Scattered Longings (after Machado)

Machado’s poetry connects with my heart more strongly than almost any other poet, so it seems appropriate to re-publish, in the midst of a sequence about connecting with the heart, the three whose spirit I have attempted to capture in English

For source of image see link: for the original Spanish click here.

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Understanding the Heart (5/6): The Right Method of Approach to the Truth

Was Jill Bolte Taylor in contact with her heart rather than her right hemisphere given the fact she had no words at all, an alleged characteristic of the heart in a physical sense? This is a difficult enough issue to decide on.

There is a far more complicated one coming up right now.

Even given the alleged evidence to support the notion that the heart has at least a limited capacity for precognition and long-distance emotional communication, is it a leap too far to even begin to suggest that the pump in our chest is able to rise to the challenges I am about to address concerning our ‘understanding heart’ in the Bahá’í sense of that phrase?

The Understanding Heart

I have explored this phrase at some length in a previous sequence, but will share a few key quotations at this point in order to give a sense of its importance in the Bahá’í Revelation and clarify the context in which Bahá-u-lláh uses it.

Even at best, the heart has clear limitations as Bahá-u-lláh explains:[1]

Consider the rational faculty with which God hath endowed the essence of man. . . . . Wert thou to ponder in thine heart, from now until the end that hath no end, and with all the concentrated intelligence and understanding which the greatest minds have attained in the past or will attain in the future, this divinely ordained and subtle Reality, . . .  thou wilt fail to comprehend its mystery or to appraise its virtue. Having recognized thy powerlessness to attain to an adequate understanding of that Reality which abideth within thee, thou wilt readily admit the futility of such efforts as may be attempted by thee, or by any of the created things, to fathom the mystery of the Living God . . . . . . This confession of helplessness which mature contemplation must eventually impel every mind to make is in itself the acme of human understanding, and marketh the culmination of man’s development.

If we want to get the best out of it, we have to purify it:[2]

When a true seeker determineth to take the step of search in the path leading unto the knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy. . . . . . He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth.

This helps get us closer to possessing an understanding heart:[3]

Then will the manifold favors and outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind. . . . . . Gazing with the eye of God, he will perceive within every atom a door that leadeth him to the stations of absolute certitude.

So, despite its inescapable limitations the understanding heart has significant powers, including another key capacity:[4]

Were these people, wholly for the sake of God and with no desire but His good-pleasure, to ponder the verses of the Book in their heart, they would of a certainty find whatsoever they seek. In its verses would they find revealed and manifest all the things, be they great or small, that have come to pass in this Dispensation. They would even recognize in them references unto the departure of the Manifestations of the names and attributes of God from out their native land; to the opposition and disdainful arrogance of government and people; and to the dwelling and establishment of the Universal Manifestation in an appointed and specially designated land. No man, however, can comprehend this except he who is possessed of an understanding heart.

The Central Importance of the Heart

Klebel addresses these issues in Chapters 3 and 4 and is convinced, on the basis of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s clarification, that the system of nerves connected with heart are both spiritual and physical:[5]

‘The powers of the sympathetic nerve are neither entirely physical nor spiritual, but are between the two (systems). The nerve is connected with both. Its phenomena shall be perfect when its spiritual and physical relations are normal.’

He tries to unpack some of the possible implications of this duality:

Bahá’u’lláh, for example, speaks of the ‘eye of thine heart’[6] or He mentions a person who has ‘unstopped the ear of his inmost heart’[7] implying the heart has an ability that can somehow be compared to the senses of hearing and seeing. He states that hearts can be affected by touch, telling us ‘hearts have been sorely shaken’.[8]Bahá’u’lláh speaks of a ‘wise and understanding heart’[9] and places the function of memory into the heart as well when He lets us pray ‘to make my heart to be a receptacle of Thy love and of remembrance of Thee.’[10] He further instructs us to think, meditate, or ponder in our heart, saying in many places, ‘Ponder this in thine heart’.[11]

He quotes the Báb, the forerunner of Bahá-u-lláh, who is a Manifestation of God in His own right and not just some kind of John the Baptist figure simply prophesying the appearance of Bahá-u-lláh:

For the Báb, the heart is the central place where the belief in God is centred, and the heart encompasses the ‘expanse of heaven and earth’.[12]

With the help of Nader Saiedi and his book Gate of the Heart, I have attempted to take a closer look at the Báb’s Writings on the heart. There is a huge amount to ponder there but for now I will just flag up a key consideration.

Klebel raises an important point:

. . . the Báb proposes how . . . conflicting yet complementary attributes of the same thing or idea are unified only in the heart:

‘Such conclusive truth hath been revealed through the gaze of the heart, and not that of intellect. For intellect conceives not save limited things . . . No one can recognize the truth of the Middle Way between the two extreme poles except after attaining unto the gate of the heart and beholding the realities of the worlds, visible and unseen.’[13]

This same quote can be found on page 177 of Nader Saiedi’s book Gate of the Heart. Later, Saiedi complements that insight by stating:[14]

The essence of this discussion is that humanity has now arrived at the beginning of a new age: human spiritual culture has evolved from the stage of the “body” through that of the “soul,” to that of “intellect,” and has arrived at the stage of the “heart.” Humanity is now ready to receive a revelation based on the sanctuary of unity.

Picking up the threads of the previous post, where Klebel explains the heart’s relationship with poetry and dream and revelation, we find him quoting Bahá-u-lláh:

‘Do thou ponder these momentous happenings in thy heart, so that thou mayest apprehend the greatness of this Revelation, and perceive its stupendous glory.[15]

Poetry and Revelation are closely related in Klebel’s view:

The affinity revelatory writings have with poetry, and the fact that some of them even take the form of poetry, can be explained by the fact that poetry speaks primarily to the heart, and only secondarily can be understood by the brain. This is true also for Revelation, as this is understood primarily by the heart and only afterward scrutinized and evaluated by the logical mind. It could be said that the language of the heart is not only the language of dreams but also the language of poetry; this is how spiritual values and understandings are expressed. Ultimately, it must be stated that the language of the heart is the language of divine Revelation.

It is definitely a no brainer to realise why all this appeals to me so strongly given my lifetime of effort invested in decoding poems and dreams.

We can only access the language of the heart indirectly:

. . .  we always have a translation from the heart to the brain and have no awareness in the heart itself directly; we can only use the logical mind to become aware of what happens in the heart. The feelings we experience in the body must be understood by the brain.

Perhaps, in our case, because ‘[m]ost Westerners are well trained in using the brain and have little access to their understanding heart.’

As Nader Saiedi explains it in Gate of the Heart, the Báb’s position is clear (page 65): ‘,. . . it is “the gaze of the heart, and not of the intellect,” which is the right method of approach to the truth.’

The Báb places the heart at the highest level of four in terms of representing human reality. Saiedi states it in this way:[16]

The Báb employs a symbolic schema to represent human reality in terms of four levels: heart, spirit, soul, and body.…

The highest of these levels is the heart. “Heart” here should not be interpreted in the Western sense in which the heart is associated with emotion or sentiment. It is rather the supreme seat of spiritual truth, the abode of divine revelation. After the heart are the three lower stages of spirit, soul and body.

This was a radical change of perspective for me. Saiedi’s explanation is complex and will have to wait until next time. Even then I am not sure I will be able to do it justice.

References:

[1]. Bahá-u-lláh: Gleanings – pages 164-166: LXXXIII
[2]. Bahá’u’lláh: Kitáb-i-Íqán – page 162.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 196.
[4]. Op. cit. – page 174.
[5]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, p. 308. As to the authenticity of this Tablet, the following information was provided Roger Dahl, Archivist of the US National Bahá’í Archives: ‘That Tablet . . . was to a Dr E. H. Pratt of Chicago. The Archives does not have the original Tablet but we do have the translation that Dr Pratt sent to Albert Windust which was used in publishing the book. From a note by Albert Windust apparently ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave permission for the Tablet’s publication, which Dr Pratt had requested. There is always the possibility that the World Centre Archives has the original Tablet. The translation was done by Ameen Farid on October 4, 1905 in Chicago.’
[6]. Bahá’u’lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán, p. 91.
[7]. Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 86.
[8]. Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations, no. 9, p. 8. On this point touched by emotion seems more likely than touched in any direct physical sense.
[9]. Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 65.
[10]. Bahá’u’lláh, Prayers and Meditations, no. 40, p. 42.
[11]. Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 74.
[12]. Selections from the Writings of the Báb page 145.
[13]. The Báb – Tablet to Mirzá Hasan, Iran National Bahá’í Archives, 53:199
[14]. Gate of the Heart – page 227.
[15]. Kitáb-i-Íqán – page 236.
[16]. Gate of the Heart – page 102.

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Understanding the Heart (4/6): How deep does intuition extend?

After my slight detour down the path of the breath triggered by James Nestor’s book, I need to get back to what was supposed to be my original focus: the heart, and at last it looks as though I’m ready to start tackling the transpersonal possibilities.

Intuitive Foreknowledge

I think that it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the same sources that explore the more material-based processes of the heart also embrace its possibly spiritual capacities. So, the first step will be to pick up once more on Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance – An Overview of Research Conducted by the HeartMath Institute by Rollin McCraty (see Link).

His exploration in Chapter 7 continues:

 . . there is now a large body of documented rigorous scientific research on nonlocal intuitive perception that dates back more than seven decades. A variety of experiments show it cannot be explained by flaws in experimental design or research methods, statistical techniques, chance or selective reporting of results.[1]

By non-local he means ‘compelling evidence to suggest the physical heart is coupled to a field of information not bound by the classical limits of time and space,’ which comes ‘from a rigorous experimental study that demonstrated the heart receives and processes information about a future event before the event actually happens.’ [2]

They built on Dean Radin’s protocol and ‘found that not only did both the brain and heart receive the pre-stimulus information some 4 to 5 seconds before a future emotional picture was randomly selected by the computer, the heart actually received this information about 1.5 seconds before the brain received it,’[3] concluding that ‘the results of the . . . experiment confirm our and others’ previous finding that electrophysiological measures, especially changes in heart rhythm, can demonstrate intuitive foreknowledge.’

McCraty therefore understandably feels ‘it is not surprising that one of the strongest threads uniting the views of diverse cultures and religious and spiritual traditions throughout history has been a universal regard that [the heart] is the source of love, wisdom, intuition, courage, etc.’

In terms of his model he clarifies that ‘the terms intuitive heart and spiritual heart refer to our energetic heart, which we believe is coupled with a deeper part of ourselves.’

‘Several notable scientists’ he adds, ‘have proposed that such functions operate primarily in the frequency domain outside of time and space and they have suggested some of the possible mechanisms that govern how they are able to interact with biological processes.’[4]

In his view the benefits are clear:

. . . Heart intelligence is the flow of higher awareness and the intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into synchronistic alignment with the energetic heart. When we are heart-centered and coherent, we have a tighter coupling and closer alignment with our deeper source of intuitive intelligence. We are able to more intelligently self-regulate our thoughts and emotions and over time this lifts consciousness and establishes a new internal physiological and psychological baseline.[5]

Moreover:

Our intuitive insights often unfold more understanding of ourselves, others, issues and life than years of accumulated knowledge. It is especially helpful for eliminating unnecessary energy expenditures, which deplete our internal reserves, making it more difficult to self-regulate and be in charge of our attitudes, emotions and behaviors in ordinary day-to-day life situations. Intuition allows us to increase our ability to move beyond automatic reactions and perceptions. It helps us make more intelligent decisions from a deeper source of wisdom, intelligence and balanced discernment, in essence increasing our consciousness, happiness and the quality of our life experience.

The Importance of Silence

One of the ways to strengthen this connection is by ‘developing deeper levels of self-awareness of our more subtle feelings and perceptions, which otherwise never rise to conscious awareness.’

What does that mean exactly?

 In other words, we have to pay attention to the intuitive signals that often are under the radar of conscious perception or are drowned out by ongoing mental chatter and emotional unrest. A common report from people who practice being more self-aware of their inner signals is that the heart communicates a steady stream of intuitive information to the mind and brain. In many cases, we only perceive a small percentage of intuitive information or choose to override the signals because they do not match our more egocentric desires.

When I try to explain to people the nature of my own experience of this, I describe it by saying that the head shouts but the heart whispers. Therefore, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wisely advised and Jill Bolte Taylor dramatically discovered in My Stroke of Insight we need to silence the brain-noise if we are to have any hope of listening to the heart. It is another of those strange correlations, rather like earth being an anagram of heart, that the same applies to the words silent and listen.

The words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are:[6]

Bahá’u’lláh says there is a sign (from God) in every phenomenon: the sign of the intellect is contemplation and the sign of contemplation is silence, because it is impossible for a man to do two things at one time—he cannot both speak and meditate. It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed.

A Window on the Spirit

Does all this this justify Klebel’s next leap in Chapter 4 of his book The Human Heart?

He argues that just as ‘Poetry, for example, originates in the heart . . . [t]he same process underlies the poetic aspect of the Revelation; hence, the special language of any Revelation has this poetic style and needs to be understood by the heart. It speaks directly to the heart but also needs to be understood by the brain; or rather, it needs to be internally translated to the logical and intuitional ability of the human brain to be fully understood.’

Given that this whole sequence has its roots in the dream I had about the hearth in my family home and its connections with both the earth and my heart, and given that it is my only dream in which I have sensed the presence of Bahá-u-lláh, I am inclined to go with him on this. His perspective has a degree of plausibility for me. In the same chapter he writes:

Only in the dream, when the brain is excluded by sleep, is heart thinking present alone, but even that kind of thinking has to be translated by the brain into the normal style of thinking to become conscious and possibly be understood.

. . . These considerations are based on the understanding of the Bahá’í Writings that the mind or the soul, with its rational faculty, is using the body, in this case the brain and the heart, as instruments of their action.

He quotes from the Bahá’í Writings in support of this possibility: ‘Say: Spirit, mind, soul, and the powers of sight and hearing are but one single reality which hath manifold expressions owing to the diversity of its instruments.’[7]

The context there is interesting in the light of this perspective. Earlier on the same page Bahá-u-lláh writes: ‘Know, furthermore, that the life of man proceedeth from the spirit, and the spirit turneth wheresoever the soul directeth it.’ And He goes onto to explain on the next page, ‘In like manner, when this sign of God turneth towards the brain, the head, and such means, the powers of the mind and the soul are manifested.’

What meanings we derive from that are of course for each of us to decide.

Klebel feels that ‘ brain thinking constitutes a polar opposite between rational and intuitive thinking’ and ‘[t]ranscending this way of thinking of the brain is the thinking of the heart.’

One way in which, in his view, the thinking of the heart is superior to the thinking of the brain he explains in the following intriguing discussion:

One of the most distinguishing differences between the brain and the heart is the fact that the brain is divided into a right and left hemisphere, and how they work together in logical and discursive thought is not yet fully understood. In opposition to this is the fact that the little brain of the heart does not have this distinction or separation and seems to be undivided, as expressed in the following statement by Bahá’u’lláh. This has ethical or moral consequences which are important to notice, especially when considering the understanding of divine Revelation:

‘And as the human heart, as fashioned by God, is one and undivided, it behoveth thee to take heed that its affections be, also, one and undivided. Cleave thou, therefore, with the whole affection of thine heart, unto His love, and withdraw it from the love of anyone besides Him, that He may aid thee to immerse thyself in the ocean of His unity, and enable thee to become a true upholder of His oneness.’[8]

I won’t go back over all the ground I have covered in this blog on the left hemisphere versus right hemisphere challenges – suffice it to say, my deep engagement with that problem perhaps explains why I resonate to the possibility that the heart Bahá-u-lláh refers to has a physical dimension, as I have also been wrestling to deepen my understanding of exactly what the term ‘heart’ means at this spiritual level. I was taken, as I have explained elsewhere, with the idea that the heart is the experience of soul in consciousness, but perhaps it’s a touch more complicated even than that.

What does seem to be clear is this:

. . . Another conclusion is the understanding that the revelatory writings of all religions are actually speaking to the heart more than to the brain. Nevertheless, the brain is not neglected, because it must be used so that it gains awareness of the language of the heart which can then be interpreted in the logical way of the brain.

As I plunge more deeply into the spiritual perspective, we will find some puzzling and surprising insights in the next post or two.

References:

[1]. Hogarth, R. M., Educating Intuition 2001, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
[2]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysiologi- cal evidence of intuition: Part 1. The surprising role of the heart. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(1): p. 133-143, and McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[3]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[4]. Pribram, K.H., Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing1991, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Laszlo, E., Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: how the new scientific reality can change us and our world 2008, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, Mitchell, E., Quantum holography: a basis for the interface between mind and matter, in Bioelectromagnetic Medicine, P.G. Rosch and M.S. Markov, Editors. 2004, Dekker: New York, NY. p. 153-158, Tiller, W. A., J. W E Dibble, and M. J. Kohane, Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of a New Physics 2001, Walnut Creek, CA: Pavior Publishing. (pp. 201-202), Bradley, R.T., Psycholphysiology of Intution: A quantum-holgraphic theory on nonlocal communication. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 2007. 63(2): p. 61-97, Marcer, P. and W . Schempp, The brain as a conscious system. International Journal of General Systems, 1998. 27: p. 231- 248, Pribram, K.H. and R.T. Bradley, The brain, the me and the I, in Self-Awareness: Its Nature and Development, M. Ferrari and R. Sternberg, Editors. 1998, The Guilford Press: New York. p. 273-307, and Schempp, W., Quantum holograhy and neurocomputer architectures. Journal of Mathematical Imaging and vision,1992. 2: p. 109-164.
[5]. McCraty, R., M. Atkinson, and R.T. Bradley, Electrophysi- ological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004. 10(2): p. 325-336.
[6]. Paris Talks – page 174.
[7]. Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, page 154..
[8]. Op. cit. – pages 214–15.

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Book Review – ‘Living in a Mindful Universe’ (5/7): the brain as filter

Given that the post on 13 November makes reference to Eben Alexander’s near-death-experience I thought it might be helpful to republish this sequence albeit slightly soon. 

Our Dividing Line

Anjam Khursheed, in his book The Universe Within,[1] summarises our situation: ‘Humanity stands on the dividing line between two universes: the conscious universe within us and the external universe that surrounds us.’

The previous two posts have focused mainly on the importance of the impact we need to try and make on the ‘landscape’, whereas it is now time to return again to a focus on what we might call the ‘inscape.’

I recently rediscovered a poem to which, judging by the note scribbled in the margin, I had strongly resonated when I first read it nearly 30 years ago. It’s called The New Mariner.[2]

The joking reference is obvious. R S Thomas may not have been through a traumatic experience at sea after shooting an albatross, but he clearly identifies with the idea of pestering unreceptive strangers, including wedding guests, with his weird experiences in the manner of Coleridge’s ancient mariner.

He speaks of sending out his ‘probes’ into ‘the God-space, being an ‘astronaut/on impossible journeys/to the far side of the self’ and returning ‘with messages/I cannot decipher.’ In the end he can’t help ‘worrying the ear/of the passer-by, hot on his way/to the marriage of plain fact with plain fact.’

His poetry is full of similar references, for example in Groping:[3]

The best journey to make

is inward. It is the interior

that calls. Eliot heard it.

Wordsworth turned from the great hills

of the north to the precipice

of his own mind, and let himself

down for the poetry stranded

on the bare ledges.

He is of course not alone among the poets in this respect. Gerard Manley Hopkins sings from a similar though darker hymn sheet:

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall 

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap 

May who ne’er hung there. 

Such attempts to capture what I have come to call the inscape, a term borrowed from Hopkins, have always fascinated me, not least because of the quotation from Ali, the successor of Muhammad in Bahá’u’lláh’s The Seven Valleys. In the earliest version I came across it reads:[4] ‘Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form/When within thee the universe is folded?’ Anjam Khursheed in his book The Universe Within uses[5] almost identical wording from The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh[6], along with quotations from other religious traditions, to give warrant to the title of his book.

A later edition of The Seven Valleys uses another wording:[7] ‘Dost thou deem thyself a small and puny form,/When thou foldest within thyself the greater world?’

Viv Bartlett, in his recent and last book, Navigating Materialistic Minefields, uses this later quote to come to a more limited conclusion:[8] ‘the physical body of every human being comes from the materials of the universe.’ Given Bahá’u’lláh’s wake up call in the Arabic Hidden Words[9] – ‘Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust?’ – that may be one possible legitimate implication of those lines. However, I don’t think it is the only one, or even the main meaning of the words. Viv’s book contains many deep insights of great value, which caused me to pause before deciding to use those poetic lines to support my perspective on the infinity within as Khursheed also did in his book.

In the end, I came to feel that the quote more than justifies this sense of a numinous infinity hidden within us, and Alexander and Newell’s book, Living in a Mindful Universe, comes as close as almost any trending text I have read to exploring what the ‘God-space’ might be, how it might be connected with ‘the far side of the self,’ and in the process confronting ‘plain fact’-addicted materialists with unpalatable transcendent truths.

Most of the territory they cover was already familiar to me, but the way they synthesised it provided one of the most coherent validations so far of my own developing understanding of this ineffable reality.

Why Is It So Important?

Why might this be so important, even in the light of the compelling imperatives of action I explored last time. Khursheed raises an important point here:[10]

Our spirit of exploration and discovery in the external universe is not matched by a corresponding spirit for the inner universe. We are more comfortable conquering far away moons then exploring inner space.

The climate of the mind, it seems, is at least as important as the climate of our planet, but we are out of balance, something which renders the maintenance of progress in the right direction highly problematic. In Khursheed’s view[11] ‘We must endeavour to uncover our eyes and ears, open our hearts and minds, so that we can recognise our role, play our part, and discover just who we really are.’ Blind to our inner reality we will fail to be fully effective.

So, what do Alexander and Newell, along with their advocate, Mishlove, actually say?

The Brain as a Filter

They have an interesting take on why we are so blind to what is potentially so important.

Mishlove, as a starting point, highlights the evolutionary bias:[12] ‘. . . The brain places into the spotlight of awareness a reduced level most useful for biological survival.

Unlike the transceiver model to be found in John Hatcher[13] and Pim van Lommel,[14] Eben Alexander prefers to use a filter model:[15]

The brain is a reducing valve, or filter, that reduces primordial consciousness down to a trickle – our very limited human awareness of the apparent ‘here and now.’

Why should this be so? Mishlove[16] calls on Grosso to explain:

We must ask why embodied human beings have psychic abilities. . . . Philosopher Michael Grosso states these are unnecessary, rarely used abilities for most living persons – as we meet our survival needs through conventional sensorimotor and rational faculties. However, ESP and PK are latent potentials that become stronger, ‘after we drop our bodies in death and our minds are all we possess.’ Then they become essential.

Once brain activity reduces, access to the transcendental paradoxically increases.

Alexander points towards the evidence for this surprising state of affairs in that experiments with psychedelic drug experiences suggest[17] ‘the greatest mental experiences involved a significant decrease in regional brain activity . . .’ In addition,[18] ‘Mindfulness training is correlated with a decreased volume in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with fear responses,’ so that[19] ‘[a]s the brain becomes less active, internal mental experience actually becomes more active.’

Only then, it seems:[20]

 By reducing the visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli that bombard us every waking minute, we are able to connect more with the Collective Mind. . . . When we eliminate the “noise” (that is, the sensory flood processed through our body’s nervous system to perpetuate the Supreme Illusion), we isolate a core aspect of conscious awareness itself.

Alexander describes it graphically by saying:[21]

Ultimately, by getting the brain out of the way, whether through meditation, achieving a flow state, or sensory deprivation, we are able to rise above the Supreme Illusion of earthly space-time.

All of which goes some way towards explaining ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s emphasis on silence:[22]

Bahá’u’lláh says there is a sign (from God) in every phenomenon: the sign of the intellect is contemplation and the sign of contemplation is silence, because it is impossible for a man to do two things at one time—he cannot both speak and meditate. It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed.

Such is the power of silence that:[23]

This faculty of meditation frees man from the animal nature, discerns the reality of things, puts man in touch with God.

Even so we need to be careful. Alexander flags up the same kind of trap as Mason Remey fell into when he started his completely unwarranted claim, after Shoghi Effendi’s death, that he was the new Guardian:[24]

“Got to be careful not to go through the door of enlightenment too fast; that would be going through the door with your ego on. Good way to get delusions of grandeur, a messianic complex, to wind up in a mental institution. You got to be really pure. You can’t just make believe you’re pure.”

We can end up mistaking the light we see shining from the mirror of our hearts as being ours, rather than having the humility to see it for what it really is – a reflection of light emanating from a far more noble source.

He advises us to review the day’s events for their meaning:[25]

What if we could enact a daily or weekly review, where notable events are assessed as potential lessons?

This echoes Bahá’u’lláh’s advice:[26] ‘Bring thyself to account each day.’

In this process we need to bring into awareness of the unconscious processes involved in our decision making if we are to connect more securely to our higher selves:[27]

. . . Each choice of intention creates a consequence and [we need] to pay close attention to the ramifications of our choices. Becoming more conscious of our unconscious decision-making process allows the greater awareness of how our unfolding reality comes into being.

In the end, this may render us capable of recognising a deeper truth about our reality:[28]

Our self-focused world is a major part of the problems we currently face. Our little individual theatre of consciousness appears at first glance to be ours alone, but the evidence emerging from quantum physics and from the deepest study of the nature of consciousness and the mind-body problem indicates that we are all truly part of one collective mind. We are all in this together, and are slowly awakening to a common goal – the evolution of conscious awareness.

Time to pause again before taking another look next time at the delusion of materialism.

References:

[1]. The Universe Within – page 7.

[2]. Collected Poems – page 388.

[3]. Op. cit. – page 328.

[4]. The Seven Valleys (1945 edition) – page 34.

[5]. The Universe Within – page 23.

[6] The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh – page 40.

[7]. The Seven Valleys (2018 edition) – page 44.

[8]. Navigating Materialistic Minefields – page 127.

[9]. Arabic Hidden Words – Number 68.

[10]. The Universe Within – page 157.

[11]. Op. cit. – page 169.

[12]. Beyond the Brain:
the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death – page 16.

[13]. The Purpose of Physical Reality – page 151.

[14]. Consciousness Beyond Life – Kindle Reference 261.

[15]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 85.

[16]. Beyond the Brain – page 90.

[17]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 145.

[18]. Op. cit. – page 294.

[19]. Op. cit. – page 304.

[20]. Op. cit. – page 306.

[21]. Op. cit. – page 314.

[22]. Paris Talks – page 174.

[23]. Op. cit. – page 175.

[24]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 626.

[25]. Op. cit. – page 514.

[26]. Arabic Hidden Words – Number 31.

[27]. Living in a Mindful Universe – pages 519-520.

[28]. Op. cit. – page 629.

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Book Review – ‘Living in a Mindful Universe’ (1/7): synchronicities & NDEs

Given that the post on 13 November makes reference to Eben Alexander’s near-death-experience I thought it might be helpful to republish this sequence albeit slightly soon. 

This is likely to be the most complex and ambitious attempt to integrate and express my understanding of some of these issues that I have ever undertaken. I mustn’t overload it though or the sequence might sink

As if all this was not already enough, in the interests of synchronicity I’m afraid much more needs to be said before I even start to describe the main trigger to this attempt.

Post-Covid I had been attempting to reconnect with friends and former colleagues after a long lapse in communication, but been pretty sluggish in taking any kind of consistent action.

Interesting Synchronicities

The first event of interest here was a conversation with an acquaintance of my wife’s in town. She inadvertently dropped into the conversation that I was – or, perhaps more accurately, had been – a psychologist. The next day he texted to say that a psychology friend of his from abroad was wondering whether he could help her find out how to get work in that field in this country. It was proving difficult. When she first asked him he hadn’t a clue how he could help. After my wife dropped the hint he got in touch.

This triggered me to get off my procrastinating backside and contact a former colleague who not only was a psychologist but, as I knew, had a number of European friends in the same boat as the lady asking for help.

He kindly agreed to consult with her and see if he could help in any way. I thanked him and suggested we meet for coffee, which we did soon after. For two hours upstairs in the All Saints café we were immersed in in a deeply enriching exploration of spirituality, the afterlife and consciousness. I wish we had recorded what we discussed as I can’t remember half of it. But that’s not the main point here, but I will be sharing some of the material we covered later on this blog, I expect.

The day after we’d had the conversation and exchanged emails about how enlightening we had found it, a friend in Australia phoned and during the conversation asked me if I had any videos on NDEs. I explained that I preferred reading to watching, and apologised for not being able to help.

Within hours of that call, I got an email from the former colleague with an attachment. It was an essay by Jeffrey Mishlove titled Beyond the Brain:
 the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death. I’ll be touching on some of the content later but what is most relevant now is that is contained 71 links to videos on NDEs and closely related issues.

This is by no means the first experience I have had of synchronicity. There are many times in my life when I had read a book on a particular topic, usually consciousness related but not always, and within days someone asks me to help them understand exactly that topic and its implications for their current situation.

Even more importantly my discovery of the Bahá’í Faith depended upon finding a particular book in the Hendon Library, which I would not have dreamed of bothering to borrow if I had been able to find anything else to take away to compensate me for my trudge through the snow and bitter wind on a winter’s day.

Not surprisingly, the essay reactivated my exploration of NDEs once more, as well as enabling me to share 71 video links with my Australian friend.

As though to make sure my research was definitely reactivated at this point, I was also asked to make some comments on a draft text that was replete with quotations from the NDE literature.

Following the various threads, both in terms of reading the essay and watching two hour-long videos (yes, I really did break my pattern and do that!), not only left me with some new insights, which I will explore soon, but also flagged up a book by Eben Alexander and Karen Newell, Living in a Mindful Universe. That book will be my main focus in this sequence alongside an exploration of the way some of my previous insights map onto or complement their perspective.

Hearticulture

Early in life I had thought my interest in books meant I should be focusing on literature. Later I came to realise books were definitely not my calling for their own sake. My interest had always really been in what made people tick, in addition to our heart beats that is. My joke with my wife, who is a keen gardener and therefore a horticulturist, is that my specialism is hearticulture. 

This, though, involves not patronisingly treating other people as plants, but rather, as I also joke, practising heart-to-heart resuscitation. We’re all in danger of spiritual suffocation in this material world. The links between breath and spirit are close. Heart to heart resuscitation, it must be emphasised, is a reciprocal process, not a one-way street. We all need to work at helping everyone we meet to breath in the spirit. 

That’s why I’m grateful for Alexander and Newell’s book — Living in a Mindful Universe — which has been rather like visiting a spiritual optician. The book has tested my mind’s sight, given me a prescription for a new and much improved soul-lens, which is greatly enhancing my ability to see spiritual truths more clearly, and hopefully helping me be a better hearticulturist, if that makes sense.

I want to get to the bottom of the mind. That will not happen, of course, before I die, but I’d like to pothole down as deeply as I possibly can.

Near-Death Experiences

When I was about 11 years old I fell seriously ill. In the poem Solitude I recently tried to capture the experience I’d had:

At the time I bought into delirium as an explanation, but the experience has stuck in my memory in a way that other periods of delirium never have, even more recent ones. I don’t think this alone has been the trigger for my almost 40 years of unrelenting exploration of consciousness.

My well of pain revelation at the Encounter Group weekend in London in the mid-seventies certainly played its part. Clearly my mind was not what it had always seemed to me till then. From that point on various forms of therapy, Buddhist meditation, the study of psychology and existential philosophy, all focused on the nature of the mind, catapulted me towards the Bahá’í Faith where I met the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that set the core of the puzzle that bewildered the psychologist in me at the time:[1]

. . . the mind is the power of the human spirit. Spirit is the lamp; mind is the light which shines from the lamp. Spirit is the tree, and the mind is the fruit. Mind is the perfection of the spirit and is its essential quality, as the sun’s rays are the essential necessity of the sun.’

He went on to add: ‘This explanation, though short, is complete; therefore, reflect upon it, and if God wills, you may become acquainted with the details.’ Reflect upon it I certainly have: how well acquainted with the details I have become remains to be seen, I think.

My experience of the Bahá’í Faith has been very much a quest. I am travelling the Bahá’í path, my understanding influenced by all the twists and turns I’ve just mentioned that shaped my perception. I know I will never be truly a Bahá’í in this material life but I can at least try to inch closer to a truer understanding of spiritual truths.

The book I am about to explore has reinvigorated my desire to explore and understand all this far more deeply. In the process of sharing its impact, I will be going back to the Bahá’í Writings, poems I have been affected by, and other texts, to re-examine them with what I hope is now my keener gaze.

Eben Alexander

Eben Alexander’s NDE

Before we plunge more deeply into the book, we need to briefly go back to the experiences I have blogged about in my posts on Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven. Certain aspects are clearer now.

For example Mishlove explains how improbable during his coma was any kind of conscious experience, and afterwards how unlikely was he not only to survive, but if he did survive to have anything remotely like a full recovery of cognitive functioning:[2]

Bruce Greyson examined the medical records, over 600 pages, with two other physicians. Puss from a rare infection filled Alexander’s cranium. His Glasgow Coma Scale result indicated minimal brain function. The three physicians all agreed there was less than a one percent chance of survival and no possibility of a normal recovery. As Greyson describes… ‘This guy was as dead as you can be without having his heart stop.’

Not only that, but his recovery, in the light of Greyson’s data on his extremely dire brain state, would seem to be unique:[1]

. . . Any physician realises the basic impossibility of a complete medical recovery, and yet that is what happened. I have discovered no cases of any other patients with my particular diagnosis who then went on to benefit from a complete recovery.

One of the most moving aspects of his story for me, not suprisingly given my sense of connection with the sister who had died four years before I was born, was his discover of the identity of his companion during his NDE:[2]

Another interesting slant on his recovery he deals with in this book is how his memories returned:[5]

Most personal life memories returned by three weeks after awakening from coma. All prior knowledge of physics, chemistry, and neuroscience . . . returned progressively over about two months or so. The completeness of my memory return was quite astonishing, especially as I thoroughly reviewed my medical records and held discussions with colleagues who had cared for me, and I realised just how ill I had actually been.

Memory

What was even more astonishing than the return of his basic memories, was that[6] he  ‘[e]ventually, . .  came to realise through subtle evidence over the next few years that, in fact, [his] memories had come back even more complete than they had been before [his] coma.’

He goes into the specifics of some, such as:[7]

In expanded states of awareness, I have recovered memories going back very early in life, and these have included the realisation that the perceived abandonment by my birth mother, initially on day eleven of my life when I was hospitalised for ‘failing to thrive,’ was an event that was so dramatic and shocking that it left scars that are still apparent in my psyche.

His has led him to see memory in a different light[8]:

Just as filter theory allows that the brain is not the producer of consciousness, likewise, we use the brain to access memory from an informational field . . that exists outside of it.

According to Alexander, all systematic scientific attempts to identify the exact location of memory in the brain have failed:[9]‘. . .  The mechanism and location of long-term memory storage remains a complete mystery.’

There will be more on filter theory later. This is enough for now before we take a long look at the idea of a Universal Mind next time.

References:

[1]. Some Answered Questions – LV.

[2]. Beyond the Brain:
the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death – page 25.

[3]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 37.

[4]. Op. cit. – page 49.

[5]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 63.

[6]. Op. cit. – page 146.

[7]. Op. cit. – page 379.

[8]. Op. cit. – page 487.

[8]. Op. cit. – page 653.

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Some Pointers Towards a Spiritual Psychology (2/2): Potentiating Reflection

Given how this links to my recent sequence on reflection I couldn’t resist re-blogging it now.

At the end of the previous post, I raised an important question, given how divisive our attachment to the contents of our consciousness can be much of the time: would it not be easier for us to reflect, meaning step back from the contents of consciousness and connect with deeper and more authentic aspects of our being, if we believed that the mind is independent of the brain?

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Son of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, describes reflection at one point as the ‘faculty of meditation’ which ‘frees man from the animal nature, discerns the reality of things, puts man in touch with God.’[1]

By reflection what Koestenbaum seems to mean is something closely related to meditation in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sense. Reflection, he says:[2] ‘. . . releases consciousness from its objects and gives us the opportunity to experience our conscious inwardness in all its purity.’ What he says at another point is even more intriguing:[3] ‘The name Western Civilisation has given to . . . the extreme inward region of consciousness is God.’

If we believe that our minds are simply products of our brains, it will be very tempting to simply assume that brain-noise, the most vivid part of our inner experience, is virtually all there is. We’ll be convinced that we are just the constant stream of anger, fear, hate, love, joy and sadness, of thoughts and beliefs about others, ourselves and our world, and of the plans we make in consequence, which flows across the screen of consciousness and carries us away with it all too often, no matter how destructive it may be at the time. Blind rage will often trigger us into the kind of violence we are seeing all too often in the news right now.

So what other choice could we possibly have but to go with this flow for which we believe there is no substitute?

That many of us choose to gain more control over our minds than that, is admirable, but I can’t escape the feeling that we would find it easier if we could only believe that we are far more than our brains. My own experience strongly suggests that this will be the case. Before I took the plunge into the Bahá’í Faith, my meditative practice got me a long way – in fact it prepared me to recognise that the Bahá’í perspective was what I had been looking for all my life.

Since then I have more consistently tried to enact the same level of detached concentration across more areas of experience, a persistency that I feel stems at least in part from my having recognised that I must not continue to confuse the signals of my primate brain with the essence of my being if I am to fulfil as much of my potential as I can on this material plane.

So, would not the taking of that same step make it easier for others as well as me, not only to consult together more effectively in greater awareness of our interconnectedness, as I have argued elsewhere on this blog, but also to break out of what Ziya Tong describes as our ‘reality bubble’ and transcend what Tom Oliver argues is our ‘self delusion’?

For Ziya Tong, the sad truth is:[4]

Our food comes to us from places we do not see; our energy is produced in ways we don’t understand; and our waste disappears without us having to give it a thought. … humans are no longer in touch with the basics of their own system survival.

Tom Oliver is as intensely concerned to counteract our dangerous delusion that we are independent selves:[5]

. . . We have one . . . big myth dispel: that we exist as independent selves at the centre of a subjective universe.

He explains:[6]

We are seamlessly connected to one another and the world around us. Independence is simply an illusion that was once adaptive but now threatens our success as a species.

Surely it would be wiser, in the light of all the evidence pointing in that direction, to discard the misguided conclusions of promissory materialism, which is just as much an act of faith as theism is, embrace the idea that we are more than our limited brains and transcend the blind spots so forcefully flagged up by Tong and Oliver. It might even help us save the planet as well as ourselves and avoid the kind of anguish-ridden bloodshed of a war.

This seems to me to be the foundation stone upon which I have built my own understanding of an effective spiritual psychology.  There are many other elements that I have drawn from the Bahá’í Revelation that have shaped my thoughts and practice. Consultation is one key example, which I have already mentioned.

When I have more time I hope to revisit some of those as well. I’m afraid this will have to do for now.

References:

[1]. Paris Talks – page 175.
[2]. The New Image of the Person – page 99.
[3]. Ibid.: page 49.
[4]. The Reality Bubble – page 172.
[5]. The Self Delusion – page 3.
[6]. Ibid.: page 4.

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