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Wednesday 9 April 2014

Jim Morrison, David Bohm, A Psychedelic Explosion And A Quantum Exposition- From Buddha's Neti Neti To The Quantum Theory

"Whenever we deny something unreal, it is in reference to something real."
                           - Brahma Sutra

An excerpt from Light My Fire an Autobiography and Biography by Ray Manzarek on Jim....


"....And he shifted shapes in the sand once again. But this time he was looking for himself. No more playacting. No more character adapting. And straight as an arrow, this was going to have to be the real Jim Morrison. And, Lord, he was shy.
I continued encouraging him, "Its just you and me here and im not gonna judge your singing voice, i just wanna hear your words, and you know, what you've in your head." And then softly, "Go ahead Jim."
That seemed to work. Emboldened he got up on his knees, faced me and dug his hands in the sand. He came up with two handfuls and began to squeeze real tight and the sand started streaming out between his fingers i saw these rivulets of sand this waterfall of sand coming out of his hand like the Yogic Master Sai Baba and he said, "Okay Here is the one i have . Its called Moonlight Drive." And he closed his eyes and began singing sand still streaming, and i heard those words for the first time......"


BUDDHA'S NETI - NETI (TRANSCENDENTAL APHOPHATICISM)

 

Coming from the word Buddh meaning ' to awake' Buddha or the Awakened One (Tathagata) transcends the equivocation and conceals of Maya (illusion) operating through the play of Samsara (the world game) leads to the eternal state of  Mahaparinirvana. This attainment of Nirvana is possible by adopting Neti Neti way (the path of negation) and transcendental aphophaticism - transcendence through negation.

In the fourteen unanswerable questions based on atta or the self/soul, Brahma the existence or non existence of God, the origin of the universe and life beyond death. Buddha expresses that an answer or a position (Vaccha) is something disposed by a Tathagata or a Buddha as it bears no relevance in the pursuit of nirvana. Hence Buddha remains silent unanswering the questions

SHANKARACHARYA'S ADVAITA VEDANTA

Advaita Vedanta or Jyana Yoga (the way of knowledge) seeks to attain Divinity or wisdom (Prajna) through the path of Negation, as one can know God by knowing what is not God. The Brahman is acquired by understanding the non Brahman through the de-arrangement of senses and shutting one's rationalizing reason and turning inwards to the Self.

The Brahman is Nirguna non descriptive beyond what the mind can think . The Taittiriya hymn of the Krishna Yajurveda also mentioned in the Vishnu Purana states Brahman as a plane "where the mind does not reach."

As the verse III of the Brahma Sutra states

"Whenever we deny something unreal, it is in reference to something real."

The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad mentions the concept of Neti Neti search as an important tool for self realisation and knowledge of the Self as the real Brahman integrated to the macrocosmic universe and the microcosmic senses for its own self conscious-bliss (Ananda) explaining the non dual unified nature of the Brahman the Absolute Whole or the Universal One.


AVADHUTA GITA

Tattvamasyadivakyena svatma hi pradipadita
Neti neti srutirbruyadan ta pancabhauticam

Translation of the above sloka : By the words "Thou Art That" one's own self is realised whereas for all else composed of elementary matter the sruti disposes as Neti Neti (Not This Not This).


Sung by Lord Dattatreya the trinity incarnate avadhuta himself - a mystic beyond egoistic thoughts self emmersed in the esctasy of Pure Consciousness reveals the immense and ultimate nature of the Brahman through this excerpt written by his two disciples Swami and Kartika. Comprising eight chapters it breathes onto the Lifebreath (Prana Vayu) of the Mahabhuta the four great elements forming matter. Based on the Non dualism of Advaita Vedanta it bringsforth from tantra to Ishvara from Svabhabha the attainment of Brahman or flowering of the Buddha Nature in Dzogchen as Gotra to Sahaja (simplicity) and Amrita (Ambroisia) culminating as The Nectar of Naturalness Sahaja Am Itam.


VIA NEGATIVA THE APOPHATIC THEOLOGY

Coming from the Greek word Apophemi meaning denial or negation and Via Negativa in Latin stands for the Western Negative Theology Or the Negative Way where one seeks God through the path of denial. Contrary to Cataphasis, it aims at understanding the transcendental and all pervading nature of the Creator (God) deeming it beyond human understanding and rationalizing, as human thought processes are too meager and underdeveloped to comphrehend the lofty yet simple nature of the Lord beyond His creation. The Cataphatic theology rather descriptive in nature hails the Divine qualities and attributes associated with Divinity failing to describe the Divine directly which can be achieved only through aphophasis and self introspection.

As according to John Scotus Erigena, a 9th century Western Theologian-

"We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being."

IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The Aphophatic theology can be traced by to Hesiod's Theogony where Chaos is centered as the birthplace of the primordial deities Eros, Gaia (Earth) and who later gave birth to Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (Night).

During Neoplatonism Plotinus heralded aphophasis as the medium of knowing the Unknown. As in Enneads, Plotinus writes  "Our thoughts cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remain active in the soul... To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of  ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and even forget yourself, and so come within the sight of that One."

TAOISM

In the first statement of Tao Te Ching of the Chinese Taoist tradition is : The way or Tao that can be described is not the tao or the True Tao, hence Tao or the way is indescribable.

JEWISH PHILOSOPHY JUDAISM TZIMTZUM

In Jewish traditions,  the Divine creator as referred in the book of Genesis pervades His creation and creates this conceptual space and indecribability for the sustainance of the physical world according to the principles of Tzimtzum later as explained by a Jewish medieval philosophical thinker Maimonides. As he writes:

"God's existence is absolute and it includes no composition and we comprehend only the fact that He exists, not His essence. Consequently it is a false assumption to hold that He has any positive attribute... still less has He accidents (מקרה), which could be described by an attribute. Hence it is clear that He has no positive attribute however , the negative attributes are necessary to direct the mind to the truths which we must believe... When we say of this being, that it exists, we mean that its non-existence is impossible— its existence is not due to any cause; it has power, wisdom, and will — it is not feeble or ignorant; He is One — there are not more Gods than one… Every attribute predicated of God denotes either the quality of an action, or, when the attribute is intended to convey some idea of the Divine Being itself — and not of His actions — the negation of the opposite. "

THE QUANTUM THEORY DAVID BOHM

"…in relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well-defined. Each theory is committed to its own notions of essentially static and fragmentary modes of existence (relativity to that of separate events connectible by signals, and quantum mechanics to a well-defined quantum state). One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails is unbroken wholeness. "

                                                               - David Bohm 1980

The birth of Quantum physics marked a breakthrough in the World of Science. This new approach and a new analysis of our material universe startled our understanding of what we called solid reality. The Quantum Theory written in 1951 was well received by others including Albert Einstein himself. The double slit experiment showing the Aharonov-Bohm Effect in which an electron passes through the two slits on a wooden planck hitting the screen across creating an interference pattern as produced by waves when NOT observed (similar results were concludive in case of photons), but the most baffling dichotomy was discovered when the electron instantaneously and intelligently changed its behaviour passing through only one slit creating a particle form upon Observation. This dichotomous nature of electrons that comprise all forms matter gives an absurdly incomprehensible nature of our physical universe. Thus alluding to the holographic nature of our reality confirming the essential presence of a Universal Observer 'collapsing the wave function' thereby manifesting wave forms to physical matter.

"The new form of insight can perhaps best be called Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement. This view implies that flow is in some sense prior to that of the ‘things’ that can be seen to form and dissolve in this flow."

THE IMPLICATE AND EXPLICATE ORDER

Beyond the old Cartesian model of mere physical and mental existence, David Bohm's theory of the implicate and explicate order presents two alternate perpective of realit as we see arising or projecting itself from different layers or planes more like a hologram in which all the underlying plates bear or contain the image projected by it .
The implicate order represents the Enfolded plane beyond human comprehension in which encoded unfolds the explicate order or the Unfolded plane which we perceive as solid reality.

"In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order."
                                 -David Bohm 

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