Techno Spiritualism and Modern Symbols

TECHNO SPIRITUALISM AND MODERN SYMBOLS

Whenever individuals are trying to describe something vague and subtle like a deity,- they use metaphor. Metaphor is defined in The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language as “ A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applied.” Metaphors come from culture, and all cultures have inherent differences, therefore the metaphors differ from culture to culture, but ultimately people all over the world are trying to explain the same thing; unfortunately instead of embracing the idea that we are all trying to explain the same thing we argue over who’s metaphors best describe something that almost defies description. A metaphorical example of this dilemma would be; if you and I took a slice form the same orange and attempted to described the taste, we probably would not use the same words , and our experience of something as subtle as taste would not be the same. Many of us experience some state of knowing deep within that there is some subtle underlying supportive force that keeps everything going, but our experience of that something is quite subjective and personal, so it would be of great benefit for us to set aside the conflict over which description is more appropriate, and share the subtleties of our subjective personal experience in order to enhance our individual experience.

Every culture has creative and resourceful thinkers, individuals that are very skilled at the use of language and metaphor and have a sense of the aforementioned subtle underlying supportive force ; some of these individuals are compelled to share their insight with anyone that is willing to listen. In the case of the individual whose spiritual metaphors are accepted and embraced with enthusiasm by a large number of people, those people form an organization with that particular individuals description as the focal point of their spiritual philosophy; this is how religions are formed, , something I like to call the politics of spirituality

There is great power in people using their synergistic energies to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.The problem arises when any group in particular decides that their spiritual leaders metaphors are the only ones that adequately describe subtle and infinite nuances that can be associated with a diety or supreme being. The argument over which metaphors work better is a major distraction from the question that has inspired many of us from the beginning of time; what is this thing that seems to defy description? If more time was spent embracing the concept that we are all trying to describe the same orange we could come to a better understanding of the orange much sooner.

UNIVERSAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS

I AM

I am the sky

I am the land

I am the mountain

I am each grain of sand

I am the stars up in the sky

I am what always lives I never die

I am the one there is only one

The one is all and the all is one

And so it is

Since all is one

Whatever occurs

God’s will is done KO

In many spiritual philosophies there is the concept of oneness or that all things that exist in the universe are part of one field of energy, and that the boundaries that seem to separate all things from all other things are an illusion. One example of this concept in a spiritual philosophy exists in the TAO, an eastern philosophy that has been around for more than 2500 years. One way of defining the TAO is to say that it is that out of which all things have arisen as well as that which interpenetrates all things. Even though this definition is a vast over simplification, it serves the current purpose of providing a general idea of what is meant by TAO. Laurence G.Bolt states in his book The TAO of Abundance (pg.xxii), states that it is written in the Chang Tzu, “ Heaven and Earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things(a metaphor for all that exists in the universe) are one with me.”

One of the laws of physics states that all things are energy and that how portions of that energy organizes itself is what determines individual manifestations of what we know as things in the universe. Since all is energy and all the energy in a seemingly infinitesimal existence is energy and nothing but energy,the boundaries that are defined by the particularization of things in this universe become less significant than the whole of existence itself. Imagine that you are looking at a painting, the painting has lines and colors that define the shapes of things in the painting, some shapes in the painting are particularized into whatever is being represented in a particular space, but whatever is particularized in a specific space in the painting is probably not the whole picture, the entire composition is comprised of all that exists within the frame that holds the painting. In the case of energy and the universe, the Allness of energy is framed by infinity. Another law of physics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it only changes. This is a difficult concept for us humans to grasp because we are accustomed to perceiving things not in terms of a continuous shift in energy states, but in terms of beginnings and endings. Unfortunately we are not always able to perceive or comprehend some of the things that move into different energy states; therefore we percieve certain circumstances as endings even though whatever appears to have ended has only changed.

Consider the question of what happens to life after it has ended its tenure in this earthly manifestation. Most of western culture has come to an agreement on a relatively specific metaphor, that being the concept of heaven and hell. It is not my intention to support or deny the existence of these concepts , but only to pose the question; what happens to the energy that constitutes our consciousness when we make our transitions (I prefer the word transition because it supports the following concept) especially considering the fact that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so the energy that is you or me only changes. Whether the embodiment of that change is an extremely long term lease on a cloud,an eternity on a hot seat, or that the energy is just being redispersed into the infinite pool of all that is, I don’t know; what I do know is that it does not cease to exist.

Quantum physics has theorized that all points in space are at the same time separate and connected. How is this possible one might ask. Bob Toben states in Time Space and Beyond , (pg.134) that;

All things are interconnected. Each part of three dimensional space is

connected to every other part through basic units of interconnection, called

wormholes. Signals move through the constantly appearing and disappearing

(virtual) wormhole connections, providing instant communication between all

parts of space. Taking into account that all parts of the universe are connected, could be a possible explanation for extraordinary powers demonstrated by some of history’s more significant spiritual leaders. In other words this might be an explanation for what we have come to know as miracles; is it possible that these extraordinary individuals had some intuitive knowledge that all things in the universe are connected and realized that they had access to whatever was needed, and used that knowledge to heal the sick, provide food for the hungry and achieve many other things that we consider amazing, but actually are achievable by all of us? Jesus Christ would say yes and made that point clear in a passage from the gospel of John Chapter 14 verse 12; “Verily, verily I say unto you He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” (Holy Bible, Red Letter/ Condance/ Scofield study System/ KJV/Oxford.)

THE EFFICACY OF FOCUSED THOUGHT

An excerpt from the “Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” (V0l.#5 pg. 182 paragraph #5) quotes Immanuel Kant;

In other words, we can explain the certainty of time and space only supposing

it is knowledge of the structure of our own minds, and thus of how objects

appear to us rather than knowledge about how things are in themselves.” In “ Taking the Quantum Leap” by Fred Alan Wolf (pg.6) it is asserted;

Quantum mechanics appears to describe universal order that includes us in a

very special way. In fact, our minds may enter into nature in a way we had not

imagined possible. The thought that atoms may not exist without observers

of atoms is,to me a,very exiting thought. Could this fact concerning atoms also

apply in other realms of science? Perhaps much of what is taken for real

is mainly determined by thought. Perhaps the appearance of the physical

world is magical because the orderly process of science fail to take the observer

into account. The order of the universe may be the order of our own minds. These excerpts suggest that there is no such thing as a passive observer in the universe, and, that whatever is being observed is affected in some way by the very fact that it is being observed. Taking into account the observers affect on what happens in the universe, and that “Each part of three dimensional space is connected to every other part,” when an individual or group focuses attention on a particular situation or circumstance, it is possible that they can have an affect on the that situation or circumstance through the “basic units of interconnection called wormholes.” There are several ways of looking at the practice of focused thought, two of which are prayer and meditation. Prayer and meditation are two practices that remove the passivity from our connection with Allness. Since our observations affect the state of the universe we can begin to be deliberate about how we observe and use our intention to create, specifically. In the book of Genesis it is written;” So God created man in his own image ,” that image is creative, we are continually creating through our interconnectedness with all that exists, that is why in many spiritual philosophies participants are advised to get to know themselves; it has been said that the universe gives us exactly what we ask for and believe we will receive, so it is important that we know what we are asking, because it is possible for us to be thinking one thing and believe something entirely different, true belief is a function of the heart and the universe responds to what is in our hearts. How important is belief? Jesus Christ put it this way “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”(Mark 9:23)

It’s not about asking,

begging or beseeching.

It’s only about being.

It’s not about reflecting

or speculating,

not about worry,

resentment or regret.

It is only about is.

Where the here is

NOW.

And when the where is

HERE.

And is,is

the most important word. KO

BREATHE IN THE MOMENT

In many spiritual disciplines meditation is an important practice. Although meditation takes many different forms I would like to concentrate on the practice of focusing one’s attention on the breath. Breathing is one of the few things that we can be aware of in the moment that it is actually happening. Jon Katat-Zinn writes in Where Ever you Go There You Are (pg.18);

Our Breathing can help us in capturing our moments. It’s surprising that more

people don’t know this. After all, the breath is always here, right under our

noses. You would think just by chance we might have come across its

usefulness at one point or another. We even have the phrase,” I didn’t have a

moment to breathe” ( or “to catch my breath”) to give us a hint that moments

and breathing might be connected in an interesting way.

Twenty years ago I had a book with writings form a religion called Tantra in which I found a beautiful simile, it said that, the mind is like the sky and thoughts are like clouds and usually the mind is overcast, but if we could take one thought and look at it in the sun (which represents the light of God) then we would be better able to discern the particulars of that thought. Chogyam Trungpa says in his book The Myth of Freedom; “The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought. “ Most of the time when we are thinking we are not in the present moment we are either reflecting on the past or speculating about the future and our minds are inundated by an onslaught of thoughts distracting us from our connection to Allness, which exists in the here and now.

CAN WE SEE THE LIGHT

Most of what we perceive is not perceived in the moment that it actually exists or originates; for instance as we look at objects we are not seeing them at the time of their actual existence; light moves at 186,300 miles per second,which is incredibly fast but it still takes an instant for light to bounce off of an object and reach our eyes. Sound is rarefied air that travels at about 740 miles per hour, considerably slower than light , when we hear something it takes even longer for sound to get from where it originated to where we are able to perceive it, so there is always some lapse in time between the origin of an event and when the carrier of the information that is representative of the event (be it light or air) reaches the receptors we posses that provide us with the necessary information. The time it takes for the information to travel from the event to to where the information is received does not even account for the time it takes for the information to travel from our receptors through the nervous system to where we cognitively analyze it; so everything we perceive has already happened. What we are actually perceiving is the past.

The Treasury of Religious Quotations ,( pg 243) by Gerald Tomlinson provides us with an excerpt from Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism;

The conception of time as an objective blank in which particular events...

succeed one after the other has completely been discarded. The Buddha...

knows no time-continuity; the past and the future are both rolled up in this

present moment of illumination.

The gateway to oneness is through the aforementioned” present moment of illumination.” I find it interesting that Suzuki chose to use the term illumination which is defined in The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary as; “ a source of light.“ In Time Space and Beyond it is stated that;

Beyond lightspeed, an object or consciousness would be completely free of

the shackles of space and time. It could “drop in” at any time past or future.

It could visit anywhere at an instant. All points in the universe would be its

home.

These quotes from Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism and Wolf’s Time Space and Beyond have in common some “illuminating” similarities; it is no coincidence that both quotes have light as an intrinsic element. The reference to light appears in many spiritual texts, for instance; one divine name for the Koran (the sacred text of the Mohammedans) is an-Nar, which means, the Light, and in the Koran we find this passage; “God is the light of heaven and earth.” Karen Armstrong in her book The history of God states (pg. 319);

The first Quakers--George Fox and James Naylor and their disciples--preached

that all men and women approached God directly. There was an Inner Light

within each individual, and once it had been discovered and nurtured,

everybody, irrespective of class or status could achieve salvation here on

earth. From the Bhabavad-Gita (pg.661), a spiritual text from India we read “ He is the source of light in all luminous objects” the interpretation by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada asserts; “The Supersoul,the Supreme Personality of Godhead,is the source of light in all luminous objects like the sun, the moon and the stars,”and finally from theThe Holy Bible; Psalms.27:1; “The Lord is my light and my salvation...” These are only a few examples of light appearing in spiritual texts as a representation of that subtle underlying supportive force that permeates all of existence. It appears that many spiritual sages had an intuitive insight that is now being arrived at in the field of quantum physics.

The circle has always been treated with a special regard throughout history, probably because we can recognize cycles in many of the natural events that play such a significant part in our lives; it seems as though science and spirituality started out on their respective journeys from the same point on a circle traveling in opposite directions and are coming to realize that they are on a course to meet somewhere along the way. When all the people creating the metaphors,scientific disciplines, spiritual philosophies and so forth, come to an agreement that we all all trying to achieve the same goal, the reality of infinite possibilities will be well within our reach.

Keith A. Otis 5/15/00

Fred Alan Wolf,Taking the QuantunLeap

( Harper & Row Publishers,1981)

Ram Dass,The Journey of Awakening

(BantamBooks,1978)

Gerald Tomlinson, Treasury of Religious Quotations

(Prentiss Hall 1991)

Laurence G. Boldt, The Tao of Abundance

(Penguin-Arkana 1999)

Bob Toben, Space Time and Beyond

(E.P.Dutton and Co.1975)

Karen Armstrong, History of God

(Alfred A. Knopf 1994)

A.C. BhagktivedantaSwami Prabhupada interpreter of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is

(Bhaktivedanta Book Trust,1886)

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are

( Hyperion1994)

The Livint Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary

(North American Educational Guild 1971-1972)

The Scofield Study Bible

The Holy Bible Authorized King James Version

(New york University Press)