As simple as possible but no simpler*

Possibly the simplest conceptual model [0] of spirituality.

Start from what is self-evident - the physical body and things in the space outside it. Science and spirituality [1] have no quarrel thus far.

Now consider the complicated world of consciousness, mind, intellect, five-fold sheaths, three-fold bodies, layers, and what-have-you. Stripped down to its barest essentials, it is something that is not the physical body, but has definite relationships with it. [2] Science agrees, but considers the non-physical part to be created from or by the physical body.

Spiritual paths generally agree that there is something beyond this non-physical part, beyond the mind and intellect - infinite, un-graspable/unknowable, beyond time and space. It can yet be experienced - in a limited way - inwardly. Those who have experienced the Unknown have given some descriptions or analogies [3], especially using a series of increasingly subtler physical ones, and then negating or transcending each one. E.g., from earth/solidity to water/liquidity and so on to space/immanent and transcendent.

 The simple model looks something like this:

UNKNOWABLE/INFINITE/DIVINE

======================

NON-PHYSICAL PART

==============

PHYSICAL BODY

===========

OUTSIDE

One explanation for the non-physical part is that it is an interface between the Unknowable and our physical body. [4] The interface has two sides, one adjacent to the Unknowable, and the other next to the physical body. Limited and contextual descriptions of the Unknowable say that it is pure, simple, and subtle or light. Naturally, the interface should also have similar qualities on that side. The physical body's qualities normally appear in stark contrast to those of the Unknowable and such is also the interface next to it.

A naive idea would be that the interface is very thin. But usually, there is a gradient from pure, simple, and subtle to impure, complex, and gross, as one's mind or non-physical part (NPP) "moves" from the Unknowable to the physical body. Put differently, from the "inside" to the "outside".

The simplest explanation for our present state is that the focus of this interface has become weighted towards the outside. So it ignores or is unable to receive, let alone process, impulses or signals from the inside correctly. All spiritual practice is about moving the focus inward for longer times and with greater stability until the interface is permanently weighted towards the inside. Paradoxically, this needs less effort than going outward because purity, simplicity, and subtlety were the original and natural states. [5] Yet another paradox is that the inward journey of each individual's NPP is reported as commonality and unity, even transcendence, [5] while the outward journey leads to differentiation and separativeness, competitiveness and groupism.

Much spiritual jargon comes from complicated, incomplete, and inconsistent explanations of spiritual experiences or reports thereof. I have not considered the focus or movement of the NPP laterally, across human beings. But such focusing may be done more effectively once the inward focus is settled and it becomes easier to see patterns, or in other words, keeping in mind the forest while dealing with individual trees.

NOTES

* Ascribed to Einstein, Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler
gives a detailed history.

[0] A more "structural" details of model in Two bodies or what do we really know?

[1] Some spiritual paths consider the objective or material world outside to be unreal or at least unimportant.

[2] E.g., reading these words requires you to process them physically as well as non-physically. Understanding, vocabulary, memory, intellectual processing, etc. uses physical energy and time, as well as abstract or non-physical processing.

[3] Given the differing times and cultures, these descriptions have differed. Garbled and misunderstood communication of the descriptions caused further confusion.

[4] See Mind Sandwich for a similar perspective.

[5] According to spirituality. Since science has no measurable proof of the Unknowable, and considers the NPP to have originated from the body, it logically considers numinous or transcendental states to be later developments of the NPP.

[6] Trying to describe something that is simultaneously immanent and transcendent is a major preoccupation of the early Upanishads.

You - I - We

Interdependence was popularised by Steven R. Covey in his "Seven Habits ..." book [1]. Basically, it means that human beings (as well as organisations, and nations) need each other to thrive.

From You to I to We.

First is dependence - the ‘you’ phase, where the child looks to others for its safety, wellbeing, and pleasure. If someone withholds, the child is deprived. With caring others, the child thrives.

Second is independence - the ‘I’ phase, where the child develops into adolescent and young adulthood. If all goes well, the young adult develops independent traits - taking responsibility, making sound decisions, and becoming self-reliant.

Third is interdependence - the ‘we’ phase, where the independent adult chooses to increase their circle of concern, to include ever widening groups of people.

Interdependence is the recognition that people – and the social system within which they exist – are mutually dependent. We cannot function alone, we need social cohesion and the work of others to thrive.

And for the group or social system to be viable it needs us to make our contribution. Only independent people can choose to be interdependent.

(Paraphrased)

While this staging is neat, real life is messier. Children may be more independent as toddlers than as teenagers, and teenagers more interested in looking after their peers and the world at large than adults. But, in general, yes, adults are expected to care about others and themselves - it is a sign of greater emotional maturity.

Compare with Vidura Niti in the Indian/Mahabharata context.

NOTES

[1] Covey, Stephen R. 2004. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People : Restoring the Character Ethic [Rev. ed.]. New York: Free Press.

Occam's Razor (PoP) and turiya

In scientific research there is an old [1] idea known as Occam's Razor or the Principle of Parsimony. Basically, it says choose the simplest conceptual model that explains all the data. Mathematically, prefer the equation with the smallest number of terms to describe something. E.g., E=mc^2 describes the maximum energy present in a mass 'm' using just one other term 'c'.

Similarly, the elegance of Advaita lies in its theoretical notion of everything in the universe arising from just one single thing. Unlike Einstein's equation, though, it is not possible to test, let alone prove that through "objective" experiments. A bit like the Big Bang theory! [4]

Advaita, while parsimonious in its axioms of initial (or eternal) state, does end up resorting to earlier concepts from Sāṁkhya (which has two foundational entities) to explain our world. Thus Māya is practically the same as Prakṛti, and Ātma, or Jīvātma, the same as Puruṣa. 

In Sāṁkhya, consciousness and non-consciousness are eternally separate and so it is easy [2] to understand that states of mind (a non-conscious thing) are different from a state [3] of consciousness. Thus, jāgrata, svapna, and suṣupti - all mental states - are different from turīya. Or they are orthogonal to turīya. Turīyātīta, posited as another state of consciousness, subsumes easily into turiya in combination with a different mental state.

NOTES

[1] Traced back to Aristotle per Wikipedia.

[2] Sāṁkhya is a realistic philosophy which does not deny the existence of anything, including mental states.

[3] Strictly speaking, consciousness, or Purusha, in Sāṁkhya is absolutely non-interactive. So there is only one state.

[4] But see first comment below - at least one prediction of the Big Bang theory has been tested and proven, and so it is more valid than, say, the steady-state theory. In general, though, it is not theoretically possible to prove a theory - it can only be disproven.

Anonymity and other spiritual rules

Anonymity

Spiritual practice, especially work done for others, must be done without fanfare, in fact, even without acknowledgement.

Perhaps this is to imitate Nature. Nature works - creates, maintains, and destroys - automatically and without fuss, because work or dynamism is its inherent nature.

Some other, little-known, rules:

Generosity

One who gives, gets more and more - to give.

E.g., one who gives money to others gets more and more money, but to keep giving, not to hoard.

Generosity opens up one's heart.

One definition of spiritual progress is large-heartedness. Another is soft-heartedness.

Work

(Corollary to previous rule)

One who works efficiently is rewarded - with more work.

So how does one avoid the management principle "Work going to the most efficient worker multiplies until he drowns?"

Teach others how to do your present work and keep working on new things. Also see Rest.

Work efficiently, and with interest. Try to improve in terms of energy expended, especially emotional energy, and reduced strain.

Rest

    Change of work is rest.

Chariji [1] was a wonderful exemplar.

Change

Change is constant. Accept or tolerate it, at the very least. At best, welcome it.

There is an intriguing paradox though. Spiritual progress is sometimes assessed by how boring or routine one's life is. Such a life gives ample time and opportunity for spiritual practice. Those who lead exciting or complicated lives seldom think about going inward. On the other hand, spiritual masters who lead busy lives, though, have gone through their periods of boredom or internal focus to acquire a solid base of emotional stability.

Constant Practice

(In the midst of constant change, unremitting spiritual practice is the stable foundation and background.)

Do the practice for the long-term. 12 years is a magic number.

Do with interest, and yet light-heartedly - without frowning or a "castor-oil" face. [2]

        Observe patterns in practice over the short, medium, and long-term.

If the effects are stagnant (and you are convinced of the practice, its practitioners, and its propounder), then you are not following the steps correctly. Re-read, or get clarified, the introductory material. Reboot, in other words.

Depth in practice is accompanied by increasing subtlety and lightness. Often thoughts are fewer and decision-making clearer.

Courageous thinking

Think freely, unmindful of emotional pressure. Act, once convinced, fearlessly. Accept mistakes.

Yet, follow rules aimed at maintaining peace and routine. Yet again, abusive people need not be encouraged.

Serious disciples understand the spirit of the practices in a system and can respond positively to hints or unwritten rules.

Notes

[1] Chariji, Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari of Chennai, was the third guru in the Sahaj Marg tradition. He was famed for his indefatigable and unflappable workstyle, often working continuously without rest for a very long time while switching between different tasks.

[2] Swami Sivananda of DLS, Rishikesh used this phrase often to mock those who did their spiritual practice with a frown. (People who regularly drank a dose of castor oil, for health, generally puckered up their faces at its taste.)

Stalactites and separation

Think of a cave.

A limestone cave.

A cold climate.

Water seeps in from the ground above and covers the ceiling.

It freezes into ice.

Water keeps seeping in, and the layers and projections of ice start to descend.

They lengthen as icy water keeps flowing inside, and each stalactite grows, separated from the others.

Now, imagine the water in a stalactite coming alive. It wants to fully experience its original unity, its commonality, with the others. Resisting gravity, it returns to the ceiling and the flowing water beyond.

Next, imagine your mind, weighed down by its identification with your body. It seeks its original lightness, balance, understanding, and expansiveness. It wants to become subtler and relaxed, but has to strive against its own habits of painful effort, of experiencing and expressing itself grossly, through the body, and against others.

Thinking and meditation

(from Daaji - mostly verbatim)

Meditation as an act is resting the attention on something effortlessly.

Every human being does this activity multiple times every day, especially when doing something enjoyable (such as eating ice-cream).

This also happens during work, business, planning meals for the family, etc.

Spiritual meditation is effortless focus on an infinite object.

(based on Daaji's talks & writings; paraphrased and extended)

Meditation training using one's own mind is about effortless focus on something that is not immediately enjoyable.

In Sahaj Marg meditation, one places one's attention on the divine light in one's heart. The source of that light then pulls one's attention towards itself.

The source being infinite, one's mind cannot grasp it and has trouble resting stably in the heart.

When attention has drifted away from the light onto another object, and one becomes aware of that change, one should simply relax the attention, the mental grip. It will naturally glide back to the previous object, the heart and the light within.

Learning to focus effortlessly for a long time on an object means using lesser and lesser energy to deal with the movement of attention. [1]

One should also understand that attention is one's mind gripping something, consciously or subconsciously. Relaxing is all that is needed to un-grip, not yanking it away or cutting it or anything else needing more effort.

Progress in meditation may be defined as the ability to focus on subtler and subtler objects for longer times. But in Heartfulness meditation, the object of meditation stays the same (being already infinite and deliberately undefined) but our understanding becomes subtler.

(My speculations)

Cleaning is a way of returning to the condition (of our heart, mind, and body) received, or gifted to us, by our morning meditation.

Prayer meditation, along with going over the day's activities, is introspection; so as to change ourselves with the help of that which is inside our own hearts, as well in the heart of each and every human being.

NOTES

[1] Daaji writes that after thinking - effortless focus - on the object comes feeling the object - without words or thoughts, and after feeling comes being the object. The Yoga Sutras put it differently - the object alone stays in conscious awareness, and awareness of meditation and meditator are lost during that time.

Daaji also says that after being there is becoming and then one goes beyond. These two are subtler states leading to the next level.

The important point, though, is thinking is only one of the many activities of the mind.

Rote learning and traditional learning methods

Rote learning - simple memorisation and regurgitation of textual/teacher-enforced knowledge - directly causes atrophying of two of the three traditional ways of getting valid knowledge - direct perception, analysis and prediction based on direct perception, and authoritative or authentic sources.

How does a baby learn?

I think primarily with its sense organs. Its brain is used mainly for memory, and for innate processing of physical events such as hunger, discomfort, and pain. [1] But, it is also used for emotional learning - happiness, surprise, etc. - from the moods of people and other living things around the baby. It is probably fair to say that a baby learns through direct perception of its physical and mental world and simple rule-making or analysis of its perceptions.

How does a child learn?

A child (in India at least!) is stuffed with facts, generally randomly and confusingly put together sans a consistent/logical framework. Such facts are often completely out of sync with the child's world, making them even more difficult to memorise and regurgitate. It learns to behave primarily based on physical, emotional, and mental reactions of surrounding adults to its own behaviour, and not from being allowed to explore freely in a safe and prepared environment. Ultimately, a baby's natural capacity to learn through its own senses and independent thinking is lost by childhood's end.

Why does it matter?

A child who depends mainly, or completely, on inputs, assessments, and discipline from the outside world and other people has lost the ability to sense its internal world - its own body [2] and mind. It has lost confidence in its own conceptual frameworks of its world. It is not taught how to travel skillfully among sensations, percepts, and concepts - basic ones or higher degrees or layers of concepts. It does not know how to validate what it reads and hears against its frameworks since insistence on rote memorisation means ignoring or deleting the frameworks. Nor does it know how to subsume, expand, or otherwise modify its frameworks since a child is not encouraged to experiment and analyse. [4]

Isn't it inefficient to teach through experimentation and self-analysis?

It depends on the definition of inefficiency. In the animal kingdom, a human child is already the most inefficient because it takes about twenty years to learn to fit into adult human groups.

Compared to other, more specialised, animals, humans are general-purpose, and are not the best at anything physical. Humans have succeeded as a species due to the evolution of their mental capabilities. This evolution came from original ideas and their sharing. There is also an exponential growth of knowledge across generations. So, yes, it is more efficient to learn from the experience of others (authoritative sources). After all, they have already gone down many mental and physical blind alleys and found viable paths that save time. Also, teaching is often a more efficient process than replicating an experience.

However, evolution of human consciousness requires the evolution of a majority of human beings, not just the rare special ones. Also, useful learning, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, creativity, result only when each human child, teenager, and adult has learned to generate and validate its own sensations, percepts, and concepts.

What is validation of knowledge or true understanding?

In a traditional Indian darśana, something is true or valid if it is found to be valid according to all the pramāṇas or channels of knowledge for that darśana. Thus, in sāṁkhya-yoga, something is obviously valid, true, or factual if one has directly experienced it (pratyakṣa), it fits into one's conceptual frameworks (anumāna), and it has been recorded precisely and faithfully by authorities (āgama).

However, all three validations are not necessary or even possible. So they are ranked. A directly-experienced sensation - a physical sensation, a thought, a mood/emotion, or even an energy sensation - always has precedence over concepts and authoritative sources. This is because concepts and their relationships change. So does understanding of authoritative sources, with more and different direct experiences, and changes in one's ideas, and different (deeper, wider) inputs from authorities. A truly original experience or conceptual framework, never experienced or thought-of by anyone else before, obviously means āgama cannot be used for validation.

Finally, in the oral tradition of yoga, āgama (arrival, etc. in Sanskrit) is construed to mean the transfer of the direct experience or inference of the authority into the student or practitioner. [5] For the first, an experience transfer, or evocation, requires a prepared mind or brain. In the spiritual context, that preparation comes through meditation and contemplation. When āgama is considered as transferring theories or concepts or ideas, we have the more usual meaning of teaching a concept after assuming that the student knows the concepts required to understand it.

Conclusion?

In both material and spiritual contexts, simple rote-memorisation isn't enough for "future-proofing" human beings. In a dynamic world filled with new ideas, cross-linkages across scientific and other fields of knowledge, and regeneration of traditional approaches to life, skills in validating one's own experiences and ideas and those of others are increasingly essential. Paradoxically, such skills come not from frenetic external activity, but an elegantly simple and relaxing journey inside oneself - leading one to concur with true sages that a natural human life can be both simple and stress-free, though not necessarily easy!

NOTES

[1] Sounds - language and play-acting, touch, taste, etc. as well. Babies are often stopped from experiencing things using all their senses. Unfortunately, this teaches behaviour at the expense of direct perception.

[2] One's reaction to hunger, for example, and eating only till one's body is naturally satiated, is trained artificially based on precepts like "finish your plate" [3] and mindless intake of over-processed food.

[3] This makes sense only if one is also allowed to take only as much as needed.

[4] Essentially, an experiment is a prediction of sensations, or percepts, based on concepts and their implications.

[5] A matter seen or inferred by an accomplished person (āpta) is taught in the form of words in order to transfer one's knowledge into another. The vṛtti from that word, with its matter and meaning as the object, is the listener's acquisition (āgama) - Vyāsa Bhāṣya for PYS I.7, translated by Swami Veda Bharati in his PYS w/ VB, vol.I, Samādhi Pāda, pg. 149