Consciousness and the Pluralistic Universe Part III
The paradox and drama of today lies in the fact that amidst the superabundance provided by Western technology, man is profoundly skeptical - even though he has achieved a high level of autonomy over the forces of nature. The implications behind evolutionary theory, the discoveries related to atomic and nuclear physics, the impact of two world wars have shaken man's confidence in the notion that humanistic progress is the inevitable result of history. These and other events have left him with a sense that he exists almost totally within a contingent, relative and temporal world where chaos is king. There seem to be no eternal values anymore. Human existence seems to be transitory and fragmented.
Because the scientific, social and moral upheavals of the past decades have revealed life as a series of chance, unpredictable events, man has come to feel that there is no ultimate coherence or fundamental order to existence. To what avail are symbols of transcendence or, for that matter, even one's private sense of meaning and purpose if, as Rubenstein claims, "no power in the cosmos will ultimately sustain or validate them."[1] In such a case, spiritual values seem to be merely temporary adjustments, like aspirin, to the underlying confusion of a world that is essentially empty of ultimate meaning for mankind.
While this secular and skeptical mood prevails, it is nevertheless still true that each generation raises again the ultimate questions. The range of man's rebellion - from protests in the marketplace to attempts to overcome death - shows us that man does wonder about his origin, about the significance of life and mortal destiny. Man still searches for symbols that express his acute feeling and thoughts in the crises of existence. The joyful or despairing conditions of life provoke occasional praise when we think about their limits. As John Wild has said, "to reflect upon these boundaries seriously is to raise the ultimate questions of our existence. The way we face them reveals the kind of being we are, for the way a finite being holds itself with respect to its ultimate limits is the very core of that being. ...But to be aware belongs to the being of man. Hence, to become evasive or confused about these limits is to confuse our existence at its very core."[2]
Along with man's confusion, however, one also finds today a positive, concerted effort to challenge the limits that scientific rationality places upon man's self-understanding in a finite world that is apparently without purpose. In spite of technological improvement during the decades of this century alone, man - for one thing - has become less inclined to continue equating mechanical development with moral and social progress - because of their tragic misapplications and unforeseen dire consequences. History has shown that inventive ingenuity does not necessarily correspond to humane improvement, and there are new teleological and holistic concepts and trends coming from the human community that are creating pressure for the revision of scientific objectivity. Equally important is the rising realization that man's internal world of self-understanding - as well as the preservation of the universe itself - involves multiple symbol systems. The world is too rich it its variety of forms to be reduced to just one system of thought or one particular methodology in a laboratory. To be consistent with himself, and, the knower and lover, cannot eliminate his own subjective being without also eliminating himself and those dimensions of the world that make life meaningful and enriching.
If man's impulse toward ultimate meaning is not merely a subjective creation, but real potential in human nature, then the possibility that it may be completed must be grounded in the actual world that confronts man today; somehow those clues suggesting that there is an ultimate meaning must be found within the culture and yet find their full expression beyond the limits of our existence within that culture. The experience of an ultimate meaning must possess a transcendental core, or essence, for otherwise one cannot escape the sense that existence is transitory and arbitrary. For if the ultimate meaning of life is what is right in front of man's senses, the human freedom is a charade, played out in endless variations - a stagnant destiny of flux.
On the other hand, if the ultimate and fulfilling purpose of human freedom is man's self-transformation so that he may experience a sense of transcendence, then those positive impulses to overcome biological entropy, to extend organic limitations, to synthesize technology with humanistic values, to strive to make a world that minimizes tension and promotes creative peaceful living may be considered to be recurring aspirations, with all their cultural ambiguity, that symbolize his goal. In this way the search and testing for optimal survival may be viewed as the formation of man's highest state of consciousness - a state in which man incorporates spiritual fulfillment into his life in society.
The task, then, is obvious: we must describe those clues that point to the reasonable possibility of personal evidence, or our offering hope to man remains another empty proposal to avoid the anguish or modern living. So the quest, or task, ere is not abstract formula or platitude, a theoretical proposition that relates man in nice words to the realm of the transcendental. Words alone are absurd in the midst of suffering and the law of diminishing returns. What man wants is the sustained experience of liberation, an event he can participate in that achieves the hoped-for reality. Today he does not have the confidence to speak of anything that is beyond the limits of his finite senses. However demoralizing this attitude may be, the catastrophes of this century seem to justify it. Thus the burden of any program for liberating him from his skepticism is that it must restore a sense of transcendence to his experience of being in the world.
Fortunately for our task, there are encouraging signs already appearing on the horizon indicating that man will have to revolutionize his present thinking about the limits of his nature. In a chance-filled world wherein man has no abiding control over the realm of atomic energy, let alone his own nature, he would seem to be at the whim of random events, without hope for a real future. But the very technological advances which have extended man's understanding of the universe are also helping him to penetrate the secrets of ultimate self-control. In the field of psychophysiological research, combined studies in meditation and biofeedback indicate that voluntary control over bodily organs and internal systems is greater than heretofore suspected. Clinical reports on the use of biofeedback for relieving headaches and hypertension as well as such revolutionary work as Dr. Karl Symington's use of meditation for the remission of cancer are beginning to cause us to reconsider the role of the mind and its influence upon the body.
Nor are these successes isolated events. With a minimum of training most people can learn to extend their will power to control various heretofore unreachable parts of their bodies, and this only reconfirms, in modern terms, the ancient tradition of self-control called yoga.
These experiments can become part of the evidence that is necessary if we are to know that a state of transcendence is a real and valid component of human nature. Unlike Maslow's "peak experiences"[3] (which cannot be brought about at will), yoga achieves a coherent integration of mind and body that results in consistent performance - and this is what people need in order to counteract their skepticism. The intellectual position of the mechanists and the behaviorists, who deny that consciousness has the power to manipulate the autonomic nervous system and who view consciousness as a function of the brain, is becoming increasingly untenable as evidence accumulates pointing to the fact that this kind of self-control is possible. With sufficient training, people are quite capable of exercising direct and immediate control over bodily energies - intentionally and with purpose - this revealing an orderly process at work. It is highly doubtful that chance is responsibly for its success, for if chance governs natural processes, then an ordered, willed, repeatable event would not take place. If chance is dominant in nature, then training in self-control could not be achieved with any degree of consistency or reliability.
Training in meditation, on the other hand, gradually expands one's awareness beyond the ordinary boundaries of rational discernment into the further reaches of consciousness that no longer see reality only in terms of sense impressions and ideas. The Newtonian world, or everyday life, can always be apprehended by the sense and rational analysis, but through meditation one can discern further dimensions of reality, always there, but undetectable through the ordinary channels of sense inquiry.
In other words, as consciousness expands, one moves past the flux of life (so easily seen at the surface of the body-mind level of apprehension) into the subtler regions, and this experience amounts to a process of self-transformation. New values are discovered and older ones enhanced or abandoned. One evaluates life more subtly than before because of one's wider and deeper vision. Before, at the sense and rational level of discernment, where the emotional traumas of life occur, one was caught in a struggle for order and personal accomplishment; now, expanding one's vision past this level, new laws of behavior are at hand that can be integrated into one's personal conduct. And this expanded vision of self, a direct result of the meditative process, includes also a deeper understanding of the laws of nature. Respecting nature's laws, man nevertheless transcends its normal boundaries, achieving a new freedom over material energies. The separation between man and nature is only apparent, and man is now filled with a new sense of the unbroken unity between himself and the universe.
Man always has a natural capacity to exceed his cultural limitations, as well as his personal niche within society. His hope of survival lies in nourishing the sense of self-discovery that underlies his every preoccupation. Life becomes, on this basis, the continuing realization that his destiny is to be involved in the experience of transcendence. The ultimate meaning of life, then, is always more than what science or philosophy can discern at any one moment, for this knowledge, however correct in its conceptual formulation, can never supplant the actual experience of self-realization, or transcendence.
The ancient tradition of yoga thus challenges the dismal conclusions many draw about the nature of the universe. When one enters upon the inward journey yoga sets forth, a new way of seeing life dawns, and gradually, as this vision grows, the secure mood of society is less able to extend its hold over one. The feeling that everything is governed by chance, the sense of isolation one feels in an apparently blind, mechanical and arbitrary world is slowly recognized as a superficial judgement that takes into account only nature's apparent chaos, ignoring the evidence pointing to nature's orderly and consistent processes. This last insight does not always come before the pursuit of inward transcendence reaches a certain level of personal order and stability. But as the self-transformation takes place, so will the ability to discern the pluralistic levels of reality.
One has to embark upon a personal experiment. There is no other lasting way to overcome the pressure of our times. The ancients have gone before and shown the way. By learning how to integrate all the levels of his being, man can regain for himself a positive identity. He can recognize that he needs nothing except self-realization in order to establish ultimate fulfillment. The further one progresses on this inward journey, the more the trials of life, including suffering, are seen as stimulants to consciousness, as opportunities for it to expand beyond its "normal" limited sphere. And the gradual recognition that man is, paradoxically, the immanence of the transcendent acts as a powerful summons to him to purify himself in order to fulfill the conditions necessary for experiencing the ultimate awareness. Meanwhile, the ultimate unity of life remains a hidden mystery, an undisclosed treasure waiting for man - waiting for him to turn from the flux of "everyday" existence to the inward journey toward his higher consciousness and the purpose of life.
[1] R.L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 204-5. Rubenstein, while addressing himself to the religious implications of World War II, especially the Jewish tragedies, sides with the existentialists such as Camus and Sartre in their assertion that there is no ultimate meaning to existence.
[2] J. Wild, Existence and the World of Freedom (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 27-8.
[3] A. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (N.Y.: Viking Press, 1970).
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