Ajna Chakra - The Upper Floors of the Mind

Moving into the 3^rd Eye, or Ajna Chakra, we leave a lot of what we discussed in the lower chakras behind.  In a way, we can look at working with the 6^th chakra as a separate task entirely, although it is deeply related to what has come before.  When we worked with any of the first five chakras, we were concerned primarily with personality and our individual psychology.  This is a process the tantric mystics called “tattva shuddhi” or the purification of the elements.  These are the elements of the personality, which we call (for convenience) earth, water, fire and air.  Space, the element of the 5^th Chakra, is that which contains the rest and represents an individuated or whole personality. 

For most of us, this is the goal: reconciliation with ourselves, healing, and even the development of a new point of view independent of the ego and yet individual.  Psychology, especially Depth Psychology, has this as its main concern, and it the Jungians who go the furthest with it, describing the strange and wonderful individuation process.  But for the Jungians, this is pretty much the end of it.  Most of the rest of psychology stops much lower down the chakra tree. 

The yogis and saints of all ages tell us about states and stages well beyond this, and that’s what we’re talking about when we get to the Ajna chakra.  These, described in books like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, are states that require incredible non-attachment and perfect concentration to master.  The sutras tell us that yoga is “the cessation of the fluctuating states of the mind” and that when we manage to stop the mind’s constant chatter “then the Self dwells in its own nature.”  Essentially, the Sutras make a claim that there is a Self beyond the mind, but which, when the mind is active, appears to be those very fluctuations.  We believe we are what we think, feel, or do, but according to the yogic classics, as well as most religions, we’re far more than that. 

In classical yogic metaphysics, there are two fundamental substances.  First there is Purusha, sometimes symbolized by Shiva, which is pure consciousness. Not thought, but the pure awareness which has no content, no aim, and no reflection.  According to the scriptures of yoga, this Self is eternal, independent of time (our time-sense being a product of mind), and forever unaffected by actions or karma.  This Self is utterly without content or mind, as I said, so it is also without personality, or even individuality.  Ultimately, this Self is considered non-different with any other Self.  My Purusha is not different from your Purusha, and in fact can be considered exactly the same thing.  Imagine, for instance, a paper globe with a candle inside.  If you prick holes in the paper, small beams of light will shine out in a different direction.  If you imagine that you in the small sense, your personality is one of those beams, we understand that Purusha is the candle flame, the source of the light for every beam of light, simultaneously.  As one of my earliest teachers once said, one candle flame loses nothing by lighting another.  You may have heard the very common platitude “we’re all already enlightened”.  What truth is in this phrase comes from the doctrine that indeed this Purusha is always free, and never in bondage, although it appears to be when it takes on the qualities of the mind.  It is the mind that is in bondage, or is liberated, never the Purusha. 

            The second substance is Prakriti, which is sometimes symbolized by Shakti, and it includes literally everything that is not Purusha.  The keyboard I’m typing on, the electricity in the computer, the light from your monitor, your eyes, face, brain, feelings, thoughts, memories, and mind.  It is, we might say, the world.  Purusha is consciousness, and Prakriti is what we are conscious of, and the means by which we know.  This Prakriti, while fundamentally one substance, which we call primordial Prakriti, is said to change and evolve into the varied forms that we see.  While there are 24 of these evolutes, I’m going to simplify the system for our purposes and talk about only a few.  We can begin with the five elements which make up the lower chakras – everything we’ve been working on up to this point.  You, the little self, are entirely made of Prakriti.

As we’ve moved up the spine, the elements have gotten subtler, especially when we got into the akasha or space of the 5^th Chakra.  In order to conceive of the space of the mind, or chidakasha, a level of non-attachment is necessary.  If we identify ourself with the ego, or with our desires, the non-ego and our aversions will seem to not be included in the space.  Only if we stop being so attached to the specifics of our personality can we begin to work with the psyche as a whole.  But the psyche is still individual, and in order to get at the 6^th chakra, the ‘third eye’, we must let even that go.

Last week when teaching about the Vishuddha chakra, I likened its inclusiveness to a phrase from the Chandogya Upanishad, but which has correlates in the West as well – satya brahmapuram, or the “true city of God.”  We imagine the psyche as a city, God’s city, not ‘ours’, and recognize that the city has good parts and bad, mansions and slums, and recognize that all of this is part of the city, even a necessary part.  In order to really look at the psyche like this, nonattachment is necessary.  Now, a mandala is the perfect illustration of this idea, and in fact mandalas are often intended to be read a sort of 2 dimensional city.  So imagine that you were looking down at a mandala, like a plan of your psyche.  If the psyche is the object, then what is the subject?  What sees?  Ultimately the Seer, but to the Seer no differences exist, no boundaries, no neighborhoods. No, the Seer sees through something else, a subtle, content-less part of the mind.

There is an ‘element’ of a sorts for the ajna chakra, and it is called ‘mahatattva’ or ‘mahat’ which means the ‘great element’.  It is a stand-in for the mind, and specifically one subsection of mind which we call the buddhi, (not to be confused with the Buddha) or ‘discriminative intelligence’.  Its job is to choose, to make differences between things.  We should try to understand this as the very root of the mind itself, its impersonal substructure common to all human beings. In yogic metaphysics, buddhi or mahat is the very first evolute of the primordial prakriti.  First there is just stuff, a sort of primordial soup.  Nothing is different.  Then a mind comes along and starts to find differences, like, this is ‘me’ and that is ‘not me’, and then ‘that not-me is a rock’ and ‘that not-me is a person’ and so on.  The first basic division is the me/not-me, which creates the illusion of an individual self.  I say illusion because this philosophy considers the self like a wave in the ocean – it’s there as long as the mahat is making it different, but soon enough the mahat desolves and now the wave is again non-different with the ocean.  It is this mahat or buddhi which can dispassionately observe the ‘city’ of the psyche.

The buddhi is considered extremely pure, and when we remember that the previous chakra, the 5^th, was called Vishuddha or “most pure”. This refers to the perfection of non-attachment that must happen in that chakra before we can really enter into the Ajna.  This goes back to what the sutras said about what yoga is really about – quieting the mind so that the Seer, or Purusha, can ‘dwell in its own nature’.  When we have all sorts of psychological twists and issues and complexes, the mind is tense and restless.  The buddhi, let alone the Purusha, is invisible.  It’s like trying to focus on hearing a pin-drop at the Superbowl – it isn’t going to happen.

The solution to this problem is to quiet the mind, to do yoga in its fullest sense.  The eight-limbs of yoga (ethical restraint, observances, postures, pranayama, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation, and Samadhi) are a direct method towards this goal of stopping the mind, which we call Samadhi.  But this is a gradual process, and as we progress in slowing the mind down (which happens for a long time before ‘cessation’ occurs), we can begin to focus not on the content of the thoughts, nor the affect, but on the sub-structure of thought itself.  We begin to see the buddhi at work, labeling, separating one thought from the next.  We notice that we can witness, judge, and even control our thoughts from some removed place prior to the day-to-day thoughts that make up the rest of the mind.  The buddhi is the part of the mind that has the most control over the rest, and can begin to do the work of cessation, preventing thoughts from arising so that the true self, the Purusha, becomes manifest. 

The Ajna stands in a special place in the chakra system.  The rising Kundalini, that earthy energy, is called Shakti in Tantra, literally the Goddess of Power, or Goddess of the World. She begins the process coiled at the base of the spine in the Root Chakra.  As we move up, it is really her (as our mind) which moves up the spine to higher levels of understanding. Shiva is pure consciousness, sitting remote and unmoving, as if in perfect meditation, unattached and uninvolved.  He is said to sit at the Ajna Chakra, and that chakra thus represents an exact counterpoint to the Root chakra and its Shakti snake coiled there.  Shakti rises because she desires Shiva, and when they meet in the Ajna chakra, Liberation is said to occur.  We must remember however what is Liberated: the mind.  We may say that Purusha comes through the Crown Chakra (although this is a bit literalistic and simple) to meet Shakti (and animating the mind) at the 3^rd Eye.  You may also be familiar with the idea that there are two nadis or subtle channels going along either side of the spine, and a third at the center.  These represent male and female, hot and cold, etc – the duality of nature.  Of course, it isn’t a duality of nature at all, it’s the mind which makes things seem dual; the buddhi separating and comparing always.  These two side nadis are said to stop just below the Ajna chakra, and this represents a cessation of the functioning of the buddhi, which is indeed the goal of yoga.

What happens then?  Imagine a wind rushing over a mountain lake, which makes the surface appear grey with white caps.  Imagine the same lake, with no wind, totally still.  Which reflects the viewer?  Clearly, the still lake will do a better job.  When the mind is still, we may say that it perfectly reflects the luminance of Purusha, of the Self.  It is no accident that the lunar crescent is often used to symbolize the Ajna chakra.  Its two petals represent that duality (also the two eyes) which is overcome by the chakra (and the third eye). It is said that the mystic who masters the Vishuddha chakra gains the ability to instantly understand scripture and to interpret it for others.  Mastery of the Ajna chakra is said to give the mystic the ability to create scripture. 

What must this be like?  Well, if we understand that time, space, and all of prakriti are detected (even created) by the mind, then such concepts will be meaningless when the mind is stopped.  No space means reality is the monad – truly one. This is symbolized by the bindu or monad point, which Hindus often wear as a saffron or sandal-paste dot on the ajna center. No time means that that one is eternal.  No content means we only end up trying to describe it after the fact.  We might say with the Vedantins ‘neti, neti’ no, its not that, not that, because if it’s that, it can’t be this.  The famous phrase sat, chit, ananda, or ‘being, consciousness, and bliss’ is used to describe the feeling that lingers when the mind starts back up again to perceive it, but can’t be said to be attributed to the purusha itself, which remains fundamentally mysterious.

If this sounds really heavy, well it is.  We’re talking about stuff that is well past what words can really get at anyway (being rather limited products of human minds).  For most of us, the practice will not be to try to perfectly stop the mind right now, but to slow it down as much as possible in meditation and try to see how it works, so that maybe down the line we can make a stab at stopping it. 

But as with the rest of the chakras, the Ajna is indeed working in us even if we haven’t fully evolved into it.  It comes across in intuition – a decision seemingly made before thought, an insight that comes from underneath the surface of the mind.  It also represents our ability to concentrate and to think with clarity. 

Overall, the Ajna is the contact point between our mind and our spirit, and represents a tremendous mystery that is still beyond the grasp (or even the vision) of science and everyday life.  It is the entry point for the gifts of the spirit, a place of openness which transcends all of the particulars of individual life.  At the level of the Ajna, “all is one” is not an equalizing platitude of the heart, but a physical, literal fact which can be experienced only by the exceptionally disciplined and self-controlled. It is where apparent difference is dissolved into perfect light. 

Religious Knowledge: Part III (The Revenge)

Continued from Part II...

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali lists three acceptable forms of knowledge: direct experience, logical inference (based on the experience), or testimony from a trusted source.  To me, this is a sound epistemology.  The order in which the three sources of knowledge are listed goes from the most reliable to the least.  We trust our own experiences first, then what we can deduce or induce from them, and lastly, the accounts of others.  In the last is traditionally included scriptural sources.  In most religions, this important order is turned on its head:  the most important knowledge is that which exists in the scriptures, then what is inferred from them, then individual experience.  Absurd!  But the Sutras are essentially a mystic text, full of methods to bring about religious experiences for one’s self.  Therefore experience is considered primary. 

            The above thoughts are leading me to conclude that we must take the heights of religious speculation, presented as infallible dogma which we call scripture, with a sizable chunk of salt.  I believe that scripture still has value,  but most of its value is in its description of religious or mystic experience itself.  The interpretations of these experiences must be carefully weighed, preferably in light of our own experience.  Nothing should be taken as canon, as absolute, or infallible.  We may also find value in scripture when it contains actual mystic techniques used to obtain religious experience.  Here tradition is useful, as it is more likely that a method be tried and true than the metaphysic based on it. Based on these ideas, we may refine our list of religion’s claims of knowledge to a much shorter list, and each item should be kept distinct:

1)      Descriptions of the experiences of the founder.

2)      His interpretations of his experience (which includes the cultural information which informs it).  This may include the actions of the founder, for instance, giving to the poor, as these are the result of conclusions reached by his own primary experience.  Ie. if one experiences God as love, and one then reasons that one should therefore love one’s neighbor, charity should be considered an interpretation, rather than a religious experience in its own right.

3)      Others’ interpretations of his experience. 

4)      Recorded methods of attaining direct experience.

If scripture or tradition does not contain the above, we must either discard it or generously consider it to be either a purely cultural artifact (like literature) or a philosophy as open to criticism as Descartes or Plato. 

            Perhaps someone out there is asking themselves “but what about faith?”  It would be a bit much to tackle this exhaustively here, but I think its important to address in connection to the above.  St. Paul famously defined faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1).   But this clearly won’t satisfy any but the most credulous mind.  I may hope for Santa Claus, but that hope cannot in any way be characterized by evidence of his existence.  Similarly, the faith of billions is not evidence.  The experience of billions would be, however, if it could be reliably replicated by others.  But we can also say we have faith in something known and real – we might have faith in ourselves.  This is confidence in the face of the unknown.  Walking into an unknown situation, faith in one’s self is helpful, especially when based on evidence.  Faith in this sense means “believing something likely, though it is presently unknown or uncertain, based on our prior experience.”  We might immediately notice the similarity of this idea of faith to our idea of an “educated guess”, or inductive reasoning, and ultimately we can’t do without it.  Faith in our methods is certainly crucial in investigating anything (faith in the scientific method is necessary to really pursue science), but I must reiterate that faith is not evidence.  Faith is a temporary measure that bridges the gap between the known and unknown, at least until the unknown becomes the known.  This only happens through experience, and therefore I must conclude that religious faith can never be a source of knowledge, and that religious experience is the only real form of religious knowledge.

            The next step, and I think it is an important one, is to separate the actual content of experience from the theologies that spring from them.  For instance, we can separate the idea of God from the experience of God.  Perhaps I have an experience of something which appears to me to be eternal, or to be full of being, knowledge and bliss.  When I come down from my altered state of consciousness, I then ask myself “what the hell was that?”  I might well suppose it to be God, especially if I’ve heard about the supposed characteristics of God from others.  If we belong to a particular religious tradition, it’s likely I would then relate my experience to scripture and tradition.  Such adherence to a tradition may well even color the experience itself, so that this experience (which we might tentatively call God) takes on certain characteristics during or after the fact, becoming Shiva, or Jesus, or God the Father.  The fact that few believers have experiences that contradict their own scriptures, but may contradict those of other faiths makes me suppose that the conclusions reached by others (inherited metaphysics) may limit, or even shape the experiences of those who hold their beliefs as dogma.  In order to get at the actual, objective thing that is experienced as ‘God’ or whatever you choose to call it, we have to first separate the experience itself from whatever is layered upon it, especially a restrictive pie-in-the-sky metaphysic.  In order to do this, we must cultivate a new methodology to generate religious experience that is not dependant on metaphysics. Such a methodology would have some rather serious implications.  For one, morality that is based upon scripture and induction, for instance the Christian notion that morality is based on divine commandment and law, would be rejected insomuch as it claims to be absolute.  This would not necessarily lessen the beneficial implications of such ideas as “thou shalt not kill”, but such ideas cannot necessarily rest on the idea of divinity.  Any such behavioral prescriptions would be suspect so far as they claim to be based on the idea of “what God wants.”  Unless, of course, you heard God command such yourself. 

            But that just raises more questions.  Even direct religious experience is full of traps and pitfalls.  The modern neo-pagans are a great example of people working in the mystic tradition to achieve knowledge of deity.  But they too quickly can make themselves silly, as when High Priest #1 has a vision of Apollo that tells him to build a replica of the oracle of Delphi in his basement and that he shall be placed in charge of the millions who are about to return to the ancient religion of Greece.  It gets worse when High Priest #2 has his own vision of Apollo that tells him that High Priest #1 is a fraud and that he should build his own oracle in the shed behind his mom’s house.  Assuming that both individuals are truthful in their claims, the content of their religious knowledge differs.  What is a High Priest to do? 

            Reconstructist Pagans (probably the more intellectual of the bunch), who are trying to literally reconstruct the extinct religion of their choice or ancestry, have come up with an interesting solution to this problem.  They regard “the lore” as paramount, including primary sources from the period in question (for instance, Hesiod, Homer, Plutarch, etc, among the Greek reconstructionists), and treat matters of personal revelation as ‘Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis,’ usually shortened to ‘UPG.’  This is treated as suspect, until it is ‘verified’ by others, or it becomes too emotionally convincing to stay objective about.   Of course, this treatment creates the same problems as religious metaphysics of the mainstream religions – personal experience is subordinated to some kind of scriptural canon.  This problem is often exacerbated in reconstructionism in that the religion in question went extinct at some point, and often much of the textural context has been lost to history.  In a group like the Norse Reconstructionists, there is a terrible lack of primary sources, and what remains to work with often enough comes down through descriptions of the pagans by Christian monks, who were clearly not impartial.  The tradition, wary of ‘UPG’, and having little to base their reconstruction on, may well feel rather incomplete (as is anything in the process of being reconstructed.)  This is not to say the endeavor is not worthwhile, but its difficulties must be addressed honestly.

            The real question, and one I don’t have anything resembling an adequate answer to, is how can we judge primary religious knowledge ('UPG')?  By what standards can we critique such experiences?  My intuition tells me that Carl Jung may have been one of the few who tackled this area, but that’s a whole different can of worms. 

            Clearly this is a bigger job than any one blogger can take on.  If you’ve actually read this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts! 

Abhiniveśāḥ - A New Years Post

 "The truth of the matter is just this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; or does any one else who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom.  For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied." - Plato, Symposium.

            I've been debating what to write this week. I'd intended to continue to talk about Stoicism and Yoga, but another topic has been on my mind, a topic appropriate to New Years, and something I've been teaching on constantly for about a week.  A dream last night answered the dilemma quite clearly.  It was one of those nights where you know you've been dreaming all night, but can only remember about 30 seconds of actual content.  In my dream I was in the ancient world, probably Rome, and I was on my death-bed.  Whatever ailed me first took my sight, and in the dream my eyes were so weak that I wasn't able to read on my own (although, being a dream, I could see the room clearly).  Then my wife came into the scene.  She knelt by my bed and asked if there was anything I needed, anything to ease the pain.  I asked her to bring me Plato's Phaedo, the famous dialogue dealing with the death of Socrates, and read it to me. She brought the scroll and began to read, and that's all I remember.  The whole scene reminds me of a book I read this summer that depicted the death of that great Stoic and enemy of Caesar, Marcus Cato.  Before his suicide (at least in the fictionalized account I read), he sought solace in the Phaedo, finding comfort in its logical "proofs" of the immortality of the soul, and Socrates' own equanimity and grace in the face of his own death.  The death of Socrates, as depicted in the Phaedo, has been held up as the perfect example of a a philosopher facing death without fear.  Therefore, I thought I’d take a break from the Stoics and write a bit about abhiniveśāḥ. 

            As you might recall from last week’s post, abhiniveśāḥ, translated as “clinging to bodily life” or “fear of death,” is the fifth of the obstacles to Liberation given in the Yoga Sutras.  These obstacles (or kleśas) are listed in a particular order: avidyā (ignorance), asmitā (egoism), rāga (attachment, or desire), dveṣa (aversion), and abhiniveśāḥ.  Ignorance is said to be the ground upon which the others rest, the idea being that the other obstacles vanish when true knowledge (of the eternal Self, or Seer) is achieved through the various yogic practices.  In fact, we can look at these five obstacles as a sequence taking us deeper into bondage:  due to ignorance of the nature of the self, ie. confusing the nature of the Seer (eternal consciousness) with the Seen (matter, mind, etc), we identify with something that is sort of a hybrid; the mind-body complex, animated by the soul.  This is the second obstacle, egoism.  The Yoga Sutras define egoism as considering “the nature of the seer and the nature of the instrumental power of seeing to be the same thing.” (II.6) This is much like the brain thinking it’s the eyeball, or you thinking that you’re your web browser.  Egoism then, is unlimited and unbound consciousness misidentifying itself with a limited (in space, time, etc) body-mind.  I’m reminded as I write this of a line from one of the initiation rituals of the Golden Dawn, a Victorian Rosecrucian order, in which the initiator explains to the candidate that “The Three Fold Cord bound about your waist was an image of the three-fold bondage of Mortality, which amongst the Initiated is called earthly or material inclination, that has bound into a narrow place the once far-wandering Soul.”  Clearly the symbolism and metaphysics are different, but the idea is similar – we are bound into a single individual instance by identification with a mortal body.

            Attachment and Aversion are really just a deepening and reinforcing of this tendency.  We enjoy something through the instrument, and we begin to actually identify with the experience.  Similarly, we identify ourselves by our rejection of other ideas.  This comes across in speech in numerous ways:  “Are you a Republican or Democrat (based on whether you like or dislike their platforms)?”  “Are you a white chocolate person or a dark chocolate person?” “Are you a Mac or a PC?”  I always think of High School when considering this point, a time period that was about “finding ourselves” which really means defining ourselves by our likes and dislikes.  We still do this, but when we were kids we did so unabashed.  I, for instance, was labeled a “metal-head” due to the fact that I enjoyed that type of music and played guitar.  People who enjoyed sports were labeled “jocks,” those who enjoyed school were called “nerds,” and so on.  As the internet flattens interpersonal communication, we see this becoming more evident.  Just log onto Facebook and see how people’s  profiles are set up to define you by when you click the “like” button. 

            All of this is like the ego principal coming into contact with the world of the senses, creating a sort of friction and tension.  Whenever we are confronted with new ideas, we tend to feel naturally a bit uncomfortable, because we don’t yet know how we feel about them.  There’s a sense of uncertainty that most find unpleasant, because it challenges our preconceptions.  The habit of continually relating everything to the self (which we might call egoism) means that new information must be assimilated as quickly as possible – we must discover whether or not we “like” or “dislike” this new thing in order to feel comfortable again.  We arrange our world around ourselves in this way, everything settling into a tidy arrangement of a world view. Having defined ourselves by our likes and dislikes, egoism is expanded outside the mind-body to include our favorite football team, our political party, and our musical tastes. 

            Where it goes from here seems natural.  When we have a pleasant experience, we want to have it again and again.  Similarly, when we manage to avoid something we are averse to, we want to keep on avoiding it.  This is the principal of continuance which we all fall victim to.  The Sutras themselves admit that abhiniveśāḥ, fear of death, afflicts even the wise.  How do we make the leap to fear of death?  Well, the main reason we want to keep living is to continue to enjoy what we enjoy and to avoid what we loathe.  We’re largely afraid of losing what we have (family, friends, pleasure, etc), and we’re afraid of pain in the act of dying, or that once dead we might have to endure something we dislike (like divine retribution).  Hence we see so many conceptions of the afterlife which appear calculated to comfort these fears.  A common conception of the Christian afterlife says that in heaven we’ll meet up with all those we were separated from, and we’ll be with them forever, and that everyone there is eternally happy.  We’re similarly assured that there’s no pain to be found, etc. 

            What does all of this have to do with New Years?  As I’ve shown, the order in which the obstacles are listed can be taken to be a progression into bondage, each obstacle being a reinforcement of the one previous.  It is assumed that your typical person, at the beginning of the yogic path, will be afflicted by each of these obstacles.  If we consider kleśas in the exact opposite order, we see the order in which the obstacles must be attacked.  How do we tangle egoism or ultimate ignorance when we are completely bound up with our attachments, aversions and the desire for their continuation?  Therefore, if we are to make progress in the yogic path (and I’d argue, any spiritual or philosophic life), we must first address abhiniveśāḥ, which I will venture to broaden the definition of as “fear of change.” 

            To me, abhiniveśāḥ boils down to the desire to preserve the status quo due to fear of change.  In the Bhagavad Gita, the 16^th chapter sets divides the qualities of a divinely natured person (read: virtuous) and a demonically natured person (read: animal-natured).  Krishna, beginning with the divine qualities, lists those which we might expect (charity, self-control, compassion, etc), but he gives the most prominent place to something surprising.  Abhyam, fearlessness, is the first word of the chapter (a prominent place).  My interpretation of this is that all fear is essentially related to change, ie. is abhiniveśāḥ. Therefore, before we can bring out the rest of the divine qualities, we must be willing to change.  Without this willingness, and the courage to follow through, growth, as well as Liberation, is impossible.  So the first obstacle we face in our desire for peace is our own resistance to change from the state we’ve become accustomed to. Similarly, the first quality we must try to cultivate is fearlessness in the face of change.

            I mentioned in an earlier post that I knew nothing about Plato and the other classical Western Philosophers, and that I never read any of them, other than in excerpts.  After that post, I started to correct this, reading several of Plato’s dialogues and most of the first volume of Copleston’s epic A History of Philosophy.  If I can keep my enthusiasm going, I’d like to continue my survey of Philosophy into the modern day.  However, in doing so I’m directly confronted with the problems I’ve described above.  As I read ideas of numerous different people which are often in conflict, I naturally relate them to myself and my own established “identity,” that composite of my attachments and aversions.  Am I a Platonist, a Neoplatonist, or a Kantian?  Who do I agree with, and what parts do I disagree with?  Furthermore, some of the philosophers pose some challenging theories that I can’t help but agree with but also conflict with the world view I’ve built around myself.  This creates a little mental tension which can only be resolved by absorbing the new material into the whole of my identity. Clearly, this also explains the timing of my dream last night (in yoga, sight is connected with the 3rd Chakra, the ego, and the sense of identity and self.)  Similarly, studying Sanskrit has been an incredibly bruising experience on my ego.  Considering myself as decently intelligent, I find myself at the level of a child regarding Sanskrit, but not even as well off as a child, as a child doesn’t have to worry about fighting old habits, or unlearning old preconceptions.  Learning, we can see, is not always pleasant, but I think we can argue that it is usually a good thing regardless.  Still, its not hard to see why so many people prefer to remain complacent in their lives and accept the status quo rather than the uncertainty that accompanies change.  Certainly it is easier and more pleasant.  I myself have often been tempted to stop studying because it would be easier to just live with convention, happy with the little I know, content in self-congratulatory ignorance.  The quote at the beginning of this post sums this tendency up nicely.

            So many people choose the easy road of complacency (consciously or not), trying to find stasis in life by building a nest around themselves of material goods and pleasant notions, and trying to make it permanent.  But the truth is in opposition.  Everything in life changes, and fighting change brings us nothing but misery.  Sooner or later, someone is going come along and knock over your neat little applecart. 

            The doctrines of the Stoics, of the Yogis, and of the Buddhists are largely trying to answer the question “how can avoid the suffering brought on by the inevitability of loss and pain?”  The answer given by all three is Non-attachment.  This is the practice (and it takes lots of practice) of not trying to hold on to the objects of life, even the body itself.  This is not to say not to enjoy life, or the things in it, but to recognize that whatever you have, you will have to give back.  The first step in this practice must be to recognize the inevitability of change, and to stop trying to make the world into something its not: static.  We must further recognize this habit in the way we consider ourselves, that we believe we are a certain way.  We say “I’m not that kind of guy,” or “I’m just an angry person,” or “I’m a soft-hearted person,” as if these are the only possibilities available, that we, like our likes and dislikes, are an “either/or”.  We’re not.  Identity, personality, and even most traits are fluid (all traits are actually fluid, because they all come to an end).  Think back to who you thought you were and what you valued (and what you were averse to) when you were 10, 16, 20, 30, 40 years old, and it becomes obvious that you’re not the same person in the conventional understanding of the term.  The first step seems to me to be to loosen our own conception of ourselves, essentially “undoing” the personality to discover its actual nature as impermanent (and I’d argue, largely arbitrary).  The yogic method here shares a singular commonality with the Hermetic doctrine of the Path of Return – of the upraising of the mind from the complex to the simple, the particular to the universal.  Both represent an undoing of the path of “creation” of the particular person into its component parts.  While this may sound like metaphysical suicide at first glance, we must remember that in both systems, there is a single permanent aspect to each of us, the immortal soul, and it is this which remains when its coverings are removed.  But this is starting to take me away from my point...

            With the arrival of New Years, its natural to take account of our lives, and to aspire and hope to better ourselves in the year to come.  The main obstacle to this is our innate fear of change, to a clinging of an apparently fixed identity that is the outgrowth of the conjunction of the Seer and the Seen, of the soul with the body-mind and through it the world.  Therefore, whatever you may wish to become in 2011, resolve to be first fearless of change, and even of death.  After all, after whatever pain involved in actually dying passes, there remains only two possibilities:  there is some sort of afterlife, in which existence continues, or there is not, in which case you won’t care or even notice.  Either way, what is there to fear? 

Happy New Year everybody!

"You're not your fucking khakis." - Tyler Durden

Freedom (from Attachment and Aversion)

            I have an article on New Years Resolutions in the Mahopac News today, however it doesn't appear to be on their website as of yet.  If it ever is, I'll try to link to it.  In the meantime...

            Everyone desires freedom.  We yearn for it, even if we can’t perfectly describe it in words.  Even if we manage to develop an idea of what it is (or isn't), we still might not have the first clue as how to achieve such a state. For milennia, the idea of freedom or liberation has been at the center of the dominant philosophies and religions of the East, but it has also inspired Western thinkers, ancient and modern.  So what is this thing we call freedom?

            Lets check the dictionary first.  Merriam-Webster says: a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care).  Our understanding of the word then would indicate either a lack of outside obstruction upon our action, a state of independence from the same, or a state of release from the same.  So really, freedom can only be understood in comparison to its opposite – obstruction. 

            From this we draw our conventional idea of freedom.  We think of political freedom as an absence of government interference and equate this with certain rights.  Further, we often equate financial independence with real independence, as we are less moved by financial necessity if we’re rich.  Money helps us with freedom of movement, buys better justice, shortens waits, and brings desires to sometimes instant satisfaction.  Sure, things might go more smoothly with money greasing the wheels, but are rich people significantly happier than poor folks?  Science consistently says no (I should qualify this by saying that this only true over a certain basic level of financial security).  Philosophy usually agrees.  Yoga and the Stoics especially say that this financial freedom is not real freedom, but an illusory independence.  Money can vanish, be stolen, be confiscated, and otherwise be lost.  In fact, when we equate freedom with money, we become dependent upon it, not much better than a slave.  We end up serving it, fearing its loss, working to preserve what we have against the inevitability of its departure.  We must spend time managing our wealth, protecting it like a child, and like any parent, we must often sacrifice for its welfare.  While those in the highest stratosphere of the upper tax brackets may seem immune to this, we must consider what these rare few had to do to achieve their exalted position.  Many had to lie, steal and exploit their way to the top, and these habits of a lifetime are not easily shed once financial success is reached.  Why?  Because the only way to become that rich is greed, and greed is never satiated.  Further, although certain day-to-day frustrations might flee from the super-wealthy, they are necessarily surrounded with sycophantic hanger-ons, all after a piece of the pie.  They become an institution rather than a person, unable to really judge the motives of another except through the lens of monetary protectionism.  Such a person has about as much a chance of finding real peace as a camel has to pass through the eye of a needle. 

            What then is real independence, real freedom?  Well, based on our definition, freedom is not a positive thing that can be possessed or grasped.  Freedom is an absence of obstruction.  Based on this idea, freedom is actually our natural state, if we could imagine ourselves entirely independent of all obstruction.  Lets begin with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, as they are explicit in terms of what the obstructions to this state are.  These are the five Kleshas, or sources of misery, often translated as “obstructions” or “obstacles.”  The Kleshas include avidya, ignorance; asmitā, egoism; rāga, desire (attachment); dveṣa, aversion; abhiniveśaḥ, clinging to bodily life (fear of death).

            As with most lists that appear in such works, the order in which they appear is significant.  Ignorance is considered the cause, and even the ground upon which the others rest.  In this context, ignorance is the “beginningless” misapprehension of our true nature.  According to the yoga philosophy as presented by Patanjali, our essential being is called Purusha, or the Seer within.  We may see this as analogous with the idea of the immortal soul which is separable from the body.  This has come to be understood (through the medium of Advaita Vedanta) as Consciousness itself.  Patanjali presents this Purusha as a duality in opposition to Prakriti, or matter, which constitutes absolutely everything that is not Prakriti: your computer, the air you breathe, the lungs you breathe with, the brain that regulates breathing, and even the entirety of the mind.  Only consciousness, changeless and eternal, is considered separate.  The entire study of yoga, according to the Yoga Sutras, is concerned with overcoming our in-born ignorance and attaining the realization of our identity as Purusha.  This is different than “thinking” that you’re the Purusha, as in order for the state to mean anything it must be experienced as the true reality.  The meditative and mystic elements of yoga provide this, but for now lets concern ourselves only with the philosophy.

            From this inborn ignorance of our nature, we come to egoism, which is the identification of Consciousness with the mind-body complex.  We begin to believe that we think therefore we are instead of realizing that we are therefore we think.  The body experiences pain and we think it is the self that feels it.  We identify with our gender, our individual form, our birth (nationality, religion, parents), and all of this comes together to form our point of view.  I might say “I’m a male, liberal, half-hispanic yoga teacher from New York, who likes rock & roll.” But this is not really correct, according to the yoga philosophy.  The correct way of putting it would be “I think I’m a male , liberal, half-hispanic yoga teacher from New York, who likes rock & roll due to ignorance of my essential nature.  In reality I’m pure being, consciousness and bliss, eternal and beginningless, and not distinct from any other consciousness anywhere in the universe.”  Clearly this is a radical view.

            From egoism, this identification with what we might call the “small self,” comes rāga and dveṣa, attachment (desire) and aversion, which are really just two sides of the same coin.  Through egoism, we identify with pleasure and pain, and thus relate everything in the world back to ourselves.  We appear to experience pleasure, and we wish to repeat the experience, becoming attached to it, and through it, the various and innumerable sources of pleasure.  Similarly, we become averse to those things which are uncomfortable, challenging, and painful.  The last Klesha, abhiniveśaḥ, “clinging to bodily life” or fear of death, is really about the desire for the continuation of the experiences of attachment and aversion.  We fear death because it represents an uncertain change in circumstance, in which we fear we may not continue to enjoy those things we’re attached to or avoid those things we are averse to.

            According to this philosophy, all of the Kleshas are obstacles to be eliminated, starting with this fear of change, and including the rest.  The method is primarily non-attachment (although this is elaborated a great deal into various parts and methods).  The theory is, by the removal of these obstacles, we become independent and free.  “…the Seer dwells in its own nature,” independent of association with Prakriti (all objects of consciousness – the Seer).  A common metaphor is that when the sluice gate is lifted, water naturally flows into the cultivated fields.

            This is a demanding philosophy.  In its final analysis it requires us to let go of not only our attachments and aversions, but even our very identification with our personality, etc.  Clearly many people will balk at this idea, and I think that’s completely understandable.  But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that this approach is philosophically sound.  Whether it is practical for most is another matter entirely. 

            It is the difficulty of method that has led me to consider whether the ideas of the Stoics could be a supplement to, or perhaps a stepping stone to the achievement of the philosophy of yoga.  Stoicism drew a lot of inspiration from the Cynics, a school of extreme asceticism much like yoga, at least superficially.  The exemplar of Cynicism was Diogenes, famous for having no possessions, and living in a tub in the marketplace.  Stoics tended not to go so far, and practiced a more moderate asceticism.  For the Stoics, freedom was also a lack of constraint, an independence of being, which involved deep consideration of the natural human faculties of desire and aversion.

            To the Stoic, freedom meant essentially only having only experiences that you desire, and not experiencing anything you are averse to.  Sounds wonderful, but there’s a big catch.  The reason why we’re not already at peace is that our attachments and aversions are out of whack.  We desire those things we should avoid (because now or later they will make us miserable), and we avoid those things we should desire (those which will make us happy).  Desire/Aversion is ultimately a matter of judgment, and if our judgment is faulty, we tend to become frustrated, and frustration is the feeling most associated with obstruction.  To re-quote from last week’s post, “It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them... So when we are frustrated, angry or unhappy, never hold anyone except ourselves – that is, our judgments – accountable.  An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his misfortune.  To blame oneself is proof of progress.  But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion.)  The idea here is that a wise man, whose judgment is sound, never experiences anything he is averse to and always experiences what he desires.  He has purified and refined his faculties of attachment and aversion, rather than doing away with them entirely as yoga would have us do. 

            “The faculty of desire purports to aim at securing what you want, while aversion purports to shield you from what you don’t.  If you fail in your desire, you are unfortunate, if you experience what you would rather avoid you are unhappy.  So direct aversion only towards things that are under your control and alien to your nature, and you will not fall victim to any of the things that you dislike.  But if your resentment is directed at illness, death or poverty, you are headed for disappointment.

            Remove it from anything not in our power to control and direct it instead towards things contrary to our nature that we do control.  As for desire, suspend it completely for now.  Because if you desire something outside your control you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which are under other circumstances would be deserving of our desire, are not yet within our power to attain.  Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, with discipline and detachment.”

                                                                        - Epictetus, Enchiridon, Chapter 2.

            The idea here is that we should desire only those things which are under our control, and be averse to the same.  We should desire that which is “good,” ie, that which upraises us – virtue;  and we should be averse to the “evil,” ie, that which degrades us towards the animal state.  Epictetus here clearly recognizes the difficulty in doing this.  We all start the process full of attachments to outside things, and this is where our misery lies.  So he tells us, try to get rid of desire completely, because chances are our judgment is not so wise or strong as of yet to resist the pull of some desires and not others.  It is my opinion that this is the same reason that Patanjali is so adamant against desire, not even suggesting that we cultivate a desire for God, such as other yogic books like the Bhagavad Gita might say. 

            According to Epictetus, we should practice non-attachment, and start by purifying our aversions.  This is the same order implicitly suggested in the sutras (eliminating the Kleshas in the backwards order):  first we eliminate resistance to change (we can’t do anything until we decide to change ourselves), then comes aversion, then attachment, egoism, and lastly (at the very end), the basic underlying ignorance of the Self.  In Stoicism, the attention is mainly on attachment and aversion only. 

            Stoicism very explicitly teaches what should fall under the auspices of our aversions and desire – only those things we are able to control, which really isn’t very much.  We can’t control our family, friends, finances, or even our body, which will age and die despite our willing it otherwise.  Further, the body can be imprisoned, injured or killed by those who are physically stronger, regardless of our desire or aversion.  All of these things are lumped under the idea of “externals.”  The attitude cultivated towards them should be neither attachment or aversion, but complete indifference. 

            What Stoicism calls “internal” essentially means the mind and soul, which since Plato have been consistently linked, and seem to be to be considered roughly interchangeable.  Therefore, what we should desire are mental states independent of external stimuli, and what we should be averse to are different mental states.  We should desire virtue, wisdom, discernment, and character; we should be averse to those degrading mental habits that take us away from these.  This ultimately leads to peace and serenity, at least in theory.  This is the idea of independence:  you can be forced into a jail cell, have your possessions (including the body) taken from you, but no one can change your character or your mind unless you assent.  If you're indifferent towards the things that can be taken, then the peace you’ve achieved is theoretically untouchable by the outside world.

            The main difference between Stoicism and Yoga regarding all this seems to me not a matter of a different understanding of whether or not aversion and attachment are entirely bad, or have beneficial uses, but in the difference in understanding the mind.  Stoicism, unlike Platonism which holds that mind and ideas are immaterial, postulates a material of mind (and, I should note, a material God).  Despite this important distinction, the Stoics nonetheless treated the mind as immaterial in that they seemed to link it with the soul (which they also called material, but seemed to treat as immaterial), and thought that the mind could be independent of the world around it.  Like Plato, the Stoics held the soul to be immortal, but it seems to me that when we connect the idea of an immortal soul to a finite mind, we confuse the issue a great deal.  Mind is clearly related to the body (injure the brain, injure the mind), and therefore should really be classed, by Stoic logic as an external, not an internal.  Just as the body can die, the mind of the most brilliant philosopher can suffer dementia.  By this logic, only the soul is truly internal, and this is the basic yogic distinction between Purusha (the Seer) and Prakriti (the Seen.)  In yoga, the mind is considered material, although far more subtle in constitution than gross matter as we know it through the outer senses.  It is considered external, and separable from the Self, or soul.  In fact, it is this basic separability that is the metaphysical basis of the deepest goals of yogic practice.

            Liberation, as it is understood in yogic philosophy, is about achieving a deep and abiding recognition of the identity with the immortal Soul, independent of the accidents of (or karma-caused) birth.  If the soul is immortal, and perhaps transmigrates (as the yogis and Plato believed), then if we identify not just with this mind/body, but with the common nature of all of our soul’s incarnations, desire and aversion particular to an individual life in this world no longer have the potential for obstructing the freedom of the soul.

            I should point out an important point before ending this already too lengthy post.  In the yogic conception, the soul was never really bound, but it only appeared so to the mind.  When we transcend the mind and identify with the soul, “we” are free, but who is the “we,” if not the soul?  It is the mind which is bound, and it is the mind that is Liberated, and nothing else.  The soul, immortal and unchanging, can only be the impassive witness to the vicissitudes of life, and as it neither desires nor is averse, it is never frustrated, but is always partaking in its essential nature: being, consciousness, and bliss.

            While I think this concept is philosophically sounder than the Stoic conception, in practice it is probably more difficult, at least to one who is determined to live in the world.  I think that Stoicism could be a useful philosophy to consider for a yogi whose interest is perhaps not all-abiding, or someone with children or other responsibilities.  If we practice non-attachment, and can make ourselves desirous only of virtue, and averse only to vice, at the very least we are on the road to greater happiness, contentment and serenity than otherwise.  I seems certain that if someone who was successful in this found that it was imperfect (as it seems to me it would be), then the virtue thereby gained would be more than enough to take the far greater leap to the loft goal of the yoga philosophy of Patanjali.  In my next post, I hope to conclude my discussion of Stoicism in relation to yoga with some practical suggestions from the ancients towards the practice of non-attachment and the achievement of true independence.