Philosophical Message – Page 4

A Voice from The Grave

A voice from the grave. That’s the origin of all religion, according to Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, the man credited with starting the modern science of anthropology. Specifically, Tylor speculated that religion, as distinct from totems and their associated specific dietary taboos, arose when peoples ran into major difficulties or obstacles, and became open to listening to advice from respected lost elders currently residing in spiritual domains. The disembodied voices of dead ancestors were the original gods.

Of course in Asia, many still worship their ancestors. That’s part of why the Ten Commandments conveyed to a small group in the Sinai Peninsula should still, today, be considered revolutionary. The Ten Commandments instructed “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

We, the descendants, culturally if not from the specific haplo group, were told to HONOR, not to worship. It was intended to be a liberating commandment.

And, the reasoning was provided. Now, we may ask how honoring our PARENTS equates with long life for the ones doing the honoring, as opposed to the ones being honored. To answer this conundrum, we need only realize that as we live, we set an example. If we honor our parents, our offspring, or other people’s offspring, will see us doing so. If the entire community honors their parents, that will be the way life proceeds in that community. Then, the children will learn to honor their parents. They won’t even need the commandment.

Many people think that the reasoning is stating a different reality. A carrot and stick type approach. That God is sitting up in the sky counting the times we honor our parents, and adding days to our life in proportion. No. That’s not how it works.

The Fifth Commandment is a simple commandment followed by a statement of the consequences of the natural laws of human behavior. We learn by example.

That is the major reason why social change takes so long. That’s part of why the Pound Me Too movement is evoking a backlash, as innocent and thoughtless people alike are surprised that someone is trying to overturn the oldest rule of all, and not even in a single generation. In a single week, it seems, we’re seeing many question the millennia long truth that power and wealth are the ticket to doing whatever one likes. Within a week, it seems, the Pound Me Tooers claimed that every human has been cleared of all their subconscious conflicts that broadcast yes or maybe when the voice says no.

This is being followed in the national conversation by teenage girls claiming the right to go to school mostly naked, and claim it’s for their comfort, and that those who find their uncoverings sexually inviting need to ignore their bodily promptings. I really don’t see how this is going to end well. Unless the new generation has truly evolved to something other than Homo Sapiens.

Giants in our midst

We’re all bigger than we realize. We usually think of our size in relation to the clothes that we require to cover ourselves. But the reverend minister at the church I attend is always reminding us that our spiritual auras extend far beyond our bodies.

This can be understood in many ways, at different levels. Even the most mundane aspects of our activities in the world involve interactions with others. If we displace a certain volume of air, and occupy a certain position on the face of the earth, nobody else can simultaneously occupy the same position and displace the same volume of air.

That, in any given situation, may or may not have obvious and immediate consequences.

Was our purchase of an orange from the Ionia Meijer what made the difference in the produce manager not getting fired? You never know. You just never know.

What size are we now? As big as the Meijer store?

Was the fact that we were trapped in position 12 in the traffic jam, which was what made the obstruction visible over the top of the hill, what gave the distracted father enough time to hit his brakes? You never know. You just never can know.

What size are we now? As big as the intersection that didn’t have an accident? As big as the area that contains all the lives of the people who helped to not allow the accident? As big as the lives of all the people who were able to carry on their activities because there was no accident at the intersection?

What size are we, NOW?

We sit at the coffee shop, writing away about Giants in our midst. We are the giants. We are the giants in our midst. Well, there is only one our, and just one giant. Just like the light that we see coming from Proxima Centauri, that took 4.244 years to get here, our size extends in both space and time, our actions, both intentional and unintentional by-products of our intentional actions, extend far beyond our specific knowledge.

What size are we now, that someone on the other side of the world has read our blog entry? Now, that we have seen the light of not only Proxima Centauri, but many other stars from far away galaxies.

No Pix from Day 6

Today, I am staying at my hotel. I don’t spend a lot of time with people any more. The Day 4 festivities, with the Baby Krishna reenactment, were followed, on Day 5, by four other neighbor kids dressing up as later versions of a Krishna as a youthful man, his wife Radha, and two other characters. It was again very joyful, lots of music and dancing, and crushing of crowds. So these images are all from yesterday, or earlier.

Scene from life of Krishna. Everyone has to see up close and take photos of everything!

Dharmendra and his sister dancing during a break from the storytelling associated with the Gita.

The rituals are powerful though. On the 4th day, or was it the 5th, after the morning puja, I went to personally greet the image of my mother. Suddenly, it appeared that she was there. Her face seemed three dimensional. She seemed to be watching me, smiling. I have had this experience before in India. When at the Swami Narayan Temple (BAPS) in Delhi, in 2009, the eyes of the 4th Guru, the main founder of today’s movement, seemed to follow me as I passed his bust. Skillful sculpting? I don’t know. Later, all of the photos of the deceased who were on the “altar” of holy cow dung covered bricks seemed to be alive to me, with the possible exception of the one photo that was really old and faded and off to the side. But some of the other photos were almost as badly faded. Maybe this uncle has already reincarnated, and his spirit is not available for this event.

The deceased honorees of this Bhagwat Ceremony. My mom to the left of the soldier. Dharmendra’s mother above the soldier, his sister to the left of his mother.

The power of the rituals must somehow be associated with the overall liveliness of the Indian people. A lot of effort goes into clothing. It’s so amazing to see people dressed in so many ways, from traditional to western to some mix of odd styles that constantly surprises me. But here is another beautiful sari, just because.

Many Indians are becoming obese. But not this woman, or Dharmendra’s father’s sisters, shown below.

The traditional generation. Bananas were passed out as “prasad,” or blessed food. The bags of fruit and other items, including rice, lentils, etc. to be used in cooking later, are left in front of the dias, under the images of the deceased honorees, to get the blessings along with the bricks and spirits of the departed.

I was told that the “main priest” would be reading from the Gita, and offering commentary. My Hindi is limited and my Sanskrit even more so, but as I read along in my English translation, the word husband occurs NOT ONCE. In fact, there is only one mention of family members, and it’s an exhortation from Krishna to Arjuna NOT to be attached to his wife or son. Yet the word that kept coming to me in the long Hindi passages was PATI. Which is husband. Eventually I became very suspicious that the speech of the priest had ANYTHING to do with the highest spiritual message of the Gita. Which is that our true essence is not the part of us that is carrying out our daily activities. Our true essence can do nothing at all but witness the universe. There is, as I noted in yesterday’s post, an exhortation to duty, repeated and repeated, but never one word about a wife’s duty to her husband.

My French friend later confirmed that they are actually not reading from the Gita at all.

The whole thing is a circus of storytelling. Of course. Because the Gita basically says clearly and repeatedly that the people who carry out the old Vedic rituals have much lower merit than those who devotedly love Krishna as they go about their daily duties maintaining society. No. That would never do for the priests to read the real Gita to the simple, religious people. It could destroy their livelihoods.

The message of the Gita is to renounce caring whether you experience pleasure or pain, and simply abide as the one witnessing the experience. By ending one’s identification with the body and the sensory pleasures and pains it attracts, one eventually merges with the eternal, all powerful Source. It’s an inward path. Has nothing to do with hiring a band of pandits to do rituals.

But Shush. The Catholic priests for many years prevented believers from reading the Bible on their own, and I argue with a Protestant friend whenever I have the strength that he would behoove himself to make his own interpretations from his studies, instead of repeating the supposed experts’. While the Israelites, the people of THE BOOK, were encouraged to become literate and read their holy texts for themselves, the mystical traditions that teach how to merge with God have also been kept hidden from all but men over 40 who are deemed worthy.

And obviously, Hindus, Christians and Jews are not the only ones who have two religions under the same name. One that is for the people who in my Knomo Choicius novel would really like the Free Thought Church, where one is freed from the burden of having to think. And the other, the hidden tradition, is for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, heart and feet to seek.

It is likely that my realization that the whole afternoon series of supposedly Gita inspired events is a facade for the opposite teachings was a factor in my need to stay in my hotel room today, and be an American on a spiritual path, taking a vacation from my “vacation”!

Lion’s Love or Alternative Valentine

The Buddhist nun Thubton Chodron says “Love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness.”

I am very happy to have come across this definition of love. By this definition, I am very loving. I want all sentient beings to have happiness. The fact that I have given up on trying to help others have happiness no longer bothers me. I want it. Thubton Chodron seems to imply that’s what love is.

Of course Westerners think that wanting alone is not as effective as doing something to achieve the desire. We have that old saying: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But Easterners have more wisdom that assures us that thoughts are things. In a way, we could consider that the entire core message of Jesus was just that. Jesus’ followers eventually got rid of much of the law, the requirements for doings. They emphasized the inner thoughts. Why, if not out of an understanding, not belief, understanding, that thoughts lay the groundwork for the quality of the deeds.

Another culturally Western Buddhist teacher instructs “Don’t just do something. Sit there!”

But, as long as I have been attracted to and studied the ideas of the East, a big part of me still feels like I need to do something to make my wishes into horses. Through the tension of East and West, I’m beginning to realize that every effort I have made to truly help someone out of what I perceived as a dire situation has gone wrong. People get into dire situations for large, complex and complicated constellations of reasons, most of which are incorrect subconscious beliefs about the nature of reality. Therefore, one person can’t ever have a high chance of truly helping someone for the longterm by adjusting their outside situation. The persons incorrect, unacknowledged beliefs will continue to sabotage them.

Therefore, while my spoken statement is that I have given up on doing anything to express my love, and am happy to wish for others’ happiness, my inner desire is to have the strength to continue to work in the ways that I am allowed to help others see a way to happiness.

Now, the intent, or content, of this string of sentences is all well and good. However, it pretty much applies only to humans. Thubton Chodron says that love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness. The Buddhists have a prayer that is often translated into English as follows: May all sentient beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness.

Ok great. But, as Lynn Sparrow Christie, a motivational speaker notes, “There’s the problem of the food chain.” The Jains have truly tried to create a system of rules / laws / habits / deeds / way of life that addresses this. Not only are they vegetarian, they don’t eat seeds, because that cuts off a life. Eating the fleshy part of the peach is ok. Garlic cloves, definitely not. Wheat not. I’m not sure about potatoes. They can produce a new plant, but the plant will make seeds if allowed. So maybe they do eat potatoes. Of course, Jains might or might not have known about potatoes when their religion was started. The coffeeshop where I am writing is getting a new internet router, so I can’t check. This is good. Lets you the reader see my stream of consciousness, and you can go look to figure it out on your own! 🙂

Anyway, to get back to the Jains, not only do they have a restricted vegetarian diet, but they wear masks, so that they do not inadvertently inhale and kill by immersion in digestive juices, any gnats or other sentient beings. Not only do they wear masks to avoid unintentional inhalation of gnats, but they sweep their paths ahead of themselves as they walk, to avoid crushing ants and worms. Every moment of the Jains’ lives are taken up in avoiding harm. I now see this as an uninterrupted meditation on laying the foundations for other sentient beings having the causes of happiness, or at least avoiding the causes of pain and suffering at a basic physical level.

Kindof like Judaism, there are so many rules and regulations, you don’t have time to get into trouble. Of course I am sure that just as there are Orthodox Jews who manage to lead truly creative lives, there are Jains who do the same. I am convinced that God has led different peoples to adopt different religious systems, not only because it was natural and expedient based on differences of environment, both natural and as responses to cultural pressures, but because having a spectrum of beliefs and ideas and cultures makes watching the human drama a more interesting prospect.

That said, getting back to all sentient beings having the causes of happiness is going to require a lot of changes to the status quo. In order for all sentient beings to have the causes of happiness, many of Nature’s beings are going to have to undergo fundamental changes. The lion must be able to lie down with the lamb in perpetuity, not only for a few minutes, after it has gorged itself on three giraffes.

Dancing to an Unheard Melody

This is a past life regression I did in 1988. The title above is from my friend Mel, who heard me read the piece in the writing group…

To my surprise, I actually find myself embodied. My arms around my partner, I look into his eyes. He is black. He wears an army uniform. He is taller than I am. He leads me around the dancing floor. Bright spots of light move as the glitter ball rotates above us. The vision is a vision, and I don’t hear the music. I look down at my shoulder, and find I am white. I don’t think this is a surprise. The inner self I was channeling must have known this as soon as I noted the dark tones of my partner’s skin. The question of my gender was never articulated.

As the unheard tune ends, I step back to smile at my partner, and looking down, I see the upper line of my yellow sleeveless dress against my skin. I am pretty. I know this, even as I can’t see my face. They say that beauty is perceived in the face designed from the average of all common features in a population. I fill in my face with this subconscious information. I am slim. The pretty and the slim are different from my current incarnation.

The skirt of my dress is yellow, like the top, but covered with black polka dots, the size of quarters. I sense this is happening in the 1930’s. Maybe one of those dance contests they had with cash prizes to supposedly alleviate the misery of the depression. Like in the movie They Shoot Horses.

Now, thirty years after this past life regression experience, I wonder why an enlisted soldier, presumably with a paycheck, would subject himself to this. Hmmm. Maybe he was attracted to me? Still, this is hard for me to imagine, having been stuck in my current body for all of this lifetime.

The essence that I took from the extremely foggy vision of a past life, that felt extremely forced at the time, was that my unwillingness to conform to society’s expectations goes back to a time before my birth into this current heavy, plain looking carcass. But she must have died young, if she was in her twenties in the 1930’s or 40’s, and died in time to provide a soul to one born in the late 1950’s. I wonder what happened to my dancing partner. Was he a partner for an evening only? A weekend of a dance contest? Years?

Yesterday, I joined the Theosophical Society. They’d already been around for 100 years when I graduated from high school. Their purpose is to promote Universal Brotherhood. The founders believed in the benefits of reincarnation. If you know you have many lives, you don’t have to feel pressured to “get this life perfect.” All the major religions teach that we are more than our bodies. Most teach that we are more than our minds. Or that we are neither our bodies, nor our minds. Nor our feelings for that matter. I can intellectually grasp that there is evidence that we are more than our bodies and thoughts and feelings. The idea of reincarnation helps to explain a lot of things. It’s not the only possible explanation for the experiences of deja vu, or strong connections to other people. It’s not the only possible explanation for my wondering from the age of four why I was born.

To my mother’s credit, she never gave me a fake answer. For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask my dad. Perhaps this persistent question, which implies that I did have a choice in being born, or at least that I thought I did, is even better evidence for reincarnation. Or at least for the existence of the individual’s soul or spirit as an entity separate from the body.

When I took the past life regression workshop, I had little hope that I was actually going to be able to get any information about my past lives. I’m an intellectual, and that generally interferes with the ability to perform self-hypnosis. As noted at the top of the post, I was surprised to even get a glimpse of a past life.

My friends at the Spiritualist church assure me that I have had many past lives. Who knows? My “karmic astrology report” from Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment says that my planets give a tendency to get carried away by my imagination. Yet some type of undiagnosed brain damage has left me with extremely poor visualization skills. I get lost really easily, even as I have developed skills to get to where I need to go in my daily life. Maybe this brain damage is what has kept me centered in the physical world. When I do have a clear inner vision, it always feels like a gift. I can never conjure it at will.

Glory of Ordinary People

The Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers Prompt was:

The Glory of the Ordinary People

Ordinary people or ornery people, Mel asked.

Either way, Cathy responded. Here’s my stream of consciousness….

Years ago, one of my clients, who I proposed coming to work for full time, responded with an affirmative to exploring the concept, despite my orneriness. Ornery. Hmm. I think it was the first time I heard that word. I more or less figured out that it meant all my personal characteristics that people complain about. But maybe I will look it up now, that I am sitting in my writing group meeting.

Well, I would have, but the internet is misbehaving. That forces me to continue with my writing. Am I out of luck exploring ornery? Or should I just continue to mull all my bad habits as known to me? Ornery, critical, a complainer, grouchy, won’t willingly suffer people who don’t treat me the way I want to be treated, self-righteous, according to my ex. I could go on, but you get the gist. Twenty one years ago I had a spiritual awakening, and all those characteristics vanished as I walked about the world. They didn’t totally vanish at home, where the bonds of habit are tighter, but suddenly I smiled my way through work and grocery shopping, and participating in my extra-curricular activities.

My vocabulary too, changed. Was my client’s part really cracked? I couldn’t tell for sure. What I actually saw looked like a shadow. Overwhelmed by a sea of beauty, who was I to pronounce their part cracked, defective, useless for the intended application?

The client, to his credit, a former school teacher, was unimpressed. “It’s cracked,” he said. “Call it a crack.” Well, who was I to pronounce their part cracked? Aaahhh, the specialist in cracks?

The next week, at breakfast after the morning prayer meeting, someone tried to sell me some real estate, and then, when I expressed strong disinterest, a small replica of the Calder Sculpture found in downtown Grand Rapids for $24.00, claiming it was enameled solid gold. It was obvious that the volume and weight of gold would far exceed $24.00 worth. Not to speak of the value of the labor of actually making the piece of jewelry. I told him I didn’t believe him. He agreed to let me test it. I told him it would destroy the piece. He said that was ok. I cut the part and mounted it in hard plastic, polished it to a mirror finish, and put it in a scanning electron microscope, then zapped it with an electron beam, which caused it to emit x-rays. The analytical instrument attached to the microscope informed me that the x-rays in a thin layer under the enamel, which covered a piece of steel, were emitted from gold. In other words, it wasn’t solid gold, but mostly iron and oxygen.

Did he thank me for preventing his further lies to potential buyers? No. When I showed him the data, he simply turned away. Of course he didn’t want this information, that now forced him to confront the fact that he had given false information to all of his previous buyers. I realize now that he was subject to the Belief Perseverance Syndrome. New facts be damned. New facts require work to reroute previously laid down neural routes. Entirely too much work for most of us. Most of us won’t even consciously acknowledge that we should do the work, if we want to act out of the truthfulness that most of us still claim to hold as our highest moral guide.

Truth, it turned out, was really more important to me than cheerfulness. Truth, it turned out, really was more important to me than politeness. Or at least that’s the way it used to feel to me.

There are parts of my life that now are reflected back to me as lies. But I guess that the fact that I allow myself to experience the waves of negative opinion washing over me might eventually lead me forward to a balance more in line with ordinary people, who know the truth that cheerfulness and politeness are more important than truth.

Why are some of us so obsessed with truth anyway? Because our parents beat it into us before we had developed logical analytical skills. Because of course our parents don’t want us holding secrets from them. Our parents are responsible for us. Our parents have millenia of cultural practice working in their favor when they invoke the highest spiritual forces to enforce their demands for truthfulness.

“Did you eat that cookie?”

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Did you break that glass?”

“Did you just feed that Brussel Sprout to the dog?”

Of course a lie, if discovered, would result in punishment, but even if undiscovered by the parental units, would still be known to the omniscient, omnipotent divine forces, who would eventually pay us back for the sin of lying, even if most of the above-mentioned acts do not usually carry felon status. It’s about the cover-up, the LIE.

Yes, it’s easy in retrospect to see why our ancestors found the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient GOD useful as a method of control for their offspring.

Why do some of us hear this verbal call to truth more clearly than we respond to the lived reverence for cheerfulness and politeness? A mystery. Past lives? Just a result of the variety of temperaments dished out by fate?

For now, orneriness is a blessing, a protection. Cheerfulness be damned.