Knowledge and Religion

How did we get here, a different view of time?

The Theory of Evolution

As most of you know Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a theory of how we become human beings. According to this theory life stared as simple cells that gradually changed and became more complex, until these cells became entirely different species such as monkeys and apes. From there, as these species evolved, human beings were born.

The theory supposes that random mutations occurred in the genetic code of on organism. The beneficial mutations were preserved because they aided in survival. Other organisms died out. This is a process known as natural selection or survival of the fittest.

Are we limited to two choices?

Unfortunately these days the theory of evolution has evolved from a theory that scientists are trying to verify, to a religious belief. For instance, now we frame the discussion on evolution like this: you either believe in evolution, or you believe that God created the world in seven days as it says in the bible. For this reason any discussion on this subject seems to throw you into the mist of a huge controversy, or a lot of nonsensical babble.

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Do our bodies really determine what we are?

I am curious however, and wonder if these are only these two possibilities. Since we know that we are much greater than physical beings anyway, that our being really springs from Consciousness and Bliss, can’t we take a more objective look as to how these bodies got here?

After all, if it turns out that these human bodies came from apes it wouldn’t say a thing about us. That’s because these bodies are just a spec in our Consciousness. Like bubbles in the ocean, bodies last for a few seconds in cosmic time and then disappear.

Our real value comes from the still Awareness that sees these changes, and not from the changing objects, including the body and mind, that we see. The implications of this are enormous. Returning to our real center, Consciousness, we see that the life of the body is not our life, and its death is not our death. This is really the good news.

To learn more about this go back over the archives of this blog, or if you want a more succinct step by step version that takes you right to the core of your own being, read Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.

Holes in the theory of evolution

Now we can get back to the theory of evolution. The way scientists try to verify this theory is by looking at fossils and other records left behind from creatures that lived on the earth in the past. They then attempt to date these creatures using scientific methods that are accurate plus or minus several thousand years.

Using this data, scientist attempt to determine which creatures lived on the earth at what time. The problem is that scientists haven’t found all the links where one creature supposedly changed into another. And so we have the famous missing links. Moreover, scientists have trouble getting their timelines correct. For instance, they are finding civilizations going back way farther in time than they are supposed to.

With all of these problems I think you can see that the theory of evolution has yet to be verified. Now if we look at our experience have you ever seen one species change into another? On any level that you know has there really been this type of change? Now multiply that by all of the changes that a simple cell would have to go through to become this complex mechanism called a human being, and you can get a sense of how improbable the theory of evolution really is. That’s why I think that the theory of evolution has evolved into a religious belief instead of a scientific theory.

But can we still get a sense of how we got here?

So given the holes in this scientific theory, can we still get a sense of how we got here through our meditations and direct experience? The key is to look at the nature of time. Not the objective nature of time as determined by the movement of a clock. But rather our subjective view of time which is a lot more flexible than you may at first imagine.

In fact when you look at your own experience you find that time is so flexible that you can easily see why scientist have so much trouble determining an objective timeline for how we supposedly got here. That’s because time is inexorably connected to our mind. That means that as our mind changes so does time.

You may wonder how it is possible that time is flexible and not a fixed objective phenomena. Just look at your own experience. When your mind is absorbed in your work and you are having a good time, hours seem to fly by as if they were just seconds. On the other hand, if you are in the middle of a boring class that you are forced to attend, time seems to drag by and minutes seem to take forever.

Now what happens to time if our mind changes even more and we begin to dream? Remember in Self-Knowledge we go by our direct experience and not by some theory. So from within the dream state, the dream is real and the waking state does not exist.

If this is hard to understand here is an example: if you were talking to a group of people in last night’s dream and told them, “This is just a dream,” they would reply, “What do you mean! This is the waking state!” That’s because from within the dream the dream seems real. It is only when we wake up and look from the waking state that the dream state seems unreal.

But here’s the point that I am trying to make: The characters in the dream don’t think that they just arrived two minutes ago. They feel that they were always here. They can tell you about their husband, wife, children, grandparents, and ancestors. Then you wake up with a startle and ask, “How long was I asleep?” So you glance at the clock and see that it was a half hour. Imagine, in a half of hour an eternity went by.

Then with this view of time, how did we get here?

Because of the flexibility of time, in may be imposable to come up with an objective timeline for how these bodies got here. But you can still know how you got here by examining your actual experience. That’s because the presence that makes the world seem solid and real does not come from within the world, it comes from your Being, which is Consciousness and Bliss.

Here is the proof: You are the seer of change and not the one caught in its grasp. When you recognize this you find that the sense you may have that you were not born and will not die, actually comes from a valid place. In summery by your nature you stand as the witness of everything that changes; you are therefore free from change. This means that by your nature you are outside of time.

For this reason it is not that you got here by changing into human beings. You were always here. But your Being is so close that you just overlooked it, and took your self to be an object in the world, like a human being with a body and mind. This is like seeing objects and overlooking the eye that sees them.

Letting go of the objects and returning to the ever-present source, which in reality you always were, you get to see by your own direct experience, how you got here. As the sun does not need another light to see itself, you do not need a separate mind to see your Consciousness. You know Consciousness directly, because you are Consciousness.

Standing at the source you will know what the world is and how you got here. But the beauty of your direct experience is that it is much too rich for these limited words to describe. So if you want to know how you really got here, you will have to perform the experiment of abiding in your own Self-Nature for yourself. Abiding in your own Being, you will know that which words cannot say. But you will see that this knowledge is self evident.

And if you need help with this experiment, ask here and we can explore and find answers together. If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs please tell your friends.

Best Wishes, 

Michael Gluckman

Finding Happiness at Its Source

Sabir asked some questions on how to find freedom from the suffering that he feels, and the foreboding feeling that things are not going well including his desire to get a promotion at work.

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Hi Sabir,

It is good to hear from you again. When you meditate find the place where actually experience happiness. This is the place that is really yours. If you still expect to find happiness in a promotion and in wealth, even if you were to obtain these things, there would be no guarantee that you would be happy.

Thinking that happiness comes through promotions and wealth will lead to another type of string theory: that’s the theory of getting strung out. Even if you did get the promotion that you are looking for, you would only find yourself at peace for a week of two. But soon you would see that the promotion did not give you the happiness that you were expecting. So still looking outside for happiness you would wonder, “What’s the next promotion I can get.” As long as you are searching in the world for your happiness, you will never quite get the sense of completion and joy that you want. So you will continue to need more and more.

In the mean time the pressure would be on you to perform to the level of your new promotion as the people below you would be just itching to get your job. What you thought would bring you happiness, brings lots of misery with it too.

We have seen some very unhappy people in some very big houses, and some very happy people who have very little. That’s because wealth cannot give you what you already have, and poverty cannot take it away. So in your meditations find the place that happiness springs from and abide in your own heart.

Now lets say you have an ethical dilemma. Your boss calls you into his office and closes the door. He says, “I know you found this fraud going on in our branch. But if you are willing to just ignore it, I will give you a promotion.” So now you have to choose between getting what you think you want, and protecting all of the people that would be hurt by the fraud.

Knowing the place of happiness, you might make a decision that wouldn’t seem to benefit you at that moment. But it would leave you at peace in your own heart. Then in a few years when a new government comes into power and they start prosecuting your boss, you would be free. This illustrates that the situations in the world are always changing. If you rely on them for your happiness, when the winds begin to shift, your happiness will seem to fall down. But if you find your happiness at it’s source, as the winds of the world change, you will be at peace. 

You should know that when aiming for a promotion and wealth you can take many steps. But whether you succeed or not depends on many factors that are out of your control. So in your meditation find peace and enjoyment in your actions and let the results come as they are meant to. Consider the results to be a gift from God. With this attitude towards work, you will start to see how you are connected to everything. You will discover the unseen harmony behind the whole universe, and you will no longer feel like a misfit in the world. 

This harmony comes from the fact that at our core everyone is the same. The things that seem to divide us like our thoughts and our bodies and their condition, do not really divide us at all. For a few seconds in cosmic time it seems as if some people are smarter and wealthier than others. But in the end these people too come back to their source. They also have to find the answer to old age, disease, and death and the mystery of life.

Because of this wisdom, you have the opportunity to the find freedom and joy that does not depend on anything else. This freedom is even free from death. Is there any higher form of wealth than this? So please let me know if this answers your questions or if this raises more questions.

And if you need help, ask here and we can explore and find answers together. If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs please tell your friends.

Best Wishes,

Michael Gluckman

What is the Universe Made Of?

It might seem surprising but you can prove or disprove some of the most complicated scientific theories by simply looking at your direct experience. As an example, today I thought I would start out with the string theory.

The String Theory

So I had better start out with a layman’s description of this theory, which is extremely popular in physics these days. It is a theory that attempts to unify everything in the universe. Don’t worry I am not a physics or a math major, so I won’t bore you with a bunch of mathematical details.

But it is interesting to see what scientists are trying to accomplish, and how they are attempting to approach this problem. Then using your own direct experience, you can take a look. Through meditation on the Self you can ferret out your actually experience from what you think you experience. Indeed by the end of this blog you will get a sense of how, by standing in your own self-nature, you will be able to see what the universe is made of, without the help of any complex theory. Then you will be a position to see directly if the string theory may fall short or not.

String theory is an attempt to find one unified understanding of all the forces that physicists find in the universe. This includes gravity, electricity, magnetism, and molecular forces.

It proposes that the basic structure of the universe is particles smaller that molecules and atoms that act like strings. These strings vibrate like musical instruments, and these vibrations are the fundamental structure of the universe.

Now the sense I get from hearing about the string theory is that it is based on some very eloquent mathematical equations that seem to be able to describe this fundamental structure of the universe. They are now attempting to verify these equations to see if what they describe is actually true.

The string theory describes a universe with some very unusual qualities that sound a little like science fiction. An example is that the universe is made up of eleven dimensions. We can only perceive four of these dimensions including time. For this reason there could be whole universes that are just millimeters away from us that we are unable to perceive.

Now if you want to travel through space at warp speed that is faster than the speed of light, you could perhaps travel in a different dimension. In that dimension, what to us seems like billions of light years away could be merely a few seconds away. There might even be places in space called wormholes that are entryways into these other dimensions. 

But before I sound too much like a science fiction writer I had better describe how scientist are attempting to verify the string theory. One way is by accelerating particles in a very long tunnel to speeds where they break apart into very fundamental elements. These are elements that last for a very short time.

Then the scientists want to watch and see if some of these elements disappear. If they do, at this very tiny level these elements may be passing into other dimensions.

Finally in all fairness I should mention that there are many variations to this string theory. It is not just one theory. Also some scientists think that the string theory is really just a part of an even more fundamental theory of the universe.

Limitation to this theory 

Ok, now I hope I have given a fair description of this string theory. So here’s what I think the limitations of the string theory will be. In their theory scientists forgot the most important element of them all: that’s the nature of their Mind. Now you may be wondering how Mind could describe the unity of the universe.

It is easier to get a sense of this if we reverse the question and ask what is it that seems to divide the universe. It would surely have to be the objects that we see like time, space, bodies, thoughts, colors, tastes, smells, touch and sounds. If there was a unifying substance that underlies the universe, it would have to underlie and be the true substance of every object that we perceive wouldn’t it? It would also have to be the underlying substance of us too.

So here’s what I would propose. If there is one substance that underlies the universe it could not be different from us. Therefore if we knew our self we would know the nature of the universe is too.

See that’s the problem with the scientist. When he or she looks for unity of all things the scientist forgets the most important thing of them all: the very nature of the observer or the scientist herself. Without including that there is something very important missing in the unity that they discover.

So if we hope to find unity it is a matter of looking to the subject and seeing what we are really made of. Let’s frame the question this way: are we the objects that seem to divide us or are we the knower of these objects. Then we can look and see if the objects have an existence that is independent of the knower. If the substance of the objects that we perceive is not different from us, then we have found the unifying factor in the universe.

Now in these blogs and in my book “Making Your Wisdom Come Alive” I have shown how we are not the objects that we see and consequently how the objects that we see do not really divide things up. This is similar to how rooms, walls and pots do not really divide up space. Room space is just a name with no real substance. If you want to find out more it is worth taking the time to read through the archives of this blog or for a more concise form, read, “Making Your Wisdom Come Alive.”

When you perceive an object, where exactly do you see it?

But here I want you to try a different experiment which is more how the Buddha would see things. By the way, in self-knowledge you might call these experiments meditations. When you perceive an object, where exactly do you see it?

As an example, when I look out the window of my office and see the foothills across the valley; where am I actually seeing them? I am not seeing them over there, am I? I am seeing them here. And yet for some mysterious reason the hills appear to be over there.

If this seems confusing it is only because perception does not fit into a concept in your mind. It is only afterwards that your thinking comes in and tries to define what you perceive. This is like mistaking a photograph of the hills for the actual experience of the hills. The photograph is only a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional experience. Moreover, in a photograph there is no sense of hearing, touch or smell. At the most a photograph can only be a reminder of what you experienced and not the experience itself.

But where exactly do I see the hills,anyway? Light reflects off the hills and like a camera enters my eyes. Then what happens? The light is transmitted from my eyes to the optic nerve. From the nerve it enters my brain and from my brain it enters my mind. And then what happens? I see my mind. So am I really seeing hills out there are am I seeing my own mind?

Experiences like this do not easily fit into the words on a page. But I think if you attempt to discover where you actually experience the world you will find that the place is different than you think. You might also find that your mind is much bigger than you ever could have imagined. In fact a small part of your mind contains the whole universe.

So the next time you are watching a beautiful sunset or hiking in the woods or anytime as you go through life and feel like it, look afresh and see where you actually experience. Be ready for a surprise.

You may discover what the scientists are overlooking: the nature of the mind. That the beauty, the substance, and the harmony of everything you see comes from the nature of your mind. When you discover this you will not be one who knows the Buddha’s teachings. You will be the Buddha. You will have become what you really are.

I am sure this will raise many questions in your mind. Here questioning is always welcome. We take so many things to be normal that aren’t really normal at all. So questioning is the process of finding the nature of your mind, free from the limitations that you my inadvertently put on it.

And if you need help, ask here and we can explore and find answers together. If the comment section of this blog doesn't work, please send your questions and comments to michael@ananya.com. To find out where this all leads go to, www.light-up-your-life.com. And finally, if you enjoy these blogs please tell your friends.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Michael

Science and Self-Knowledge

After taking a break from the blogs for a while I am now refreshed and ready to get back to it again. I am going to make this a weekly blog that will come out on Thursdays. The last part of this blog was commenting on the verses in Sankara’s poem, Self Knowledge. Sankara is simple and clear; it is worthwhile to review that part of the blog occasionally.

Although the words remain the same, you will find that as you go deeper in your meditation, this teaching will seem to change. That’s because as you go deeper you will start to stand in the place where these words point. You will see that these words do not refer to a state of mind; they refer to a state of being. This is what you always experienced. But looking right passed your Consciousness and Being, you took yourself to be a mere object. Now you have the opportunity to return to your home, to just be yourself. That’s what these blogs are really about.

Now in the next few blogs I thought we could take up the topic of science and Self-Knowledge. As you might know scientists are developing many interesting theories including “String Theory” which attempts to unify everything in the universe, and one of the most controversial theory of them all, the theory of “Evolution.”

Science works something like this. The scientist observes a phenomenon in the universe like apples falling towards the earth and not away from it. The scientist then attempts to explain this phenomenon with a theory like the theory of gravity. Finally he or she attempts to verify the theory by experimentation.

Like a scientist we need to verify what we know. If we can’t verify this information then self-knowledge becomes just another theory that may or may not be true. But unlike a scientist the instrument that we use is our own direct experience and not an instrument outside of ourself; that’s because our aim is to ferret out our own Being. 

We attempt to separate what we think we experience from what we actually experience. It might seem surprising, but many times our actual experience is much deeper than our thoughts about our experience. Oftentimes our thinking comes in after an experience and attempts to comment on it, remember it, or measure it. But I think you will find with a little experimentation that your actual experience is much more intelligible and much richer than your thoughts about it could ever be.

Furthermore by standing in your own Being you get to see directly what the universe is, where we come from, and what happiness is. So in the next few blogs, I will compare our results with some of the theories held by scientists as I understand them.

Since I am talking about your own direct experience this will give you the opportunity to experiment for yourself and see what you find. We call these experiments meditation.

For more information on this Self-Knowledge go to www.light-up-your-life.com . You are also welcome to ask questions, which we use as a springboard for these blogs. Send questions to michael@ananya.com. Also if you enjoy these blogs, please tell your friends.

Best Wishes,

Michael