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Sunday, December 26, 2010
Men and Technology by Judy Krishnamurti
...As I am writing my final project I just arrived to seeing a talk given by Krishnamurti in 1982...
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Something Interesting...The internet...
This is a video clip published at "The Real News" the first independent news network.
Technology, Freedom of Speech, Internet...and...
...From Aggression to Elegance...
This writing moves from reality on a global level to invisability, questions perceptions, science technological essence and searching in understanding of myself. It consists of Synthesis of Eastern and Western thought...
...Take a deep breath...
Paramahansa Yogananda(1999), widely recognized as one of the prominent spiritual teachers of our time wrote in his book “A world of transition”:
Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world.
Every individual must change his own life if he wants to live in
a peaceful world. The world cannot become peaceful unless
and until you yourself begin to work towards peace (p.202).
We live in reality of total contradictions and contrasts, reality of degradation in the majority of human kind, of violence and aggression. The crisis in which we are in it is not economic, social, cultural, racial, national, and ecological in nature, it is a crisis of consciousness. It is a reality where parallel to super development of technology and science; seventy two percent of the world lives in poverty, thirty-four thousand children die out of hunger and treatable diseases every single day. We have more and more mentally, emotionally and physically sick people, who try to pull through every day life. Meaningless conflicts and wars, total separation, isolation and lost of self. How numb we have become to accept the live images on the television screens of people being killed for patriotic and safety reasons. To what level of denial have we sunk to that we think this is normal and this is how life should be. Why did and do we accept it? Why have we forgotten about the power of the spirit and human intelligence which has endless capacity to create and transform reality? Where our imagination has taken us or left us…or…
In the western part of the world we experience the result of super materialistic development and we as healers face daily the human suffering, missing the presence of spiritual breath and fulfilled silence. The eastern part of the world is lost in old traditions and practices of spirituality looking toward the west for more practical and simple way of experiencing life, trying to rediscover the incredible amount of wisdom from over six thousand years ago. There is definite imbalance and lack of harmony in every piece of the Earth. We institutionalized life, establishing organizations, associations, foundations, stereotypic theories, dogmas, methods, techniques, creating reality in which we have enslaved the human spirit, living an outward life. If our thoughts, emotions and actions are the trinity throughout which we create our reality, what is lacking so to create a better world of peace and harmony? How the art and its endless capacity can be mobilized to assist the elevation of the human consciousness? How can we breathe in light toward transformation? How can we open these energies within us? Are we too much in our minds ignoring the energies of the heart? Are we aware of our own imagination and the possibilities to recreate our lives? How we use this invisible but always present energy?
James Engell (1981) wrote, “Imagination for Schelling is an immaterial and even mysterious energy” (p.305). It is always there in its multi-dimensional presence. It seems that moves from the known to the unknown, from complication to simplicity. In some moments this mysterious energy becomes visibly materialized and probably most often its highest creations never become present. Other times it comes spontaneously unexpected and others structurally invited. Sometimes imagination is escorted with emotional experiences, others is emotionally free.
“The imagination is not matter, and it is not “received” by any senses, but it alone explains how we face change, connect the past, present and future, and direct our actions” (p.52). During a creative flow, even though every creative process I have experienced never repeats itself, the flow of imaginative energy manifests uniquely and it depends strongly to the state of mind, reflecting physically on the brain function. According to Engell (1981), “The imagination orchestrates the crescendo and harmony of feeling and thought” (p.53).
Using Mind Mirror EEG, Anna Wise (1997) measured and trained brainwaves. In “The High Performance Mind,” Wise stated that brainwaves play an important part in non‑verbal communication. She studied electrical impulses produced by the brain, stating that the four kinds of brainwaves; alpha, beta, theta, and delta communicate information along the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind. She described:
While theta brainwaves are associated with creativity, other brain rhythms are needed to bring this creativity into your consciousness mind. A combination of additional frequencies is needed to access the profound potential of theta brainwaves. Delta waves make up the unconscious mind, they are radar that seeks out and receives information on an instinctive level. High deltas are mostly intuitive, but all of them work together to create a wide range of mental, emotional and spiritual states. (Compare with music sometimes the combination is melodious, smooth and flowing.) Our goal is to create a full, powerful and harmonious symphony of brainwaves (p.93).
As Wise (1997) concluded:
To enhance creativity, the artist has two choices: meditate before creating, as in alone meditation, or encourage the awakened mind brain waves pattern with the eyes open while in the act of creating.
Pattern of creativity is on the way to form awakening mind patterns (p.107).
A Buddhist perspective supports this, “When the thought becomes a routine, it creates a pattern and loses its energy flow. The mind has certain independency than the body but the body is interdependent of the mind. There are different levels of the mind, which defines different energy levels.” (The Dalai Lama, 1995, p.129) This quite a significant direction of thought and realization can give some further perspective on why it is so difficult the energy flow to be shifted from more surfaces to deeper level of consciousness. The reality, which we create, has very repetitive nature, where control and power is easier to impose. On that surface level is where the mind operates within intellectual framework of perceptions, transferred and adapted information. On that level the imagination energy has its limited expression, function and ability to create. Engell (1981) summarized:
Schelling, like Coleridge, gives imagination at least two functions in the human mind. We receive elementary stimuli from the outside world, such as noise, light, color, hardness, stench, and sweetness. This is the original sensory perception, according Schelling and he calls this stage of mind the first potential of power. But these stimuli are then grouped, ordered and arranged into objects, and these groupings have a connection with the world of forms and ideas…. We compare the passive perceptions in ourselves with our active ordering of them. The two, active and passive, interplay in an unending dialectic (p.307).
Very common observation is that most human beings circulate within that level, the level of no originality. It is usually a repetition on pre-existing matter, ideas, etc. To study clients’ creative imagination, becomes essential to have objective perception from where life has been self created and experienced and the momentum ability to shift towards expansion and actual change. Is the imagination flow is blocked within its passive function or is it capable to travel further beyond the ego and intelligence? “Throughout the act and product of its own creativity, the ego or intelligence actually sees itself becoming objective and real. Imagination frees man from the closed circle of self-reflection and subjectivity” (James Engell, 1991, p.318). It does create a definite new form, the work of art, which expresses the mind relationships to its own perceptions and to the external world, but can go above and beyond this manifestation. The work of art becomes external and objective. The mind has created something, through transferring its vibrations to the physical body, which releases itself from never ending series of perceptions and self-perceptions. The work of art becomes apart of the world, a part of nature, yet created by a free act of the mind. The unity or the absence of it within the art piece becomes a reflection of state of being. It represents the unity of mental and emotional energies being materialized. My mind shifts in the direction of duality of imagination. The mystery of how this energy can move from elegance to aggression and what is the drive, which directs this move. Is this related in any way to the mind-heart connection? In the time of observation of a piece of art we can know what the source of energy that dominated the work is. Did it come from the heart or did it come from the mind? It is deep intuitive knowing that is based on complex emotional experience…we feel the soul of the matter. Beauty and aesthetics are important but not absolutely, the heart of the artwork to be experienced.
According to Chogyam Trungpa (1996) the establisher of “Dharma art” “that main point of dharma art is discovering elegance and that is the question of state of mind, according to the Buddhist tradition” (p.5). Further the philosophy of dharma art defines the purpose of art is “a work of art to bring out the goodness and dignity of a situation. (Trungpa Choguam, 1996, p.8). Overcoming aggression is a main intention of dharma art. According to Buddhist Vajryana tradition, if your mind is preoccupied with aggression, you cannot function properly. On the other hand, if your mind is preoccupied with passion, there are possibilities. In a state of aggressive mental energy we do not want reality to experience in the fullest sense of all. Instead, we seem to always try to bring in substitute reality. Another layer of seeking brings me into the realm of imagination in relation of developing awareness of self and overcoming the boundaries of the ego-self experience. It is a new place of integrity and wholeness, where creative imagination unities the momentum and continuum of experience. From the individual to the collective…from the collective to the individual…A moving within…inward…outward, where the spirit is truthfully rediscovered, materializing itself in pieces. The secret of the best art is internal process: it shapes and generates form from within; it unifies all parts. It is not the imposition of a form on a heterogeneous mass or the external manipulation of surface effect. In other words: “creative imagination is the secret of art” (James Engell, 1981, p.319).
If we begin to theorize about the existence of the world, its solidity, its eternity, or whatever, we are blocking out a very large chunk of our experience. We are trying to prove too much and trying to build a foundation too much. …The question of perception becomes very important, because perceptions can’t be packed down into a solid basis. They are shifty, and they continuously float in and out of our life” (p. 57-p.58).
These lines are a moving reflection of new, old, re-discovered thought and
feeling in process of ever lasting dance…a dance… a perfect dance in its own imperfection…
Imagination & Technology: Where in the concept of Being, Doing and Having?
I do not now why but I am having thoughts about how technology influences imagination, a source of creativity a swell as the concept of being, having and doing. I am asking the question does the technological experience keeps us into doing, having or allows us to be?
Entering the experience of “Poetics of Imagining” by Richard Kearnney brought thought and feeling in the realm of being, having and doing. It began with the expressed statement:
…Whenever this imaginative function is lacking, human consciousness loses its
freedom and falls victim to surrounding circumstances. No longer able to envision
alternative modes of experience transcending our present state of affairs, we
despair- we fall back into unfreedom. Imagination’s power to suspend the natural
attitude in favor of the phenomenological attitude of free variation is…(p.23)
“…I know that nothing belongs to me
But the thought which unimpeded
From my soul will flow.
And every favorable moment
Which loving Fate
From the depth lets me enjoy…”
This letter represented by Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust (Faust as a dramatic description of the conflict between being and having) expresses the quality of being with the utmost simplicity.
Being in the present moment and turning back I see an active dance of ideas, influences, concepts, belief systems, philosophies that came and stayed… and some of them left quietly the space of my own truth. A Daoism’s wisdom says, “Human kind tends to think that spiritual growth comes thru gaining knowledge, but the real spiritual enlightenment starts with getting rid of the unnecessary one”.
A poem, an image, a word, a movement, a sensation have become in a certain moment, time and space an essential piece of philosophy. Some exist consciously or subconsciously, waiting to be provoked and than materialized. The intensity is colorful and it is often impossible to stop the moment of happening and say: “this is what defines me”. I came to the realization after long struggling in practicing attachment and detachment in interaction with the physical reality, that no matter what I achieve on my pathway I can never express the fullness of the self. The grandiose nature of our spiritual identity is endlessly expressible…its perfect in its own unperfection.
Most of all experiencing life in awareness not intellectualizing it has been a deep intention of mine. I find continuously moving forwards simplicity, totally wanting to live fully, with no doubts and when is time to go, I can leave dancing within the light. Every moment I enter the duality of what it is, shifting from seeing absolute meaning to feeling the absolute meaninglessness. Beinsa Duno (1927), a spiritual master of the beginning of 20th century stated: “The most difficult art of all is to create your own life. This is when you become a master.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1957 inaugurated the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, establishing the art of Transcendental meditation. In 1963 he finishes the book “Science of Being and Art of Living” where he unfolds the wisdom of the Veda and Vedic Literature taught to Maharishi by Guru Dev. I was 17 year old, when I came across with his teachings of truth in which I found a piece of mine. He expresses that “All levels of peace and happiness, creativity, intelligence, and power are nothing but levels of being. One extreme of being is absolute, and the other is the grossest state of relative existence.”(p.67) The main goal is achieving the level of “pure being ”, defined as being in the stage “peace of mind” as formulated by Dalai Lama. (1999)
When a human enters the space of the creative process intentionally or intuitively, he moves from one stage of being towards another, a more pure one, form one stage of imagination to another. A dimension of inner freedom is achieved where the mind and heart communicate in stillness. In this moment we are opening the door towards liberation (detachment).
“The freedom of the mind is freedom from the bondage of experience. On this point the whole philosophy of bondage and liberation of life turns.” Dalai Lama (2001)
The concept of being I believe is essential in understanding my (our) nature and the endless possibilities of creativity and it’s imaginative power. According to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1959) the way to contact the being is thru transcendental meditation. It is my belief that another way is the creative process. Practicing and experiencing both, I observe increase of energy, clarity of mind and emotional harmony. It is fascinating that the deeper I go, the process became more silent on the level of pure being. In creative arts therapy sessions the most powerful ones have ended in fulfilled silence.
According Maharishi (1959) creativity lies in the nature of absolute Being, creation is its play, and evolution is its expansion in its Beingness. During our human experience the conscious mind reaches levels of more pure consciousness, where different levels of creation in different forms keep on evolving.
Erich Fromm (1976), not to exclude the philosophical presence, treats the concept of being from more anthropological and psychological points of view. He understood the alternatives having or being to be “two fundamental modes of existence, or two different kinds of orientation toward self and the world, two different types of character structure whose respective dominance determines the totality of how a person thinks, feels and acts.” (To Have or to be? p.24)
Between 1974 and 1976, while working on the book “To Have or to be?” Erich Fromm wrote far more manuscript and chapters than actually he used in the book, which was published in 1976. Some of these chapters are later published in the book “The Art of Being”. They deal entirely with “steps towards being” that the individual can take in order to learn “the art of being”.
It is tremendously interesting that during the same year 1976 World Government of the Age of Enlightment, a non-political, non-religious, global organization was established with sovereignty in the domain of consciousness, authority in the invincible power of Natural Law, and activity in purifying world consciousness, with the participation of the people of over 120 countries.
Erich Fromm defines the mode of being and having from different aspects: security-insecurity, knowledge and knowing, solidarity-antagonism, activity-passivity, joy-pleasure, sin forgiveness, here, now past, future, etc. I deeply respect the multi-dimensional views on the concept discussed and the depth of interaction of Eastern and Western thought in his writings. According Fromm “having refers to things and things are fixed and describable. Being refers to experience, and human experience is in principle not describable”. (p. 98)
A very important moment is that “being implies change”, “being is becoming”. The perspective of knowledge and knowing in relation to being fascinated me. “Knowing in the mode of being, means to “see” reality in its nakedness. It does not mean to be in possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely”. (p. 135)
Master Eckhart (2006) reflects it further: “Knowledge is no particular though but rather it peels off and is disinterested and runs naked to God, until touches him and grasps him.” (p.172) What a powerful beauty of truth.
These are fragmented reflections within me brought thru two extraordinary souls: Erich Fromm and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who made their deep marks in the elevation of the human consciousness and overcoming suffering on the pathway of Love and Happiness (when the East meets the West). The dance must go on…
“Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth ill safe
When we feel safe in ourselves.
From call me by true names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh
Just be…just be… in your endless spirit…
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