the uses of ideology

To identify ourselves with an ideology is quite commnon. People of all backgrounds and persuasions can be found at it; sometimes advertising the fact directly: “before anything else I am a Buddhist” “nothing stands between me and my Marxism”, although often indirectly through what they are wearing – a pendant, a bracelet, a t-shirt, or if they are seriously indoctrinated; their entire outfit. Whatever means a person might use to advertise their beliefs, and no matter how bold and sincere they might appear though, we may often wonder if 'appearance' is all this amounts to. After all,  it seems relatively intuitive to assume, that if the indoctrinated person really were a Buddhist or Marxist, this fact would  be so explicit in their nature, that it would require no less advertisement than the fact that they were happy, angry or upset. They may never the less be telling the truth. Though just as people who must make a deliberate point of telling us when they are angry or upset, it is quite possible that the person who must stress their ideology is compensating for a similar lack of authentic feeling.

Regardless of this fact, we should not necessarily assume that every person who adopts the political arm band, or the title of 'ism' is out to disguise their embarrassing lack of conviction beneath layers of fancy dress and high talk. They may instead be engaging in a form of public pretense in the very sincere belief, that it will eventually lead to a real physiological change in their character - such is the power of theatre and play as anyone whoever has tried their hand at either well knows. But if this is the motive in play, we may also find another implied alongside it. In addtion to cementing reality through theatre, the no-nonsense person, in placing their beliefs on public display through words and symbols, is apparently compelled by an equal desire to perform magick. Since as much as the no-nonsense type may reject outright any idea that full moons or pentagrams effect the human psyche, every practical person knows first hand the very real power of a commitment made pubic. It is what sets our wishes on the road to actual fact, driven not by the power of commitment itself, but from the potential lost face if our intentions were revealed to be only 'pretensions'. Why else, after all, would bride and grooms choose to bind their vows in public, or presidents swear allegiance before their constituents? It is magick of the very same kind: the binding of wish to reality via staking ones face on the wish coming true.

Whether heads of state, newly married lovers, or the ideologically hopeful, none it should be said, is guaranteed any success by these methods. After a lengthy period of time in fact, the person found lamenting faith’s absence rather than basking in its presence, may be the far more common sight; supported by the usual cast of friends and family consoling them that “all faith wains eventually” and “faith deserts us all in the end”, whose words anyone would be foolish and ungrateful not to welcome. Yet as much as these simple platitudes might be appropriate to the condition of some, we cannot assume that they approximate the failure of every circumstance. For many, the reason why vows are so often impossible to live upto, is not because faith receeds over time, but because faith grows bored and demands other things to keep itself occupied. Thus as Buddhists, to use one example of many, we may find our faith in Buddha waning not because our sense of conviction has departed us, but because we must somehow divide our time between all the other ideologies that simultaneously interest us - our liberal party commitments, our hedonistic pursuits and ideals, our desire to assert and promote our capitalist values. In addition to this, we must also somehow make sure we worship all our altars separately, since if anyone found out, word would soon get around that we were 'ideologically promiscuous' and no meeting house, no matter how outwardly welcoming, would have anything to do with us.

For some of course, secrecy and subterfuge is half the fun of any infidelity, and we should not necessarily assume that everyone is non-disposed to a life lived in shadow and diversion. But for most of us, being honest in spirit if not in actual fact, it is probably fair to say that we do not share in the same rougish pretensions. Ultimately however, the distinction may not be that important - in the majority of cases, our resounding silence to our ideilogical infidelities is probably motivated by far more practical, and far less moralistic concerned than secret shame, or fear of being labeled "promiscious". In practice, not only would enumerating all our various philosophical leanings; from the half-heard quips from Bruce Lee, the aphorisms of Nietzsche, to the Zen haikus, take too long, it would give the impression that were were entangled in a web of precepts and principles, of which we were too scatter-brained to find a way out. Clearly we would not wish to be perceived in this way way. We would much rather be thought of as ‘elegant’ than ‘entangled’ in thought and deed, for elegance is the form that all great genius takes, and thus we find; one of the qualities most admired. The intellectual landmarks of history quite easily prove the case - people love Einstein for the deftness of 'E=MC2”. Scholars hail the Ancient Greeks for their simple axioms. The words of Lao-Lzu are embraced for their gentle ease, while all the chaotic and inelegant theories, have been neither loved nor despised for they have so seldom been published. The tendency for history to honour the simple ideas has in fact been not gone unnoticed in the world’s religions either.  As Martin Buber once pointed out, it is always the man who offers us two choices and one path who becomes our prophet. No individual was ever reborn as a stuppa or golden statue for presenting humanity with a tangled web of choices; each offering their own unique set of promises and difficulties. We do not like these sorts of prophets because their outlook looks more like an exacerbation of life’s problems rather than its solution. Would-be prophets should always be succinct in their views if they wish to win our respect, and so must we if we wish to be held in the same regard.

As much as we would like to join the prophet on his clear-cut path however, as we have seen, things are not always so easy in practice -  the hedgerows and by-lanes of life may often prove as alluring as the road that leads straight ahead, and no matter how much tell ourselves we will stick on the “straight and narrow” our destiny may often seems fixed in waywardness. Given that we find disappointment in our own inability to see things through, it is quite likely that this whole situation will make us feel quite hopeless. But before we castigate ourselves for a trip badly traveled, we should first ask ourselves whether the path we chose was ever possible to walk in the first place, or indeed, whether any person has ever done so. If at least one person has, then we can at least say our passage is a human one – it will not be necessary for us to become Gods in order to reach its goal. But all the same, this does not necessarily mean the path is one we will be able to tread - some men can cut blocks of ice with their hands and pull trucks along by their torso, yet few of us would be wise to copy these feats. Non the less, since the proof of our abilities very often lies not in logic, but in action itself, there is probably no way to discover the extent of our inabilities other than by testing them directly. In testing our abilities against religious or political scripture then, this means we must at least be faithful to the possibility that we might make a good Marxist, Buddhist, or Jainist, even if we aren't completely conviced by the doctrine itself yet.

That faith is the essential springboard from which all political and religious action is derived, is not a principle that has gone unnoticed by the world’s ideological groups. Every doctrine must have at some point stressed its importance, and if they have not, it has probably been assumed obvious from the outset. What has been glossed over without being self-evident however, is the order of priority that faith must take. It is no good being faithful to our God, Prophet or figurehead. First and foremost we must cultivate faith in our own ability to listen to what our teachers have to say, and to hopefully follow through on some of these sayings. The difficult task of being a faithful Marxist, Christian or Hindu in this respect, does not primarily lie in summoning faith in a 10ft tall idol or a relic studded with jewels, but in a fallible being made of skin and bone who is sometimes noble but mostly pathetic. Aside from the third hand platitudes and 10th rate sentiments, this is at least one thing self-help has been correct to point out - the great difficulty of doing anything and believing anything, is that we must first learn to believe in ourselves.

Yet even assuming that we do manage to summon enough faith in our own inabilities to follow our doctrine, this does not mean that our doctrine itself will not be without problems. On many occasions, we may specifically find that although our doctrine’s moral precepts are generally straightforward, there are some situations which they cannot possible cover. “Thou shalt not kill” for instance as an instruction is fine and straightforward for most occasions, and we hopefully do not have to struggle to observe it every time we venture into town to do our shopping. But circumstances may not always be so sedate as a weekly shopping trip, and it is not inconceivable that we may find ourselves in a situation where either our own life, or the lives of our family was threatened. In a situation like this, even the most resilient of Christians may struggle to follow the universal rule of pacifism, and in the heat of impulse, find themselves acting against one of the central tenets of their doctrine. We can perhaps only be thankful that in our case, the situation is probably hypothetical, and that our lives are generally too mundane to warrant worrying about it. Non-the less, It is an unfortunate fact that not so many have been lucky - history testifies to the fact that any number of Christians have killed for one reason or another; and where the church has caught wind, the response has largely been apathetic. It is perhaps only the more Christian churches which have been keen to condemn and ostracise those who have transgressed; and where murder has been taken ‘lightly’ rather than ‘seriously’ such measures have no doubt been fair and correct. Where it has been additionally assumed however, that in disbarring the former member, the former Christian no longer performs any function within in it, such conclusions have been quite wrong. Given in fact, that the Christian who kills does so out of desperation rather than anger in fact, such a person performs a highly invaluable function - he tests the very limit of his faith, and in so doing ensures its structural integrity. Without such individuals willing to test its doctrine out in the field, the Christian faith would in fact be like an developer with no surveyor; lumbered with an edifice surely to crumble.

In our own lives of course, it is doubtful that we will ever be called upon to test the limits of our own doctrine in this way- murder, and its practical consequences, is thankfully not a topic we will need to trouble ourselves. Never the less, we will probably find a limit to our doctrinal principles somewhere along the scale, and even though the circumstances might be less extreme, we will inevitably discover what the murderous Christian has: there are some moments which our doctrine cannot prepare us for. Beyond the exceptions of misunderstanding and stupidity, the reason for this is quite simple. Rules, from the religious to the legal, assuming there is a difference, are always general in their domain. No codex can cover every potential event that life may present us with (hence the never-ending creation of laws) and where religions have tried to cover them all, the resulting rule-books have quickly turned into little more than a historians treasure trove of quaint anachronisms. We do not for instance, still require scripture to give guidance upon the sale and bartering of Oxen, and exactly how lenient or how forceful we should be with our slaves, is a dilemma that hopefully does not prevent us from sleeping at night. Recognising the absurdity of enumerating rules fast past the original scope of their guidelines, most modern people have wisely ignored the particular rules of ideology, and have sought to observe only the universal ones instead. And for those situations where precepts sometimes prove too broad to accommodate the narrowness of life, with equal wisdom, the same people have discarded the rules altogether in favour of intuition- thus in practice, the contemporary man allows his principles and his passions to work in harmony together.

As far as our ideological leaders may be concerned however, nothing could be less ‘harmonious’ than allowing our principled side and spontaneous nature to consort together. If we posses any wisdom at all  in fact, we should recognise that where the unruly and the principled are to be found together, both are in fact locked in a ‘struggle’ to usurp the other. In theology in particular, the idea that our impulses and rational nature are fundamentally at odds, has been widely interpreted as the mutual antagonism between the body and spirit; and where it has been assumed that the spirit may only triumph in doctrine, orthodox churches have generally sought to ensure its freedom by preserving it (or perhaps 'imprisoning it)  it in even more doctrine. It is probably only within the unorthodox systems of Zen and Tao, where the spontaneous aspect of human life has been cultivated and encourage, and both philosophies have often done so with great success. Although sadly, where the human impulse has become reified by as a further rule to be rigidly observed in either pilosophy, the spirit of spontaneity has often been lost.

Assuming that it were possible to keep spontaneity purely 'spontaneous' and rules perfectly ordered however, what remains to be asked is why people of various ideological types have exclusively sought one over the other. Maybe if our desire to obey our duties, and our contrasting wish to be free in spirit were destined to be locked in struggle if we did pick a side we might understand, but this view overlooks a crucial point - since rules are always directed to our conscious, rational side, and the natural circumstances of life; our unconscious spontaneous side; mutual antagonism between the two is quite impossible. There really is no question of either trespassing into one another’s territory or cancelling out the work or the other; any more than play obliterates all the toil and achievement of hard work. Both are entirely separate responses to totally different aspects of existence, and in as much as both often ‘fill in’ for the absence of the other; the two may even be complementary.

A further analogy may be necessary to draw out this subtle yet complex point. Taking our ideological precepts first, as a type of plan for future action, let us imagine them as blue-print in an architect’s design. In the immediate instance, It is obvious that the blue-prints are essential and cannot be shown to one side: the building could not be created without it. Although at the same time, it is impossible to imagine that the building could go up without a certain degree of ‘gut-instinct’ to help things along the way. After all, as much as our plans might be ‘fool proof’, if the wall came down, or a bird suddenly decided to take up shelter in our roof, nothing in our plan could instruct us in our next course of action - both incidents would require us to think on our feet, and in responding to these events without prior planning, the blue-print would be harmonious with the impulse in meeting the same end.  In the same way then, we should not necessarily think of our ideological rules as ‘hopeless’ because they cannot hope to cover every eventuality we might come upon - as blue-prints or guidelines to action, by definition they cannot realistically be expected to. But by the same token, we should not either think of our impulses as interfering with the rules we have tried so hard to obey - even if they do not help to bring about our ideological ends, they at the very least fill in for the aspects of life which ideology cannot cover, and therefore have not ‘interfered with’ or stolen the place of anything.

Though as much as we may sometimes replace ideology with an impulse, and often with no great harm to our ideology itself; every decision out of step with our doctrine, may not necessarily be a spontaneous one - as we have seen, in many instances where we rescind on our doctrine, we do so not out of impulse, but because we have found some other doctrine, idiom, or precept far more appealing - the Hindu finds temporary solace in capitalism, the ascetic in hedonism, the Christian in Marxism. As we are no doubt already aware, people generally do not generally admire this kind of behaviour. It is called 'fickle' and 'contrary' and as a result we rarely admit to our ideological infidelities in pubic. Yet if contrariness is a shameful quality to concede, it is a wonder we do also try to keep our commitment to a single doctrine similarly hidden. For in practice, even the complete Buddhist, Marxist or Christian must manage an extraordinary number of contradictions all at once: The Buddhist must learn detachment through his or her complete attachment to the Dharma. The Christian must somehow reconcile 'love thy neighbour' with 'an eye for an eye'. The Marxist who's doctrine says that all private property is abhorrent, must redistribute that property, albeit unavoidably into various private hands.

On the grounds of contradiction then, it is surprising, if not incomprehensible, that we regard the person with many faiths any less than the person with just one - both in practice, are clearly as contrary as the other. But maybe there is some difference to them. Maybe the person who is monogamous to a single ideology seems so much more respectable than the person ‘faithful’ to dozens, because he has far more devotion or ‘conviction’ than the other type. Anyone, after all, can dabble around in the exotica of far off philosophies and obscure rituals, but it takes a rare stoic conviction to stay the course with a single doctrine; despite its decreasing lustre and sparkle over the years.

As is often the case with any sort of monogamous relationship however, to what extent we respect their devotion is largely dependent on what they are devoted to. We would not for instance, find a woman devoted to a dogmatic husband admirable in her faithfulness. In this case we would say that faith was ‘blind’ and that we could not respect her monogamy until she chose something respectable to devote herself to. For the same reason then, if we do find the person monogamous to one doctrine worthy of admiration, it cannot be due to their single-minded devotion. It must the ideology itself which has roused our respect, and given that practically all ideologies are internally inconsistent, this by extension, is to have found virtue in something contrary. Why then should we not give equal respect to the ideological cherry-picker? Certainly not because he or she is being 'fickle' or 'contrary'. Contrariness lies at the heart of even the most single-minded of faiths.

Perhaps In looking for another reason, we should look towards our attitude towards consumption and excess instead. We perhaps find it 'distasteful' to worship at three separate altars or with five separate scriptures, in the same way we find it distasteful for a person to have five houses or six cars – we couldn’t possibly get the full use out of them, and we would in the process, have made our lives far more hectic than necessary. While this may be true of some case though, it is certainly not true in all of them - some people may in fact get far more use from five cars than a person with one; but who only used it occasionally, and a person with several homes, may find their situation far less hectic than a hobo suddenly lumbered with the responsibility of looking after just one. Thus, as far as ideologies may be equated with our possessions, it does not necessarily follow that more than one doctrine would be ‘one doctrine too many’. More importantly, unlike our physical possessions, we do not in possessing any number of ideologies horde them from all the rest, and so there is no danger of us being ‘excessively selfish’ either. Unless it is a private members club, most ideologies should in fact welcome a practically infinite number of patrons, and if the ideology does operate an exclusive members policy, this a sure sign we are not dealing with an ideology but a cult – which unlike harmless forms of snobbery, are almost always deadly in their pretensions.

None of this, it should be stressed, is to advocate or excuse of holding a entire set of doctrines (where a person chooses to) it is only to point out that if there are significant problems with following many ideologies at once, it is not for the reasons ordinarily thought: There is nothing more contradictory in holding many doctrines as opposed to one, and nothing essentially ‘excessive’ in the same behaviour. Similarly, there appears to be no great sin in acting ‘out of faith’ where our action is dictated by our impulses, rather than by some rival precept. Such impulsive behaviour as pointed out, not only occupies a very different territory to the one ordained by our rules, it sets the necessary limit beyond which our precepts cannot reach. Even so, there may still be significant problems with allowing either our impulses or external ideologies to usurp our principal doctrine, and for reasons that are not clear to us, we might prefer to be a complete fascist, Hindu, Christian or Marxist. But as well we might, it is worth pointing out that when history has produced a person who is able to follow a system of belief to the letter, such an individual has rarely been permitted to rejoin his fellow man. In fact, in following any ideology with this unique sort of perseverance in fact, such individuals have usually been reviled as humanity’s monster or venerated as its saint. Therefore if we do find difficulty in following any doctrine with complete perseverance, we should perhaps take small comfort in the fact that we do not have the capacity to join the likes of Hitler, Ghandi and Buddha - while such individuals may have earnt themselves equal glory and disdain, all were denied the simple pleasure of being human, which is a pleasure only we can partake in.

Rational explanations

When something strange or miraculous happens to us, not wishing to appear superstitious, we may attempt to search for a 'rational explanation' for whatever just occurred. Thus, if we saw an apparition from the corner of our eye, or a strange light in the sky, we may feel that the only rational thing to conclude, is that we had ‘hallucination’ or otherwise fell victim to a 'trick of the light'. Theoretically speaking, there would be nothing wrong with putting forward these suggestions - both in fact, would count as rational explanations in as much as we could construct valid arguments from their premises. Where people have generally gone wrong however, is in assuming that rational explanations by definition must be prosaic in order be rational. Although certainly not incompatible with the concept, contrary to popular opinion, rationality has at no point been synonymous with the commonplace. We do not have to say that the creaking on the landing was the wind, or the apparition in the sky a shooting star. In harmony with rationalism, we could equally claim that the creaking on the landing was a ghost, or the ufo a flying saucer. All that counts is that the argument have some sort of logical form, which is valid, and hopefully sound.

Recognising that rational explanations may just as well be extra-ordinary as ordinary in character, it is still unlikely however that many of us would wish take the risk in putting forward the extraordinary one. We may find that in practice, it is much safer to stick with the prosaic argument where circumstances and events baffle us, and if we do ever happen to venture into the world of outlandish argument, it will probably only be because an overwhelming body of evidence has suddenly rendered it safe for us to do so. Although perhaps a little cautious or timid, there is nothing particularly wrong-footed in this approach - caution in fact, is almost always preferable to eagerness where our explanation has little evidence going for it - to explain things ‘ordinarily’ should be our first reflex. What is perhaps a little stubborn and wrong-footed though, is to cling to our ordinary explanations, far past the point where the ordinary or prosaic can adequately explain anything. As already pointed out, timidity, or perhaps even fear of ‘public ridicule’ may partly excuse this tendency, but given that people who are not otherwise undeterred by public opinion often shy away from outlandish arguments, this cannot be the sole motive at work.
Assuming that we are inspired by what passes for common opinion however, the motive in this particular instance may not be particular difficult to discern. Without consciously registering it, we may have been impressed by the general bias which says that whatever things are stable, static and regular are real, while whatever things are irregular, fleeting or transient are unreal. And since paranormal phenomena are almost always ethereal in appearance, it is not difficult to see by extension, why we might dismiss such phenomena as 'unreal' so quickly and without reason. If any actual proof were needed of the extent of this latent bias, and it is reasonable to ask for it, we perhaps need only look towards the guiding beliefs and practices of our social institutions for additional support. Within the scientific community especially, what is transient has long been synonymous with speculative fantasy, since unlike regular constant things, transient phenomena are generally too elusive to be collected, counted and studied -  thus for the scientist, reality is a simple matter of what can be measured. Inspecting the universe from a slightly loftier, spiritually elevated view, the man of religion has also felt transient things to be untrustworthy, however from his uniquely transcendental vantage, the sage recognises that all phenomena are essentially transient, and thus that the material world contains no stable ground for man to build his spiritual home.

Although it may be clear enough from this, that both science and religion have been dually influenced by the common prejudice against transience, what this does not show however, is where and when this particular prejudice arose in the first place. In looking for its origins though, we may find that it began at no more mysterious a place than our formative years; where if not taught, this particular bias was perhaps at the very least implied. After all, if we think back, it would probably not be too difficult to remember a time where our parents dismissed some strange experience we might have had - the strange flicker in the garden or the fleeting glow at the fringes of the horizon, we were likely told, was simply the result of too much day-dreaming, too many story books, or else staring into the sun for too long; and from here the journey to the adult who will hear nothing of ghosts or spirits is obviously not a long one. Yet all the same, It is doubtful that all adults will have been similarly influenced. Some of us may in fact feel that there was no real justification at all to the suggestion that all fleeting phenomena are hallucinations, and that to this extent, our parent's remonstrations were little more than a convenient means of curbing our curiosity. But as wise as it might be to cast doubt over the lessons of the cradle sometimes, in this case, there may be more to this lesson than is worth throwing away: In reality hallucinations often are fleeting or transient in character, and so the apparition that suddenly appears then vanishes on the stair may well be just a figment of our imagination for exactly the reason we have been taught. It is just that since actual things are also sometimes fleeting in character (sprites, comets, etc) it may just as well be that they are not. Prejudices, our parents should have perhaps stipulated, often get the generalities right at the expensive of details.  

Whether our parents put forward their views in enough detail or not, it would be superficial however, to assume that every spooky event that is discounted, is discounted because of its transience and our taught prejudice against it. Sometimes anomalous events are widely acknowledged as real and concrete, it is just that when witnessed in their fleeting passage, the non-sceptical amongst us, tend to mistakenly believe they have seen something fantastic: Bigfoot glanced through the trees is merely an ape if it would stay still. A ufo is simply a meteorite which we have caught on its journey to the soil. In both these cases, the suggestion that the anomaly in question is really something prosaic at high-speed may well be correct, and we should certainty not assume that we have witnessed something abnormal by alternative default. It is only, much as before, where the prosaic explanation is stretched beyond the limits of the facts, that these arguments begins to lose their credibility. Thus, if we claimed (as in the second example) that a ufo which makes darting movements left and right, is no more than a ‘meteorite’ heading towards earth, we should not be surprised if other the equally unobservant take us seriously.The widely-accepted description of a comet after all, does not include any ability to change its flight path at ad-hoc intervals, so to offer it up as one, is to ignore the facts presumably for the greater good of ‘solving the riddle’ by any available means. Never the less, otherwise honest and intelligent may put forward just these types of arguments, but if they do, it is perhaps that just as some intelligent people cannot bare for anything to be mundane since it robs the world of its mystery, the person who will have a commonplace explanation at any cost, operates according to the inverse dogma: Everything in the world must have its place, even if it is not an exact fit.  

In the present age, where scientific thought is widely regarded as near infallible, many people may similarly feel there is nothing which cannot explained. And if they do, it may be because they are very sure there is nothing which science cannot presently bend into discernible shape. Where the average person embraces this sort of view, there is not much reason to find offense - It is perhaps only natural in fact to assume that the dominant system of thought of any age has “all the answers” especially when the current one has proved so much in its name. It is really where scientist falls into this error that criticism is justified, since to assume that science, can explain anything at all, is to misunderstand the scope and basis of ones own method - science, for all its history, has always been defined by its continuous progress; seeking out new riddles to solve and new facts to uncover. Therefore for the scientist to assume finality in her method, with no more things left to discover, would render her own enterprise not a science, but a religion. But given that her enterprise has not yet succumbed to absolutism and is only happy to embrace its own incompleteness, there should be nothing mysterious about a world which still contains mysteries: This in all truth, is just a natural consequence of the fact that there are still uncharted areas into which science has not yet traveled. To deny this and assume the opposite would just be to resurrect the old expanding universe-style conundrum; if science is expanding; what is it expanding into?

Leaving questions of scientific scope to one side, it should never the less be pointed out that even if the scientific programme were able to complete its journey one day, there would still be some phenomena forever beyond its reach A good example being ‘psi-phenomena’. What is frequently overlooked in studies that investigate this type of phenomena, is that no amount of observational evidence alone, would ever be sufficient to validate or disprove clairvoyance or telepathy's existence alone. In order to prove or disprove the existence of psi-phenomena, unlike other paranormal events, we would primary, need a clear categorical distinction between a chance event and a fully determined one. To illustrate by example, how many times would a person have to predict the roll of a die and get it right, in order for a ‘lucky guess’ to transform into ‘prior knowledge’? “once, twice, five times, four?” A clear answer seems almost impossible to give. The reason is because since we have no precise demarcation between random chance and prior knowledge, we have no meaningful, non-arbitrary way to distinguish between the two. Admirably, psychical researchers and professional sceptics alike have never the less tried to find ways around this - in experiments, both parties usually agree upon a statistical limit, and beyond this limit, agree to measure random chance as something more determine. But whatever these agreements add up to, they do not amount to a proper conceptual distinction. In reality they are as arbitrary and artificial as the decided boundary sovereign state and a rouge nation, and much in the same way; equally unable to tell us anything about the difference between either.  

For the sake of charity however, let us assume that there was some meaningful way to separate what is genuinely chance-like from what is determined, or has been foreseen in advance. Would this make any difference? The answer is that it probably would not. The reason for this is that psi-research would still operate under the mistaken belief that any capacity to predict future events amounts to a ‘skill’ which the test subject should be able to call upon at will. Not only is this belief presumptuous towards the extent of the subject’s capabilities, it is presumptuous towards the notion of skill on two separate counts. On the first, the psi-researcher should not assume, as is so often the case, that consistent accuracy is a necessary condition of skill. History clearly testifies to the fact that some of the most skilful artists who have walked the earth, have generally produced mediocrity to a small handful of masterpieces. We should not necessarily assume that skill is synonymous with the style of steady yet banal production that the artist by the Thames knocks out for $10 a go. The capacity to be skillful in all walks of life, may in practice be closely related to inconsistency or sudden flashes of genius; producing detail an accurately in one single moment, and then nothing at all for several straight years.  

Secondly, it is probably the biggest and worst assumption of all, to assume that a lack of skill infers anything over and above the capabilities of the individual. In reality, a person who is unable to accurately predict any symbols from a hand of zener cards, demonstrates nothing beyond the extent of his or her powers of prediction, and even then, only at a particular date and time. There is no more reason to declare telepathy a sham on observing a group of people who seem to have no aptitude for it, than there would be to declare archery hokum the basis of a handful of people unable to fire a single shot on target. It would only be once we had sufficiently tested the vast majority of the world’s population that we could otherwise declare either skill probable bunk. Although even then, this would not completely rule out its possibility - men 10,000 years ago may well have thought it impossible for a person to cut wood with his bare hand. Now there are any number of individuals who can and so few doubt it.

In either case, from all these examples it should now be clear that psi-phenomena, in contrast with supernatural phenomena, presents us with its own unique set of difficulties. The assumption that psi-phenomena amount to skills rather than latent features, has clearly been one of the biggest hurdles to psychic testing in practice - with the related assumptions that skillful feats should be consistent in nature, and that a lack of skill in one person infers a similar lack of skill in all the rest, only serving to multiply these difficulties even further. It may always be possible in the future that these assumptions will be corrected, although even assuming that they were, this would do little to improve the situation in practice - without any proper way to distinguish a prediction that was correct 'intentionally' and one correct purely by ‘chance’ we would still have no way to meaningfully analyse any data we collected. In this regard it is really our conceptual limitations that prevent us from rationally explaining this sort of phenomena; we would need to know what a chance or determined event was, before we could argue for the presence or absence of either.

Thankfully, within the opposing investigation of supernatural phenomena, conceptual issues like these are rarely to be found. In attempting to rationally explain anything from ghosts, ufos, to strange creatures, all that is required (assuming we wish our explanation to be sound) is that we stick to the basic principles of observation. Although in practice researchers have often found these difficult to follow, In essence these rules are very simple: Firstly, as with studying anything ‘in the field’, we must always time the frequency of our visits to coincide with the frequency of the phenomena. Thus, if we heard that the ghost of the Duke of a stately home appears in his old drawing room twice yearly, we would be planning our visit very poorly if we turned up for a weekend on the expectation that we might see something. In this case we would be much better advised to set up camp, whether remotely or in person, for the entire year.
Additionally, In the same way that the animal behaviourist always ensures that her own behaviour is consistent with the known habits of the animal she wishes to track, it would probably be a good idea to apply the same technique to tracking down anomalous phenomena as well. In practice then, if the paranormal phenomenon we were investigating was known to be shy and nocturnal, we should probably pretend that our habits were likewise, with the inverse rule obviously applying if the phenomena was known to be attracted by noise and attention. Although these rules may not necessarily guarantee the abolishment of these types mysteries, we may in following them, at least increase our odds of eliminating them, and we will have almost certainly succeeded in rendering our method clear and straightforward, rather than confusing and mysterious. We can only hope that the person who investigates mystery neither seeks to obliterate it by any means, because he hates it, nor seeks to escalate its presence by any which way, because he loves it. 

Prague Gnosis - Terence Mckenna Interviews Ram Dass

Great interplay here between masters of their own field - Ram Dass the 'secular guru' broken free of his previous role as a Harvard professor, and Terrence Mckenna who can only be accurately described and properly paid homage to as: 'that mushroom guy'. Enjoy.

 

Rooms and Spaces

Our lives are almost entirely spent inside rooms, and our time outside them spent mostly traveling to and from them. It is surprising therefore, that there has been so little discussion in philosophy on what rooms are and how they might affect us. It is probably only in the science or 'art' of feng shui that we find a genuine attempt to understand the room, alongside a doctrine describing how best to make such a room habitable. While this is no doubt an admirable cause, the feng shui expert, like the astrologer, perhaps over-states the case in having us believe that subtle degrees of distance between immediate or distant objects could bring about the significant changes within us that they propose. Never the less, within the art of feng shui, there is perhaps a 'basic message' or generalised set of rules which it would be foolish to passover. There is for instance, something very practical and sincere in the idea that what and where we place things within our room might have a positive or negative effect on us. Taking for example, the placement of our sofa or bed, it would probably as a rule, be far wiser to have both facing towards our door rather than away from it, so that we do not feel on edge or exposed by the possibility of someone entering while we are 'off our guard'. We may also in arranging our furniture, be just as well advised to take special care in arranging what goes around them, and in this matter feng shui tells us that it is far better to use 'living' plants rather than 'dead' inanimate ornaments. But if this is good advice, it apparently not because plants invite a greater source of 'chi' into our homes than inanimate ornaments, but because we just feel more natural and 'at home' with objects from the natural world placed around us. Similarly, if we are told that opened windows and drawn curtains are preferable to one that aren't, then we have only been reminded of a simple piece of common sense.

In practice however, it is not only the room by itself which has a profound impact on our lives, but the location in which it is situated. To this end the socio-biologist E O Wilson has put forward the convincing argument that the best sort of home is usually one which is highly placed (preferably on a hill), overlooking a forest, with a fresh water-supply in the form of a stream or a lake nearby. Such conditions are apparently so intrinsically appealing to us according to Wilson, that in studies where a person is shown a series of landscape paintings with a house situated within it, the individual will almost always gravitate towards the one which is upon high ground with a neighbouring water-course and forest nearby. When we take into account our not too distant past as pre-civilised beings solely dependent on our natural environment, the reasons for this seems obvious: the elevated ground allows us to see any potential threat on the horizon before it can strike. The water source provides us with a direct source of water which we do not have to travel far to acquire. And the forest; containing many varieties of wild animal, gives us an easily-accessible hunting ground where we can find our food. None of these things are of course strictly necessary in the modern world of technological convenience, but something of our evolutionary-lineage clearly lingers on; and apparently such conditions continue to appeal in spite of ourselves.

The exact location and decorative features of our room are however, only one side of the story. In any discussion about rooms or living spaces it is perhaps equally as important to understand what a room actually is, alongside where it is and what it does. In order to achieve this aim, as with any other object of inquiry, it seems we must first discover its allegorical nature; that is to say, what it 'symbolises'. Initially we might find such a course of inquiry ludicrous: Why waste our time trying to discover what the symbolic nature of a room is when, quite obviously it is something functional – In this case something to keep us warm and sheltered? The reason is that in attempting to find the symbolic nature of anything, we are in fact trying to extract out a further function it might have that has been hidden and obscured, and like anything that is hidden and obscured, there will much more to learn by investigating its nature as opposed to studying only what is apparent and obvious.

In order then to discover the room's 'extra function', much as with any other, it will probably be necessary to cease using it in the way we are used to. In practice, this may be achieved by doing nothing more than siting quietly in our room, and allowing the events around us to unfold - only in this way will the symbolic function of the room be revealed. When we do manage to sit quietly long enough without interfering with the events around us, it should soon become apparent that our room in essence is a stage upon which life itself plays out daily. In as much as any stage has a story to tell, we may also find that ours in particular has one to tell about the essential transience and chaos of existence; teacups, friends, wasps in summer, all are just passing through our habitat in much the same way that they are passing through like. In addition to this, we may also find that the room, if we are willing to reflect, has just as much to reveal about our attitude towards these essentially transient facts of life. If for instance, our room is one in which everything is immaculate and no cushion may be disturbed, it is probably true to say that the erratic and haphazard nature of existence is so distressing to us, we feel the only rational response is to eradicate these facts within our own home. Similarly, if we take the opposing attitude towards our room, and seek to accumulate and hang onto as much clutter as we can; it  is probably not a stretch to imagine that this response extends to our life in general - everything we love we cannot let go, everything that slips through our figures we can never forget.

In our own lives of course, we may feel that we are nowhere close to the extremes of these types of characters, and that as much as these characters resemble human nature, they are more caricatures than actual likenesses. Never the less, the whole point of a caricature is only to exaggerate not only what exist in the subject, but by degree in every man. Thus; the hoarder is the extreme manifestation of the commonplace habit of collecting certain items and putting them either in drawers of cupboards, the germaphobe; the house-proud person operating at the very outer limits of what it means to have 'pride'. Even in our own lives then, we may find that we fit somewhere within this domestic spectrum, and whether through hoarding, collecting, cleaning or sanitising, we have transformed our room from its symbolic function of a stage, to the far less playful symbol of a fortress. Worse still, if we have to some degree or another, conspired to turn our home into a fortress in this way, any advice the feng shui expert, socio-biologist or environmentalist has to give us, will be necessarily useless: We cannot consider 'integrating the organic' into our home when we are so naturally uncomfortable with what the organic entails. We cannot think about moving to live by a forest, hill and a lake when forests hills and lakes are the very things that we distrust. Changes in environment must always be preceded by changes in mind, and if a room is to be altered at all, we must first become at peace or at least accept the reality of the facts contained within it. 

This may all be good and well, but how do we realistically achieve peace of kind? In as much as the facts contained within our room, are identical with the general facts of existence, it seem we can only make peace with what exists in our room by making peace with existence itself. We are no doubt, already aware that a great deal of religion and philosophy and has been written towards this end, and that much of it is very helpful, even if it has not helped us. What we might have overlooked however, is that once the symbolic function of the room is understood; as a stage upon which all the facts of life are revealed, we no longer require religion or philosophy to help us in this respect. As we watch any number of things succumb to age, grow, death and play within our four walls, it should become apparent that the room itself tells us everything we need to know about the fundamentals of existence. Once these facts are finally understood, there is then no question of how we should then come to terms with them, since the answer is that we already do; precisely by living amongst them everyday.

Setting up the first Zen monestary in San Francisco - Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

For this post I thought id upload some videos on Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and his setting up of the very first Zen monastery in San Fransisco. All three parts offer a very interesting insight into not only Zen and meditation, but also how a monastery functions in a surrounding community populated primarily by non-Buddhists. The following 5 parts can be found on youtube. Enjoy!

 

 

 

The way of religion, the way of the spirit

It is now more common than ever for people to call themselves 'spiritual'; a term which seems to signify a person's desire to be religious, but to do so in a style which is dis-organised and spontaneous rather than structured and formal. This perhaps is a present day manifestation of what was historically known as 'the mystic tradition', within this tradition (if we can call it one) would-be mystics sought to express their spiritual libido through the chaos of everyday life as opposed to the more traditional outlet of the religious institution. Unlike in the past where displays of religious non-conformity were fiercely condemned however, today we generally find that such errant forms of worship go by more or less unpunished.

Unfortunately for those who hold tradition close to their heart however, where stigmatism counts for social exclusion, in todays world it is more often the origanised religion rather than disorganised one which finds itself left out in the cold. This has not of course, gone unnoticed by the church, and periodically a Dean or Archbishop will come out to remind us that although going against convention can be fun, to depart from religious convention will ultimately lead us down a series of blind alleys culminating in a spiritual 'dead-end'.

If a person has in fact left all the old methods of religious navigation behind to pursue a faith entirely uncharted, such warnings are no doubt fair and right. However what the Churchman often tends to overlook, is that the spiritually-minded person is not someone recklessly wandering off into unknown territory like the mystic of old, but is in fact following a well-worn religious path with a slightly alternative set of props– the 'weekend retreat' is simply what the spiritual-person calls his church, the 'support group' is no more or less than what amounts to the church-goer's parish community, and the Christian God who art our father in heaven, is simply exchanged for the more forgiving figure of the Mother who listens rather than lectures. Once we fully compare the spiritual and religious movements in fact, whether the religions we have selected happen to be Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, it seems we have little more to contrast but superficial differences in style underlying a common aim – to connect with others in the communal act of experiencing something far greater, wise and more bewildering than anything ordinarily admitted by habitual experience.

To conclude from this that there is no real division within spirituality or religion would perhaps be somewhat pre-emptive however; although both movements stand mutually undivided in their common aims and beliefs, both movements through their practice have managed to divide themselves from something infinitely more significant - their object of worship. By informing us that religious observance is something that goes 'here' but not 'there' or that spiritual practice is something that takes place under 'these' circumstances but not 'those', all traditions unwittingly segregate us from the spiritual nature of all other circumstances. Mecca, Jerusalem or our weekend retreat may well be 'sacred ground', but if this is all we find sacred than we have by effect 'secularised' the ground upon which we walk everyday. The activity or drama of being religious or being spiritual becomes something we only feel comfortable doing at a designated location while modeling our beads, cassock or Kippah.

If the habitat and dress of the spiritual-theist really are little more than the props of a highly elaborate performance however, what then are we to make of the Buddhist monk who wears her orange robes, or the weekend-monk who strolls about in his smock and sandals? Would it be fair to insist that such a person is merely playing at being the sage and that; following in the footsteps of the mystic, they should lay all symbols and rituals aside? This surely would be a mistake. Aesthetically we do not lose anything by wearing what would be unconventional if we wore it on the high street, while conversely we do not become any more spiritually authentic because we have chosen to wear a dull knitted jumper. Moreover we often tend to overlook the fact that most forms of ceremonial dress were originally devised not for their 'religious colour' but for their practical convenience: The Samue of Zen Buddhism for instance comprises no more than a pair of draw-string trousers and a vest which can be quickly and easily taken and off again. While the dyed orange and yellow robes of traditional Theravada and Hinayana Buddhism often understood to impart subtle differences in doctrinal understanding, were originally dyed these colours simply because these were the dyes most easily attainable in their respective regions.

Most religious wear in this way did not originate for the purpose of segregating people from the ordinary unenlightened masses, but rather took its origin in the simple desire to be practical, thrifty and if at all possible 'elegant'. All of this is easily forgotten with the passage of time however and the outer-garments and props of religion can easily come to embody all the practice and virtues that were supposed to be independent of anything to do with culture, fashion or tradition. In fact even when we do not observe any rituals or dress up in any particular 'garb' in order to engage in the spiritual, we can still make the mistake of diluting divine feeling down to that which is transient and superficial. We might say “I am a spiritual person” or “At heart I’m a deeply religious person” and here we reduce the expansive mystic experience down to something we might put down on a dating questionnaire – 'I'm also a huge romantic and have a great sense of humour'. To identify our ego with the divine in this way is surely far more debasing of our beliefs than the monk who simply happens to worship in a monastery because it is nice and quiet, and who shaves his head and wears his robes for no other reason than his dislike of hairdressers and his practical need for something easy to move about in. Such a person does not identify his clothes or his place of worship as anything other than incidental to his spiritual path, whereas the individual who identifies the divine with his persona (that is to say his 'mask') believes his social veneer to represent the full depth of his spiritual conviction.

Whether we identify our spiritual sensibilities with a specific part of ourselves, our wardrobe, or some part of the world is perhaps irrelevant however since in the final analysis all of these forms of reduction always amount to the same thing – we unwittingly fuse the sacred with the singular and discrete when if there is any common basis to all theology, it is that the divine is not something particular but something universal. This does not of course mean that there is nothing sacred to be found in the personal or particular – beyond their aesthetic appeal or functional practicality, we may naturally find our religious symbols and icons to be both expressions of the complete order as well as expressions of our own divine feeling. But we surely distort the common theme of religious-spiritual teachings when we attempt to assert that any of these things have an exclusive claim or 'right' to this status. If we wish to be spiritual or religious in the authentic sense of accepting everything as sacred without prejudice or preference, it seems we cannot afford to consign the spiritual to any single object or event;  all events and objects must stand equal in their intrinsic value. Whether anyone in human history has actually managed to adopt such a broad and undiscriminating mind as this is another story. If however on our journey through life we ever happened to encounter an individual who is happy enough to wear beads of dried dung as he is of polished ebony, or to take a toilet stall for his chapel rather than a well-ventilated cathedral, we might well assume we had already met him. 

What is the Problem?

In life it is said, we often find “more problems than answers”; we attract calamities to ourselves with an almost superhuman ease, while grace and fortune stubbornly resist all our efforts of charm and cunning. It is also a well-known truth however, that one man's problem is another man's blessing to which the rule may also be inversely applied, and so before we complain about our problems we better be sure that we are actually in possession of a real one.

In the strictest possible sense, we might distinguish a real problem from a false one by the condition that any real problem will always work against our advantage in every case, whereas a false one will only prove problematic here and there. But very rarely if ever can we imagine such a cast-iron example: Failing to gain asylum to a country might seem like a predicament free of any possible benefit, however for all we know gaining it may have very well lead to a fate worse than death. Losing the love of our life may seem unbearable with no positive outcome at all, but we could well imagine a situation in which their continued presence may have indirectly lead to the death of our whole family. Even taking an extreme example in which we ourselves die an untimely and tragic death, such a tragedy may also be considered a great blessing in that it has ultimately delivered from the slow and tedious death of old age. And so if there is any real predicament to be faced, it is really no more than our inability to know for certain whether our disappointments are blessings in disguise, or whether our blessings merely conceal further disappointments.

So let us look at this problem; the only one we ever have – our predicament of not knowing whether we have been cursed with problems or graced with good fortune, what would happen if we could know for sure whether a situation would in the long-run turn out to be advantageous or not? Well naturally we would be able follow each and every path we knew would lead to a favourable outcome, and in doing so create heaven right here on earth. But if we are convinced such a world would be heaven manifest, we have perhaps misunderstood the entire notion of paradise altogether: While it may be 'heavenly' to see every one of our plans come to fruition immediately and exactly as we envisaged, we would have also in the process cut ourselves off from the possibility of generating any new ones, since as every successful person knows: 'Good plans are not conceived in the comfort of security but in the turmoil of defeat'. By necessity then, our paradise would have to be one in which we could just as much expect disaster and defeat as success and bliss; an ethereal wonderland where good luck and bad luck happily existed side by side. If this is our definition of heaven however, could it not be that we are already in it? We seem after all, to have just described the exact conditions we find ourselves in.

Such a conclusion may not immediately seem obvious. It could well be argued in fact that the central flaw with our world is that our problems are often so many that we are not propelled by them into greatness, but mired down by them into self-despair. We are all familiar enough with those unfortunate individuals who have been disproportionately burdened with homelessness, terminal illness as well as a lack of steady employment. For these sorry people the possibility of rendering their situation as hopeful rather than tragic seems slim if not impossible. However, before we judge how many problems is one too many, it seems that we must first ask whether such a person would in fact recognise the blessing in having their situation completely transformed. All too often we accept good fortune not in the manner of a thankful adult but as a spoilt child finally receiving a present: "About time! I wondered when exactly you were going to give me my just deserts. Thank goodness you finally have!" And in this way it seems that our over-riding burden is not whatever positive accumulation of burdens we feel we have we have been unfairly apportioned, but rather the negative burden of simply failing to appreciate our blessings. It is perhaps only the individual who expects nothing from the universe and seeks nothing in return who is able to transcend this thankless state of mind and cherish every blessing that comes their way. This is the archetypal monk or sage presented to us throughout world religion. The person who has finally 'got it'. But if we think for one second that that we can transform ourselves to become this sort of person then we will have only succeeded in multiplying our burdens even further: If there is any central canon to the world's religions it is that as much as we would like to be Dogen or one of Christ's apostles we can only really succeed in being ourselves. This does not of course mean that we should not seek inspiration from the sage. It simply means we should not frustrate ourselves by mimicking something impossible. The sage after all is not some cosmic super being immune to all the horrors and disappointments that life naturally brings, the sage is only a sage in as much as he understands one simple thing – that in frustration resides the seeds of peace, and that in peace lurks the embryo of frustration.

Reflecting upon this subtle yet obvious truth and applying it to our original problem then: 'How do we distinguish our blessings from our misfortunes?' it appears we already have our answer: 'There are no inherently problematic or fortuitous situations. I’m afraid all this time you’ve been trying to work out whether the hill is an interpolation of the valley, or the valley an interruption of the hill when there is in reality no correct view to be had. Both perspectives may be interchanged ad infinitum.' Realising this we may no doubt get it into our heads that we have finally uncovered the secret that will win them the game: 'If every crisis is potentially a blessing in disguise then how wonderful! From now on I shall invert my perspective from now on so that all I see is blessings!' But this is quite mistaken. Being enlightened to the fact that problems and good fortunes are only constructs of our minds does not now mean it is practical (or even possible) to embrace every woe as a blessing. It means having the good sense to embrace our woes as woes. It is only in this way that they will take root as our catalysts for future growth and blossom into blessings. In doing so, we may natrually wish to recognise and cherish our blessings once they have finally flourished as well, and in many ways this can often prove the greatest challenge of all. But in reality our challenge is really no more strenuous than the spontaneous deduction our eye makes that there must be a 'hill' every time it sees two valleys next to each other. In the exact same sense, we need only take note of the problems going on all around us in order for the blessings right in front of us to fall into view. If we can adeptly master this, then in the most practical sense possible we will have grasped what every sage has known all along: “problems and successes are only a matter of perspective.”