Edward’s Diary Entry 84: The Five Senses: 6. Five become Six.

Ages ago, in some of the oldest writings in the world (Tamil literature, the Tolkāppiyam), there were 6 senses, not 5. The 5 senses through which we receive impressions all flow into the biggest “impression-producer” on Earth – our own minds. 

So the five senses put data in, and the amalgamation and processing of that information is the “sixth sense”. The sixth sense is the Mind. This is in line with the different Chittas as described in Vedic philosophy, “chit” being “consciousness” or “memory bank”. For us humans, five fingers make up a hand, and remember we have to oppose the fingers with the thumb for the hand to work. And the five senses come together to produce the mind, and by controlling the five senses with our mind it becomes our “hand” for touching and dealing with the world.

On this blog promoting “Self-Awareness” we have to reject the commonplace “sixth sense” as some kind of paranormal or extrasensory perception. It is a misnomer and just a convenience term for strange sensations… "um, ’six’ comes after ‘five’, and we have five senses according to traditional teachings, so anything we can’t explain should be, um, the ‘sixth sense’, right?” Well, no. It’s not that simple…

I maintain along with the Tamils, the Buddhists, the Yogis and others from Asiatic traditions that the five external sensory inputs fall upon data already inputted in the past – experiences, memories, idiosyncrasies, conditioning and programming already present in the mind – and this in turn gives rise to the “sixth sense organ” of the actual mind that processes these inputs, consciously or unconsciously. This is why we can “see” without seeing, “observe” without observing, or why suddenly we “notice” something special when we had always looked without actually “seeing” – producing a surprising kind of aliveness.

Of course not everyone can fathom this. It takes a degree of Self-Awareness to observe and confirm this, in oneself and others. Take any common example: you know a person, and this person has a set of beliefs, described in so many words. If you say a specific phrase contrary to these beliefs, there will be an adverse reaction in that person’s mind. Repeat the experiment, and the person will react in the same way, regardless of your intentions, arguments or explanations. Opinions are fixations of the mind-stuff. The word simply triggers the reaction, a set of mind patterns. Or in oneself: I have a set of tendencies, and when I myself try to change these tendencies and put myself in a different position or situation, I encounter friction in my own mind and either have to give way, or make a greater effort of will by being aware of this and forcing myself to change my usual posture.

So on minimal levels of Self-Awareness, our minds are us and we just react; we are our minds, and our supposed “willpower” can do nothing about it. Consciousness is trapped in the actual mental reaction, produced by thought and reinforced by emotion, and we are completely identified with that. When this happens, we can wreak havoc upon others to defend our “mental” position, or what we call our outlook or opinion. Isn’t the world full of vehemently defended “opinions”?

Self-Awareness, on the other hand, provides the tool for observing both the 5 inputs from the senses, and the reactions to these inputs in the mind itself, the “sense” or “nonsense” being made of the 5 raw materials being supplied. Because, unlike low-level awareness where consciousness is trapped in a thought, standing apart from the mind with Self-Awareness allows us to witness this “sixth sense” of our own mind’s reactions. Test it and see.

I have found an interesting symbol for this and will now continue with various descriptions of this very curious invention dating from the 12th century… More soon.

Edward’s Diary Entry 83: The Five Senses: 5. “Touching” is very down-to-earth...

This is skin to skin, skin to material, body to body. Very basic. Again, there are “receptors” in the skin, Merkel, Meissner’s, Pacinian, Ruffini…. But a few tricks can fool even these smart little fellows. In a #Sadhguru exercise, we were told to rub our open palms together quickly for some 15 seconds. Then bring our palms towards each other slowly. Where does the supposed “skin” of one palm pick up on the skin of the other palm? When they touch? Or before? Try it and see. Touching means connecting two boundaries, but where are these boundaries?

Being a “bag of skin” separated from the “outside” world means – as the therapists say – that we need people to touch us. Our mothers and fathers are supposed to do this when we’re young. But when we grow older and wiser we need to increase the boundaries of our petty “selves enclosed in a sack” to reach out with our Self-Awareness to the entire universe, otherwise we become very small, lonely, constricted human beings – the kind who always complain and make trouble in the world; or the kind who are always asking to be touched... instead of touching others. Sit still and sense your body, and soon you no longer know exactly where your “body” ends and the “rest of the world” begins… This is learning to reach out, touch and live…

We all know there are people we like touching and other contacts we draw back from. I sometimes agree with the Chinese writer and philosopher Lin Yutang in that the cultivated Chinese custom of bowing to another person avoids the embarrassment of having to detect the state of mind and body of a stranger, like when we perform the Western custom of shaking hands. Do I really have to find out how clammy and cold or limp the hand is? Or how robust, dry and meaty it happens to be? Do I really need to ascertain that by touching? Can we not communicate on a higher level? The Indians, too, perform a simple inclination and do Namaste with their hands, placing Yin and Yang together to bring balance to the encounter. Isn’t that sometimes much better?

Tree huggers I think are OK, although some could be a bit nutty, but smiling people dressed like teddy bears in the street offering free “hugs” to people only tell us how infantile we really are. Do we really need hugs from strangers to feel good? Do we hate ourselves that much that just about anybody hugging us will do? Can’t we love ourselves better? I guess not, we’re too full of crap, and unconsciously, we know it. So we pine for the touch of a warm hand…

“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.

O, that I were a glove upon that hand

That I might touch that cheek!”

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Touching is down-to-earth, a basic instinct, often infiltrated with the game of sex and desire, however pretty the words are made to sound... 

Now we have looked at the "five senses"… stay here for more soon.

Thoughts on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

What does this mean?

"The consequences of any further use of nuclear weapons, whether intentional or by mistake, would be horrific. When it comes to our common objective of nuclear disarmament, we must not delay -- we must act now." 

- Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon

Tell me, what don’t we understand about the three letters N-O-W? Now? Which now? Now today, or now tomorrow or now never? In any case – with all due respects to the SG, who is a man of good heart I’m sure – it’s all just words. And here are some more recent words from President Barak Obama's speeach at the UN, on 20 September 2016:

“We cannot escape the prospect of nuclear war unless we all commit to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and pursuing a world without them.” (Emphasis mine.)

Well, who are “we” to understand this or “commit” anyway? In my neighbourhood, no one has made a nuclear weapon – as yet. In Spain, there are supposed to be no nuclear weapons on Spanish soil, although the country is part of a nuclear alliance along with Albania, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and South Korea.

The European hosting countries of nuclear warheads are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey.

The nations with nuclear warheads are United States (6970), Russia (7300), Britain (215), France (300), China (260), India (100-120), Pakistan (110-130), Israel (80), North Korea (<10)… All in all, the numbers ensure a good dose of overkill. Now is that logical, or is it just a reflection of human madness?

Lots of people have talked about this since 1946, as documented by the UN itself, listen: “Achieving global nuclear disarmament is one of the oldest goals of the United Nations.  It was the subject of the General Assembly’s first resolution in 1946. It has been on the General Assembly’s agenda along with general and complete disarmament ever since 1959.”

Yet nothing “has been done”. I guess it’s not “we” who have to do anything. It’s “them”. But “they” never do it. So “we’re all” in a double bind. There seems to be no solution. 70 years have passed since the UN started talking. And Mr Obama has just proven that it’s all still talk. As a very wise man once said about the problem of the “hobby horse”: Pull at the mane and the tail gets stuck; pull at the tail and the mane gets stuck!

So what do we do?

1) Sign petitions? Democracy won’t work, because, like Brexit, we may get a split vote or slight win at 49-51% and that solves nothing. And it’s like being on a boat with suicidals: if half plus one of the passengers want it sunk, and half minus one don’t, how can we get anywhere like that? Who’s going to win?

2) Write letters? To whom? And even if we find someone “important” to write to, they’ll never get it personally, or if they do, they’ll just laugh.

3) Use social media? Well, at least this is being written, and maybe one or two people will read it, but what’s that going to do? Those who understand already understand. Nevertheless, since this blog was started, it is part of my duty to mention these things and willy-nilly I shall do so. And never before in history have there been such totally-globalised communications media available as there are today, so that's a hope.

4) Meditate or pray? Just like the UN speeches and broadcasts, these are just words, but addressed to our own heads, which are too full of other things anyway, and nothing will come of it. And “pray”? To whom? Who is supposed to be listening? God? He already accepted mankind making the bomb, so it’s not His deal, is it? The government? Sorry, they ain’t listening to you or to me. The Pope? He’s already praying and we don’t know if it’s doing any good yet. And in any case, he’s just one religion – a true one for sure! – but just one of many. What’s nuclear science and psychological pathology got to do with religion? Why should a Saviour save us from our own folly?

One good thing that the American president did say in his farewell speech is this: “I do not believe progress is possible if our desire to preserve our identities gives way to an impulse to dehumanize or dominate another group. …The world is too small, we are too packed together, for us to be able to resort to those old ways of thinking.” (My emphasis.)

Here, Mr Obama hits the nail on the head. And that's hopeful too. It is “thinking” that is the problem. Nuclear weapons are human productions, from human brains. Human brains caused the problem out of fear and aggressiveness. Are we saying that the human mind with its thinking cannot now solve the problem? It looks like it. For some, there is “no problem”, because they believe in nuclear dissuation. For others, there is “no problem” because it is far above our heads. For some silent souls, there is a “problem”, but we don’t know what to do about it. And so we talk and write about it for 71 years.

Well, someone has to do something (or say something), so here are a few suggestions:

Everyone back to kindergarten. We all agree that a red light means "stop". It’s a simple lesson. Some drivers or cyclists jump lights. But we all know that red means STOP. So – to totally eliminate nuclear weapons – we set up a panel of wise people and gurus in each country where warheads are on the ground or sea and convene a meeting with everyone in that country having a say in nuclear weapons or warheads, anyone with any power of decision, from president or prime minister, to top generals, and the rank and file, anyone in command of any kind of firing device. We find these people and we send them back to kindergarten and teach them the meaning of a red light, a stop, a ban, a “total elimination of nuclear arsenals and weapons”. This means re-educating them entirely, so it’s no easy job. But as results come from each country, finally there can be international meetings of responsible heads of state and the ban can be put in place, acted on and nuclear weapons eliminated (whatever that may mean). Simple.

Come to me. If that doesn’t work, I can provide my own solution. Here’s the offer: Round up just the heads of the governments of the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea and tell them to come to me. Or I’ll go wherever they want to meet. I’m just a normal guy, a man in the street, a student of the mind, but I will sit down with them and re-educate them until they see that UN concerns are world concerns, our concerns as human beings, for our own generation, our children's generation and many more generations to come, and we will draw up a working plan for the total elimination of nuclear weapons in 3 years. Not five, not 10, not 20 and not just sitting around talking for another 70 years. In 3 years we want the job done. All I need is someone to help organise this for me. Anyone there?

Sit still. OK, maybe we should just sit still and remain peaceful inside. But for those of us who already do (if it’s true that we do), we will have to increase our efforts to get others to do the same. If we think it over, we should be able to influence at least another 10 people. But if, because of our inner silence and understanding, we can get just one more human being to do the same, we will be helping the world to become less barbaric, less uncivilised, less warlike, less liable to become extinct from a nuclear holocaust.

Those are my three. Anyone else have any suggestions?

Cave Series 6: The walls change…

Maybe we’re rushing it and jumping to conclusions, but as I sat in the cave dying to get out, gulping dry air like a fish out of water, holding my breath to the limit at each infrequent respiration, the walls took on a weird phosphorescence as I cried for liberation – not the usual green and purple clouds that come and go, but focalised images of light issuing from the walls, and all of a sudden there appeared before me a clay-like sepia-grey wall with inscriptions on it. And a black hole, which is a familiar sight, probably due to the scotoma – where the optic nerve exits the retina. But the black hole drifted off and was nothing compared to the clay wall that stood in front of me – not with cuneiform inscriptions as pictured here, but with unintelligible patterns that intrigued me. Streams of delight ran through my body… uh, what body? It wasn’t there anymore. It was a momentary hope of liberation from my cave, but I came back again, and wrote this... So, when you’re really dying to get out, it just might happen. You never know... they may be digging in from the other side…

Edward’s Diary Entry 82: The Five Senses: 4. “Tasting” is more substantial

“I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes 

in the mouth and wanting to eat it.” 

Lin Yutang, from “The Importance of Living”

There is understanding through words and understanding through the belly, and the saying about conquering a man through his stomach is part of this. But when it comes to this 4th sense called tasting, we see a curious thing with respect to “time”.

If we put our “five-sense” study onto a timeline, we find the following rates of usage:

- The eyes capture data all day long when we’re awake, say 16 hours a day, and they still seem to work overtime in REM sleep, albeit internally.

- The ears are also on a full workday, like the eyes, but they seem to rest better than the eyes at night.

- The olfactory channel, however, with its nose, only does a half day’s job when we’re awake: it’s only on the in-breath that it can potentially smell! 

- The mouth, with its capacity for taste, is mostly off duty during the day, unless you’re a binger or compulsive eater, as you only taste when you eat your meals or snacks or have your drinks – or chew gum! And remember, taste is smelling’s little brother: when you have a cold or a stuffy nose, you can lose your taste, because you can’t smell anymore, and you only notice textures!

- Then when it comes to touching, this is actually quite infrequent during the day with animate objects, although maybe quite frequent with inanimate objects (at work or play), and even obsessively recurrent with today’s cell phone use!  But remember... the deepest kind of “touching” – sex – is quite “infrequent” during the whole week! Durex says “Greece tops the list of having the most sex on a weekly basis at 87%. Brazil and Russia sit high on the list at 82% and 80%, respectively. Just over half the people in the US have weekly sex at 53%. Japanese are least likely to have weekly sex at 34%.” And 73% of the Spanish are "once-a-weekers", according to El Mundo.

So before we come all the way down to Earth with physical “touching”, tasting is the sense that definitely needs substance or material in a particular place, the oral orifice, and this is what I mean by it being much more “substantial” and physical, although “aftertaste” may well be a result of the olfactory pathway.

The scientific descriptions of taste are all quite interesting, and have been duly chopped down into their constituent parts, with detailed descriptions of receptor cells, nuclei, nerves and parts of the brain, along with all the molecules, atoms and DNA required for such functioning. But still, how Life gives You a taste of something and how You interpret it is just as much a mystery as any other sensorial input. Dissection tells us about parts and microscopic details and chemical reactions, but it doesn’t say 1) why things taste different anyway, or how exactly they taste to certain people, different societies or to other species of animals; and 2) how these things interact in the mouth and sinuses to produce their tastes, flavours and aromas, and even aftertastes, and 3) how all this information gets into Consciousness and is dealt with in the mind. How does material enter awareness as taste and increase our Self-Awareness?

Is this making some sense, or do I just have a taste for the bizarre? Well... wait a bit till we review all "five senses" and then look for the sixth sense...

Keep calm and be peaceful...

Today was called International Peace Day. 

I woke and communed with the elements. I sat and breathed. I remained seated on the floor and repeated 7 A’s, 7 O’s and 7 M’s. I did various exercises and Namaskars. I mentally recited the 26 virtues in a difficult posture, following my breathing. I sensed parts of my body and my whole body. I worked, walked, shopped, made food, ate, rested, repeated a sensing exercise and looked inward for 21 mins. I worked again. I went out. I came back. I noticed thoughts. I allowed no destructive, violent, angry or even critical thought to influence me today. 

I did not know this day was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly as “Peace Day”. But today is nothing special. Every day is peace day if you truly look inward and understand. But how many people do?

Edward’s Diary Entry 81: The Five Senses: 3. Smelling is “Spiritual”…

Everything you've been looking for has been right under your nose all the time! – The Buddha.

Whereas our eyes are accustomed to registering the visible physical world around us, hearing is a little finer because sound is invisible; only when big bass woofers produce high-volume notes can we actually feel the vibrations in our guts, or the ground shaking under our feet. Touching of course brings us into actual contact with matter, skin to material, so it is very down-to-earth. Tasting, too, requires material in the mouth…

But smelling is the most “spiritual” or ethereal of the five senses, as not only is it invisible, but molecular and magical. Nothing else can tell us something about the reality around us like an aroma – or a stink – can. There may be nothing to see, hear, touch or taste. But an invisible message comes in on the breeze and produces an effect on us.

The sense of smell, according to many, is also the most underdeveloped or degenerated of our senses, because we no longer live in Nature and use natural smells to guide us or provide us with information for survival. And we have created a vast array of “unnatural” smells, too, ranging from the delightful to the totally disgusting – just think of industrial effluents as we travel by a petrochemical plant, which is all too common! The sense of smell is very much a repressed sense as well – certain smells are considered “inappropriate” – so this is an area where we might like to concentrate some extra attention, starting with incense burning and flowers and plants in the room where we sit and meditate. Children never study “smelling” and its vast array of wonders at school – would that be too primitive a subject for youngsters?

I suppose if I hadn’t been born decades ago, before 3D glasses, I might have been into so-called “virtual reality” now, like today’s kids. But the trouble is, this virtual reality is only visual and auditory – it only includes two of the senses, and may simply have vibrations or movement added via gloves, treadmills or seats. But, according to the thesis offered on this blog, we already live in a “virtual reality” because we don’t really know how our senses work anyway, or how messages are transmuted into conscious perceptions and reactions in the mind. So why waste time and lose ourselves in second-hand virtual realities when our own so-called “reality” is virtual or “mind-made” anyway? We should be studying real reality, not man-made fantasies – there are simply too many of them already. Māyā always produces more māyā.

I am still wondering why it has been so “easy” to develop the transmission of visual things (painting, photography and film) and that of auditory events (jungle drumming, Morse code and now full digital streaming…) but no one knows how to break down and transmit olfactory, gustatory and tactile data… My iPhone cannot tell me what the aroma of a dandelion is; there are no nose-buds for this. Or mouth-tasters for food, or body-squeezers for tactile data… I guess we will have to accept this for the time being… But maybe that’s good, as it might even be too dangerous: if artificial flower and spice aromas were readily available on the Internet, who would bother to plant the real flowers and herbs?

Our sense of smell is pretty poor: Who can remember smelling in dreams? Who has dream aromas during meditation? Why, we don’t even bother with smells when we’re awake and walking around – only stronger things like jasmine at night, croissants being baked in the early morning, or coffee, or a whiff of a woman’s perfume as she walks by (if pleasant and not overly done!), the soft scent of a nice clean towel after yoga, or some Mediterranean midday cooking… We do not practise smelling enough. I see dogs living by scent, living intensely, as they are out on their walkies in the streets. I see no humans “wasting time” and stopping even to smell the flowers planted by the city authorities! They’re only attractions of the visual kind, as always.

So we can forget “clairoma” or “clairalience” (and “clairgustance”) for the moment. Nowadays in our civilisation, we are probably more accustomed to noxious and nasty smells than anything remotely “spiritual”: traffic, fumes, smoke, decay, garbage, sewers and carbon monoxide are a large part of our daily ration when we live in cities. An escape to the park may bring a certain degree of refreshment, but there doesn’t seem to be much conscious effort – from either designers or users – to promote the possibilities for enhancing our human sense of smell. But just imagine the veritable wealth and richness of this olfactory world: all the millions of flowers, plants, trees and woods, all the herbs, all the spices, fruits, berries, nuts and vegetables and their varieties… The list of aromas is infinite.

With a little Self-Awareness and mental calm, instead of being perpetually obsessed with mind chatter about ourselves, our petty personalities, our likes and dislikes, fears and anxieties, self-importance and eternal problems, we can simply enjoy sitting, walking, watching, tasting, perhaps touching, and smelling the aromas of places, plants, food and other natural things, as a way to be more cognizant of our sense of smell and the mysterious way that scents and aromas can invoke our thoughts, memories and perhaps our dreams…

Why don’t we discover this wonderful world of aromas by daily practising more sniffing and less sniffling over silly problems… Maybe then we will see what’s right under our noses!

Edward’s Diary Entry 80: The Five Senses: 2. "Hearing" is More Mysterious Still...

“But he [Jesus] said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” Lk 11:28.

Do we hear from inside or out? 

In the age of wired earphones, Iphone 7 starts to use a wireless Airpod, but the technology is the same – an .mp3 file (a marvel in itself, as it is really just a compendium of 0s and 1s), and their considerations about wireless being better don’t seem to convince consumers much at present. Just like sight, we take hearing for granted; all except Moses, who heard the voice of God and walked up to Mt Sinai ([picture] like I did one night years ago). And except for the “spiritual” and the scientists. The spiritual, because they talk about “hearing” the word of God and then doing it. The scientists, because Brian Kross, Chief Detector Engineer at Jefferson Lab, says this about “hearing”: “In a process which is not clearly understood, the brain is capable of interpreting the qualities of the sound upon reception of these electric nerve impulses.” (sent from the hair-like nerve cells of the cochlea)... So Gray’s Anatomy tells us what these things look like to our eyes, but never exactly how they work in our consciousness.

So we also have various kinds of hearing.

1) Starting with “not-hearing”, when we simply do not register sounds because our attention is elsewhere. The same vibrations are travelling through the air, falling on the same eardrum, but since attention is diverted, there is no “hearing” – no sound! It’s like being asleep or in a dream.

2) Dream hearing is when our brain tells us someone has called our name and we wake up, and we realise that it was just in our heads. There was no one there. Or when we spy on our own thoughts and “hear” them like in a dictation, but try as we might, we cannot remember the exact words when we wake! Has that happened to you? When you are learning a new language, this happens too. When you come to Spain, you wake up saying calamares or patatas bravas or café con leche or something like that!

3) “Normal hearing”. We hear normal conversations, words, sounds, music, birds, the wind in the leaves and the traffic or the crows… What exactly happens, no one really knows. We just pretend to know or take it for granted. A word is uttered, and our ear picks it up, and even distinguishes tone, volume, pitch, degree of calmness or nervousness in the sound, emotional and sentimental overtones, and a whole lot of real or imaginary nuances… This capability combines with seeing as the two most highly developed and overworked senses in us humans. Audio and visual are the two constant bombardments from computer technology, the only two senses so far that have been broken down and put into digital format for transmission.

4) Inner hearing. With your ears wide open, or tightly closed with fingers or hands, if there is still hearing, it’s not from the ear. It’s from “inside” the head. This happens to me, and I don’t consider it a defect called by a funny Latin name referring to bells. It seems to be a boon, although I haven’t yet been able to interpret any of the messages being sent, if they are messages, that is. What is apparent is that some time ago, I noticed a familiar sound that I had heard off and on over my life, and this sound was inside my head. It used to be like a musical F, then a G#, now it seems to be around G. It is drowned out by street noises, but purrs on nicely when everything’s quiet. Its utility is that it reminds me I’m alive. It’s always there, and when I pay attention to it, I know my heart is still beating, energy is being transformed, and some modicum of Self-Awareness is there, like me and my shadow. My inner sound is like a companion who is still just breathing alongside me as we go on our journey together, and hasn’t actually said anything yet, but maybe one day will.

So if seeing is interpreting the world of visible things, hearing is the interpretation of visible and possibly invisible things in movement. It is an attempt to interpret an “event” or “series of events”, something that produces vibration from movement. How consciousness does this is the mystery. It is not enough to describe the process as we understand it. Because we don’t. We do not really know what produces the original, so-called vibration, or how it is captured and transformed into a message to the brain, and above all how this message is converted into something intelligible for our minds.

Any other kind of hearing in the head may simply come from personality and headbrain chatter. None of this, in our “normal, civilised state”, can come from a “higher source”: it is just a part of the normal mixed-up human mind, full of book-learning, beliefs and past experience. Only when the mind is being quietly looked at and listened to in Self-Awareness, and it quietens down of and by itself, can anything arise from much deeper within, and that, if it involves sound, may be vital to our lives. But who can sit still long enough and actually hear it, really?

Edward’s Diary Entry 79: The Five Senses: 1. “Seeing” is a Mystery

He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage-Stamp.
'You'd best be getting home,' he said,
'The nights are very damp!'

 - from The Mad Gardener's Song, Lewis Carroll, 1889

WYSIWYG? No, what you see is what you think you see, that’s all.

1. In sleep, we have seeing in dreams. The eyes “see” things in dreams. You remember a dream and you know you have “seen” things, but this seeing is just in the mind. You may be in REM sleep and open or flutter your eyes, but they are just reacting to impressions floating through the mind during sleep. The pictures may be incredible – mine sometimes are. If I had the techniques of a great painter, I would paint intricate pictures of worlds that no one else has ever seen! Poor eyes! They have never been open and seen things like this. We are so identified with our eyes that this is what dreams are made of – visions and pictures. Who remembers smells or tastes in dreams? It’s mostly sights and sometimes sounds…

2. In the normal “waking state”, we have seeing with eyes closed. We close our eyes and sit still, maybe in meditation or just relaxing. We “see” colours, shapes, lights, invented or actual things, pictures and scenes, sometimes with photographic clarity. Often, in deep relaxation, we may fall into a dream or semi-dream state. That means we are back at No. 1 above. But if we don’t, in that darkness of the closed eyelid, we often find lights and shapes that accompany us and keep our mind's eye quite busy.

3. In the normal “waking state” we sometimes “see” nothing… The eyes are open, but our attention is on something else, perhaps our thoughts or feelings, our anxiety or stress, or maybe a sensation, but we don’t notice what is right in front of our faces. Appearing to look, we don’t see – our minds are elsewhere, attention is lacking.

4. Then there are “seeing” variations, because we have two eyes and the power to focus or de-focus. We can make ourselves see double, by crossing our eyes or de-focusing. A uniform, single-colour mosaic wall can appear to be closer or farther away depending on eye focus. When we see it as closer or farther away, only touching re-establishes the normal “real” wall at the right distance. A flower can appear as two flowers in two vases, and by gently focusing again, you can make the two meet into the one “real” flower. We also have either left-hand eye focus or right-hand eye focus and mostly don’t realise that one eye (like one hand) is the dominant one. A chiropractor taught me this and it’s true.

5. And now finally comes what we call “real seeing” – which is recognising the outside world in representations that others would also agree with to a large extent: that so-and-so appears to be tall or good-looking, a sunset looks red, a traffic signal presents a definite colour to everyone, except the Daltonic, etc.

But this so-called “real seeing” is only just another input – put in from outside – like seeing in a dream is an input put in from the inside. We can read about how science interprets seeing: a supposed “object” is reflected through the lens onto the retina, with its sensitive layer of rods and cones connected to the optic nerve that sends electrical impulses to the brain. Here, the messages from the optic nerve and waystations are “processed”. In other words, the physiological (the measurable) gives way to the psychological (the immeasurable) – “you” realise you have seen “something”... uh, whatever that means.

What it really means is that a “stimulus”, a flash of light, has been interpreted as a “thing”, i.e., something previously known by the mind. But the two mysteries are: what the thing is in itself, since only light waves have been emitted from it, and what the mind interprets it to be, which is based on previous experiences of seeing the same thing or a similar thing, i.e., a product of the brain’s functioning. If you have looked at a flower, that flower does not enter your eye, upside down, and is then turned right side up in your brain, in a smaller version, as the eye diagrams seem to tell us. No. No flower goes into your head. Light signals or vibrations are emitted from the flower, and these are captured and processed in the cerebral cortex, they say. What the flower really is, and how the “you” actually experiences it are the TWO BIG MYSTERIES.

And this is why we posit the existence – quite apart from man and the animals with their specific “seeing” abilities – of a REAL WORLD or a REALITY that we do not “see” or perceive with our senses, but only interpret by means of our senses. And interpretations, as everyone knows, are always subjective. We are little transistors capturing data of a limited nature and transmuting it for purposes we know little of. Since we do not see REALITY as it is, we are constantly wrong about what we are seeing, and hence mankind’s eternal conflicts. Can’t we agree about ideas and concepts? How could we possibly? We can’t even come to any basic agreement about what our eyes are actually perceiving! It’s all in the mind.

So when practising “Self-Awareness”, we are careful not to judge too quickly using such interpretations about what we see and what we don't, what a thing is or what it isn't, and by extension, what anything means or doesn't mean, what is good or bad, right or wrong, useful or absurd, and so on and so forth. Looking and seeing are only raw ingredients that we can use if we have a sutiable recipe for making something of our own volition. Seeing may be believing, but believing is seeing as well. Do you see that?

Edward’s Diary Entry 78: How to apply "Self-Awareness" to yesterday's "World Days"?

OK, let’s answer the World Day entry from yesterday… What to do about these things?

       1) About controlling atmospheric explosions of nuclear weapons. Sit down and cross your legs for 10 minutes and concentrate on your breathing. Air flows in and air flows out. You follow your breathing, you don’t think, you don’t feel, you don’t repeat any peace mantras – they’re just words. Simply place your awareness on your breath, with eyes closed and your focus uplifted between your eyebrows. You are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are not a bunch of words protesting about nuclear weaponry. You sense your breathing, you may listen to your inner sounds, you may hear outer sounds but you do not classify or react to them. You are not a protester, a politician, a scientist or a construction worker. You are not a member of any religion, you have nothing to argue about with anyone – those are all thoughts that divide us. You have no feelings to make you react to ideas – human ideas just divide us. Everything flows naturally. You are at peace with yourself. The state of being at peace with yourself will help all our sentient beings to find peace in themselves, thanks to you maybe. This is how an individual helps to control atmospheric explosions of nuclear weapons.

2)   About controlling underground explosions of nuclear weapons. Sit down and cross your legs for 15 minutes and concentrate on your body. It is sitting on the floor. You sense your weight. You place your awareness in your face and work downwards, from the top of your head, going slowly and concentratedly sensing each part of your body from head to foot. After your shoulders and arms, come back to your breathing and follow it downwards and relax every part of your body down to your buttocks. Then follow each leg down to the foot. After this, sense the whole weight of your body as it rests on the floor. Then sense the floor under you and the Earth under it. If you are lucky enough to be sitting outside on the ground, so much the better. Don’t think, don’t feel, don’t repeat any peace mantras – they’re just words. And we don’t need more words. We need a sensation of soil, Earth, matter, bodily weight. The weight of a body, a body that will eventually lose its life and return to the Earth, in the form of dust and ashes, but at the right time – not when a nuclear explosion goes off. Sense your body, be in it. Realise its importance for life. The state of being at peace with your body will help all other sentient beings to find peace because of you. This is how an individual helps to control underground explosions of nuclear weapons. You think it sounds silly. But if one person does it, one person is fomenting a peaceful atmosphere. If a thousand people do it, the benefits are greater. If 10,000 people do it, and create peace within themselves, the world will start noticing it. If a whole spiritual nation of brothers and sisters numbering one million do it, the world will change. So it’s not a silly as it may look at first.

  3)  About overcoming divisive nationalistic thinking and becoming a world citizen. This you can do in a sitting posture, feet flat on the floor. It is an analytical exercise. You are a human being. You can think. But you must learn to think reasonably, logically and rationally, taking into account everything necessary that you can get from anywhere in today’s globalised world and social media. It goes something like this:

a.     The Universe as described by science is Infinite, or at least much larger than we can imagine.

b.     Amongst all the galaxies, the so-called Milky Way is just a tiny speck, although its stars cover the entire night sky that we can see from Earth.

c.     Within that Milky Way galaxy, we live in a tiny solar system, somewhere out near the edge, on the 3rd planet from our Sun, which for us is like the centre of the world and the powerhouse of everything we have around us. Without the Sun, there would be no life on Earth.

d.     Earth has its percentages of water, soil and air, in similar proportions to our actual bodies. Life came into being on this planet millions of years ago, and we humans are new arrivals. Modern man is only about 40,000 years old. Our modern “historic” world is 2,500 years old. Our technology-based civilisation (petroleum-based) is only about 150 years old. Our great-great grandparents rode horses instead of jumping in a car.     

e.     So there’s a speck in the Universe that’s our galaxy, a much smaller speck that’s our solar system, an even smaller speck that’s our planet, and you and I are just infinitesimal specks on a planet with 7.4 billion other specks.

f.      Yet from birth our heads are filled with ideas about OUR OWN IMPORTANCE, our own Sense of Self and our own Ego, and our personalities are nourished on the importance of concepts like “my daddy”, “my house”, “my friend”, “my school”, “my town”, “my country”, “my government”, “my religion”, “my God”, "my feelings...", "my pain...". This evolves into superficial Pavlovian impulses like “my daddy is better than your daddy”, “my town is nicer than your town”, “my country needs protection”, “my government is right”, “my God is the only God worth praying to”, “my ideas are sacred and yours are crap”. Hence division, anger, hatred and violence, of the deeply-seated, irrational, unconscious kind. There is no reasoning, there is no perspective if this is not analysed and controlled.

g.     So it’s time to find your perspective. Analyse your thinking. Review the REAL situation. Don’t justify anything, don’t make excuses for anything. Go the whole hog and see what your life situation is like. One person with divisive, non-inclusive thoughts in 7.4 billion means nothing. But 7.4 billion divisive-thinking human beings can never live in peace. It’s simply impossible. So inspect, review, analyse and find out how to be inclusive instead of exclusive. Accept all, stop fighting over thoughts and ideas. It’s out of all proportion to do that, and even today’s science gives you enough real information on the physical so that you can actually feel like a speck if you want, being humble, being accepting, being thankful for being alive, and getting things in a perspective that corresponds more with Reality.

h.     Realise that all divisive thinking, all human concepts, are just something you have heard about and read about in the past. Thinking is preterite, the past. Analysing thoughts with Self-Awareness, and applying reason is the present. So, live in the present. And good luck. When you realise, like Gary Davis did, that you share more things in common with other human beings than there are differences, you’re already a world citizen.

4)    About adoring Saints. This is egoistic and stupid, if you're just on the receiving end. Saints may inspire you to do something, but putting up a photo of Mother Teresa in your bedroom is not going to help the world, although it may make you feel good. What’s the point? Teresa didn’t sit around wondering when God was going to show himself to her. She just saw helpless and needy people and went out and tried to comfort them. So to practise charity, put your hand into your pocket now. How many coins are there? Ten? OK, take out one tenth of the amount and put it into another pocket. Now take a walk in the street. You’re sure to see a needy person. Don’t even judge them. Don’t wonder what they’ll spend it on. Just give him or her a coin. You have just practised charity for today. Do it again tomorrow. Refine your technique as you go. You’ll eventually understand. Waiting to get something isn't the path. Giving is. 

Edward’s Diary Entry 77: Significant “World Days” I Missed Writing About...

Yes, I continued my practises in August, but I was kept quite busy otherwise... travelling back to Spain, then adapting and making up for time spent elsewhere, then a week of caring for my honey bunny with a bad foot. Now a new routine has been fixed and this morning at 6am I went back to one ritual and then it was off to Bikram Yoga to start the day.

Meanwhile, a whole month has gone by since my last entry, and although I kept more or less up to date on Facebook and the media, I haven’t seen any news about some significant World Days that should have been mentioned.

29 August was the United Nations’ International Day against Nuclear Tests, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “there is an urgent need to end the dangerous impasse on this issue.” If, as we have already established, nuclear weapons must be immediately banned, all new testing must also be immediately halted. A total of over 3,500 tests have already contaminated the Earth quite enough since 16 July 1945. I heard no new about this on 29 August. In fact, a few days later, North  Korea conducted yet another test, and the Western powers are still “thinking about how to deal” with this. The traditional “nuclear powers” did take the first steps some years ago due to public outrage. There have been no atmosphere explosions by the USA since the four in 1963. The UK continued till 1974, as did France with 9 explosions that year. Then China took over and set off one explosion a year till 1980. Total atmospheric explosions in history: 1,558. Underground explosions were more popular, with a total history of some 2,055, with the USA stopping in 1992 with 6 last bangs, France continuing to contaminate till 1996, along with China. In 1998 India and Pakistan had the dubious honour of conducting two underground nuclear explosions each, just in case they had to annihilate each other. Since then, the only nutcase left is DPRK, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the euphemism for Supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s fascist state, which set off an underground explosion in 2006, 2009 and has just done it again this year. Information from https://www.ctbto.org/map/. When will this madness stop?

4 September was “World Government Day”, or Gary Davis Day, because on September 4, 1953, Davis announced from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine the formation of the "World Government of World Citizens" based on 3 "World Laws" — One God (or Absolute Value), One World, and One Humanity. Following this declaration, mandated, he claimed, by Article 21, Section 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he formed the United World Service Authority in New York City as the administrative agency of the new government. Its first task was to design and issue a "World Passport" based on the UN articles. Gary Davis was born Sol Gareth Davis on 27 July 1921, and was an American citizen until 1948, when he renounced his citizenship and gave up his US passport until his death in 2013. He founded the World Service Authority and was its president until his death. He wrote books like “My Country is the World: The Adventures of a World Citizen” (1961); “Passport to Freedom, A Guide for World Citizens.” (1992); “World Government, Ready or Not!” (2003); “Letters To World Citizens.” (2004); “A World Citizen in the Holy Land.” (2001); “Cher Monde, Une Odyssée a travers la planete.” (2005); and “DEAR WORLD, A Global Odyssey.” (2006).

5 September was the UN “International Day of Charity”, and we did hear something about charity on this day, as Mother Teresa, after being beatified in 2003, was canonised as a Saint on the eve of this day because it marked the anniversary of her death in 1997. Whether the charity and mercy message actually came across is another question, as most viewers were more interested in the personality of the Saint that in following her teachings and example. I could not detect any sudden increase in charity in the world the day after her canonisation. As already mentioned extensively on this blog, "charity” is amongst the four main virtures of the 5000-year old document, the Bhagavad Gita: "Fearlessness, Purity of Mind, Perseverance, and Charity”, so we can't let another 5000 years go by without at least trying out some kind of charity, and trying it today better than tomorrow. OK?

Our next big date, as far as “World Days” are concerned, is coming soon - 26 September, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. A dire day, as according to the UN “as of 2015, not one nuclear weapon has been physically destroyed pursuant to a treaty, bilateral or multilateral, and no nuclear disarmament negotiations are underway.” What can we do to promote this day and tell our leaders we do not want nuclear weapons for ourselves or our children or our children’s children or for any future generation? Shall we write a letter to our senator, MP, congressman or whatever? Why are the decisions of the UN falling on deaf ears? Why has the smartest species on this planet invented something so destructive that our own survival has been placed in the balance, and NO GOVERNMENT DOES ANYTHING REASONABLE ABOUT THIS? 

Sculpture of St. George and the Dragon., with the "dragon" being fragments of Soviet SS-20 and
US Pershing nuclear missiles.  Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant