The Secret of Life

Earth Doomed! (see page 53)

More 'Heart Of The Secret' to follow soon but first of all I'd like to draw your attention to the UN Geo-4 report on the 'global environment outlook', which was published last week. According to The Times, 'the report was drafted and researched by almost 400 scientists, all experts in their fields, whose findings were subjected to review by another 1,000 of their peers'. The report warns that 'the speed at which mankind has used the Earth's resources over the past 20 years has put humanity's very survival at risk'. We are warned that 'the point of no return' is fast approaching.

What causes me greatest concern is not the report itself, chilling though it is, but the low degree of priority it has been assigned in the news media, at least here in the UK. I heard about it last Thursday morning in a brief bulletin on BBC Radio 5 Live but as the day went on, the story seemed to slide down the news agenda. When I searched on Google News in the evening it appeared at number 9 in 'world news'. When I checked the papers the following day, I found that of the four 'quality' UK dailies, only The Times and The Independent chose to put it on their front page. To their credit, both ran it as their sole front page story, clearly believing that it deserved maximum publicity. In The Telegraph, by contrast, it appeared on page 16.

I also checked the Daily Mail, the 'popular' UK daily which does so much to inform our population about the threat to our national way of life from immigrants and other minorities. But they didn't seem to believe that the threat to our national way of life from the destruction of the planet warranted so much as a mention. At any rate, I couldn't find anything about the report in the paper at all, and I got as far as page 56.  I could have actually bought a copy, I suppose, and checked more thoroughly, but that would surely have been taking things a bit too far.

OK, so we already knew that the planet was in a bad way, but we're talking here about an authoritative, well-researched international report which clearly states that the survival of the human race is in imminent danger. The fact that it has been given such a relatively low profile in the news media says much about the capacity - or rather, incapacity - of humanity to respond to this crisis. An immense concerted effort from us all is required if planetary disaster is to be averted, yet not only can't we be bothered to make such an effort, we don't even feel it's necessary to make sure that everyone knows it's needed.

If you read this blog regularly, you may have gleaned from the occasional comment I've made that I believe - or at any rate hope - that the human race will shortly undergo a subtle transformation, that we're in for a consciousness upgrade, from a mindset in which we care mainly about ourselves and our own selfish needs and desires to one in which we come to perceive ourselves more as an integral part of the human race and the universe, in which we 'widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty', as Albert Einstein put it. For as Einstein presciently warned: 'we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive'.

The reasons why I 'believe' in this transformation are several:

1) Starting with what some might see as the 'wacky' side of things: there are numerous prophecies - including the fact that the Mayan calendar ends mysteriously in 2012 - which suggest that either the end of the world or a new golden age will occur at this time. Being a natural skeptic, I wouldn't give much credence to these were it not for the following:

2) So many resources are now available for personal transformation. I've talked about Deeksha and other resources on this blog. I shall talk about more in the future. Most of these have only emerged in recent years, some having apparently been guarded secretly for millennia, waiting for this time in history to arrive. It is not unreasonable to ask why all these resources have suddenly emerged. Could it be because we are going to need them?

3) And finally, the most compelling reason is the one which echoes the words of Einstein. A transformation is surely required if humanity is to survive.

In a recent article in The Sunday Times, the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss asked the question: 'is human consciousness fit for purpose?' As it stands at present, the answer is clearly  'no'. Our perspective is too self-absorbed and short-termist. We are so entrenched in our present lifestyles that it would take a tsunami and California-style fires on everyone's doorstep to grab enough of our attention to prompt us to take the action that's needed to save ourselves. And if such a thing happened, it would probably already be too late...

So that's the principal reason why I 'believe' in the coming transformation: not because of the prophecies or because there's  a 'new age' category in the bookshop, but because  I'm at heart an optimist and I can't see any other way ahead.  It's as though the prophecies and the planetary crisis are converging synchronistically into the only possible future for the human race: a future of transformation.

Only when we come to think of ourselves as first and foremost an integral part of the human race and the universe at large, rather than as separate entities in competition with each other, will we have the perspective needed to sit down as one and work together to find a way out of this mess. Even then, the road ahead will not be an easy one.

But at least we'll be in with a chance.

Consciousness Animation

In a recent post, I returned to my favorite quote from Einstein:

"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness..."

Here's an interesting animation on the same theme which I found at Mike's blog: Enlightenment, Sex, and Sweeet Guitar. Let me know what you think!

An End To All Abuse

Today is Blog Catalog's Blogging For Hope Day, when thousands of bloggers all over the world will unite to turn the spotlight on all forms of abuse. The hope is that in raising awareness, we can make a difference.

Yet when you think of all the abuse which takes place all over the world, you could perhaps be forgiven for losing heart. We might achieve something here and there - and of course we are right to try - but will this enormous weight of human suffering ever really be lifted? People have abused each other in various ways throughout history. When you look at the big picture, is that ever going to change?

It seems to me that when you get right down to it, all abuse derives from a single mistaken idea: the belief that each of us is separate, that other people are somewhere 'out there' and are different from us, that they threaten us in some way, by hurting us or taking stuff from us, or just by being 'bad people'. From this idea, the impulse arises to get our own back by making these people suffer in return, in the mistaken belief that when we hurt them, we do not suffer ourselves.

Even self-abuse is rooted in this same belief in our separateness: that we ourselves are alone and unworthy, that we do not deserve any better.

It seems to me that what is needed to stop abuse is nothing less than a wholesale change in consciousness: for us all to come to understand that far from being alone, we are all together in this. We are all part of the human race, all part of this great universe in which we live and breathe, that all of us are linked: that we cannot hurt other without hurting ourselves.

Einstein expressed it brilliantly. I've used the following quote before on The Secret Of Life, but I make no apologies for repeating it here:

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

In The Secret Of Life, I try to present some of the ideas and techniques which might help to bring such a 'new manner of thinking' into being. And what I'd like to do here is to take you through an exercise to help you imagine what this change in perspective might be like. Please give yourself a few moments to try it.

The words that follow are not a poem, but you may find them more effective if you read them slowly, which is why I've left gaps between the sentences. As you read, you might find it helpful to pause between each section to see what appears in your mind. I hope you enjoy the experience...

First, think of the people to whom you are close: your family, your friends, the people you see every day.

Imagine that you are connected to all these people by a series of thin, gossamer threads.

White, shiny, almost invisible threads, connecting you all together into one.

Imagine subtle energy flowing along those threads: subtle light, subtle electricity.

Feel this energy flowing through your body.

Imagine that this web extends more widely now, connecting you to everybody you know.

Those same thin gossamer threads, that same subtle energy, flowing through you all, connecting you all together into one.

Now imagine the web extending wider still.

Imagine that all these people you know are also connected to everybody they know.

Those same, thin gossamer threads extending round the world, extending to embrace the whole of the human race.

Now imagine that all your many feelings: your hopes, your fears, your pain, your love, are shared by everyone else.

Your feelings travel along the threads so that everybody experiences the same feelings as you

All of you feel whatever you feel as a single living creature.

All your feelings are shared by everyone else.

Imagine too that everyone else's feelings are shared by you.

And that everyone shares the feelings of each other.

Now imagine the web extends to embrace all living things: all the creatures and all the plants and trees all over the world.

All linked by the gossamer threads, all feeling subtle vibrations traveling along the threads, all linked by the same vibrant energy.

Now the web extends to the whole of the earth: the seas, the land, the mountains, and the towns and cities in which we live.

All linked by the same threads, by the same vibrant energy, in a single living, breathing pulsating whole.

All of us bound together in an intricate matrix of life,

All that vibrant energy shared, and all our feelings too, so that what is good for one is good for everyone.

Just reflect for a while upon these thoughts.

If you enjoyed that, you may like to hear the audio version where the same words are presented as a ten-minute guided meditation.

My good wishes to all those who are taking part in Blogging For Hope. I hope that it makes a difference and I hope that we can all eventually reach a place where abuse no longer figures in our consciousness.

The Nature Of The Universe

(To see comments on recent posts, please click here for Vision, here for To Simply Be and here for Let's Pretend.)

In previous posts, I've mentioned Einstein's belief that our sense of separateness is "an optical delusion of consciousness" and the idea of unity, that all of us are essentially One. For the whole of this quotation from Einstein, please see this previous post. But what else do scientists have to say about all this? Does what we know of the natural world support the idea of Unity at all - or was Einstein just going off on a flight of fancy?

An interesting book to read in this respect is The Tao Of Physics by Fritjof Capra, first published in 1975, which draws parallels between modern science and Eastern religious & philosophical thought. In the words of one of the reviewers I've just come across on Amazon, Capra "demonstrates that both modern Western science and traditional Eastern spirituality share the same core truth: that the universe is one interconnected whole, a ceaseless flux of living energy of which we are all part". Does that sound familiar?

Many books making similar comparisons have followed, including The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami and The Field by Lynne McTaggart. Such books tend to be treated with varying degrees of scepticism by scientists and it's very difficult for the lay reader to make an objective assessment of them. This is especially true if you're like me and too much quantum mechanics makes your head hurt. Where some of them fall short, perhaps, is in claiming that the science proves that the philosophical & spiritual ideas we're talking about are correct. What may be more accurate - yet surely still exciting - is that they hold out the tantalizing possibility that they may be right, that science and spirituality may indeed concur.

Certainly it is true to say that what we think of as solid matter is mainly empty space. The particles which comprise atoms are very tiny indeed, with a large proportion of empty space between them.  But even these particles are not solid matter as we experience it in everyday life. They appear to be more like waves and only assume a fixed position when someone tries to measure them. So are they waves or particles, a bit of both, or something else which we don't yet understand? These sub-atomic entities are the building blocks of our own bodies and the matter we see around us every day. So what is in dispute here is the very nature of the fabric of reality.

I've previously mentioned the web site spaceandmotion.com, a fascinating repository of quotations and information on science and philosophy, the (not so) hidden agenda of which is to promote The Wave Structure Of Matter, a theory which proposes that particles are not particles at all but standing waves, interacting with each other to produce the effect of a particle. This would mean that there is no matter at all in the way that we normally understand it. Everything That Is, including ourselves, are really a series of interacting waves.

The Theory of Loop Quantum Gravity takes things even further, proposing that the universe is merely information in a giant quantum computer, stored by a series of twists in space-time. This would mean that we and everything we see around us are all part of a vast network of space-time, and furthermore don't even really exist. Which might sound extremely surprising - except to Buddhists.

It is clear, then, that some very imaginative concepts are being proposed to explain the universe, and in this context the idea that we are all part of a continuous field of energy - as many people experience through meditation - does not seem at all ridiculous. This 'connectedness' seems to be further confirmed by 'non-local effects' or quantum entanglement, whereby 'particles' which are separated in space - sometimes by large distances - appear to influence each other.

The universe is a strange place - or perhaps it only appears to be strange because we don't understand it. And if the so-called solid matter we see around us is not only mainly empty space but not even matter at all, then perhaps we should be open to the possibility that the way we see the universe - and our place in it - is in need of substantial revision.

To Simply Be

Do take a look at the comments on the previous post, Let's Pretend (please click here), as some very interesting ideas came up. Please also click here to see further comments on Unity Is Powerful, as Dr Rob Yeung emerged out of the network of gossamer threads which comprise the internet to protest that I hadn't been very fair about his book on office politics. I have duly apologised and I have to say that it comes as a relief to discover that the book wasn't - apparently - as horrid as I thought it was. This makes me realise how new I am to this blogging business, though. It's like you're taking part in a discussion one night in the pub only to find that, say, George Bush is suddenly sitting beside you, complaining that you've got it all wrong about his foreign policy.

Come to think of it, I did have a go at Bush and Blair in a previous post. I wonder...? No, it's OK. They'll have a lot of other blogs to get round first.

It's interesting in terms of what we've been discussing here, though. I found that I was very eager to correct any misrepresentation I'd made about Dr Rob's book, so at least I wasn't hung up on "the need to be right". As far as I was aware, I was simply keen to make a correction in the interests of truth - but was there something else going on as well? Was my main concern really to prove to the world what a fair-minded and generally admirable human being I am?

Which leads us on quite neatly to what I wanted to say in this post...

Did you try what I suggested last time? The idea was to imagine that what Einstein said is right: that we are, in essence, an integral part of the universe rather than separate entities. If we take this idea to its logical conclusion it would mean that we are all essentially one: that when we look into someone else's eyes, we see ourselves staring back; that when we smile at someone else, we are smiling at ourselves.

Some people might view this idea as a precursor to mental instability, but others may find that it taps into something inside them, something they like. The important thing is: how does it make you feel? You don't have to believe it, but if it makes you feel good, then why not go on pretending? And is it really, after all, such a ridiculous idea?

It is no more ridiculous, surely, than this all-powerful construct we carry around in our heads: this Thing which is our Image, this 'My Space' of the mind. We all have this image of ourselves - and which we imagine others share - which we preen and polish with everything we do. We judge our every word and action to see if they make us look better or worse in the eyes of the world, before slotting them into the fabric of this Monster, which we feel we have to rebuild and repair every moment of our lives.

But what if we don't have to bother with any of this? What if we aren't in competition at all? If we're really all one, as we've been discussing, then the various sources of stress I've mentioned in recent posts - with the possible exception of Trick Or Treat - lose their power to affect us. Why should we bother what others think, or care if we win an argument, if we're only really competing with ourselves?

At this realization, a great weight can suddenly fall from our shoulders. Suddenly, there's nothing we have to prove any more. All the years of ceaseless striving can finally come to an end. There's no shiny image of ourselves by which we will be judged. It doesn't matter. At last we can simply be.

Let's Pretend

(To see the continuing comments on previous posts, click here for Unity is Powerful, here for The Need To Be Right and here for Disorientation. You may also be interested in a very good article on dealing with failure over at Maurits' Blog.)

The concept mooted by Einstein that "we are all part of a single unified whole" is an appealing one to me. (See the previous post for the whole of this Einstein quotation.) My instinct tells me that his words are not some pretty, poetic idea but are rooted in the truth: that we are indeed, in essence, an integral part of the universe rather than separate entities.

I've been fortunate enough to have various experiences - some spontaneous, others through meditation - which have offered me glimpses of what it's like to experience this. The words to describe these glimpses are hard to find, but the overwhelming impression was one of tapping into a vibrant source of energy. There were also impressions of light and bliss, and of letting go of a heavy burden I've carried (without my conscious knowledge) the whole of my life.

It may be that such glimpses are due to some mental aberration (like deja vu for instance) caused by wonky synapses or too much rich food, but the way I look at it is this: what else do we have to go on if we can't rely on our senses? So I prefer to go out on a limb and believe what they tell me.

But what does this mean?  If I choose to listen, what are my senses telling me?

The message I get is that there's a different way of looking at things from the one we normally use - it's like taking off a pair of dark glasses and so transforming a gloomy landscape into one of light and beauty. The beautiful landscape has been here around us all the time, but we haven't been able to see it. And yet if only we could see it, and continue to see it, our lives - and with them the world - would be transformed.

As I say, I've been lucky enough to snatch glimpses of this for myself, but you may be asking what that has to do with you. What are you supposed to do if you haven't had such glimpses? How can I expect you to believe a word I'm saying? Why should you believe that what Einstein said is true?

One possibility would be for you to simply believe it because it sounds kind of nice, an option which has worked surprisingly well throughout human history. But belief without any evidence to support it has never seemed to me to be as admirable as some people seem to think. So what I suggest instead is to pretend.

What you can do is this: instead of thinking of yourself as an individual who has to battle against everyone else to survive - which, let's face it, tends to be how we view the world, even though 'survival' may really be nothing more important than being first across the line at the traffic lights or having a better-kept hedge than the guy next door - instead of thinking of yourself like that, try to imagine that you are part of a massive composite entity which embraces the whole world. It may be easier to do this if you think of one of those pictures of the earth taken from space: try to imagine the sphere that you see in your mind's eye as a living, breathing being, and that you are a part of that.

Now imagine that you are connected to everyone else in the world by a network of fine gossamer threads. Imagine energy flowing through those threads, flowing through you and flowing through everyone else. Imagine that this network extends to embrace all living things: all the creatures and all the plants and trees, everything connected together with that same energy pulsing through them. Now, finally, imagine that this network extends beyond the planet, out into the universe, connecting the whole of What Is in a single vibrant entity.

Now feel that same energy flowing inside you. Look into someone else's eyes and see it staring back at you. Smile at them - and know that you are smiling at yourself.

Unity Is Powerful

To see comments on recent posts, click here for Halloween, here for The Need To Be Right, and here for Disorientation.

I'd like to kick off this time with a quote from Einstein:

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

You can find the above on Geoff Haselhurst and Karene Howie's remarkable website spaceandmotion.com along with a wealth of other quotes and information on scientific and theological themes. If you have the time, it might be interesting to contrast this with a recent article on management from The Sunday Times entitled "A Fakers' Guide to Mastering Office Politics".  If you haven't time, don't worry - suffice it to say that it reviews a book called "The Rules of Office Politics" by Rob Yeung  which provides helpful advice on how to further one's career by making appropriate cooing noises round those colleagues who are considered important and either ignoring or evacuating the contents of one's bowels upon those who aren't. Working away to the best of one's ability for the benefit of society or even of one's own organisation don't get a look in here. "It's all about me..."

(Note: Rob Yeung wasn't too happy about the way I described his book! Please see this post's comments for clarification.)

Using this book to characterise the way in which our world presently functions may be looking a bit on the black side, but I suspect it applies more often than not. Most of us are brought up to further our own interests - or, at best, the interests of those who are close to us - rather than the interests of humanity or our society at large. This is because - as Einstein observes - "we experience ourselves... as something separate from the rest".

But try to imagine for a moment if it were different, if everyone acted according to Einstein's vision: for the benefit of the universe instead of just for ourselves. Then, during our working lives, we'd all focus on how to produce better widgets: sharing our knowledge instead of keeping it to ourselves, working like we're on the same team as our colleagues, instead of pretending we're all taking part in The Weakest Link. Or, if we felt that the widgets our firm produced were a nett drain on the universe, we'd go and work for another firm which produced a more wholesome product. That way, we might have cars that ran on clean fuel, shorter queues at call centres, and maybe even trains that ran on time. Everyone would pull together, and because everyone believed in what they were doing, they would do a better job.

Just imagine...

OK, so this all sounds like something out of a John Lennon song, but just pretend for a moment that the universe really is the way that Einstein suggests: that we are all part of a single unified whole, but we can't see it because of what he calls "an optical illusion of the mind". Pretend that a tiny shift in our mental perspective would be enough to change all that - and so to change the world.