This course is based on the working draft of my current book, so if you have suggestions, they are welcome.
Each chapter contains Questions for Reflection, so to receive the greatest benefit from the course, when you come to such a Question, take a moment and write your answer in a journal. Then go back and consider your answers as new thoughts arise as the course goes along. Also, send in your thoughts and questions, and I will respond when I can, and post some as the course goes along. (If you would like to send in a question or thought that is not to be shared with others, just indicate that.)
Now, the Introduction to the book:
What is the point of human life? What do you organize your life around: Finding happiness, meaning, or fulfillment? Having as many pleasurable experiences as possible? Feeling good physically as much as possible? Being productive? Having good relationships? Being creative? Fulfilling your duty? Finding love? Maximizing your experience of whatever might happen after this life is over (getting to heaven, having a better reincarnation, getting off the wheel of rebirth, merging into the One, etc.)?
Whatever you organize around (or if, like many people, you are not sure, or have several different goals); from wherever you are starting, if you wish to have any conscious input into how your life will develop from this point forward, the first order of business is to develop an understanding of how you got to this place. My book, On Being Human: An Operator’s Manual, takes up this question. It deals with the four major forces that shape our lives: basic urges and desires, the messages we received from the people around us while growing up, human reason (the capacity to think through and consider options), and intuition (the ability to catch a glimpse of the broader picture or the flow of things).
On Being Human explores how the stories we were told as youngsters and the way we put those stories together into personal packages has created our sense of self and formed our worldview. After this mostly unconscious process has unfolded for several years, our worldviews have molded, to a great extent, the lives we are living. But the story does not end there. The central point of the book is that we have the capacity to examine our stories and our worldviews, to consider how they are serving us—as well as how they might have become the prisons within which we are trapped. The book suggests that those who develop an understanding of how their stories and worldviews are currently shaping their lives will be able to employ the incredible human capacity to make more conscious decisions, and thereby alter the course of their lives. Within this framework, strategies are suggested for making the best decisions for a fulfilling life.
My second book, Art, Science, Religion, Spirituality: Seeking Wisdom and Harmony for a Fulfilling Life, takes a wholistic look at the many facets of our lives and explores how they can all be brought into harmony with each other. We tend to compartmentalize our lives, thinking separately about relationships, finances, health, spiritual matters, career, sex, values, passions, goals, political views, group identities, finding pleasure, aesthetic interests, and on and on. At the living edge, however, where life happens, all these currents are not separate, so to find meaning and live a fulfilling life requires that we discover how all these currents can be harmoniously integrated. The book notes that the basic motivations of human life have not changed much through the centuries, so the biggest challenge we each face, as was true with our ancestors, is to discover and put into practice wise responses to the core motivations.
In ancient Greece, the quest for this wisdom was exemplified by the admonition of Socrates: “Know Thyself”. Two thousand years later mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blasé Pascal said, “It is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are.” Continuing this theme in the twentieth century, the humorist James Thurber advised, “All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
Art, Science, Religion, Spirituality thus examines four of the most valuable ways we humans have sought wisdom: (1) Engagement with science; (2) Creating and experiencing art; (3) Following a religious tradition; and (4)Undertaking a spiritual journey. Although different on the surface, these four are not so different underneath.
As Albert Einstein succinctly put it: “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” This second book, then, explores art, science, religion, and spirituality—the commonalities between them and the guidance they each provide for a fulfilling and meaningful life.
Taking up the story of life’s journey where the above books leave off, the current
volume explores the furthest reaches of life’s possibilities, delving deeper into these great mysteries: (1) We live in a universe containing billions of galaxies that extends trillions upon trillions of miles, a universe made up of enigmatic black holes and composed mostly of things about which we know next to nothing (dark energy and dark matter). In just our little corner of this gigantic universe there are trillions of living beings composed of ever-shifting collections of superstrings, quarks, electrons, atoms, cells—or whatever your preference for the best way to think about what material reality is made of, for the nature of material reality is confusing. We are now being told that the particles we thought were real things are not always particles, but sometimes waves, waves that are within fields that overlap in space with other waves. I personally find it very difficult to think of objects as waves, and especially to think of my own body as a wave, so let’s stick with particles for a moment. If I say that what is “really real” consists of separate particles, though, immediately I have to consider the fact that among the trillions of living things within our ecosystem, bits of matter and energy are constantly being exchanged. You are involved in this exchange each time you eat, breathe, send out sound waves, take in light, smell a pleasant or unpleasant odor, radiate heat from your body, and on and on. Even beyond those exchanges, there is the current theory that some particles (perhaps all?) communicate instantly over limitless distances with each other—defying the scientific bedrock of all communication being local that Einstein defended.
So here we are, in this almost infinitely large universe, one among trillions of living things, made up of a swirling flux of waves and infinitesimally small particles that are constantly in exchange with each other. The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that we are not so much objects as processes, more like whirlpools in a single steam than isolated monads. Yet, despite all this, you usually think of yourself as a separate individual! How does that happen?
If you really think about it, the picture gets stranger still. Our bodies consist of
99.99999% empty space, with material objects making up the rest. That tiny
remainder is usually thought of as atoms—atoms that are billions of years old, each of which has been in countless other configurations through the eons. All over the universe. That is, at least, one way to think about what our bodies are made of.
Others say that atoms are not physical objects at all, but, at a more fundamental
level, are superstrings, or musical notes, or energy. Another recent scientific view is that, at the basic level, there are no particles, only probabilities. Try to wrap your mind around the fact that you are made up of probabilities. (That would be an excellent Zen koan.)
Another fascinating realization, if you think about what you are, is that since you
came into this life you have been enmeshed in many systems (family, tribe,
community, nation, and all sorts of groups and teams). How do you separate yourself out from all the groups in which you have been immersed?
Compounding the difficulty of pinning down what you are is the fact that you, like the rest of us, are being influenced by the forces and fields surrounding us all the time. Without your conscious awareness, trillions of waves/particles are constantly interacting with your body and brain all the time (sound waves, visible and ultraviolet light, radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, gravity (waves?), and gamma rays), sometimes passing through and sometimes affecting the various parts in ways that we have barely begun to grasp.
Another puzzling realization is that all of the cells of your body and brain are
constantly being replaced, and all of them will be replaced many times over within a lifetime. Where, then, does the real you reside? In addition, your thoughts change, your experiences Or consider the fact that within your body there are trillions of separate living beings (bacteria, mitochondria) that are much more numerous that the cells of your body—one estimate is that your body contains ten times as many bacteria as cells. All these small living things are constantly interacting with your body and with each other—creating another whirling vortex of activity within to match the one outside.
All the above is simply to emphasize this great mystery: Within the incredible scope of this universe, amidst the swirling flux and exchange that we are and the universe is— a world where particles and energy are constantly colliding, interacting, and intermingling—and despite the countless changes going on within and around you, you think of yourself as having a personal identity. Over a lifetime your thoughts change, your experiences change, your beliefs change, your goals change, and yet you seem to have a unique self that persists through it all. What is that self, and what role does it play in finding what is truly important in life?
(2) That somehow, for reasons we do not understand, we have consciousness, are conscious of our existence and can thus plan for the future, experience joy and sorrow, decide how we will spend our time, choose to be guided by what we believe to be right (or choose not to do so), love another person, and sacrifice our physical well- being for a cause or in service to others.
(3) That we have the ability to contemplate the ultimate purpose and meaning of our existence (or question whether such things as meaning and purpose actually exist). That we can consider what the wisdom traditions of history suggest is important and decide for ourselves which answers seem to have the greatest merit for our own lives. That we can make choices. That we can attempt to live toward whatever we consider the highest and best possibility life has to offer.
This book, then, will explore both identity and consciousness—and how coming to a better understanding of these two mysteries can lead to a more fulfilling life. It will consider the opportunities involved in living an ego life fully. Then, delving into the furthest reaches of what is possible, it will contemplate the possibility that sometimes arises when the nature of identity shifts significantly and the experience of consciousness changes dramatically. At that point, that which lies beyond our normal conceptions of identity and consciousness breaks thorough, the clouds part, and we recognize, at least for a moment, who we really are.
These are the possibilities to be explored in the following pages. Come join me.