Psi and spirituality - east versus west.
We
continue with the controversy surrounding religion and science, between heart
and mind.
Reading the work of the
transpersonal pioneers I wondered what it is what makes the human experience in
Eastern traditions so different from what people born and raised in the West
feel.
We could learn from each other,
find answers to our questions by looking at the findings of other humans who
developed different constructs and views of the same reality we call the human
experience.
The
way in which humans perceive their spiritual nature seems of great importance
in determining the constructs they have about themselves and their reality.
Allow
me to paint my thoughts in black and white:
In
Western cultures God was seen as an external
power; a force separate from and
above all people. Although he is pictured above all as the loving father
figure, God is also someone to obey, to fear and to surrender to.
Humans
are per definition inferior beings, sinners even.
They
are vulnerable and dependent in this view and need to learn how to behave and do
“good” to earn acceptance and avoid punishment.
Faith
is directed at some power that is beyond
human which is in that sense hard to access as a direct experience.
Knowing and doing
become important to ensure a favorable final judgment.
The
concepts of heaven and hell are thoroughly engrained in our culture.
Unconsciously
constructs like past determines present
(or future) – causality - and growth
is the integration of the external have become
truths people survive by. Greed and materialism can be seen as a byproduct of
this perspective, the need for independence and autonomy (individualism) too.
Prayer
is the way to commune with this external God, mostly in the form of pleading or
thanking for divine help or guidance. At communion we eat the Host and drink
the wine to symbolize the integration of Christ into our bodies.
There
is no real dialogue however. Humans struggle with the duality of their
two-faced God (the goodness vs. the vengefulness and arbitrariness).
They
expect the universe to be fair (causal) and it is not, or at least not in their
human interpretation[1].
Western
science looks in a objective and rational
way at the world from the outside, as if separate from it. It examines and
defines pieces of reality, forms and structures, differentiating before
integrating.
Westerners
feel a need to know what is, maybe
because they need to understand how to be and do (good). They use separation as
a tool to structure and organize the otherwise (too) chaotic world.
The
Head is the most important tool to survive; knowledge and insight the main
ingredients for transformation.
The Dalai Lama often talks of
the lack of real self-love and self-respect that he sees in many people in the
modern (western) world. Underlying this self-doubt
is what seems to be a neurotic conviction of our own limitations. This
construct of (the lack of) human worthiness could be a tragic result of our religious
teachings and might be the main reason why we westerners experience reality in
such a fundamentally different way than our eastern contemporaries do.
The idea that we are separate
from the divine and have to earn acceptance contradicts the central truth of
Buddha’s teaching which claims that we are already essentially perfect. Eastern
thought is based on self-faith and faith in the goodness of others and the
universe.
I have the experience that when
a person can grasp the concept of inherent goodness (divinity), a fundamental
trust can be generated and with it a ground in being that is accessible as a direct experience.
In my vision it is that (sense
of a) ground in being that forms the base of our spiritual life. It is
essential in giving us direction and meaning. It connects us on a more
conscious level to all there is.
But let us have a look first at
the teachings of the Eastern traditions
Buddhism
denies the existence of any Creator God. In this perspective “God” is internal; our nature, our essence and a
source of knowledge.
In
eastern thought a human being grows by living and being in harmony with this internal truth towards an awakening from
the illusion of being separate.
The
goodness of our essence is a given, total acceptance is already there; a given
too.
In
this vision our human psyche guides our unfolding of that foreknowledge of what we are meant to be (life’s purpose) and growth is the integration of the internal.
What
is right is what is true to our nature; to do right is to become more and more
what we essentially are.
In this perspective there is no
need for material goods, on the contrary, every form of “grasping” is
considered a cause of suffering. Individualism as we know it is not a direction
of growth in a perspective were surrender to the flow of life is more important
that the need to control or manipulate it.
Meditation
is a way to just be[2]
to be able to commune with the inner self.
In
a sense meditation is a way to step out of and dissolve the role-playing
ego-self (the sense of personal self in Almaas’s
words) in order to have a dialogue with the real inner knowing self.
Were
I considered the separateness (solitariness) of the practice of meditation a
paradox and not in line with the “connectedness” eastern wisdom entails , this
inward orientation explains the need for solitude, or separation from others
and the external world. As the focus is primarily directed inward, meditation
is practiced optimally with a minimum of stimuli or distraction from the
“outside” (even ego-self is considered a distraction).
The
paradox however remains. Why should only an inward orientation show us our true
nature and essence? Simply put: if inner and outer world are in essence one and
the same, why this (almost exclusive) attention toward the inner?
I
don’t want to suggest here that meditation is not a (right) way to communicate
with our “higher” self, but I don’t agree that we find Buddha only “inside”.
Of
course Eastern Teaching also focus on nature and the external world, but not to
the same degree.
Also,
the idea that we only need to become aware of how we are (inner) in contact with the outer world (more or less
the Gestalt way of awareness) is limited in its scope. When we envision a
wholeness, a oneness of inner and outer,
we
need to seriously look at (what we consider) outer as being part of who we are.
In
my vision we might find our true essence too by focusing on the (external)
world and the reality we perceive. By living my life and meeting others I learn
to know myself too. I love Martin Buber’s I-Thou way
of looking at this: in meeting the other we meet ourselves.
And
of course this goes much further than mere psychological projections, or
contact with people for that matter. Buber also says:
“the
limits of the possibility of dialogue are the limits of awareness”, and I suspect it is true the other way around too; by
allowing a true dialogue with what we consider “the other” (or something
outside, or separate from us), our awareness and consciousness can grow.
What
emerges in our consciousness is what is; the foreground we are presented with.
Any form of conscious “stepping out” or “blocking off” undesired elements is no
more than a focusing tool and we would gain by acknowledging it as such.
(I
would not advise any of my clients to live their lives permanently hypnotized,
however useful hypnosis is as a tool to, for example, focus on and explore past
experiences.)
I want to come back to this when
we discuss Psi, because I believe that what we
consider “parapsychological” might be in fact what we
need to acknowledge and accept within our field of awareness, in order to make
the next step towards consciousness.
In
Eastern thought humans seem to have “forgotten” their true nature and live in a
state of “maya” or illusion. The ultimate purpose in
life is to liberate oneself from the illusion of separateness, achieve freedom
from rational thought (vs. direct experience) and thus actualize true Buddha
nature.
The mystic (religion) looks at
the experience from within to see and examine what is of value. The purpose is to integrate the wisdom that comes
from pure experience.
The Heart is valued most, the
potential for transformation comes from within.
It amazes me how many aspects of
life are significantly and even drastically touched be this difference in
orientation. Where the West if focused towards the external and sees man as
separate from his God, valuing head and rational thought, Eastern teachings are
oriented towards the internal, considering the divine our essence and true
nature, validating heart and intuition.
Inherent in eastern teachings is
the interconnectedness of all things. Not only does “all there is” have a
common ground in being but any connection between events (in consciousness) can
be seen as a meaningful one. The ultimate oneness or wholeness of all there is
implies that outside and inside are one and the same, which brings me finally
to the topic of this LM: psychic experience.
Psychic Experience.
Although psychic phenomena are
hard to proof scientifically, their occurrence seems to suggest a link between
the world inside our psyche (inner) and the material (outer) world.
As we saw, the way in which
people experience their spiritual nature influences the way they perceive
themselves and reality.
Psychic experiences are a part
of the human experience.
From the western perspective,
with its emphasis on verification, psychic experience seems indeed para or beyond the normal, scientifically
explainable experience.
However, if we look at it with
the scope of eastern teachings, psychic phenomena are in no way out of the
ordinary. In a worldview in which inner
and outer are connected and formed out of the same ground in being, these
so-called parapsychological experiences are in fact more “real”
than human day-to-day rational objective thought.
In a culture where heart
predominates mind, intuition is a basic human experience, synchronicity a fact
of life one needs to pay attention to and the different forms of “psychic”
thoughts not seen separate from other products of the mind. Here there is no
need to look for differences between psychic experience and spirituality simply
because both are expressions of “what is” and in that sense not
distinguishable.
In our western world however,
things as synchronicity and Psi are still seen as
unscientific and mysterious. This is probably why we need to speak of “psychic
experience” in the first place.
Nowadays, with the new scientific evidence of the
existence of “psychic” phenomena and persistent reports of experiences of
synchronicity, the effect of prayer and for instance clairvoyance, we begin to
realize that our view of the world is incomplete. As we recognize that mind is
not necessarily limited to the inside of our heads, or to the present time for
that matter, we are looking for ways to learn more about the connection between
inner and outer, between psyche and matter.
Synchronicity and other psychic
phenomena could be seen as “proof” of this inner-outer connection in that they
are an expression of the Unus Mundus, the
unitary ground underlying both matter and psyche.
Although it is hard to verify
the connectedness of events, people who experience synchronicity perceive it as
extremely meaningful. Often it seems
harder to believe in coincidence than in an underlying order of things.
Victor Mansfield suggests that
we can understand synchronicity in a teleological sense: as an expression of
the guidance of the self, as a presentation of meaning (“Tao revealing
itself”). I believe people who recognize synchronistic events in their lives
sense this guidance and intuitively read the message of meaning behind it.
It is interesting to realize
that meaning is an anthropomorphic
interpretation (Jung) and in that “just another” human construct. As such we
need to consider that, where
If we grasp the meaningfulness
of the connection between the inner (soul) and outer (matter) world we can
understand that
The message in this how apparently gives us guidance and
seems to indicate a direction of growth. With that synchronicity becomes
spiritual.
I however like Marie-Louise von
Franz’s words: “the Unus Mundus
becomes revealed in the phenomenon of synchronicity”.
This hypothesis is extremely
interesting, not only because it
a.) directly suggests the
existence of an “unus
mundus”, but also because it
b.) implies that this “unus mundus” and with it life
itself, has a direction and in human
concepts - a purpose.
I could even envision the
possibility that not only synchronicity, but
c. ) anything that emerges
within our consciousness can be considered teleological “information”
I realize however that this is a
western way of looking at it, again with the limited perspective of a (western)
Gestaltist who feels a need to integrate something
from “out there” into “in here” in order to transform or grow.
Jung grasps this nuance when he
comments on Lao-Tzu’s characterization of “Tao” as “Nothing”: “Nothing
is evidently meaning or purpose, and it is only called Nothing
because it does not appear in the world of the senses, but is only its
organizer”…. “Tao never does; yet through it all things are done”.
Psychic and Spiritual.
In my vision human experiences
that “reach” or “touch” us through other “channels” than our know (and
verifiable) five senses can give us hints of and maybe even openings to
dimensions beyond our “normal” reality.
Although there is no scientific
“proof” of how Psi works exactly, evidence is
gathered that point to the mind and brain not being identical. Consciousness
appears to exist outside the brain. It really does not matter whether we
“explain” Psi by theories of quantum entanglement,
multi-dimensional models or metaphors of light, the most important thing is
that we acknowledge what we experience and care enough to open our minds and
hearts.
For many individuals who are
interested in developing awareness, and who are in that sense on a spiritual
path to dis-cover their true nature, an interaction
with life as it presents itself seems the key to transformation.
“Transformation is the natural
outcome when you bring awareness to your life.”[3]
Isn’t it frightening then that
we, as a culture, have come to a stage in our “scientific” evolution in which
we have more faith in our constructs and theories about reality than in our
direct experience of it?
Isn’t it weird that we doubt what we sense is true more than what we
learned to believe? Why is it so difficult for us to accept that we can
know with our hearts what we don’t know (yet) with our heads?
I read Dean Radin’s
article in Shift[4]
in which he suggests we find ourselves living inside the parable of the
Emperor’s New Clothes; he claims “the majority of educated, informed Americans,
…. believe in topics that the leading scientific foundation in the
I envision that, as more and
more people consciously experience the “paranormal” in their day-to-day lives,
and share their stories, we do become aware (on a conscious level) that mind
and matter are indeed interrelated in ways we never suspected. Maybe we can
convince ourselves and each other with our stories of what we intuit to be
meaningful. Maybe we can overrule the need to scientifically proof what seems
too complex to grasp with our minds.
I think we are on the verge of
uncovering yet another layer of truths, on our way towards a society that
accepts the reality of psychic phenomena.
So let me end this essay with a
story from my own experience with Psi phenomena…
My father, a very intelligent,
down to earth businessman, died almost two years ago. After a more or less
healthy life he needed heart surgery and never really recovered from it. We
nursed him at home during his last months.
In the final few weeks his body
was deteriorating fast and although he had moments when he was very clear
minded, totally aware of his surroundings, and communicating with us as he
always had, most of the time he seemed to drift across a subtle border between
here and “there”.
Sometimes my father talked to us
while he was (seemed to be) in this other world/dimension. He described what he
saw as if he was describing “normal” surroundings. It seemed like this other
world became more real to him than the reality he shared with us.
We (my mom, my three sisters,
brother and I) were keeping watch 24/24, so we could more or less compare
notes. We all “got” the same impression of realness; the story was consistent,
if not always comprehendible. It sometimes was extremely difficult to follow
what my dad was saying. I vividly remember that he tried to explain things to
us, insisting that at least one of us should “understand” what he was talking
about (“you are clever, you see what
I mean). It seemed important to him to share his point of view (which was
totally in character with how he lived his life). The most eminent feature in
his accounts was a departing “train like” instrument of transportation he felt
he had to get onto. He argued with us that we, and especially my mother, was in
some way keeping him from getting on this train. He actually claimed he had
missed it on several occasions and said it was really time now.
Another important factor was
that he was seeing people –strangers at first, but later also people he had
known in his life.
In some instances he seemed to
see both worlds as if they existed together for him. My mother told us that on
the evening he finally drifted into a coma, he was speaking to people in the
room (not visible to my mom) and actually holding my mother and introducing her
to them: “this is my wife”.
My father also promised us he
would be there to welcome us when our time would come – he personally said this
to my mother and to me and seemed contented when we acknowledged his meaning,
almost as if it reassured him to reassure us.
My father was a non-conformist,
a man who never believed anything he did not “see” for himself. He raised us
without any religious practice because he believed we should find out by
ourselves what suited us best.
Probably this is the main reason
why, for me, what he told us was so real.
Maybe there are medical or
psychological “explanations” for what we experienced with my dad. Maybe not.
For me it does not matter that much.
What I know is that the process
we went through with his passing transformed me. Before this episode I considered
myself open-minded and willing to experience for myself what I was, and what I
considered to be true/my reality.
Now I feel “settled” in a
knowing that there is a reality beyond the reality I perceive with my known
senses. It is difficult to explain, but this direct experience of the “beyond”
made this “beyond” part of me. With this/my experience of beyond, it is no
longer beyond me.
This is probably why it seems
weird to me to have a discussion whether or not psychic phenomena exist, or
indeed to talk about the difference between psychic experience and
spirituality.
I know myself to be a spiritual
being, whether I do partake in any (human construct of a) spiritual practice or
not. I know that I experience “things”
that could be called “psychic” all the time, whether I care to (or can)
distinguish them from the “normal” things I experience or not, and whether I
can rationally explain them or not.
It reminds me of the fish that
did not know “water” until it had the experience of jumping out of (beyond) it.
(There's this fish: He wants the
fly but he doesn't want it in the fish way. He throws himself into the air, shimmery and breathless, hovering above the only atmosphere
he knows will love him, if only for the sheer, desperate, temporary thrill of
freedom from the water's grasp, and in that weightless click of time between
the rise and fall, the leap and heft and tumbling back, makes a place for
himself in pearly light on the wrong side of the water line. This fish is
pretty cool, right? Now imagine what would be possible if this fish could fly.[5])
[1] “Behold, I am of small account, what shall I answer
Thee?”: C.J. Jung, Answer to Job, 1958
[2] By the practice of meditation the lake of
the heart becomes pure and calm, and when the lake of the ordinary man’s heart
becomes pure, it is the reflection of a Bodhisattva which appears within it
(Sutra-text)
[3] Is Mindfullness a Religion?
Mark Phillips, 2003
[4] Quarterly by the
[5] Russell Edson and Ana
Castillo, just for fun