Mystical Physicists

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Rick

 

In the mystical consciousness, Reality is apprehended directly and immediately, meaning without any mediation, any symbolic elaboration, any conceptualization, or any abstractions; subject and object become one in a timeless and spaceless act that is beyond any and all forms of mediation. Mystics universally speak of contacting reality in its “suchness,” its “isness,” its “thatness,” without any intermediaries; beyond words, symbols, names, thoughts, images.         —Ken Wilber

 

This quote is from Wilber’s Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Greatest Physicists. It is a collection of essays from the likes of Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Einstein, Planck, Pauli, and others, with an introduction from Wilber. I returned to it recently for inspiration and clarity in writing my new book. The one thing that each of these brilliant minds share is a certainty that the absolute best that science can aspire to is a mathematical description of the shadows we can see, NOT an encapsulation of what is really happening. Eddington wrote, “The frank realization that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.”

In recent posts I have been emphasizing the importance of noticing when we are in ‘experience’ mode. It is the shadowy world they talk about. Paradoxically for most of us, this world of shadows is much more substantial than the “suchness” it reflects. Each of these geniuses of quantum science knew the insubstantial (xu) must interact with the substantial (shi). And that’s the foundation of good gongfu. Eventually, what we consider substantial and insubstantial does a flip, and the previously concrete world of experience is seen for what it is: “the story I tell myself.” And the ‘mystical consciousness’ described above becomes the bedrock of our practice.

Wolfgang Pauli, thought by his peers to have a genius equal or greater than Einsein, wrote:

There will always be two attitudes dwelling in the soul of man [scientific and mystical], and the one will always carry the other already within it, as the seed of its opposite. Hence arises a sort of dialectical process, of which we know not wither it leads us. I believe that as Westerners we must entrust ourselves to this process, and acknowledge the two opposites to be complementary.

 

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Are You Experienced?

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Rick

 

… mind is always now. There is really no before and after for mind. There is only a now that includes memories and expectations. But I grant that our language is not adequate to express this…
Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Prize physicist (yea, the cat guy)

In Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate, I discuss the importance of discerning insubstantial (xu) from substantial (shi). That is, stuff from non-stuff. I won’t recapitulate that here, but it is important to remember that both are present in every thing. Mutually arising. And we see the aspect we focus on. It is analogous to the quantum paradox Schrödinger illustrates in his cat analogy (The cat in the box is both alive and dead.)

Experience is a useful term when focusing on substance. It includes the “memories and expectations” in the quote above. How and when we use the term experience gets a little fuzzy when the discussion turns to the insubstantial. The “NOW” part. It works just fine in the substantial world of object-based awareness, but can be misleading when we get to the woo-woo part of the program.

I have written recently about how transrational consciousness is essential to the internal martial arts. It’s actually much bigger than that. We can’t function from a state of wholeness without it. In anything. That means we’re fragmented most of the time. Fortunately, we slip in and out of wholeness in the course of a normal day, though largely unnoticed. That is what is meant by “buddha nature.” We all have ‘it’ (even though ‘it’ is not really an it.) We’re just easily distracted by bright lights and shiny objects and overlook those moments when nothing is going on. We get a taste of transcendence each time we access a heightened state of energetic coherence. The distractions are experience.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of experience. Even if I could bliss out all the time I wouldn’t want to. ‘Detachment’ is meaningless unless you can ‘attach’ also. But for most of us, it is really important to know when we are experiencing, and just how limited that mode of being is.

Martin Buber pointed out that ALL experience happens in the past. This is an important distinction when discussing spiritual development of any kind. The moment we recognize something as an object to be named, thought about, remembered, imagined, discussed, interacted with, avoided, or ignored that ‘thing’ is part of our experience. And that means it has been processed by our nervous system. And that takes time. The duration is often so short that we don’t notice it. A tenth to half a second. And when we ‘think about’ what just happened (make inferences), it’s longer. Ken Wilber says, “If it has a beginning, it’s experience.”

In a transrational state we move closer to NOW and farther from experience. In an absolute sense, ALL experience is ‘not real.’ The best we can do is know a little about stuff, compare it to our thoughts about other stuff, and come up with some really cool ideas about the way things work so we can enjoy life and love and explore the endless possibilities of a Mystery we are incapable of ever grasping.

In martial arts, and in life, if we can learn to function more of the time in NOW we start to get an idea of what is meant by “one with the Dao.”

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