lee's other blog

Non-locality and the oversoul

2009-02-27T04:38:00.000-08:00

A reader in the Zen, Yoga, Gurdjieff blog brought up the question of non-locality in relationship to the idea of an oversoul.

I think it's a good question. The ideas are clearly related. If there is a nonrational simultaneity to the universe -- something that seems evident, given the odd and nonrational properties that entanglement produces -- it means that everything is, in fact, "one thing," in a manner that we, as localized organisms, are completely unable to sense.

Those familiar with Mr. Gurdjieff's magnum opus Beelzebub's tales to his grandson will recall that the difference between emanations and radiation is that emanations have an instantaneous effect regardless of distance and location, whereas radiation has to travel through space and over time.

The characteristics of nonlocal quantum entanglement are identical to that of Gurdjieff's description of emanation. Not only that, his constant reference to emanation within that text suggests that he sees emanation as a quality and property that permeates the entire universe and affects the highest, or finest, substances found throughout the universe.

Put in other terms, the materiality of the universe is connected by an instantaneous transmission of energy that transcends both newtons and Einstein's laws of physics.

Falling into this category, among other substances, are those released by death, and the particles of sorrow of his endlessness.

It's not my intention to recapitulate the content of Beelzebub in this blog (that would be next to impossible anyway.) I think the essential point here is that many of the highest Being functions are connected by emanation. Emanation is part of what builds the fabric of the universe. Radiation, as any student of physics would know, is largely a destructive force. In very broad terms, we might see emanation as holy affirming, and radiation as holy denying. I'm shooting from the hip here, but it's worth pondering.

The overall point is that the "oversoul", that highest level of consciousness which is presumed to permeate the entire universe, would certainly be nonlocal in character. When Gurdjieff says that the finest particles and vibrations of the Most Holy Sun Absolute penetrate and permeate every material arising throughout the universe, he is in fact saying that the universe is the body of God. The oversoul, such as it is or may be, constitutes the emergent property of super consciousness expressed in the absolute manifestation of the Dharma, that is, the simultaneous and absolute truth of existence of all that is, everywhere, at every instant.

For my money, one of the best sets of philosophical texts to explore this idea in is the Zen Buddhism of Dogen. That being said, I've barely scratched the surface of the voluminous amounts of material on this matter which are available in the Hindu tradition.

The uncanny moment in time we find ourselves in is a moment in which physics, which investigates the fabric of reality itself, has come up against a set of natural properties that echo spiritual philosophies in a powerful way. Despite the relentlessly reductionist and anti-theistic forces which have dominated scientific investigation up until now, unanswered questions which represent absolute impossibilities based on our current understanding have reared their ugly heads and will not go away.

There is simply no way for Steven Pinker or Richard Dawkins, for example, to explain non-locality. They could argue that it doesn't matter in the context of their own disciplines, but that's kind of like studying batteries while claiming that lightning has absolutely nothing to do with them. The atheists, in other words, are finally slammed up against a wall of supernatural phenomena that violate every known principle we apply to our studies in reductionist science.

The bottom line is that there is such a thing as an oversoul, in the sense of a nonlocal link between material entities all over the universe. It lies at the foundation of reality, it's not a peripheral effect. Everything is connected instantaneously in a way that we have absolutely no understanding of. It defies centuries of so-called progress in Western science.

The authors of the article on non-locality in scientific American (was Einstein wrong, this month) point out that a large number of scientists have carefully avoided discussing this matter. No wonder. It lies outside the domain of the sciences, having stepped firmly over the line into theological philosophy -- or philosophical theology, whichever you prefer.

I think we can all marvel at the fact that a relatively uneducated dervish from an Eastern Orthodox background at the beginning of the 20th century was able to write a long novel which contains not only a description of a working jet engine, and detailed explanations of how an asteroid hit the Earth to create the moon, but also a description of an obscure and peculiar phenomenon regarding the nature of the material reality that would rock the foundations of Einstein's understandings.

What does all this mean to our own personal work?

Well, it is possible for human beings to sense emanations. Our bodies -- unlike scientific instruments -- are incredibly sensitive tools that were designed, if they work properly, to receive these signals and understand them.

This is the work that every serious esoteric religious discipline has been engaged in since the beginning of time. Western man has thrown a few brief centuries of study on physical matters up against thousands of years of work by yogis, monks, Zen Masters, and dervishes, and determined that all of them were wrong, but it appears that those of us who study esotericism may have the last laugh yet.

Most of the work that I do in describing my own spiritual path in this and the Zen, yoga, Gurdjieff blog is aimed at offering others a direct experience of what it might mean to engage in this search. The aim is not to teach or to instruct, but to share and to explore. The aim is not to brag and swagger, but to offer and support. The aim is not to presume and assume, but to question, and question again.

Our inquiring nature is part of the fabric of the universe. Our curiosity, our willingness to be wrong in order to make a new discovery -- this is an essential property of creation. The Creator Himself must share this property with us, or it would not be reflected in us.

So in our search for contact with the oversoul, in our efforts to form a connection -- no matter how tenuous -- with all the other material in the universe, and to sense our shared origin and kinship, we begin the search inside, where the material that might make it possible is received and digested.

male and female wood duck

2008-04-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Grace Church, Nyack, NY, easter sunday 2008

2008-03-30T11:39:00.001-07:00

a nun's cell

2008-02-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

Neal doing her impression of a nun (needs work.)

Capuchin nunnery- architectural diagram

2008-02-20T06:56:00.001-08:00

The tower is on the far right, in teal green, showing the layout of the 18 nun's cells.

Capuchin nunnery- the courtyard

2008-02-20T06:54:00.000-08:00

containment within the vessel

2008-01-28T17:22:00.001-08:00

the carriagemaster (possibly Krishna)

2008-01-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

horse, carriage, driver

2008-01-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

more elephant triumph

2008-01-27T09:57:00.001-08:00

triumphant, on three elephants

2008-01-27T09:55:00.001-08:00

spitting out the spine

2008-01-27T09:53:00.001-08:00

sheltered by elephants

2008-01-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

lion atop the elephant

2008-01-27T09:43:00.001-08:00

pushing the lion away; adopting the elephant

2008-01-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

fractal architecture: little temples on big temples

2007-11-16T12:59:00.000-08:00

Images from churning the ocean of milk

2007-11-05T14:00:00.001-08:00

The head of the naga

A group of Gods participating in the churning action.

here we have a group of demons with their arms firmly wrapped around the naga.

this is a picture of some of the "poisonous" creatures in the ocean of milk being broken into little bits by the churning action.

more images from angkor

2007-11-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Detail, base of naga from Bantey Srei

Naga from Bantey Srei, side view; in the nagas here, five of the seven serpents are "emitted" from the mouths of two auxiliary serpents, or perhaps lions, at the base. The symbolism still achieves the full complement of a seven-headed figure, but appears to assign a "special" symbolic meaning to the numbers 4 and 5 in the enneagram (solar plexus and heart.)

Naga from Bantey Srei

Naga with Garuda in the center, from Angkor Thom

Naga being held by giants to churn the sea of milk; entrance to Angkor Thom

some additional pictures of nagas

2007-11-02T03:58:00.001-07:00

An image of a naga spitting a chain of flowers from his mouth

Seven headed naga at angkor wat itself. This fine example is at the back of the temple.

The six characteristics of living things

2007-09-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

1. They blab a lot.

2. The eat too much food.

3. They drive cars too fast.

4. They pollute their environment.

5. They reproduce inappropriately.

6. They kill each other.

time to eat squash!

2007-07-19T16:19:00.001-07:00

some pictures from around sparkill, as the snow melts

2007-03-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Packasandra, moss, and snow. This is from the shaded part of the sparkill hollow. There's still a lot of snow there. In the immediate vicinity of this spot is a very old stone well. Cool!

See my post in zenyogagurdjieff about the huge glacial erratic in the hollow near this spot.
Sparkill notch. Here we are looking towards the Hudson river, which you can't see. The wall on the left is a huge basalt dike- part of the palisades. In the distance on the right, the hills slip down towards the river. That's the right part of the notch. The hills themselves are part of the palisades basalt intrusion.

Sparrows like this environment. I ran into a number of them chipring about up here.

It's believed that before the glaciers, the Hudson used to flow through the Sparkill notch.

These shadows are from a wrought iron fence that surrounds a property that used to belong to the actor William Hurt. Sparkill and its immediate environs are a retreat for famous people who live in this obscure neck of the woods because it's such an unlikely place for celebrities. Bjork and Bill Murray are a few examples.

This little creek is carrying runoff from the snow. It usually doesn't have much water in it, but right now it is singing with burbly joy. The rounded stones are all glacial till, which provides a welcome home for moss. We can be sure that salamanders lurk nearby, but it's a bit too cool for them here just yet.

One of God's frozen people

2007-03-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Signs of spring

2007-03-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Shoebirds have begun to nest on the Bund in Shanghai., A sure sign of spring.

Whole foods, China style

2007-03-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

Dog's eye view of a street-level seafood supermarket experience in Shanghai.
I never knew mantis shrimp got so big.

Cuttlefish are among nature's most beautiful creatures: able to change the color of their skin pigment like a stroboscopic kaleidoscope.

Unfortunately for them, they also taste good.

Little known Tai Chi facts

2007-03-12T02:24:00.000-07:00

"Breaking the wind." The Tai Chi practitioner tries to move air through the body silently.

The Godzilla pose. In this particular movement, one imagines oneself as an all powerful giant fire-breathing lizard about to crush Tokyo underfoot

forgiveness

2007-03-11T03:02:00.000-07:00

It is common, when we find a teacher, or a teaching, to believe that because it is bigger and more developed than we are, it is completely valid.

This can be a dangerous mistake. If there is one thing that religious traditions the world around reiterate, it is that higher levels are not infallible.

Not only tradition, but experience itself should underline this fact. The paths to truth are littered with debris scattered by various gurus who took their disciples in directions that turned out to be a mess.

Why do we want to be so certain that at a higher level of truth, there can be no error? Seeing our own weakness, I suppose, we have a wish for that which is higher than us to be better. This is like the wish we have, as children, for our parents to be perfect. Everyone goes through a period in childhood when they believe their parents to be infallible. And most of us can remember the moment when it suddenly dawned on us that our parents were human and make mistakes dafter all. I can remember that instance with both of my parents. It was a terrible shock. But at the same time, I saw that it was true. There was nothing that could be done about it; I had to understand that this was a fact and deal with it.

In our pursuit of inner and outer truth, we should remember that fallibility exists at all levels of the universe. According to Scripture, ranging from the Bible to Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson," God Himself has had cause to regret His course of action at times. So much the more so for his angels and archangels.

I suppose it is difficult to square this with the cosmic idea that everything is perfect as it is. In a certain sense, that appears to be true to me. That does not mean that everything always turns out the way that it is expected to. A universe created as a machine that evolves has to have a certain amount of flexibility built into it. Once that is taken into account, we see that the creation of universes involves a letting go. One cannot have a universe and absolute control at the same time. Like a child, a universe, once created, has to be allowed to go its own way and find its own being.

The parent must let go of the child, and the child must also let go of the parent.

Perhaps these thoughts are too big and the ideas to cosmic to swallow. I am not sure. However, these ponderings, which come to me on a Sunday morning staring out over the People's Square in Shanghai, seem to imply that just as much as we need God to forgive us for our sins, so God needs us to forgive Him for his own fallibility.

In this sense forgiveness is reciprocal on all levels and between all levels. I had never thought about it this way before; it bestows an appropriate universality upon the concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness must become universal and unconditional within us. In this sense, if God Himself appears to have made a mistake, we must forgive Him in the same way that He forgives us.