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#3742 - Friday, December 11, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Featured is the opening of the new book, Nonduality: A Scientific Perspective. The author chooses to remain anonymous. This book is free and not copyrighted.
Nonduality: A Scientific Perspective
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgh5nvsq_1g2dtv6c4
The spirit of the Lord, indeed, fills the
whole world, and that which holds all things together knows ever
word that is said. -Book of Wisdom The eternal mystery of
the world is its comprehensibility. ... Everyone who is seriously
involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a
spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe. ... Since our
inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of
sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems
to me to be empty and devoid of meaning. -Albert Einstein
That eternal and infinite being we call God or Nature, acts from
the same necessity from which it exists. -Spinoza Truly, I
have attained nothing from total enlightenment. -Buddha
Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
Shakespeare
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise
Without being wise
For it is to think that we know
What we do not know
Socrates
They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws upon the opposite wall of the cave. To them the truth would be literally nothing more than the shadows of the images. See what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. See the reality of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion. His eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision. The prison is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the Source, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the world of intellect.
Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Were he to return, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness?
In the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort. When seen, its also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world.
They are wrong when they say that they can put knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes. Our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being. -Plato
That eternal and infinite being we call God or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which it exists. -Spinoza
Invocation
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
I lean out from my windowsill, in this old hotel I chose
One hand on my suicide and one hand on the rose
I know you’ve heard its over now, the war must surely come
The cities are all broke in half and the middle men are gone
And where do all these highways go, now that we are free
And why are armies marching still that were coming home to me
And if by chance I awake at night and ask you who ‘I am’
Take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb
And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
Then lay your rose on the fire, the fire gives up to the Sun
The Sun gives over to splendor, in the arms of the High Holy One
Leonard Cohen
Gonna see the river man
Gonna tell him all I can
About the ban on feeling free
If he tells me all he knows
About the way his river flows
I don’t suppose its meant for me
Oh, how they come and go
So I’ll leave the ways of making me be
What I really don’t want to be
Now I am darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be
And time has told me not to ask for more
For someday our ocean will find its shore
Nick Drake
Preface
This book is about the meaning of science. There is a great deal of confusion about what science actually means, and an important goal here is to clear up that confusion. The science that is discussed here is the standard science of our day, which includes relativity theory, quantum field theory, complexity theory, and some of our most advanced science, such as inflationary cosmology and string theory. String theory is the best candidate for a theory of quantum gravity, or a “theory of everything”, which allows for unification of all the laws of the universe, and is the main focus of attention, especially as it demonstrates the holographic principle of quantum gravity. The reason to understand the holographic principle is because it allows for a scientific understanding of the nature of nonduality. This kind of scientific explanation of nonduality began when Plato wrote the Republic, continued when Spinoza wrote the Tractatus, but lately has fallen out of favor.
Science is the beautiful weapon that will guide us in this journey of discovery, by destroying false knowledge, which is the only process that ever allows for a clear conceptual understanding of the nature of nonduality. Scientific explanations can never really give the experience of nonduality, just as a map or travel guide can never give the experience of a journey to a foreign land, but they can indicate the nature of that unknown land, typically by metaphor or by analogy with what is already known. They can also point out travel directions that allow one to make the journey to that terra incognita, about which nothing is known. All possible scientific explanations about the nature of nonduality are only like a map, and are best understood in that spirit. The one that makes the journey to terra incognita can only make that journey for themselves, but they can come back and give a testimony of their journey to those who have not yet made the journey. There are many testimonies that can be read about, but this is not one of them. This work only has the nature of a map. It can only describe the final destination of the journey in terms of metaphors, and can only give travel directions about how the journey is made. There are really only two good reasons to have such a map. One is to satisfy your curiosity about the nature of the final destination without the need to make that journey for yourself, and the other is to make the journey.
Notes
There will probably never be a better description of the subjective experience of nonduality than I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, which is to say this report is as good as it gets. The basic message of Nisargadatta can be summarized with the deceptively simple statement “Nothing but the subjective ‘I am’ is true”, or to paraphrase Shankara “The world is an illusion, the source of existence is the only truth, and ultimately there is no difference between the true nature of what ‘I am’ and the source of existence”. This book is only an attempt to give a reasonably accurate and complete scientific explanation of the illusory nature of the world, and to explain how the world is created from the source of existence.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
And the earth was without form and void
And darkness was upon the face of the deep
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters
And God said ‘Let there be light’; and there was light
And God saw the light, that it was good
And God divided the light from the darkness
Genesis
The non-existent was not; the existent was not at that time
An unfathomable abyss
There was neither death nor immortality
There was not distinction of day or night
That One thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature
Apart from it, there was nothing
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning
All that existed then was void and formless
That which becomes, was born through the power of heat
Upon that desire arose in the beginning the first discharge of thought
Sages discovered this link of the existent to the non-existent
Having searched in the heart with wisdom
Their line of vision was extended across
What was below, what was above?
Who knows truly?
Whence this creation came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation
Whether he formed it all or did not form it
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven
Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not
Rig Veda
Brahman is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and Self
Shankara
The whole universe is a dream, dreamed by a single dreamer.
The dreamer is Brahman.
Joseph Campbell
Brahman: the ultimate impersonal reality, underlying everything in the universe, from which everything comes and to which it returns
Dictionary
Nonduality: A Scientific Perspective http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgh5nvsq_1g2dtv6c4