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.

There are many reasons why I deplore the notion of the monarchy, and if I went into them all I would have to write a book rather than post a blog. Because I am already engaged in the task of writing another book, finding the time to write one denigrating all the faults of the monarchy is currently beyond my capacity. Thus, in this short offering I will deal with just one of the ludicrous features of the monarchy, and in particular the only monarchy of any relevance to Australia, (and the concern is that it should have any relevance at all), the British monarchy. (I have deliberately avoided the temptation of using a capital letter!) This particularly annoying feature is the fact that if you are a senior member of this deplorable institution it seems to give you some perception of credibility such that your utterances are seriously reported on in the popular press however inane they are.

Well, I’m sure you knew I would have to give you an example. While it pains me to do so, I will refer you to some recent press articles reporting the words of the vacuous Prince Charles speaking at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies to mark its 25th anniversary. The Times on June 9 2010 ran an article titled “Prince Charles blames world’s ills on ‘soulless consumerism’ and Galileo.” In his speech he criticised the profit imperative behind much scientific research and was quoted as saying,

“This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in nature but quantity and motion. This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works, and how we fit into the scheme of things. As a result Nature has been completely objectified – ‘She’ has become an ‘it’ – and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.”

He went on to say, green technology alone could not solve the world’s environmental problems. Instead the West must do something about its “deep inner crisis of the soul”.

It is difficult to reconcile his complaint about “soulless consumerism” with the profligate lifestyle of one of the royals. You could hardly say they are models of frugality. His official residence is listed as Clarence House, the previous abode of the late Queen Mother. However he also owns a private estate on Gloucestershire and one in Scotland. He and his family possess immense wealth, all due to an accident of birth, and have often been great exemplars of conspicuous consumption.

But let us get back to the main tenor of his argument. Galileo with great courage, and in contradiction with the unmindful belief of the church, showed us that the earth was not the centre of the universe. This caused great consternation amongst his contemporaries who had always believed that the sun revolved around the earth and consequently put the earth at the centre of the solar system. Galileo’s observations showed that the earth was but a small planet in a huge universe and of no great consequence in the scheme of things. What we need now is his political equivalent to modify our government in such a way that we recognise politically, just as we do intellectually, that the monarchy is not the centre of our political system, and the principal figures that inhabit that institution are but ordinary people and of no great consequence either in the scheme of things.

I have no strong feelings about Prince Charles as a person, but I can see no evidence that his words bear any authority other than that his title bestows upon him. Lest you accuse me of singling out the monarchy for this criticism, I am also appalled how the world seems to fawn over the inconsequential, ill-informed utterances of pop stars, film stars, TV personalities and sporting heroes.

Charles seems to be a romanticist and an idealist. I would probably describe myself similarly. But the music of life is necessarily contrapuntal where romanticism and idealism need to be balanced by science and reason. Morality is inherent in human beings, not in science which is essentially neutral. Therefore to blame Galileo’s discoveries for the perceived shortcomings in human behaviour is ludicrous.

Let us contemplate a moment on nature. What do we mean by nature? Nature is the collection of physical and organic systems that drive the universe. Whilst the human phenomenon is part of nature, it is often seen to be in competition with or inimical to the other natural phenomena. We for example make such distinctions as the natural environment as opposed to the built environment. We often talk about naturally occurring phenomena as opposed to man-made or man-induced phenomena. Despite this, however you might want to interpret it, nature is a collection of organic and physical systems. Metaphorically we often describe nature (as Charles alludes) as “She” just as we once referred to ships and cyclones. If we use such personification as a metaphor it helps to elicit some of the characteristics of such things. But if we come to believe that nature (then possibly Nature) is some coherent being (Being) then we are falling for that old trick that the Zen Buddhists highlighted for us. They said, “When the sage points to the moon the fool merely sees the finger.” This is the trap that all fundamentalists fall for. So, sorry Charlie, nature is actually an “it” rather than a “she” even if it helps us sometimes to so personify it. As an aside, it is surprising that the likely future head of the Anglican Church could hold such a pseudo-pantheistic belief!

I am sorry if you find the above a little churlish and inconsequential compared to my usual subject matter. It probably resulted from my having to endure another Queen’s Birthday holiday. (Why couldn’t we have a holiday in celebration of Einstein, Ghandi, “Weary” Dunlop, Fred Hollows or somebody actually significant?)

In doing a little research in support of my stance I found that Christopher Hitchens had already taken up the cudgels in an article titled “Heir to Throne Attacks Science and Good Sense’. Hitchens is a far better writer but also rather more acerbic than I am and you might care to look at his response. But I will finish with a short quote from his article.

“A hereditary head of state, as Thomas Paine so crisply phrased it, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary physician or a hereditary astronomer. To this innate absurdity Prince Charles manages to bring fatuities that are entirely his own.”

A bubble on the stream,
Raised by the splashing rain, which merrily
Dances along the swiftly gliding wave,
Full of apparent life, then suddenly
Breaks and leaves no trace behind
To show where it hath been….

A summer moth,
Hovering, at night around the candle-flame,
And finding first its transient joy of life,
And then its death….

A frail banana-leaf,
Spreading its beauties to the morning wind
And broken in a trice…

A dream that comes to lure the soul with sham reality,
Yet fading in a moment, when the mind
Wakes to the truth…..

A shadow on the path
Lacking all substance, echo without voice,
Vain fantasy of action……

Such is life.

Buddhist Meditation by Zeisho Aisuko

Recently, one of the executives I coach told me of the recent loss of a loved one. We talked about the sense of loss one feels when we lose someone who has been significant in our lives. But there is also a sense of release when we have watched them age and lose their physical, and (even more distressingly,) their mental capability.

It is said that Western societies hide death. People seldom die at home any more. They spend their last days in hospitals certainly being well cared for and appropriately drugged so as to avoid any undue pain. And I suppose we should be grateful for that. None of us wants to see our loved ones suffer. But how often is it that a life ceases behind the closed curtains of a hospital ward? A soul departs without the due recognition of an appropriate bon voyage. Someone medicated to unawareness leaves us by themselves with the importance of such a life not properly acknowledged by us to them.

In preparing ourselves for our own inevitable demise what are we to do? The Buddhists teach us a salutary lesson. They tell us to imagine ourselves dead! Would it matter if the headstone was not so big? Would it matter if our obituary in the local newspaper didn’t fill a quarter of a page? Of course not! Bones in the ground are a great trigger to humility and the proper sense of ego. (I have written a meditation involving this concept. For those who are interested it is contained in the commentary at the end of Chapter 28 of “Augustus Finds Serenity.”)

The Buddhist meditation heading this blog underlines life’s brevity and transience. In “Augustus Finds Serenity” I used a similar thought embedded in a Buddhist parable.. I have outlined it below with another such parable in the commentary.

“The young Master Samadha went off to find the legendary teacher Wung Fei. After many trials and tribulations he finally came to the hut of the Master. The Master invited him in.

‘Oh Sage,’ commented the young man, ‘You live in a very spare environment. Why is that?’

The old man merely smiled. ‘Samadha you come to me yourself unencumbered. You carry little with you. Yet you are surprised that I have few material possessions. Why is it that you have so little with you?’

‘It is simple, my Lord. I have little with me because I am merely passing through.’

‘Ah, but that is the nub of it. I have such few possessions because I also am merely passing through.’”

“When we understand the intemporality of our existence, how can material possessions be of any consequence?”

Once, Augustus asked Takygulpa to explain how a life should be viewed.
“Imagine it is night, and you are a bat. You fly through the darkness. Eventually you approach a small hut. In the hut there is a candle. The candle lights up the room with its brightness. By good fortune, the window is open. You fly through the window and out the open door on the other side. That short passage through the lightened room is like a life!”

“Is that all there is?” says Augustus in surprise. “What about reincarnation?”

“Perhaps there are other huts with open doors or windows up ahead,” replied the sage. “But can you rely on that?”

(We will come back to the notion of reincarnation a little later.)

This notion of transience is also reflected in a Sufi parable about the enigmatic Khidr (“The Green One”) of pre-Islamic lore.

Once Khidr went to a king’s palace and made his way right up to the throne. Such was the strangeness of his appearance that none dared to stop him. The king, who was Ibrahim ben Adam , asked him what he was looking for.

The visitor said, “I am looking for a sleeping place in this caravanserai.”

Ibrahim answered, “This is no caravanserai – this is my palace.”

The stranger said, “Whose was it before you?”

“My father’s,” said Ibrahim.

“And before that?”

“My grandfather’s.”

“And this place where people come and go, staying and moving on, you call other than a caravanserai?”

Sogyal Rinpoche advises thus:

“Looking into death needn’t be frightening or morbid. Why not reflect on death when you are really inspired, relaxed and comfortable………….
These are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience and your whole worldview can change quickly.”

Various traditions tell us that life and what we perceive as reality is only an illusion. The Lankavatara Sutra has this to say:

“The world seen by discrimination is like seeing one’s image reflected in a mirror, or one’s shadow, or the moon reflected in the water, or an echo heard in the valley. People grasping their own shadow of discrimination become attached to this thing and that thing and failing to abandon dualism they go on forever discriminating and thus never attain tranquillity. By tranquillity is meant Oneness and Oneness gives birth to the highest Samadhi …….”

Many have postulated that while the body is mortal, that which observes the body, the seat of consciousness, the audience of our thoughts, – sometimes called the Witness – is indeed immortal. This concept, as well as that of the illusory world was taken up in my little book of parables, “Augustus Finds Serenity.”

Augustus remembering a lesson from Takygulpa Rinpoche replied, “When you understand who you really, really are, then there is no pain and suffering. It is true that your body may suffer; it is true that your mind may suffer; but at the level of the Witness there is no suffering. Our hearts go out to those who are deceived and identify themselves with mind and body, but underneath it all we know all is well.”

He continued, “You do not suffer. Only the person you imagine yourself to be suffers.”

“Let me try to illustrate with a Zen parable. There was a Master who taught his disciples that the entire world is an illusion and it was folly to become attached to an illusion. The Master had an only son and through some misfortune the son was killed. A disciple went to the Master and found him weeping.

‘Why do you weep?’ asked the disciple. ‘After all, the world and everything in it is an illusion.’

‘Ah yes,’ agreed the Master, ‘but to lose an only son is the cruellest of all illusions.’

It is hard to put aside those emotional attachments we have. It seems part of the human condition to hang on to them. But the enlightened understand that although all the earthly manifestations may seem to point to the contrary – all is well. So you see that although I might cling to some notions of injustices and suffering, in the final analysis there is no injustice and there is no suffering, for all is well.”

Let us briefly comment again on the Witness. A famous Zen Koan says, “Show me your Original Face, the Face you had before your parents were born.” Ken Wilbur explains:

“This is not a trick question or a symbolic question; it is very straightforward, with a clear and simple answer. Your Original Face is simply the pure, formless Witness prior to the manifest world. The pure Witness, itself being timeless or prior to time, is equally present at all points of time. So of course this is the Self you had before your parents were born; it is the self you had before the Big Bang, too. And it is the Self you will have after your body – and the entire universe – dissolves.”

The mystics are unanimous that death contains the secret to life.
We briefly mentioned reincarnation above. Reincarnation was a belief of the Pythagoreans, most Hindus and many Buddhists. The Eastern traditions use the term samsara to describe the endless cycles of births and rebirths. While to Western eyes to be reborn might seem some sort of a triumph, in these Eastern traditions it is not, because they believe suffering is the inevitable fate of all who live. The ultimate goal is moksha which is spiritual liberation allowing the soul to be free of the cycle of samsara. For philosophical Hindus, progress from one life to another is determined by karma.(literally action). Each rebirth is guided by the moral action in the previous life. In the ethical monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, human beings are rewarded and punished for their good and bad deeds by a good and just God. In Hinduism, however, consequences follow from actions without any supernatural intervention. Inherent in the notion of karma is the fact that evil actions produce punishments and good actions produce rewards. As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad puts it, we wander in the cycle of transmigration according to our deeds. (Remember the bumper sticker – “My karma ran over your dogma”?)

Stephen Prothero though explains the underlying philosophy that allows us to move from samsara to moksha this way:
“Hindus refer to the essence of the human being as Atman, which is typically translated as ‘self’ or ‘soul’. The essence of divinity they refer to as Brahman. And the liberating wisdom of Hindus who walk this jnana (wisdom) path is as simple and as complicated as this – the individual soul is divine. The essence of each of us is uncreated, deathless and immortal. Atman and Brahman are one and the same.
Quite a few of the themes above I have explored in previous blogs.
Our fear of death largely comes from the primary dualism where we have separated ourselves from everything else which ends up having ourselves identify with our bodies and our egos that Phil Harker continues to remind us are “vulnerable, attackable, rejectable and mortal!” This generates our existential angst.
Let me again quote from Ken Wilbur.
“The fact that life and death are “not two” is extremely difficult for most individuals to grasp, and the difficulty lies not in the direction of complexity but rather of simplicity – it is not too complex to understand it, it is rather too simple, so that we miss it at the very point where we begin to think about it. Life is ordinarily taken to be something that begins at birth and ends at death. But in actuality, life and death, or more appropriately, birth and death, are nothing but two different ways of viewing the reality of the present Moment. As we have seen, in the eternal Present there is no past, and that which has no past is something which is just born. Birth is the condition of having no past. Further in the absolute Present there is no future either, and that which has no future is something which has just died. Death is the condition of having no future. Thus the present Moment, because it has no past, is newly born; and because it has no future, it is simultaneously dead. Birth and death, therefore, are simply two ways of talking about the same timeless Moment, and they are illusorily separated only by those who cannot escape from the standpoint of temporal succession so as to see all things in their simultaneity. In short birth and death are one in this timeless Moment.”
And so it is, if we can live in the eternal present, avoid the traps of dualism, recognize that we All are One, that Atman and Brahman can be reconciled, that who we are essentially is not our bodies or even our minds, then death should not be a concern.
The mystics seem to say that death contains the secret to life.

It is an oversight that in this rambling I have not referenced a Christian point of view. But Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth century catholic mystic had this to say:
“No one gets as much of God as those who are thoroughly dead.”
The Hindu sage Sri Ramani Maharshi added:
“You will know in due course that your glory lies where you cease to exist.”
And the Buddhist text, Zenrin, says:
“While alive, live as a dead person – thoroughly dead.”

But if you believe I have been inordinately seduced by the wooly thoughts of mystics let me finish with a quote from the Nobel- Prize winning cofounder of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schroedinger.
“It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling, and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in people, nay in all sentient beings. The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago [there’s the test], another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?”

“Learn to die and you shall live,
for there shall be none who learn to truly live
who have not learned to die.”
Anon.

I wonder if we will ever give up the wrong-minded notion of the pursuit of happiness. It seems quite obvious to me that you don’t catch happiness – it catches you! The only thing you can do is prepare your mind in the right way.

Many of the executives I work with are very driven people. They work extremely hard in progressing their careers and contributing to the success of the organisations they work for. They strive to meet their kpi’s and the key objectives of their particular enterprise. They concentrate so much on their doing that they neglect their being. This often results in some dysfunction.

I was at a seminar the other day, when the presenter asked a question which went something like this. “Put your hands up if you would be uncomfortable alone for an hour or more with no mobile phone, TV, computer or any other electronic devices.” The majority put their hands up! What is wrong with us that we need to be continuously stimulated by these artificial means? For me, I relish every hour I can spend in contemplation, meditation or just relaxation. The Eastern traditions and indeed the mystics of the Christian tradition tell us that stilling the mind is more helpful to our long term sense of well-being than stimulating it. Not only do we benefit from getting our mind in order but so do those around us.

You have probably heard the story (versions of which circulated on the internet some years ago) of the Chief Executive that took a vacation and went to a tropical destination to do some fishing.

To assist him catch fish he hired a guide named Joe. Joe was in his forties and lived in a modest house by the seashore with his wife and two children. Every morning Joe would arise and walk on the beach with his family and together they would swim in the crystal clear waters of the surf. Three days a week he would take his clients out to sea in his boat and hunt for bill-fish – mainly marlin and sailfish. They would fish until he was able to conjure up a prize catch for his client and then they would return to harbour.

On the days when he did not fish Joe would spend a lot of time in his hammock reading until lunch time. After lunch he would spend an hour or two maintaining his boat and fishing equipment. Then he would pick up his children from the nearby school. Most such afternoons he would spend with the children on the beach, at local beauty spots exploring the natural environment or learning how to do useful things like mending fishing nets or careening the bottom of his fishing boat. After dinner he and his wife would walk to a nearby café for a coffee or a drink and catch up with community issues with the locals who frequented the café.

The Chief Executive really appreciated Joe’s talents as a guide. He could reliably help him catch a trophy fish – but more than that he had considerable knowledge about fishing tackle and techniques, marine biology, oceanography, meteorology and other subjects which helped him be the consummate fishing guide. The Chief Executive saw here the potential for a profitable enterprise. He explained to Joe that he could help him put together a group of venture capitalists to help him build his “underperforming business.” Instead of inefficiently taking one client out at a time, Joe could command a fleet of fishing boats each accommodating multiple clients. With some strategic advice he could branch out into related businesses – perhaps build a high rise hotel on the beach. With some astute marketing, he explained Joe could become a celebrity and appear on TV. He could use his success to market franchises to work out of other fishing villages along the coast. “And if you did all this,” said the executive, “then you could become rich.”

Joe somewhat bemused but listening patiently, asked, “And what then?”

The executive quickly responded, “Well then you could retire somewhere by the beach, relax and do some fishing and reading, and spend some time with your wife and kids.”

How many of us eschew “the good life” whilst striving to gain the means to live “the good life”? If we slowed down and appreciated what really matters we could have it now! But again this is a matter of preparing the mind and appreciating the reciprocal relationship between our thinking and our environment.

Carl Jung told this story in “Mysterium Coniunctionis” related to him by his friend Richard Wilhelm who had travelled to a remote province of China.

“There was a great drought. For months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions; the Protestants made prayers and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said: ‘We will fetch the rainmaker’. And from another province a dried-up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself up for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow storm at the time of year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rainmaker that Richard Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.

In true European fashion he said: ‘They call you the rainmaker. Will you tell me how you made the snow?’

And the little Chinese man said: ‘I did not make the snow; I am not responsible.’

‘But what have you done these three days?’

‘Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are in order. Here, they are out of order; they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore, the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came’.”

Now, I don’t know whether you believe in “Rainmakers” or whether you don’t. But I can confirm this – when you are in order the world around you is in order also. In the terminology of Anthony De Mello, once you arrive in this state, whatever seems to be the case in the world, “All is well.”

So, my exhortation to you would be to slow down, not strive so hard at conquering the world, but take a little time to come to grips with yourself. Here is the key to you own well-being.

André Paul Guillaume Gide (22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. From July 1926 to May 1927, he travelled through French Equatorial Africa. One morning, after spending the previous day travelling fast through the jungle, Gide urged his native guides to get moving. They looked at him and with firmness said: “Don’t hurry us – we are waiting for our souls to catch up with us”.

That, I think is the nub of the problem. In our frenetic Capitalist society, we don’t allow enough time for “our souls to catch up with us”!

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The above quote, which will be familiar to most of you, is from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. Hamlet is pondering on his famous question, “To be, or not to be.”

Hamlet has said elsewhere, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space-were it not that I have bad dreams.”

Poor Hamlet was beset with bad dreams. Many people have such nightmares. Many of us can relate to this. Perhaps you are being chased by a wild animal. Perhaps you are falling. There are any number of tortures you apply to yourself through the mechanism of your dreams.

If I sit and contemplate I can conjure up in my mind all manner of things. What it was like at the beach yesterday. I can rehearse that address I am going to give tomorrow. I can imagine/remember my daughter as a small charming child, despite the fact she is about to turn forty. But I am aware I am constructing these pictures in my mind. I can even imagine the sound of a clarinet. It is playing the slow movement from Mozart’s clarinet concerto. I have constructed the sound well enough that I know it is not an oboe or a trumpet. And if I try I can hear the melody progressing just as though I was listening to a recording. (I don’t know about you but I find it hard to attach too much of the orchestral accompaniment.) But it is still an impressive feat of mental construction.

Even in meditation when I can shut down all thoughts I am grounded by my bodily sensations. I can feel an ache in my back. My belt is too tight. I can hear the birds in the garden. I can smell the dish my wife is cooking in the kitchen. Without the distraction of thoughts I have heightened my physical awareness. I have quietened the mind so matter is currently dominating in the mind over matter stakes.

But what say I now start to fall asleep? Initially I pass into the hypnogogic state. This is the pleasurable condition between being awake and asleep. We are still somewhat aware of our surroundings but just starting to come under the control of our subconscious mind. This is where lucid dreaming seems to occur. At this stage you seem to be able to have some input into your dreams. Even if it seems to be a bad dream you are often aware enough to be able console yourself that “this is only a dream”! I suspect it is the pleasant experience of the hypnogogic state that makes people want to sleep. Certainly we are aware that our tiredness can be “cured” by sleeping, and we are motivated to sleep by the removal of that discomfiture. But the hypnogogic bliss exerts a positive pull on us as well.

Finally we fall asleep. Now we are disconnected from the anchoring that our sensations of our external world provide and true dreaming can start. We are now entirely susceptible to the fantasies of our subconscious mind. And I suspect, but can never truly know, that yours are as weird as mine! Consider this – however strange, discomforting, alarming or just plain loony the vista you see, it was entirely constructed by you. These people, some familiar and some unfamiliar are constructed from your memories and your imaginations. These landscapes and situations that seem so bizarre you have constructed for your own amusement, education or distraction.

When you ask someone a question in your dream, you already know the answer because it is your mind that provides the response.

Sometimes in your dreams you go to familiar places but they are no longer familiar. Sometimes you will go to a place that you know you are familiar with but in the morning recognise that it is only familiar because you’ve dreamed it before.

In dreaming we unlock our subconscious minds to fantastic feats of creativity. Not only do your dreams provide vast sources of entertainment, they provide a huge resource for creativity. Samuel Taylor Coleridge awoke from a dream (albeit somewhat enhanced by the input of opium) and wrote his famous poem Kubla Khan. The poem was never completed because in the act of recording the words that had come to him in his dream, someone came to the door. And once he dealt with his visitor he found the words conjured up in his dream had gone from his mind.
Or consider the story of Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, commonly known as Kekulé. He was struggling to understand the molecular structure of benzene. He dreamt of a snake swallowing its own tail. On waking he came to understand the structure of benzene comprised of six molecules of carbon bonded in a ring with (for the chemists among you) alternating single and double bonds with hydrogen atoms attached to the carbon atoms with single bonds.
So, if like Hamlet we have nightmares, why are we doing this to ourselves? Research in the field of neuroscience tells us we know more than we think we know. Our rational minds are circumscribed such that they are only capable of dealing with limited information. (See for example Jonah Lehrer’s excellent book The Decisive Mind.) Yet our minds take in vast amounts of knowledge and store it subconsciously. We don’t access this store of information rationally, but every now and then when we need to make a decision we are guided by an emotional response informed by this storehouse of knowledge. We sometimes call this process “intuition”. Our nightmares access this information as well and are often signals and warnings to us beyond our rational comprehension.
But going back to my main thesis, how wonderful it is that in our dreams we can create other beings and other contexts so different from the so-called “real world’. We can conjure up people we have never met. We can go to places we’ve never seen. We can experience things to which we have never had any previous connection. And in our dreams these experiences are just as real as our everyday experiences.
But what if the One that is All, the collective consciousness of the universe had such a dream? Might not the outcome actually be the universe? Might not each sentient being reflect a little of that consciousness? I must confess this is something a little beyond me, but it is a project my colleague Dr Phil Harker has been exploring. Perhaps he might indulge us with some of his thoughts now and then to stimulate our thinking about such a possibility!
Let us look now at another quote from Shakespeare. At the end of The Tempest he had Prospero utter these lines
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Perhaps we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and who should know whether we are the creators or the created in such an enterprise?

Or consider the famous story of the Taoist sage Zhuang Zi of the third century BC.
“Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and seemingly unmistakably Chuang Chou. But on reflection he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the transformation of things”.
He conjectured further that life and death were like being awake and sleeping. “While a man is dreaming, he does not know that he dreams; nor can he interpret a dream till the dream is done. It is only when he wakes, that he knows it was a dream. Not till the Great Wakening can he know that all this was One Great Dream.”
Pleasant dreams!

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Indeed it would be a great gift to see ourselves as others see us, and, although probably not completely attainable, certainly something worth striving for.

I think I have related to my blog audience previously, my good friend Dr Phil Harker’s three step process towards psychological maturity, viz. to:

• Know Yourself,
• Accept Yourself, and then,
• Forget Yourself.

That hackneyed, but valuable old tool, The Johari Window, shows us why we are never likely to completely know ourselves, but it also gives us some clues how to know ourselves better.

Burns’s quote implies that other people will know “stuff” about ourselves that we don’t. If we are perceptive, but more importantly, receptive, we can learn more about ourselves by getting feedback from others that know us well and whose judgments we trust.

But this is not easy. Many of us have a self-concept that is different to who we really are. When that self-concept is threatened we find ways of rationalising away the exposed differences. We console ourselves that what we are hearing in contradiction to how we would want to appear is ill-informed, malicious or misguided. It is hard to hear what we don’t want to acknowledge. That is why in Phil’s model the “Knowing” and the “Accepting” are interrelated –it is not just a linear progression.

There is, of course, a fine line here. Some of us unduly defend our self-concept and others accept unreasonable criticism as gospel truth. This is a spectrum that extends from psychopaths to depressives. Depressives take all criticism as being indicative of a permanent, unchangeable fault in their characters. They believe that all shortcomings in their behaviours are their fault alone and will be pervasive through all areas of their lives. Psychopaths on the other hand are entirely impervious to criticism. They rationalise away all attacks on their self-concept.

When we become truly aware, one of the things that we learn is that we have more choices. In physics we learn that, most often, a stimulus generates a response. I push down on the see-saw and the person on the other end goes up. I apply the brakes on my car and my inertia propels me forward. Many of us are conditioned so that our behaviours are manifested in a similar way. Something happens in my exterior world and of a sudden I am, angry, anxious, happy, curious or whatever. The stimulus from my environment has stimulated an automatic response that I have learnt as a reaction to that particular initiating circumstance. But awareness offers us more choice. When we are aware we don’t have to be automatically, angry, anxious, afraid or whatever. There is a difference to human reaction and the basic stimulus/response reaction that is not often obvious. For a human being it is not necessarily that a stimulus results in an automatic response. The stimulus can be mediated by the organism that is the human being. There is a fleeting opportunity between the stimulus and our response where we can have some choice in the response. That choice is only opened up to us by our awareness.

I found personally, that meditation improved my awareness. I remember an incident when this awareness was developing. I was at a meeting with a group of young managers. I was keen to be able to put a point of view. I suddenly noticed that I was beginning to get agitated. Rather than taking on the mantle of this emotional reaction, I was aware enough to question myself as to the source of this agitation. I quickly came to the conclusion I was feeling miffed because they were continually talking over me and I was not being given an opportunity to put my point of view. I smiled to myself when I realised that I was becoming upset for such a trifling reason. I did not need their recognition or approval to maintain my sense of self. Whether they heard me or not was not a matter that should impinge on how I felt. Once recognising the issue, I became less anxious to press my case and waited patiently until I could say what I wanted. In the past I would have identified with the emotion, acted it out and lost my freedom to respond in a rational manner. This is a trivial example, but awareness is a powerful attribute.

There is a parable from Zen Buddhism that I read somewhere that went something like this. A Master had taken a vow of silence for a month. A young man seeking enlightenment had travelled long from far away to seek his advice. When he approached the sage, attendants told him of the Master’s vow. Undeterred he still queried the sage. “Sir, please tell me what I must do to gain enlightenment. What is the most important thing to help me in my pursuit?”

The sage scribbled something on a tablet and handed it to the young man. He eagerly read the Master’s message but all it said was “Awareness”. He wrinkled his brow in perplexity. “Is there nothing else that you can advise me to do to gain enlightenment?”

The Master shrugged his shoulders and reached for the tablet again and scribbled on it. Eagerly the seeker read the message. But this time he seemed upset. The tablet again had on it the single word “Awareness.”

Somewhat agitated now he said somewhat belligerently, “But what do you mean by awareness?”

The master took up the tablet and with a sigh wrote, “By awareness I mean awareness, awareness, awareness!”

In one of the books by the great Indian sage Krishnamurti I recall reading about an occasion when he was travelling by car between two provincial cities. Travelling with him were a couple of young disciples. Probably to impress the famous man they were discussing the subject of his lecture at the last venue which was on awareness. “There is nothing more important than awareness,” one said to the other. They then embarked on a great exposition on the benefits of awareness. After a time the old man intervened and said, “Did either of you notice the bump just now.” The two young men looked at each other but then shook their heads. “We just ran over a goat!” said Krishnamurti. The two who were espousing the value of awareness then hung their heads in shame!

In my work as an executive coach I have assisted quite a few executives that were very competent in other ways but seemed impervious to how their behaviours impinged on other people. This lack of empathy causes bad interpersonal relationships to develop, often to the detriment of their careers. Improving their awareness can have a major impact on such people.

After his death, a book was compiled from the audio recordings of some of the seminars of Anthony De Mello. The book was appropriately titled Awareness.

Let me finish with a few quotes from this book.

“Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.”

“The unaware life is a mechanical life. It’s not human – it’s programmed, conditioned. We might as well be a stone, a block of wood.”

“What you are aware of, you are in control of. You are always a slave to what you are not aware of. When you are aware of it, you’re free from it. It’s there, but you are not affected by it; you’re not enslaved by it. That’s the difference.”