness”, is a natural consequence of impermanence. Whatever we consider to be “the self”, that which we imagine ourselves to be, is also constantly changing. So, although it is sometimes useful to talk of an ego structure as an explanatory concept, it is impossible to pin down, locate, or establish a substantial continuous self-entity in any concrete, definitive way. Can you remember all those soulful young things that in the sixties and seventies went off on journeys “to find themselves”? Such searches were always doomed to failure, because of the transient and ephemeral nature of what they were earnestly seeking to find. This realisation might come as a great disappointment to such people. Yet, once we understand the full implications of this state of affairs, it can be liberating indeed! So many of us are driven to meet the needs of sustaining an ego, which is a pointless task and diverts much of our energy and talents, that abandoning such a pursuit immediately gives us access to resources to do more useful things. (Remember Dr Phil Harker’s injunction in previous blogs to “forget yourself!”).

The third mark of existence is suffering. This is, of course, one of the “Four Noble Truths” that defines Buddhism. No matter how privileged or fortunate we are, life brings with it pain. There is no avoiding the pain of birth, the suffering of illness, the anguish of death, the affliction of trying to hang on to things that must inevitably fade away, the discomfort of what we believe is failure and so on. Much of our pain is associated with trying to control those facets of our lives that are beyond our control or becoming attached to those things that are ephemeral and must inevitably be taken from us.

Underlying all of this is another important concept in the Buddhist tradition. It is emptiness. Emptiness, as used in Buddhism, is a term that points to the ungraspable, unfathomable nature of everything. Nothing can be grasped as a solid object that will provide enduring, unshakeable meaning, satisfaction or security. Nothing is ever what we hope, expect, or believe to be. I have written of this in previous blogs. We desire someone and hold them up on a pedestal. But when they consent to be our partner we discover they are all too human and replete with everyday foibles and very human failings. I covet a new car and scrimp and save until I can finally buy it. Three weeks after I have possessed it, it becomes as ordinary as the one I have just traded in. I remember myself studying at university and driven by the comforting thought that after graduation I would be fulfilled. Again my sense of fulfilment was very short-lived. It took me a very long time indeed to understand that my sense of well-being was not determined by what I acquired but by how I viewed the world. All such experiences point to the truth of emptiness. It is indeed impossible to carve anything of substance out of the flow of reality or hold down and grasp anything of it that can sustain you.

Here we are yearning for and clutching at glimpses of the real and hoping for certainty. And yet, what makes life interesting and fulfilling? Well, of course it is change, innovation, novelty and variety.

So what can we learn from all this? To begin with we need to cease this mindless striving. Whoever we are won’t be changed by our frenetic activity. What we acquire and what we achieve won’t in the end make much difference to who we are. When we can reconcile with this emptiness, when we can put aside our material desires and our need for status and achievement, then we can embrace the notion of emptiness and bask in the satisfaction of our true being. If we are wise we learn that emptiness is not an abrogation of those things that we need for our happiness but an opportunity to put aside those distracting and peripheral issues that prevent us from knowing and accepting ourselves.

So after all this, we need to put aside our pointless strivings, forget about trying to prove our superiority over others, and accept the changing world just as it is. There is no reasonable prospect that we should be able to avoid change. There is little likelihood that we could pin down an image of who we essentially are. There is nothing left to us but to accept, and hopefully rejoice in the ongoing change we face every day. When we can do this, and feel comfortable that our sense of being is not tied into a need to constantly adapt to the moving feast that artificially requires our maladaptive response, then we can come to rest in the security of our own essential being. Then we can step off the treadmill.

When we reflect on the passage of time we understand that a human life is in temporal terms quite insignificant. In a universe that, according to our scientist has existed for something like fifteen billion years, the most we can hope for in terms of longevity is no more than perhaps a hundred years. This is but a blink in the course of time.

Yet, because of the unrealistic desire of our ego, we fervently want to have a significant impact well beyond that. And in trying to prove that our presence has some special significance we strive to ensure we have made some significant achievements, contributed to worthy outcomes and to have essentially “made our mark”. Even when our impacts on the world are rather modest we are inclined to exaggerate them and console ourselves that from our strivings we have made a difference.

And of course, seduced by such imaginations we misjudge what our real impacts on the world have been. We are led to believe that our success is determined by how much money we have made, how much material wealth we have acquired, how desirable our partner is, or how much political influence we have had in our society.

An antidote to this condition is meditation. Meditation teaches us just how to be, without doing anything, without holding on to anything, without trying to impose ourselves on the world.

Normally we do anything we can to avoid just being. I get up in the morning to go jogging. There are already people down on the walking track when I get there at 5:15am. Curiously, many of them are talking on their mobile phones. It is as though they can’t bear to be in their own company. (I can’t begin to know who they might be talking to at that hour of the morning – maybe their stockbrokers in New York or London?)

I see many examples of this. I am on a short flight and once we land the hostess says that people may now access their mobile phones. So many turn them on as though there must have been something of huge significance occur in the forty minutes of our flight that they must know about immediately. It seems as though we are always looking at distractions to avoid confronting ourselves.

One might think that this phenomenon, a tendency to constant activity and discourse with others is due to modern technology. However the seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pacal commented, “All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.”

Is there not some value in resting in our self-awareness, becoming more familiar with who we are and reconciling with our sense of self? What are the underlying fears that pervade us when we seek continuously to be distracted and avoid having to confront our essential being? This seems to me to be an indication of a dysfunctional pathology in many contemporaries.

In meditation practice we work directly with our confused mind states. We allow our thoughts to arise but not identify with them. In our mind space we treat everything that arises as just as it is without judgment. We don’t fixate on these passing thoughts but try to let them go and recline into our pure presence. There is no compulsion to prove we are good, successful or worthy. We just are. As a result we come to accept ourselves just as we are. (See last week’s blog.) Without judgment we come to understand there is a basic goodness in our simple being.

Somewhere else (I can’t for the life of me remember where) I used the analogy of muddied water. The cattle come down to drink and they wade a little way into the water. Their hooves stir up the mud on the bottom and as a result the water becomes brown and discoloured. The cattle are like our thoughts that come and go and confuse us and impinge on our sense of being. If we have not cultivated a sense of awareness we invite more and more to enter the stream and as a result the water is perpetually discoloured.

But if we can stop them entering the stream (still our thoughts) then soon the water is clear again. Most times we go to the aid of the cattle. We become emotionally involved in our thoughts. We are sad because we have not lived up to our expectations. We are angry because we have taken offence. We want to clarify the water so we put our hands in it. We struggle and we try to change those things that we can’t accept. We put our hands down and we stir around – and guess what? We now have stirred more mud from the bottom and the water is dirtier than it was before.

Let it go! If we only could come to grips with the universe as it is, unmediated by thought, expectation and judgment we would realise that despite our frenetic perceptions that lead us to believe otherwise – ALL IS WELL.

Know Yourself>Accept Youself>Forget Yourself.

This has over the years, proved to be good advice. This seems such a simple formula – and it is. But it is also very profound and quite difficult for many of us to come to grips with.

I thought this week I might pen a few thoughts about his powerful theory of transformation.

As young children our awareness is essentially open and receptive, yet the capacity to reflect on our own experience does not fully develop until the early teenage years. This is the stage that Piaget termed “formal operations”. Until then our self structure is under the sway of a more primitive capacity – identification.

This is so because in these early years because of our social needs we have a need to belong. We are very susceptible to the opinions of those whose approval we desperately seek in developing a sense of self.

Because we lack self-reflective awareness in childhood, we are mostly dependent on others to help us see and know ourselves – to do our reflecting for us. Therefore our first self-knowledge is almost entirely dependant on others. If we are lucky enough to be surrounded by those who accept us unconditionally, our derived sense of self will be positive and robust. If we are not so fortunate and those whose opinions are important to us reflect conditional acceptance and intolerance, our sense of self will be far more fragile, conditional and dependent.

So then, as our capacities for self-reflection increase we are able to review this self that was constructed through the identification process mentioned above. Many of us, at this stage fall into a trap. If our sense of self, our understanding of who we are, was able to be constructed by others before our self-awareness was properly formed, surely now we are self-aware we must be able to develop our own construct of our sense of self. Surely now, at a fundamental psychological level, we could be all “self-made” men and women. Into this enticing space jumped the “pop-psychologists”. They promoted the notion that you and I (and indeed everyone else) could be whatever we wanted to be.

But that course denies a certain truth. There is a foundation to who we are that can’t be changed. We are who we are because of our genetics and our socialisation. Whilst we can modify some of our behaviours when we are aware and proactive, there is yet an underlying platform that is unalterable.

All this frenetic energy to lead us to be what we are not, impedes the second stage of our journey to personal adjustment – to be able to accept ourselves. This process is made hugely difficult if we come to believe as the “pop-psychologists” would have us believe that we are masters of our own self-development. This is not to say that there are not things we can do to aid our own personal development but the latitude that we have to create our sense of self is quite limited.

If we are wise, we come to understand that although our original sense of self was created by others before our self-reflectiveness developed, once that capacity has been acquired there is still an impediment to our ability to manufacture an entirely malleable self-concept. If we thought otherwise it would be almost impossible to “accept ourselves”. If we are unaware of this impediment then we will idealise who we think we should be and when we fall short of this idealistic construct and blame ourselves for not being good enough.

We naturally fall into the all-too-common rationalising tendency and take up a problem-solving mentality that reinforces the inner division between a reformer self and a problematic “me” it wants to change. Psychology teaches us that the alienated , controlling, or rejecting attitude towards the problem at hand is in fact a large part of the problem itself. If we come to understand this then the way opens up to us to look at new ways of resolving the dilemma.

If we become aware, there eventually comes a realisation that there is something standing behind who we are that is indeed immutable. It is beyond transformation. It is beyond rejection. That is who we are no matter what happens. When we realise this, scales fall from our eyes. We are who we are.

This is the final stage of the Phil Harker protocol. Once we come to this realisation we can put the “self” aside. When through this process we can truly “forget ourselves” then the focus shifts from our doing to our being. The “forget yourself” imperative only occurs when we have overcome the dictates of ego. When that happens our world-view is far more objective. It is instructive to remember those times in our lives when we have been happiest. I am willing to bet that if you recall such times you were not thinking of yourself. Alternatively when we are unhappiest are those times when our thoughts of self dominated our thinking. Depressed people, for example, are self-obsessed. It has been said that well adjusted people don’t think less of themselves but think of themselves less!

In the end the decision moves from “what should we do” to “who should we be”. Once we have come to these realisations our “being” becomes more important than our “doing.” And more importantly the question of “who should we be” is only answered satisfactorily when we realise that at the centre of our being is an immutable presence. If we let go trying to be who we are not and accept that which at our essential essence we really are, then life becomes more productive and more satisfying.

Thus the next stage is inexorably not “who should we be?” but “who are we?” And if we have come to an understanding of these dynamics, we will inevitably be reconciled with the fact that this concept of self shaped by our genetics and our socialisation is largely determined for us. Then contentment is achieved by not seeking to be something other but being reconciled with this “self” which is essentially us and largely beyond our immediate control.

Thus, in the face of the mantra of the “pop-psychologists” we can’t be what ever we would want to be, we can only be what we are – and we should be satisfied with that.

When we are able to put aside the self and remove the “self” defence filters that it uses to mediate our view of the world, we are able to see the world more objectively. This is an essential step to the clarity of mind that the Buddhists call mindfulness or Buddha-mind. Here one learns to remain continually present within the movement of experience – whether thought, perception, feeling or sensation.

The Dzogchen Master, Paltrul Rinpoche said, “It is sufficient to simply let your mind rest in the state of whatever takes place, in whatever happens.”

This is the first stage of putting aside duality and removing the barrier between the observer and the observed. (Perhaps a subject worthy of discussion at another time.) But let me leave the last word, to the thirteenth century Japanese Zen Buddhist Master, Dogen Zenji.

“To study the Way is to study the Self.
To study the Self is to forget the Self.
To forget the Self is to be enlightened by all things.
To be enlightened by all things is to forget the
barrier between Self and Other.”

The Ultimate Reality, according to Vedanta, is all-pervading pure consciousness. As one adept wrote, “ [It is] one without a second, beyond all name, form or epithet.”

It is likely that Vedanta was the first belief system to enunciate the dilemma of dualism. It states in the Mundaka Upanishad that “There are two ways of knowing to be attained – as the knowers of Brahman say; a higher and a lower.” The lower mode, termed aparavidya corresponds to symbolic knowledge. This is the inferential knowledge we gain by mapping the world. The higher mode, called paravidya, is the intuitive experience of reality all at once. In the lower mode we progressively build up our knowledge by observation, measurement and apprehension. The higher mode is essentially the non-dual way of knowing when reality is experienced in its totality – when there is no separation between the observer and the observed, the knower and the known , the subject and the object.

Swami Adiswarananda maintains that Vedanta has made three principal contributions to world religious thought:

The first is spiritual democracy. This ensures freedom of worship. It encourages religious tolerance and eschews proselytizing.

The second, he calls “spiritual humanism”. This calls practitioners to serve all. It is based on one of the cardinal teachings of Vedanta, the oneness of existence. By doing good to others we benefit ourselves.

Finally there is Universal unity. Vedanta maintains the presence of one “Soul” in all. Such a philosophy enables us to put aside the accidental differences between humans due to race, culture and belief systems coming between us.

The Swami writes, “Vedanta’s contribution to humanity has been its catholicity of outlook; its spirit of tolerance, even to a fault; and its quest for inner freedom that defies imposition of any limit of race, colour, creed, special claims, or economic or political affiliation.”

Just as in one of its successor belief systems, Buddhism, Vedanta tells us that knowledge of scriptures is not enough to be enlightened. It strongly emphasises personal experience. But then it adds the cautionary note that even experience can mislead us. It contends that the validity of a transcendental experience of spiritual truth can only be assured when that experience is corroborated by scriptural testimony and affirmed by reason.

In this way Vedantic reasoning fellows a threefold process:
• Shravana –hearing the sacred texts.
• Manana –reflecting with reason on what has been heard and read, and
• Nididhyasana – meditating on what has been reasoned about.

With respect to Shravana it is not enough just to hear the words of the sacred texts. The aspirant must seek to grasp the true meaning of the texts. The learner is encouraged to look beyond the literal meaning to understand the wisdom implied in the sacred texts.

Vedantic reasoning does not seek to prove or disprove the reality of the world: its sole purpose is to have the direct apprehension of that which is ultimately Real.

Liberation, according to Vedanta, is freedom from all dictates and superimpositions of ego. It is seeing every relative phenomenon as a reflection of absolute Reality. To quote the good Swami again, “Expressed in theological language, it is the attainment of an all-pervading God consciousness by which one sees God in everything both with eyes open and eyes closed.”

Swami Vivenkananda, the chief disciple of the nineteenth century mystic, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and who is credited with bringing Vedanta to Europe and the USA used a little metaphor to describe this process of liberation through self-knowledge.

“One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean. When it found itself there, it began to weep and complain just as you are doing. The great ocean laughed at the drop of water. ‘Why do you weep?’ it asked. ‘I do not understand. When you join me, you join all your brothers and sisters, the other drops of water of which I am made. You become the ocean itself. If you wish to leave me, you only have to rise up on a sunbeam into the clouds. From there you can descend again, a blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth.’”

[Maybe there are a limited number of cogent metaphors. Until last week I had never read Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s fable. But a little while ago discussing the issue of whether matter (through complexity) manifests as mind, or mind as the primal cause manifests as matter, I used a similar metaphor. I said if I was unaware and you asked me where does water come from, I would say, “It is obvious, water comes from clouds. We have all seen the rain fall from the sky.” But if I had some scientific knowledge I would understand that clouds come from water, the result largely of evaporation from the earth’s oceans. If we view the earth virtually now as a closed system so far as water is concerned then it is always there, sometimes as water, sometimes as ice, sometime as water vapour. And so it is with Mind. It was always there, eternal and the prime cause of everything – even manifesting as matter. My apologies for the small diversion!]

You can see how these ideas from Vedanta translated into some of the beliefs of its derivative belief systems. In Mahayana Buddhism a Bodhisattva is an enlightened being that uses their wisdom to help others progress towards enlightenment.

Ken Wilbur wrote:
“For, in fact, the highest ideal of the mystic is that expressed by the Bodhisattva, who in Mahayana Buddhism is one who sees the Godhead everywhere and everywhen, in every person, place and thing, and thus does not have to retire into solitude and trance in order to find his ‘god’. The Bodhisattva’s mystic vision is identical with whatever he happens to be doing at the moment, and whether that be dancing, working, crying, laughing or intensely suffering, he knows that fundamentally ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,’ for, as Hakuin [17th Century Zen Monk] put it , ‘This very earth is the Lotus Land of Purity; And this body is the body of Buddha’”.

It is quite likely that the modern proponents of Vedanta, from whom I have drawn most of the material for this essay, have idealised their belief system (as would most proponents for other belief systems). Yet it is still wonderful to come across a tradition that is not divisive, not based on guilt and seeks to weld belief with reason and understanding of the human condition.

One day a Sorcerer came to the province. The Emperor was afraid but he held the man in such awe he allowed him into his court.

“Emperor,” said the Sorcerer, “you have been jealously guarding your power. It is for you your most valuable asset.” He came close to the Emperor who cowered away. The Sorcerer made some gestures and the Emperor stood transfixed under his spell. “Close your eyes,” the Sorcerer commanded. The Emperor obeyed. The Sorcerer put his hand forward and it seemed as if it disappeared into the Emperor’s body. The court gasped. He then withdrew his hand and placed its contents into a little casket which he carried. He gestured again and the Emperor was aroused from his trance. He handed the casket to the Emperor. “This will make your task easier. Just guard this casket and never open it and your power can never be sullied.”

After the Sorcerer left, the Emperor placed the casket in a stout chest that he bound with locks and chains. He ordered the royal guards to mount a guard of six strong men on the chest always. Thus he hoped to preserve his power.

After a time he began to have doubts. What if an enemy should come with an army? His guards could be easily overcome. He must find a more secure way of guarding his treasure. Finally he had an idea. He would enlist a dragon to help him. He made a pact with a dragon that lived in the nearby mountains to come and guard the chest.

The dragon came to live in the Emperor’s palace. The Emperor felt secure now that nobody could steal his valuable casket. The dragon proved irksome to live with and over a period of time drove the Emperor’s courtiers and the palace guard out of the palace. Eventually only the Emperor and the dragon remained.

The people still had some concern for their Emperor and they brought baskets of food for him, which they placed outside the palace gates. During the night the Emperor would steal down and retrieve the baskets.

During the day the Emperor would converse with the dragon. “How goes things?” he would say.

The dragon would reply, “There are many who would steal your valuable casket. We should build the palace walls higher to thwart their attempts at stealing your treasure.”

The Emperor agreed and the dragon raised the palace walls. The Emperor could no longer see over the wall. Therefore, every day he would ask the dragon, “How goes things?” The dragon would rise up and peer over the wall. Then he would shake his head and say, “Unfortunately, Emperor, there are many of your enemies gathered outside the wall. I can see some marauding bands from the mountains. There are also some chieftains from the plains gathered with their soldiers. They are all seeking to plunder your casket.”

When the dragon said this the Emperor would hold his head in his hands and wail.

“Have no fear,” the dragon would say. “I can protect your casket. Have faith in me and all will be well.”

As the years passed the dragon raised the walls higher and higher. “We need to protect your valuables,” he insisted. Now the Emperor could see nothing of the external world. He relied on the dragon to tell him of the world beyond the palace walls.

The Emperor would ask, “How goes it?” By now the dragon had to fly up and sit on the wall to examine the world outside the walls.

The dragon would shake his head and flick his great forked tongue about in dismay. “There are still many of your enemies gathered outside. There seem to be some of the tribesman from the east all armed and armoured. As well there are archers on horseback under the command of a large imposing fellow bearing a bronze shield and astride a huge black horse.”

The Emperor shivered with fear. “Do not concern yourself,” the dragon responded. “I will keep you safe.”

For many, many years this charade was played out. Then, after what had seemed an age had passed, the villagers noted that the baskets of food they had left the Emperor went untouched. They accumulated in a pile at the entrance to the castle.

The palace had also lost its grandeur. Some of the walls had crumbled and fallen. So much so, that a group of the villagers were able to clamber over the wall and go in search of the old man. They quickly found that the Emperor had died. His body lay alongside the chest, all wrapped with chains and locks. In his hand the corpse still grasped tightly the keys to the locks. They prized the keys from the clenched hand, unlocked the locks, and unwrapped the chains from around the chest. The hinges were by now very rusty but they managed to force open the lid to reveal the little casket the Emperor had placed there so many years ago. One bent over and withdrew the casket. He blew the dust off the lid and then opened it. There was nothing inside except a little bit of parchment with a few characters written on it. Nobody from the group could read the meaning of the few sparse strokes of the calligrapher’s hand. They replaced the crumbling parchment gently back into the casket and carefully transported it back to the village. There had been no sign of any dragon. And when they recollected the days of the court of the Emperor there was no mention of a Sorcerer.

Back in the village they found a scribe who could interpret what was written on the parchment. This was his interpretation.

When ego pursues power it comes to find that fear is merely the shadow of power, and it can’t have the one without the other.’

But what can I tell you about what it is like to be me? Unfortunately not very much! The experience is intensely personal and our language has no adequate tools to describe it. All I can say is that whoever or whatever “I” am is a seemingly continuous experience (perhaps except for those passages of time I am in deep sleep and not conscious of experience). [Some research suggests even this continuity is illusory and my mind conveniently fills in gaps when they occur.]

“I” seem to be the consciousness that affords me the privilege of being aware of this experience. This theatre of consciousness is what we have come to call “mind”.

In the early eighties I chanced upon a book called “The Mind’s I” edited by two famous American philosophers, Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. Included in this splendid collection was a piece titled, What does it mean to be a bat?”, by Thomas Nagel. (If you are interested you can easily access a copy of this paper by googling its title on the internet.) Nagel used this piece to argue against Dennett’s proposition that the mind is simply a phenomena resulting from the electrochemistry of the brain. Dennett went on to write his book “Consciousness Explained” where he proposes that consciousness is a function of the complexity and the recursivity of the brain. Nagel in attempting to refute this explanation wrote:

“Does it make sense, to ask what my experiences are really like as opposed to how they appear to me? We can not genuinely understand the hypothesis that their nature is captured in a physical description unless we understand the more fundamental idea that they have an objective nature (or that objective processes can have a subjective nature).”

Nagel offered an approach which he believed might help resolve the dilemma.

“This should be regarded as a challenge to form new concepts and devise a new method – an objective phenomenology not dependant on empathy or the imagination. Though presumably it would not capture everything, its goal would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of experiences in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences.”

Of course (certainly to my understanding) we have made no progress in taking up Nagel’s challenge. The physicalist, reductionist approach championed by Dennett seems to be in the ascendency. Hofstadter, cleverly avoiding the main thrust of Nagel’s article ridiculed the topic asking why hadn’t Nagel asked such questions as:

• What is it like to work at MacDonald’s?
• What is it like to climb Mt Everest?
• What would it be like to be J S Bach writing the last movement of the Italian Concerto?
• What is it like to be the opposite sex?
• What would it be like to be your mirror image?

He maintained that the image conjured up by the phrase “What is it like to be X?” is so seductive and tempting and our minds are so flexible, so willing to accept this notion that there is “something it is like to be a bat” when there isn’t. He therefore concluded that this was a nonsensical concept.

I think it was Julian Jaynes in his epic “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (even the title was an epic!) who pointed out that one of the problems of understanding or describing consciousness is because there are no real analogies or metaphors we can use to help us. There is nothing like consciousness which is probably just another way of saying what Nagal was trying to say in his essay.

Aldous Huxley showed us that consciousness is the outcome also of a reducing function that selectively eliminates much from mind. To begin with even the sensory inputs that inform our consciousness limit information. We can only see the visual spectrum of light. Our senses can’t detect for example infrared radiation or x-rays. We can’t hear the high frequencies of sound detectable by bats. Our sense of smell is poor compared to dogs. And all this necessarily so. If we were bombarded with too much sensory stimulation we wouldn’t have the capacity to process it and make sense of it.

But this reducing function is more powerful than just filtering sensory inputs. Consciousness is focussed on what we pay attention to. I am sitting here at my computer typing these words and thinking of what I want to say next. I am quite oblivious to the birdsongs emanating from my garden or the beauty of the roses just outside my office window until I stop and reengage with my environment.

Whilst consciousness is hugely important, it is also easy to overstate its importance. There is much going on in the background unilluminated by the torchlight of consciousness that still has a huge bearing on our lives. So much of what we do is greatly influenced by our assumptions and beliefs that are firmly ensconced in our minds outside our conscious awareness. We are all hugely influenced by our subconscious minds.

It is also informative to ask ourselves with the advantage of consciousness what do we know, what do we learn directly. Can you tell me, does the door of your bathroom open from the right or from the left? What is your second longest finger on your right hand? If you are reading this blog in a particular room can you tell me what items appear on the wall behind you? Or even more perversely, imagine the last time you went swimming in the ocean. We believe that we retrieve such information from memory – but of course we don’t. We manufacture our memories. I’ll bet that if you remembered the last time you went swimming in the ocean you saw yourself doing just that. How can that be possible? Your memories should have been of the water in front of your face, your arms cleaving the sea – there is no way you could have seen your body tussling with the ocean.

I know of several instances where people have vouchsafed experiences that are stark in their memories but other people who were there at the time have contradicted them. I know of several people who have told me they were present when various things occurred only to have others tell me they weren’t. We believe what we want to believe and those intriguing stories we’ve told about others inevitably have us as participants even when we were nowhere near.. We tell the stories and identify with them and before we know it we are participants.

And we instanced above some of the difficulties of understanding consciousness. There is of course one major hurdle which I have elicited a few times in my blogs. Here is another take on it by Michael Frayn in his book “The Human Touch”.

“Anything in the world, or out of it, can be perceived or thought about, or both, and represented in our various codes. The only thing that systematically eludes us, whichever way we turn, is the something upon which everything else depends. The conscious subject that gives meaning to the objective universe cannot give meaning to itself. Without it nothing can be understood; about it nothing can be said.”

But the question I now want to put to you is “where is the location of this consciousness.”

In stark contrast I would ask you to relate to one of the following statements:

1. I have a brain.
2. I am a brain.

Obviously, if I relate my identity, my sense of self to my consciousness the reductionists believe that the second statement is true.

Well, I am sorry it doesn’t seem that way to me. I find it impossible to believe that consciousness is somehow prised out of a material entity we call the brain. It is probably why I titled this blog “The Mind of Ted”; but sitting where I sit whilst it seems to me that my brain is a pretty important appendage, just like my heart or my liver and it gives me certain computational advantages, I find it difficult to believe that it alone bestows consciousness on me.

If I were to resume our initial debate and were to comment on what it means to be Ted (rather than what it means to be a bat) I would have to say it is this unique and exquisite experience of my consciousness. I can not see how I could possibly share that experience with you. I infer, merely because you and I share many physical and mental attributes, that you have a similar experience – but I can never be sure. And even if there is some commonality in our experience I know that we will never share the same experience because I have a different biological history, I have had a different socialisation and I have different environmental cues to deal with than you do.

I don’t know and possibly can’t imagine however I would know what it is to be a bat. But I don’t know, and possibly can’t imagine what it would be like to be you. And you have no objective knowledge about what it is like to be me. (You might even prefer to be a bat!)

Yet here is the greatest quandary of all. The subjective experience of each of us is very different. But at the source of it all, it seems obvious to me that there is but one consciousness that we all share in. This experience is mediated by our personal circumstances, but it is essentially the same experience. Brahman and Atman play out their never ending dichotomy. But however different I might seem to be, at the level of consciousness you and I are, at a fundamental level, the same. And rather than our spiritual experience being a derivative of our physical makeup, it seems clear to me, in contrast to whatever Daniel Dennett might believe, that our concrete beings are a manifestation of our consciousness. So you and I might manifest various differences in our physical, spiritual and psychological makeup, but we cannot escape the commonality that emanates from mind and our shared consciousness.

And so we break it down to that little bit we can physically ‘know’; that we can mentally circumscribe. When you understand that the universe (or indeed perhaps even universes) exist eternally and all at once, the act of creation must be looked at differently. In effect there is nothing to create because everything that ever was or could possibly exist is there already. Then what is created? It is an illusion of reality. We have believed from our studies of physics that the universe was prised out of nothing. It seems to me now to be exactly the opposite. We are, as Bernhard Haisch, astrophysicist and author has written, part of a “process that makes something out of everything!” Consequently the world as we know it, this illusion created by the limitations of our physical and conceptual knowing, relies on a reductionist process of taking away until reality is pared down to something small enough to match our awareness.

And so we create an I and a you that are seemingly separate from everything else. We then seem to be alienated from the Ground of Being, God, the All (as per my recent little blasphemous blog!) – whatever we have learned to call it. This is what creates the human dilemma. Separation causes fear. It manufactures a perceived vulnerability, highlighted by our sense of mortality. We take steps to protect ourselves as do these other little crumbs of the ultimate reality we now need to deal with as other human beings in this limited bit of time and space we have shaved off in order to experience our separateness. As a result we become competitive, insecure, untrusting and fearful.

Ken Wilbur quoted Sri Ramana Maharshi attempting to resolve this paradox;

The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.

(It is amazing how something evolving from the Vedanta tradition could sound so Zen –like!)

In 1944, Aldous Huxley published “The Perennial Philosophy.” In this book he underlined some of the pervading themes in the major religious traditions.

He enunciated the four fundamental doctrines at the core of the Perennial Philosophy as follows:

1. The phenomenal world of matter and individualised consciousness is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being and apart from which they would be non-existent.
2. Human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realise its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
3. Man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
4. Man’s life on earth has only one end and one purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

Huxley maintained that the Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula tat tvam asi (“That thou art.); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.

Now I must say I find this a much more satisfying and consoling thought than Jesus coming again or Allah allowing me into paradise with whatever my allotment of virgins might be!

A Note to my Younger Readers
(This probably includes only Cathy and Father Robin, I suspect – but they’re worth the effort!)
• These days “phenomenal” is used in a more colloquial way to mean “extraordinary, remarkable prodigious,” for example. In the instance above (“phenomenal ego”) phenomenal means arising from the phenomena, that is the phenomena of separation and physicality.

• The language used by Huxley above in defining his four doctrines would be seen possibly as sexist today. However in his time “man” was generally interpreted as humankind and the use of the masculine pronouns was understood to include the feminine. And one could understand an imperious and paternalistic style because the sun was still never setting on the British Empire! Interestingly Huxley has belatedly been given some recognition for his enlightened views on women. An early essay, for example took the cosmetic industry to task for demeaning women.

“I have being reading your blogs with interest – and sometimes bewilderment (old cowboy, you know) – & just wish to make a brief comment on ‘A small tilt at the monarchy’; you will note I have kept lower case!

Whilst not describing myself as a ‘rabid’ republican, I am very much of the view that once QE2 departs in whatever way this happens, I will probably become more ‘rabid’. I am appalled at the thought of having as ‘our’ monarch a bloke who a) wanted to be a Tampon, & b) talks to flowers: clearly a loony among a long line of similar types.

Having said that, my real concern is as to what form an Australian Republic might take insofar as its Head of State. Like it or not, our current system has served us generally fairly well & with stability so my preference is for a continuation of the system without the ties to an ancient series of accidents of birth, wars, in house arrangements, beheadings etc. In my view these arrangements have what seems a significant benefit to commercial UK, but of no use whatsoever – other than the notation above – to Australia.

I am fearful of a popularly elected ‘President’ because this would simply become a political dog fight & we could end up with Wally Lewis or Cathy Freeman and with it, a very expensive process. Much as I have, from time to time, a contempt for the legal profession I think the US system where the head of the Supreme Court is a de-facto sort of Governor General ( swearing in, etc) would work as long as activists were avoided. The Armed services have also generally been a good resource for middle of the road candidates but the churches should stay at home & tidy up their own mess.

Perhaps a joint sitting of the Federal Parliament as well as a couple from each State (Premier & A-G) with a 2/3 majority might work in confirming from a short list that had run the gamut of a public hearing. The essential issue is to maintain stability of the system with all its warts & moles without disturbing the Constitutional role of the ‘Crown’ which in this case would rest in the office of the ‘Governor General’ and in turn provide continuity at each State level.

I could go on but you get my drift & I suppose this is really a challenge for you to go past the ‘tilt’ and use your intellect to chew on the meat.”

Now, (as usual from Mark) I found that was a pragmatic and quite useful contribution to the debate on the monarchy and I am grateful he has allowed me to share it with you.

Shortly after being introduced to my blog site he e-mailed to say how he enjoyed my little weekly essays. Attached to his e-mail was a document he had titled “On Life in General” which summarised his views over a range of subjects.

His essay is a little long for a single blog, so I will share some of it with you all this week. I do so with his permission. Brian is the author of the rest of the text below.

“I have put together the following thoughts since 2005, after I was diagnosed with cancer and it is has now become much more apparent to me that I face mortality just as any other person. Before that time and that occasion, I was of a different mindset, and somewhat unprepared to consider how I have lived and how I might leave this world.

My choice of subjects is somewhat eclectic, and covers those things which have been important to me throughout life, but becoming more so in recent years
Religion

There is no doubt in my mind that apart from the nuclear family, religion is the major philosophical force driving the world. Religion has been defined by many great thinkers, but must always be a relatively subjective term. It has been rare in history and its writings that a totally objective view has been taken.

In my attempt to remove the subjectivity, I believe one should stand outside the boundaries of conventional thought and take the “ab initio” view. In this position I would define religion as follows:

A system of beliefs, values and codes which have been derived by men to meet the neesd of groups of humans for a framework within which to live and co-exist.

It is useful to discuss how this need and the answers to it have evolved in the different civilisations. Whilst the first determinant of that evolution has probably been the geographical distribution of the groups, there is of course ample evidence that religions have been influenced and modified by interaction with each other as the isolation has been overcome and broken down. The spread of Buddhism from its origins in India into China, and the emergence from Judaism of Christianity and subsequently Islam are examples.

With few exceptions (Shinto?), religions feature the existence or recognition of a superior being or beings, sometimes a deity in the image of kingship, or otherwise in the veneration of the religion’s originator, as with the Buddha, or the Bab in the Bah’ai faith. Why is this?

There is no doubt that this, ie the installation or acceptance of an originator or leader, is the single most common thread to all religions. Muhammed, Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, and the many appointees or disciples of these figures are the ones which come to mind. There are few religions that have continued to exist without this cornerstone. My own belief is that it is embedded in human nature to need or to accept that there is always going to be someone who is “the superior being”. We see this in sport, politics, the military context and commerce. Most of us seem to have a need for this, and a few the capacity to fulfil that need, hence the hero cult sometimes apparent in our various societies, and in the derived cultures and organisations.

In the absence of scientific expertise or fact-based reasoning, it is highly probable that the concept of the superior being was the first and easiest explanation of the otherwise unexplained phenomena of sun, tides, weather, heavenly bodies and other events not able to be controlled or explained. The story of humankind is replete with examples of how individuals within groups have sought to advantage themselves by the manipulation of others through the power of suggestion, magic and the presentation of a plausible explanation of certain events. A cynical view would hold that this has reached its ultimate and current form in the institution of politics within the nations of the modern era.

In stating the above, I do not attempt to denigrate those who have a religious faith, conventional or otherwise, nor would I attempt to change their position. I accept that if it works for them, without penalty of any sort to others, they should adhere to it for so long as it does.

What I do not abide is that any person, from a religious or other standpoint should seek to convert another to his or her way of thinking, apart from a healthy and robust debate. The coercive methods employed by some religious institutions and leaders are to be deplored.

The artifice of opulence used to impress the gullible is a feature of many of the world’s religions, notably the Catholic faith, viz. the treasures of the Vatican. This is to be deplored, and must represent an anachronistic attempt to control people.

Politics
Churchill is reported to have said “democracy may not perfect, but it beats the hell out of the next best thing!” I would agree with this, although it should not prevent us from refining the form of it.

Politics to me is a necessary part of the human existence. While it appears to be the refuge of those who would seek power under the pretence of doing good things for their fellows, I feel this is a necessary price to pay for the benefits of having strong minded people at the helm of the human ship. Without this the ship would run aground, or seek shelter at all times, without daring to challenge the unexplored and the unexplained.

I m not one who considers politicians necessarily to be persons of the highest moral standing, or the broadest credibility, within our society, but I do accept their existence, and their mandate within the democratic framework. There are of course those who are called to that profession by the profound realisation that their talents are desperately needed. Those I admire, so long as they continue to rise above the too frequent grubby and egocentric actions of their lesser companions.
Nations
I believe that the days of the nation state as we have known it, are numbered. The convergence of cultures, the power of communication, the expansion of trade and the understanding which flows from these things are powers which will inexorably lead to a world in which the higher values are shared and the lower ones eradicated.

The other power for the integration of the peoples of the world is that our knowledge and understanding of each other is becoming much greater as the years move on. As an Australian, I am firmly of the view that the progress we have seen recently in reconciliation with our own indigenous people, and the acceptance of refugees from very different cultures will allow us to realize that we are all of the human mould and that there are many more things binding us than there are dividing us.

This is not to say that is no place for the maintenance of the discrete and wonderful diversity of cultures in the world – we could not continue to enhance our lives without preserving and embracing our differences.

I look forward to the day in which any person from any part of our world will be able to travel, and to meet and converse without fear, any other person. I believe that some of our global institutions are striving towards this goal and I sincerely hope that success is not too far away.

It is useful to consider the origin of nations in arriving at their current attitude to war and peace.

United States of America

The US has had a history significantly more bloodied than Australia’s, for instance. Its origins were cast against a regime of long term oppression and aggression, resolved by a war to assert and achieve its independence. Its development was a moving tapestry of lawlessness and territorial conquest. I note that it was not until 1959 that the most recent of its States was joined to the Union, albeit peacefully, notwithstanding the forced annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in the late 19th century.

In addition, the Mexican incursion, the “Wild West”, the Civil War, the Indian Wars the Spanish-American War, all further developed a national mentality of survival, conquest, and rule by force which persists to this day. Even the activities of the Chicago gangsters and the Mafia were allowed to flourish in this ambience. Of note in this respect is the following quotation:

“ …..Summing up, our policy should always be to support the weaker against the stronger, until we have exterminated them both, in order to preserve the Pearl of the Antilles”
Major-General of Volunteers JC Breckinridge on the Spanish-American War, 1898.

Who would deny that US foreign policy is tethered to this principle to this day?

And another:

“War with Spain would increase the business and earnings of every American railroad, it would increase the output of every American factory, it would stimulate every branch of industry and domestic commerce”

Senator Thurston, Nebraska, advocating the declaration of war with Spain, 1898.

Who would deny that that American industry is still an advocate of war as the primary instrument of its own survival and progress?

Whenever there is a threat to their nation, perceived or otherwise, the American reaction is to respond in a militaristic and brutal manner. They do not have a natural inclination to negotiation, relying instead on their superiority in arms.

Today, this reliance is not abated if the threat is simply of an economic origin. There was a time early in its history that the Americans, having had enough of war, considered that the primary national goal should be the maintenance of the country’s economic well being. Alexander Hamilton was the leading proponent of this after the War of Independence. His influence has been lost.

I observe also that the provision of the US Constitution allowing citizens the right to bear arms, conceived by necessity during the War of Independence, does nothing to compel US citizens to seek solution by negotiation first.

The way ahead is tied to the ability of US administrations to “de-couple” itself from the industrial-military complex, recognizing it as a betrayal of the country’s founding principles and democratic values. They must review their own history and recognize that the Declaration of Independence is still valid as the touchstone of democracy, and concentrate on preserving those stated values

Of even greater danger than the US predilection for achievement of its objectives by force is its elitist attitude. The US claims the role of world ‘peace keeper’, but at the same time preserves and promotes its own economic interests: a curious and dangerous combination of self-appointed referee, and player on the field.

The establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in1921 is testament to that. The CFR defines itself as “A research center dedicated to understanding the world by better comprehending global trends and contributing ideas to US foreign policy”,
( www.cfr.org ) but in reality it seeks to advise the US Government on ways in which the US can establish and dominate a world in which nation states are no more and there is a single and undemocratic world government. The CFR was the driving force behind the establishment of the United Nations.

Notwithstanding all of the above comments, I believe that the founding principles of the US are the most elevated, ideal and commendable of any nation on this earth today, and it is a great pity that the dichotomy between intention and method continues to inhibit the human progress of that great nation.

It is to be hoped that the Obama Administration is capable of overhauling US commitment to achieving power through the barrel of the gun and move to a period of negotiation and co-operation to achieve its implied objective of a better world for all people. In the reasonable hope that Obama himself may be the best thing to happen to the world in a long time, he may be able to light a beacon for the future of our planet.

Australia
Australia had a birth in a very different adversity to that of the US, and has achieved its greatness through persistence, with founding principles very similar to those of the US, but has had the good fortune to have done this generally in an atmosphere of peaceful negotiation without resorting to wholesale lawlessness and violence.

It puzzles me to a degree that Australia has not been able to detach itself from the US policies particularly in respect of Israel and Iraq, but has blindly followed the “me too!” attitude so eloquently expressed by Harold Holt in his “All the way with LBJ!” speech in 1966.

Britain
The British story is a different one again. In common with its contemporaries, it sought military and commercial dominance over other peoples, and used any and all means at its disposal to put those peoples into positions of servitude and oppression. That nation has finally realized that it has not been able to sustain a rule by force, and has had to capitulate to the need to negotiate with others on an equal footing.

Nevertheless, it continues to follow the US lead in most areas.”

Thank you Brian for allowing me to share this with my readership. I will include the remainder of your essay at another time.

“Particles, in fact, don’t exist. Consider a particle we all know and love, the electron. They’re all the same. You know if you produced an electron on the other side of the universe, and you brought it here and compared it with an electron, they’re the same. Not in the same way you pick up two red billiard balls and say, “These are pretty similar”. We say they are identical. This is because the electron as a separate, distinct entity …. doesn’t really exist, They are merely bumps in something called ‘field’ which is a property of space and time. And if it’s true of fundamental particles, it’s true of everything they make up, including us. And so at some level we don’t exist.”

This is indeed a marvellous conclusion. The universe, which seems so real and physically imposing, has no more substance than, perhaps a thought or a dream. The Hindus, in fact believe that the Universe is merely a dream of Brahma. Astrophysicist, Sir James Jeans, wrote in the 1930’s:

“The stream of human knowledge is impartially heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm.”

But then he, of course, added this cautionary note:

“The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.”

The famous physicist, Niels Bohr in his book Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge wrote tellingly:

“For a parallel to the lessons of atomic theory we must turn to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonise our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.”

Our dilemma in trying to get a handle on reality is thwarted by the fact that we never confront reality directly. And then, because our representation of reality is so much easier to grasp than reality itself, we tend to confuse the two and to take our concepts and symbols for reality. The semanticist Alfred Korzybski pointed this out with insightful slogan “The map is not the territory.”

This problem has been identified by some of the world’s wisdom traditions. In the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu wrote, “The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao.”

The knowledge that comes to us directly, without an intermediary, the Buddhists call ‘absolute knowledge’. Frtitjof Kapra in his 1975 classic, The Tao of Physics, in describing ‘absolute knowledge’, wrote;

“It is we are told by Buddhists the direct experience of undifferentiated, undivided, indeterminate ‘suchness’. Complete apprehension of this ‘suchness’ is not only the core of Eastern mysticism, but is the central characteristic of all mystical experience.”

Is this then not just an unleashing of consciousness? It has always seemed to me that the universe is but a manifestation of consciousness.

Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist and author of The God Theory writes:

“I am proposing, in The God Theory, that ultimately it is consciousness that is the origin of matter, energy, and the laws of nature in this universe and all others that may exist.”

Right at the basis of quantum theory we learned that at the level of fundamental particles we could not depend on any quantifiable outcomes until there was an observer. All quantum functions are prescribed by probability. They are smeared all over the place within determined probabilistic distributions. It is only when there is an observer that the quantum function collapses into something definite. It seems to me that there could never be a physical world with deterministic outcomes unless there was an observer. But there has always been an observer. The observer has in fact been the creator of all these phenomena. It is the Universal Consciousness that has unleashed a material manifestation. And we all are ensconced in it and share a little of its tremendous creativeness.

Sir James Jeans seemed to have hit the nail on the head for me. The universe is a great thought. And we are all privileged to be part of that thinking.