Category: Spirituality

Can Science Explain Auras?

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Radiant Human aura photography by Christina Lonsdale. Photo courtesy of Radiant Human/the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In medicine, the term aura refers to a perceptual disturbance experienced by someone suffering from epilepsy or migraine. This is not, however, what I want to talk about today. Rather, the focus of this essay is on the psychic aura. As a boomer wading through the 1960s and 70s, I associated the term “aura” with spirituality and the visible energies around a person. But I had thought little about such things for the past 40 years. That is until I read Michael Crichton’s short story “Cactus Teachings” in his book Travels during this past Christmas holiday. It was a book given to me by my brother-in-law, Roger, who had enjoyed it and found Crichton’s stories resonant with what he heard in my poetry.

Crichton is a Harvard-trained doctor who gave up the practice of medicine to write. And he has produced some of the most popular and iconic stories of the past half-century, including Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and The Terminal Man. I admire and respect him as a scientist, medicine man, and writer. I was, therefore, fascinated to read that in the 1980s, he had encountered and learned the art of seeing auras. He did this as part of a two-week experience in personal growth, meditation, and psychic healing. His experience intrigued me and triggered my old curiosity regarding auras. Suddenly, the topic became top-of-mind.

As part of my daily walks and hikes, I began trying to visualize auric energies around those I encountered. Unexpectedly and delightfully, even though I had to convince myself they were there, I experienced subtle light rings right away. I caught glimpses of greens and blues initially. The experience reminded me of a faded but partial rainbow around the head of some people. I saw auras around animals and trees, although these were more monochromatic and usually just a simple light band around the object. I observed nothing around non-biological objects such as cars or cement telephone poles. Nor could I detect the bands surrounding people on television or on my computer screen. But an eye blink, saccade, or attentional blink, and the faint tracings would disappear.

As I continued the practice, things changed quickly and significantly. I perceived more colors, typically yellow, green, violent, and blue bands of light. It was easier to see these bands with the sun over my shoulder. And if I successfully held the view of the aura constant for more than a second, the energy bands intensified and got brighter. Unexpectedly, I began observing light bands around non-organic things and faint traces of them on television figures. Everything seemed surrounded by an aura, if only I made the effort to see it. I was unprepared for this experience and didn’t know what to make of it.

On one of my outings, I noted that bicyclists racing down a hill seemed to extend the auric field slightly, both in front and behind them. The colors were more pronounced in the front than in the receding stream of air. It was then I realized that one explanation for this phenomenon might be the simple experience of light being refracted by particles surrounding our bodies, including water molecules.

I had purposely avoided reading the scientific literature until this point. When I started reading journal articles, I found that there were no real scientific studies because scientists deem the phenomenon not replicable. Neurologists contend people perceive auras because of defects within the brain itself because of epilepsy, migraines, synesthesia, or the influence of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD. However, when tested appropriately, researchers could not verify the findings related to the psychic aura. Hence, studies done under laboratory conditions have shown that this experience is best explained as either a visual illusion, or an afterimage.

Yet, those with no known clinical abnormalities or drug use, like Michael Crichton and I, cannot deny our experiences. There are several potential explanations. First, scientific tests may be incorrect. As an example, one test used to prove the unreliability of the phenomenon is to have someone stand (or not) behind a screen that blocks the body. The screen does not block the space around the body, and thus a person being tested ought to perceive the aura when someone is behind the screen. Researchers testing individuals claiming to detect auras beforehand found they could not correctly identify auras without knowing if someone was actually standing behind the screen. A second explanation is, of course, that the phenomenon is the product of imagination processes and therefore uniquely individualized.

There are problems with these hypotheses. First, the type of test described may be inappropriate because the auric phenomenon may depend on lateral inhibition in the visual system, which would require viewing of a body. If the body is not present to provide the contrast, there is no lateral inhibition and no aura. Lateral inhibition is something that happens because of how cells in the retina and other visual regions connect. So, when one cell is excited and fires action potentials, it turns off or provides inhibition to its surrounding neighbors. This lateral inhibition explains a well-known visual illusion phenomenon known as Mach bands, named after their discoverer, the physicist Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Mach bands reflect the exaggerated contrast between edges produced by the anatomy of lateral inhibition, by triggering edge-detection in the human visual system. Hence, a simple and testable explanation for auras is that lateral inhibition, combined with light refraction by particles surrounding our bodies, creates edge enhancement and rainbow-like experiences.

A rainbow requires water droplets or small particles floating in the air. The sun must be behind you and the clouds cleared away for the rainbow to appear. When sunlight strikes a water droplet, it refracts, and changes the direction of light because of the surface of the water. The light continues into the drop and reflects from the back of the drop to the front. When the beam hits the front, it refracts again. The water drops act like prisms to separate the light into its different wavelengths and as the color spectrum we experience in a rainbow. Science has shown that clouds of water droplets and other small particles surround our bodies. These can perform a similar light-refractory function and voila—a rainbow-like aura is visible.

Auras are a subtle visual experience. They may indeed require imagination to see. This may be why we need time to learn how to perceive this natural and wonderful phenomenon. On the other hand, photography can capture auric differences, so it can not be entirely imagination. The question I want to leave you with is: If science can explain psychic auras, are they any less fascinating?

Touching Stillness and Responding Creatively

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THE-GOOD-MONKEY-MIND-chapter-1Download

I am attaching Chapter 1 of my new book, The Good Monkey Mind, so that you can respond creatively and provide whatever feedback you deem appropriate.

I truly appreciate it.

In a previous commentary, I encouraged everyone to practice stillness during this new year and assured you that touching such stillness, even for the briefest moment, would help you gain a feeling of contentment. It would also likely lead you to want to continue practicing. Today, I want to describe how touching stillness affected me in a positive and creative way.

Stillness is the attitude I adopted that “life is perfect as it is” or more prosaically that “life is what it is.” Not perfect in an ideal or Platonic sense, but as the only outcome out of a set of possibilities given the history and circumstances of each moment. I accept this reality in a willing, loving manner, and doing so from moment to moment gives way to a stillness of mind. Accepting the reality of the moment does not mean I am resigned to what life brings. The mystery is that within this acceptance lies the enormous creativity of the universe to engage and provide solutions that lead to wise change.

Like any skill, practicing mind stillness requires effort. This means keeping the “perfection of life” top of mind, especially when negative things occur. As I continued the effort, it became less conscious and more automatic – until the openness and acceptance remained without conceptual mentation. One of the first things I noticed as my practice grew was how less emotionally reactive I became to the surrounding turmoil. My emotions did not disappear or become muted—I actually felt more. The difference consisted in my response to those feelings. I did not immediately become anxious, fearful, or lash out in anger. I had the space and time to consider the unfairness or sadness of the circumstances, to feel them, but then consider how I could do something about it.

More than anything, the practice of stillness produced a joy that was totally unexpected. This joy is a fullness, closer to contentment than to happiness, even as the world seems to be more and more chaotic. Again, it isn’t a defeatist or resigned attitude but a perspective that says, “ok, this is how it is, now, what can I do about it?” This viewpoint leads me to not only follow the masking and distancing recommendations but also to volunteer to take part in the Moderna vaccine trials or be a volunteer to vaccinate people. The outcome of the vaccine trials has proven it was the correct decision. Hence, the more I practice stillness, the stronger my confidence grows about the intuitions that arise, and the more faith I place on those intuitions. It is a positive feedforward, self-fulfilling, and satisfying process.

I have asked myself about this “faith,” which has echoes of an early religious upbringing. It is a kind of faith my skepticism as a neuroscientist had displaced. My increased openness to it is something that developed as I continued my stillness practice. I struggle with it, in the sense that I  resist it, something I relate in my autobiography, Piercing the Cloud. In the end, however, I see using the scientific method and intuition as complementary strategies to know and engage the world. Both are powerful yet distinct ways to approach and know truth. At our best, our brain-mind accommodates and uses both strategies to respond to life creatively.

Enlightenment: The Spiritual Liminal State

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“… It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else.  It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.”

                                                                                                            Richard Rohr

In the above quote, Richard Rohr, American author, spiritual writer, and Franciscan friar, defines the psychological liminal state, a transitional state that can be potentially terrifying. Such a state has many similarities to the state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is defined in infinite ways. In some spiritual circles, enlightenment is the state of attaining spiritual knowledge or insight, in particular awareness of your true nature as part of the unity of life.

Joko Beck, an American Zen teacher, captured the unique nature of the enlightenment experience by describing it as walking on a knife’s edge. It’s a terrifying image, and as a spiritual liminal condition, one of potentiality, not the old nor yet the new, but a “cloud of unknowing.” A liminal condition, whether psychological or spiritual, is temporary and can terrify or be satisfying, depending on whether you learn to live with it. This recalls a quote from Dogen, founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan: “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”

The implication is that life is lived normally following an encounter with this spiritual liminal state-but with a difference. The answer is to learn to live with the cloud of unknowing, to love and trust it. When you wake up to such a reality, it becomes the only way to live a truly normal, satisfying and full life. Craig Hamilton, a contemporary American spiritual teacher, captures the difference in the before and after in this realization. 

Hamilton has written that enlightenment is not a state of consciousness. It is not a thought. It is the intuitive realization of your true nature, that who you are is not this limited, separate self; or any of the thoughts and feelings that you previously identified as yourself. Awakening occurs as you realize that who you are at the deepest level is something much bigger and more profound than who you thought you were. It is the recognition of a kind of super consciousness, intelligence, love, being, and presence that is the foundation of reality itself.

This presence is already free, whole, and perfect. Who you are is this sacred dimension of reality that is beyond intellectual comprehension, yet somehow, you “know” it. It’s missing nothing, lacking nothing, and overflows with love, wisdom, power, and clarity. Enlightenment is not just the realization that God exists. It’s the realization that That is what you are. The thing you were always seeking and putting outside yourself is actually your true nature. This intuitive knowledge shatters every conscious and unconscious belief you’ve had in your own limitation. It destroys every sense of lack, of not being enough, of feeling there is somewhere else you need to get to. You realize that the whole thing is already here. This life is the spiritual liminal state of enlightenment that can terrify and be glorious at the same time. Enlightenment is the realization that I am That. Awakening to the essence that you and everything else is sacred is beyond measure and glorious beyond comprehension.

It can bring you to your knees.

May you experience enlightenment in 2021.

A New Year Resolution: To Be or To Do?

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“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” — Lao Tzu

This is the perfect question for anyone interested in spiritual growth as you begin a new year, especially after what the past year has brought: Should I learn to be and sit in stillness till something happens or should I beckon my creativity and do? It is the perfect question for new beginnings. No doubt that the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has brought much pain and suffering to the entire world. It has created an underlying anxiety prompting us to want what we had before the pandemic, namely, normalcy. You hanker for what you took for granted: the ability to be with family, friends, even strangers. You want to exercise your creative nature, which seems stagnant after a year of waiting. So, you ask, should I be or should I do as 2021 begins? As Lao Tzu, philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, and founder of philosophical Taoism noted many years ago, painful endings often disguise the opportunities for new starts and new growth.

To begin, although one cannot beckon the muse of creativity at will, you can certainly try.  More often than not creativity and our ability to do shows up only when the ground of the mind is tilled and ready. The question, then, is really how you prepare this ground to allow for new, meaningful growth? Paradoxically, it requires stillness. Thus, the question is not a choice between doing and being but to first understand beingness and practice that and out of that practice arises the right doing. So, what does it mean to be still?

The stillness I am referring to is not related to physical action. It is not stopping of motor movement and motion. Instead, it is a psychological, and even more, a spiritual disposition. For those who meditate, it is a common experience to sit in meditation, a physical stillness, without really being still. It is the stillness of the mind that is important. So, you must really understand what a still mind means in order to practice it.

Mind stillness does not require stopping thought or thinking by suppressing or masking it. Were that even possible, it is certainly not recommended.

The stillness you are aiming for is an attitude, a perspective that you take. It is a way of evaluating information and circumstances that you experience. The perspective is that life is “perfect” as it is at every moment, and to accept that in a loving manner. Not perfect in an ideal or Platonic sense but as the only possibility given the history and circumstances of that moment. Accepting reality in this way is the basis for mind stillness. Life is what it is and cannot be otherwise. Thus, you need not lean right or left (meaning that if you accept that things could not possibly be anything else at that moment you don’t worry about alternatives). You are simply present to that reality and accept it fully. That is stillness.

Such an attitude can occur whether meditating or living the bustle and tussle of daily life. Spiritual teachers, such as Eckhart Tolle call it being present, in the moment, or in the now. I would agree and add that it means having situational awareness in every moment. It also means becoming aware of the stillness inherent in nature, from which you can learn. When you practice stillness, your actions flow in concert with your life, with nature, and that flow is the muse or creativity itself. Being and doing at this point are the same thing.

Having accepted the reality of the moment does not mean you are resigned to what life brings. It does not mean you do not try to change negative moments or circumstances. The mystery is that having accepted reality as it is, lovingly, causes the enormous creativity of the universe to engage and provide you solutions to wisely change what is negative, damaging, hurtful, inappropriate, and corrosive. It is a supremely intelligent, self-correcting system.

I encourage you to practice mind stillness in 2021. Adopt this new perspective, practice it, and if after a few weeks of dedicated practice, it does not feel positive or right then stop. I guarantee, however, that if you truly touch stillness, even briefly, you will not want to stop.

Please be safe.

The Thanksgiving Gift

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Live in the here and now.
For in that space God lives,
And life is real and flows as it is meant to do.
No problems, no questions, no answers.
Just life being a dancer
Beautifully moving and interbeing.
Creative and all-seeing,
In-and-of-itself.

It was Saturday, November 28, 2020 and “another beautiful day in paradise,” as my wife and I often describe San Diego weather. Only a couple of days before, we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day, while still isolating because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I had cooked the usual brined turkey, and we had feasted on the leftovers for two days. Now I wanted to take a long walk to help me lose the pounds I had gained during the celebration. As I stepped out the door of our condo at 8 am, the icy wind hit me and I knew I needed a sweater. I drove the few miles to Torrey Pines beach to walk up the “mountain,” to the preserve trails, and there commune with nature.

Halfway up the hill to the top of the Torrey Pines preserve, the idea struck me that I could do a longer trek. UCSD, the university campus where I had worked for 28 years until my retirement in 2018, was a six-mile walk. As I crested the hill of the preserve, I felt I was up to the long walk. The air was crisp, but the walk had warmed my body and so I took the sweater off, knowing it would only get warmer. A bright sun illuminated the morning. Clear blue skies framed the Pacific Ocean to my right, shimmering a dark blue-green shade. I had anticipated that the noise of those walking the trail and of the cars off in the distance would fade as I reached the plateau of the preserve. I wanted to listen to the sound of silence. But it was not to be. Too many cars and a few more folks than I had expected were walking the trails this morning. Silence didn’t have a chance. The siren song of the university called me. I continued past the Torrey Pines Golf Course, Scripps Clinic, the Hilton hotel, and a variety of other places before reaching the campus.

I had not visited the university in over a year. From the road, I had seen new structures slowly but inexorably grow in the space that had been a parking lot during my time there. A group of new buildings now overlooked the familiar grounds. As I approached the campus, my body signaled it needed a brief rest. I found a bench on Torrey Pines Road that served as a bus stop and collapsed into the hard metal seat. The walk had been refreshing as the light and translucent leaves and grass along the way called my attention to the beauty of nature. I felt tired but grateful and enjoying the moment.

As I looked down from the bench, I spied two pennies on the ground. I picked them up and felt there had to be one additional penny somewhere to complete the trilogy. I scanned the ground but could not see any, so after a period of rest, I continued my walk into campus. On my return, 15 minutes later, I stopped by the same bench and the same strong feeling of a third penny flooded my brain. This time I looked down and saw it, near where I had found the other two. Strange, I thought, that I hadn’t seen it previously. I have come across money before on the street, from coins to dollar bills, and don’t remember ever being concerned about the year it was made. This time, the thought occurred naturally, spontaneously, and insistently. I looked and noticed the years: 1995, 2009, and 2012. The dates vaguely reminded me of something.

As I continued my return home, it surprised me to realize that in 1995 I had received tenure from the university; In 2009, I had edited my first and only academic book on Mirror Neurons; and in 2012, I received promotion to Full Professor. If anyone had asked me what the three most significant experiences in my career at UCSD were, I would have said it was those three things. The more I considered it, I realized that other events, such as publication of one of my most widely read papers in 2005, would only be fourth on the list. How intriguing, I thought? Am I creating a story around these dates or is there a deeper significance in my finding these coins with these specific dates?

I have a creative mind and may have “conjured” significant events for whatever years might have appeared. Yet, the moment felt special. The feeling was that in some unexpected and special way, I was communing with something greater than myself. The message these three pennies seemed to be delivering was, “I know you well.” A wave of gratefulness overwhelmed and pervaded my senses. The walk home was quiet and humbling the more I contemplated what had transpired.

Gratefulness

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I am grateful for:
The beginning of life,
The first human,
Man's cleverness and inventiveness,
Medicine and its cures,
Poetry, art and its insights,
Humor and emotion.
 
I am grateful for:
Plants and the flowers they produce,
Rain that nourishes them,
Flowing water,
Butterflies, bees, and birds,
Food and its sources,
Blue sky and white clouds,
Mountains and mountain tops,
The silhouette of trees against the sky.
 
I am grateful for:
Sounds,
Ocean and surf,
Flying pelicans in formation,
Rivers and streams,
Fish and fowl.
Air we breathe.
Cold, warm, and hot weather,
The rainbow and color palette,
Pine trees and rocks.
Roaring waves,
Beaches, sand and sun.
 
I am grateful for:
Life guards, seagulls, tracks in the sand,
Quietness, music, mirth,
Running, seeing, feeling, talking, thinking,
Bodies that sustain,
Pain that warns and instructs,
Tiredness and sleep.
 
I am grateful for:
Parents who conceived and cared,
Family and ties that bind,
Infants and their smiles,
Couples in love,
A kiss from a spouse and their "I love you."
 
I am grateful for:
Laughter and joyful conversations,
Women and men and shapely bodies,
Baths and perfumes.
Friendliness from strangers,
Walking on the beach,
Athletes and their determination.
 
I am grateful for:
Technology that assists us,
The scientific method,
Leonardo , Einstein, and all who practiced it.
Religion, mysticism and all those who practiced them,
Society, schools, relationships, and their historical precedents.
 
I am grateful for:
God and this moment,
Infinite wisdom and love,
The universe and myriad forms,
Wonder and curiosity,
The Mystery of not-knowing,
My true nature.
Space, which contains all,
Time, which organizes it.
 
I am grateful for all that I am,
All that is, and
All that can be.

Faith, Reason, and A Contemporary Synthesis

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Human thought at the beginning of history likely resembled a cauldron of ideas with little foundational grounding. These ideas were susceptible to change and control by external, unknown, and mysterious forces. In what we now call the Age of Faith (A.D. 325-1300), magical thinking, supernatural ideas, and religious beliefs found fertile soil in this intellectual turmoil.

Then, in what is considered the long 18th century (1685-1815) thinking became radically reoriented by a new-found skepticism and questioning of traditional authority. It led to an embrace of the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. This Enlightenment Era, known as the Age of Reason, was specific and somewhat definite in its self-understanding of what it meant to be “rational” and “modern.”   For one, the term modern conveyed an understanding of “liberal” or “progressive” and linked with “reason” and “rationality.” 

Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and related scientific advancement to the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of free speech and thought. Yet, a great philosopher of those times — Friedrich Nietzsche — suggested that intellectual prowess and true “rationality” involved a sense and quality of rhythm, deliberateness, restraint, balance, and proportionality. Rationality, he argued, is not a mere quantity or calculation, it is more like dance or music. He rejected the notion that there is any such thing as a ‘rational truth’ or a ‘universal morality.’  It was Nietzsche’s clarion call for a new and much-needed synthesis.

In the early 1900s a third radical change occurred in conceptual thinking that we now associate with postmodern thought.  The 20th century exploded with novel ideas about concepts such as quantum mechanics, cubism, modern music, and Freudian psychology. These novel ideas challenged the accepted notions of space, time, motion, nature and natural law, history and social change, and the basis of human personality. By the middle of the 20th century, science had demolished the bedrock ideas that it itself had established. For one, science had initially set matter as the fundamental substrate in nature, as well as the idea that all elements, including consciousness, result from material interactions.  But the same objective analysis investigating such realities questioned and shattered this foundation of materialism and of our basic identities.

In this postmodern world, scientists and intellectuals saw the negation of many Enlightenment or progressive virtues and values. The result was that many intellectuals imagined the main alternative to materialism as an absence or emptiness, or great void containing nothing. This absence or groundlessness conflicted with the existential longing for definition and individuation.

Before long, these attacks on foundational ideas of being produced individuals that Alan Watts described as “adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembled the Buddhist principle of the ‘Great Void.’”  Furthermore, faced with such a possibility, the greatest wisdom of the West, its religious, philosophical, and scientific traditions, Watts argued, did not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a reality. To be nothing, immaterial, stand on nothing, and have no guidance on how to move forward can be psychologically disconcerting, paralyzing, and frightening. This is the postmodern sensibility.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we seem to be standing at another junction in which both faith and reason are being challenged. Although many attempts at synthesis have been put forth throughout history, including St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica and the recent Ludato Si of Pope Francis I, these arguments assume a synthesis that maintains the independence between faith and reason. This does not seem far-reaching enough.

From a perspective of unity, the nature of postmodern emptiness, absence, groundlessness, or void, or the battle between faith and reason, is much more sensible and positive. Emptiness in this viewpoint is not the absence of things, but a condition in which actions flow unimpeded and unobstructed by other actions. In such a universe, matter performs its own unencumbered role. This way, emptiness serves as foundational for matter to express itself in a natural and perfect way. If no emptiness condition existed, it might not be possible for the material world to exist and function. To understand and live within THIS perspective is to overcome the postmodern sensibility. It is to live a productive life in which one feels at home in groundless emptiness. And in which one feels no terror but a positive delight. This is the potential of the contemporary synthesis, of what Nietzsche’s called “true rationality.”

This is a very condensed essay about large themes. I welcome your thoughts.

The Dawning of Intimacy: Pathway to A Unity Experience

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Whether we call it nondual awareness, unity, oceanic feeling, or universal love, we have inadvertently placed such an experience out of reach and available only to mystics, saints, and special others. However, as I have written previously, we are born with this unique sense of being only to apparently forget it as our ego and individuality develop. The dark curtain covering our oceanic feeling, or okeoagnosia (from the Gr. okeanos or ocean and agnosia), is, however, overcome through meditation, prayer, inquiry, falling in love, paying attention, or with drugs. It is remarkably recoverable.

The argument I want to make today is that the news is even better than that. If we think of recovery from okeagnosia as a path, then such a path starts from the awareness that we already have a unity experience. We have it moment-by-moment since it is intrinsic to our human nature. What is needed is to “increase” that sense of being. One can do this by focusing on particular aspects of it, such as enhancing our emotional presence (heart) and unifying it with our intellectual presence (mind) (An Enhanced Sensory Experience). In the end, we gauge progress by the regained sense of joy, love, wonder and curiosity.

The following describes a path of recognition, realization, and appreciation that may be cultivated:

  • Attend to how you see, hear, feel, and think of the external world. Whether you see it as full of independent things with which you interact in a distant, objective, cold, or analytic way or as close, intimate, and loving entities.
  • Realize that your experience of the world (objects, feelings) is the result of your brain’s activity. You are a co-creator of that world and partly responsible for what you experience.
  • Realize that you see the world as individual parts but also holistically.
  • Recognize your care for this external, holistic world because what happens out there affects you inside in small and big ways, especially what other people do. Begin to see this common ground.
  • Recognize that caring can extend not only to others like yourself, but to animals, plants and everything in between. See the common ground in all.
  • Realize that the feelings of caring for all of life takes on a sense of intimacy and closeness. The coldness gives way to love and compassion.
  • Recognize that unity reflects an intrinsic sense you have but forgotten.
  • Recognize that this experience of unity is possible in others as in yourself (Trusting Stillness).
  • Recognize that it reflects a non-separation, compassion, and love knowingness (Unencumbered Original Mind).
  • Realize that you experience unity when you participate in some activity in which you lose track of things, of time, of yourself, etc.
  • Appreciate that you experience unity when in love or during focused attention where your ego disappears in the presence of someone special (lover, wife, husband, children) or something that interests you to the exclusion of everything else.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path of recognition and realization, life becomes more joyous, your curiosity increases, as does love and compassion toward others.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path, you begin to feel a greater connection, less distance and more intimacy between you and the world.
  • Appreciate that outside and inside are the same. What appears to be outside is also inside. Figure and ground are just different aspects of the same thing. They define each other but are the same. No greater intimacy than this.

In the rest of the blog, I only want to address the first and most important assumption: That we already have a unity experience. Many will undoubtedly balk and argue that it is not so and are not convinced. This is because we all have different notions of what unity means. We may not agree but let’s start by trying to define a common starting point. At the most basic level, a unity experience means that our perception of the world isn’t a jumble mess of sights, sounds, and emotions, scrambled in such a way that what we experience does not make sense.

In his 1890 volume Principles of Psychology, William James, the founder of American psychology characterized a baby’s experience as such: “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” Yet, developmental psychologists now know that James was decidedly wrong. Even at an early age, as we close and open our eyes, what we experience is not a scrambled set of sensations but a unified world that we understand and that makes sense.

Such an integrated, unified world has orderly physical laws that make prediction of events possible compared to a chaotic or random system. Because we live and are part of such a unified, orderly world, humans have evolved unique prediction algorithms to anticipate outcomes, understand the meaning of actions of others, etc. (Reducing Uncertainty in a Chaotic World and Our Predictive Brain).

Unified implies an experience of closeness, intimacy, and love. Each one of us comes into environments varying in love and acceptance. This can either extend our intrinsic unity experience or cause the dark curtain of okeagnosia to descend quickly. How thick that curtain is distorts and destroys our sense of unity. And it affects how we feel toward others and our environment. We become distant, cold, unemotional, fearful.

Now that you know, are you ready to step into the path of regaining the greatest gift you were born with, the jewel at the center of your being? Start by asking yourself, which sense did I display as a baby? What sense do I display now? How do I get from here to there?

Our Intrinsic Sense of Unity

Posted on by japineda

Romain Rolland, French dramatist, novelist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915, and all-around mystic coined the term “oceanic feeling.” He used it to describe a sensation of eternity and unity, a perception of being one with the external world. Rolland studied Hindu Vedantic philosophy through the works of Swami Vivekananda and was likely familiar with the Vedantic notion of nondual awareness. Like nondual awareness, Rolland’s oceanic feeling describes an overwhelming experience of non-separation, compassion, and love. It is, for some, the ultimate unification of heart and mind.

A friend of Sigmund Freud’s, Rolland wrote him concerning his ideas about nondual awareness. He construed it as a deeper reflection of religious feelings than Freud had considered in his book, The Future of an Illusion (1927). Unfortunately, Freud could not identify with the feeling and viewed it in more psychoanalytic terms, as a vestige of an infant’s consciousness that had not yet differentiated itself from others. He described it as a sense we have at birth but lose very early on as we develop our egoic personality. In his next book, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud appeared open to the possibility that a similar feeling could occur to someone who has fallen in love. In love, a person has a sense of ego-dissolution and merging with another.

Science, unfortunately, has failed to rigorously or systematically study this feeling of unity or nondual awareness. For most of us, identifying with it is difficult since it is the rarest of experiences associated with mysticism or love. Yet, a few people never lose the sense of connection to everything. Many others regain, recover, or re-experience it through the practice of meditation, doing inquiry, falling in love, or with drugs. The sense of unity resembles the experience of synesthesia (such as the ability to “hear” colors as sound or “see” sounds as colors) in that a small percentage of us experience synesthesia. But this transformative experience occurs under unusual circumstances, in autism or with LSD.

There is compelling evidence that nondual awareness is real and the perception of unity is recoverable. One can return to this original undifferentiated beingness, if not permanently then temporarily. Perhaps this is the implication of what Jesus meant in Matthew 18:1-5 when He said: “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” During development we lose the ability to recognize this intrinsic unity experience. An agnosia (Gr. for lack of knowledge) develops to it.  Agnosia refers to a rare condition involving one (or more) of the senses. For example, losing the ability to recognize objects through touch or what we call tactile agnosia, or inability to recognize faces or prosopagnosia. I call our inability to recognize nondual awareness okeagnosia (from the Gr. okeanos or ocean and agnosia).

One key characteristic of okeagnosia is the inability to create a general percept or understanding of the whole from the individual parts. In the 1995 book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes a patient with prosopagnosia. This person can describe individual facial parts but is unable to recognize the person or even his own image in a mirror. Similarly, we experience the individual parts that make up our world but not the sense of how they are unified, as an ecosystem, a oneness. We now know that brain areas in the occipital-temporal stream of visual processing (or ventral stream) are associated with prosopagnosia. Specifically, the fusiform gyrus, in the temporal lobe, plays a crucial role in the ability to assemble together a recognizable “face.”

A logical hypothesis is that our capacity to sense unity is also located somewhere in the brain. Whether it involves a specific area like the fusiform gyrus, or a distributed network. The fact that unity isrecoverable through meditation, love, or drugs implies it is inactive temporarily, perhaps under active inhibition. Or, equally likely, disuse has weakened the functional connections and activity does not reach the threshold of awareness when the network is activated. Drugs potentiate such a response. While other explanations exist for okeagnosia, it begs the question of why science has dropped the ball on this most important of senses. The responsibility falls on each one of us to do what we can. For, recovering the brain area or circuit that provides a unitive experience foreshadows an unimaginable well-beingness that humanity can use. We are, in this moment in time, in dire need of recovering our intrinsic sense of non-separation, compassion, and love.

My next blog will describe the path to recovering our unity experience.

Why Males Should Embrace The Feminine Principle

Posted on by japineda

“The feminine principle is an archetypal energetic expression alive in both men and women and in every aspect of creation. It represents the very energy of creation itself, the creative force from which all things are born.”

                                                                              M. Montealegre

Maleness and femaleness are like two substances that blend, but with neither element ever disappearing in one individual. These feminine and masculine “principles” are of corresponding value in both men and women, but distributed differently in each person (some individuals are more male, others more female). While the feminine principle (not necessarily identical to femininity) is strong, rather than being cherished and encouraged, it has generated fear and been the object of persecution for as long as human history. The male need for power suppresses, ignores, and distorts our feminine side. Emotionally, psychologically, and culturally, we have all been living under a paternal social order.  Over the years, we have associated specific characteristics with maleness and femaleness to the point of exclusivity. We associate maleness with authority, and femaleness with meekness. What is unrecognized is that similar to the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy, maleness exists in the female and femaleness in the male. We are blends of both.

And yet, the faulty thinking persists. We perceive the energy of the mother, as it embodies the qualities of love, compassion, intuition, receptiveness, openness and vulnerability as feminine. As if it cannot exist in a male. In Jungian psychology, they see the self as the ‘being’ aspect of personality and as the feminine principle, while the ego represents ‘doing’, the masculine principle. From this perspective, a “normal” psyche is one in which neither ego nor self dominates but shows mutual interdependence, interplay, and synergy from the interaction.

Since the Age of Reason (1685-1815), logic and the intellect, characteristics associated with the male principle, have held sway as the essence of human values. This contradicted the emotional and intuitive aspects of beingness, the female principle. To our own detriment, favoring one excluded the other. But full human capabilities include both. Fortunately, this recognition is changing, although slowly. Nowadays, more and more people realize that intellectual logic by itself cannot be the sole basis for our reality. We recognize that integration of reason and the intellect with intuition and heart is no longer an option but a necessity if humanity is to survive. There is, then, a rising energy, an ascendency, in the feminine principle. Similar to a small flame in a hailstorm, it has not disappeared and deserves protection, encouragement, and room to grow.

The feminine principle is not original to our age, but is ascendant in a way that is modern and hopeful. We are beginning to recognize the privileged and unique position of femaleness in our mythologies, histories and evolution. Just a few examples: In the Book of Genesis, Eve showed the courage to make the choice to obtain the knowledge of good and evil over obedience. It’s a remarkable act symbolizing the darker side of the feminine. Choosing the forbidden fruit resulted in both male and female being exiled from Eden, but it was the female who opened our eyes to knowledge and wisdom. In evolution, sexual selection is a misunderstood and misrepresented concept more than any other idea in evolutionary biology. Overwhelming evidence supports the notion that females “choose” mates, while males “compete” to be the chosen. The feminine once again holds the power of choice. In most mammals, the Y chromosome determines the sex. Without this chromosome, femaleness is the default. During development, women control raising of the young and teach us most of what we need to know before we enter school. This continues in public schools, where women make up to 80% of the teachers.

There are benefits to this recognition and reintegration of the feminine principle. Opening up to it can take many forms and expressions. On the positive end, it results in freeing our emotions, allowing us to be vulnerable, opening our hearts with compassion for others, guiding us toward service for the greater community. We become more receptive, intuitive and creative. It frees us from our inhibitions, and from the mental constructs of who we are. Allowing the principle to flow freely opens up a connection to the source of life, to the ever-flowing stream in the universe, to God, Buddha-nature, or being. 

In Singing Woman: Voices of the Sacred Feminine, Elizabeth Eiler has written, “This is the age of the ascendant Feminine Principle. In such times as these, women are able to look at themselves with new concepts of value and brilliance. However you inhabit and express being Woman, embrace yourself in that way today!” This rallying cry holds for men as it does for women. Likewise, Albert Einstein said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Recognizing that our bodies blend feminine and masculine aspects and being receptive to this principle is the answer to many of the problems and imbalances we produce. Acknowledging and freeing the inner feminine gives way to the love in us. And it returns us to the sacred and original mind once obscured by ego, in a manner that brings unity and reconciliation to all.