My modest dream

A few days ago, rambling around the Internet, I came across this idyllic Tibetan Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of the reputedly hippie village of Órgiva, in the mountains of Granada, southern Spain. Apart from its remoteness and the beautiful scenery that surrounds it, what enamoured me to this place were the little huts, equipped with "just the bare essentials: bed, meditation seat, altar, shelf, running water, gas stove to heat up meals or tea, wood burning stove, shower and simple toilet", that they rent at an extremely affordable rate to those wishing to do a meditation retreat. [Update 29/10/07: They are actually quite expensive. They've changed their website now, but when I first saw it it made you think that the stated price was per week, when in fact it is per day!] Another thing that I liked was the fact that you can just go on your own, for as long as you like, not as part of a scheduled retreat. You are are not required to attend group celebrations or whatever Buddhist stuff they do. As long as you respect others you're free to live your spirituality as you wish. At least that's what I've understood.

I dream of a place that would be just like that but non-denominational. I mean really non-denominational. A place where there would be no norm from with to deviate, where non-belief, idiosyncratic spirituality and doubt would be not just tolerated, but welcomed wholeheartedly; where I (for this is all about me) could speak my mind and heart out without expecting some enlightened being to save me from my spiritual ignorance. A place where one could find solitude as well as company, where there would perhaps be some group meditations which one would be invited to attend. (Why is it that discipline is so often a essential part of retreats? Is it really a good thing for my spiritual life to be treated like a child at school or a prison inmate only with more obligations?). In this ideal place there would always be someone to talk to, perhaps some kind of resident spiritual counsellor, who wouldn't be delivering wisdom to the ignorant, but providing a warm, accepting and sympathetic ear. There wouldn't be teachers, gurus, hierarchies, truths. Only people, with their yearnings, faith, lack thereof, angst, insights, beliefs, fears, worldviews and feelings. And all of that would be respected and listened to.

I'm not asking for much, am I? Does anyone know of any such place? If not, why don't we create it (apart from not having a penny and not even knowing where to begin)? If you are filthy rich and don't know what to do with your money, why not sponsor my project? We'll look for a nice plot of land in some mountainous area, and we'll build the first humanistic monastery! It would become a sanctuary for those that, while feeling the need to incorporate spirituality into their lives, cannot follow any religions or spiritual teachers any more, only their hearts. Anyone interested? No?

Free will

If the problem with consciousness is how it arises from the physical world, the problem with free will is whether it is even compatible with the laws of physical world. And if the problem with consciousness is what its nature is, the problem with free will is what do we even mean by it. We all take free will for granted: we assume that we are in control of our actions and that we are morally responsible for them. But then the usual assumption of philosophers and scientist is that the physical world is deterministic. That means that for any given state of the universe, if we knew the value of every variable necessary to describe it, or, as Laplace puts it, "all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed", as well as the actual laws of the physical universe, if we fed that into an infinitely large and powerful computer it would be able to calculate with absolute precision every subsequent state of the universe to the tiniest detail. Not only would that hypothetical computer be able to accurately predict the position of such and such galaxies in a millions years, but also the exact movement of the finger of X. pulling the trigger of the gun that will shoot Y., the nerve impulses that will make Z. whisper words of comfort to his friend A. It will predict every crime, every act of love and generosity, every word, every feeling, every effort, every defeat.

Needless to say, that computer cannot possibly be built, but the point is not whether the future is knowable by any intellegence, natural or artificial, but that it is predetermined--already written, as it were. Now, that is not a fact, only an assumption. There is no way we will ever be able to know with certainty whether physical laws alone determine the future. It is assumption, however that most scientists and philosophers take as self-evident reality. Let's join them for a while in their assumption and imagine that we lived in a deterministic universe. Would that imply that we don't actually have free will? Before attempting to provide an answer (which, incidentally, I won't) let's flesh out the problem.

Most of us understand free will as the ability to decide which course of action to take, particularly when faced with situations in which there are conflicting motivations within oneself. That would typically be between self-interest and morality, or between a long term higher good and an immediate lower good. In these situations we feel like we have a choice. Even when the urge to choose the selfish or unwise option is very intense (you are trying to give up smoking but find it impossible to resist the temptation to have another fag) we still feel we have a choice. That is why we call it an urge or temptation, because we have the choice to resist it; otherwise we would call it a reflex. We can always choose whether to fight our base instincts or surrender to them, whether to put in a bit more effort or give up. Even when we surrender, we still have the impression that we could have done otherwise.

That is what we intuitively understand free will to be. However, from a physicalist/determinist perspective what's going on in those situations is not at all a battle of will power (a battle of what power?), but nerve impulses travelling across the brain in strict accordance to the laws of physics; matter and energy mechanistically proceeding along their predetermined course. Cause, effect, cause, effect. Neat, mathematical, inescapable. Whatever you do, fight the battle or give up, it was meant to be, and you couldn't physically have done otherwise, even if you had the impression that you could. Now, this is tricky. Imagine that you do something nasty to somebody, hurt your partner's feelings, behave like an idiot, whatever:

"Why did you do that?" "It was predetermined, just like everything else. I couldn't have done otherwise." "Yes, you could!" "You don't understand. I was physically predetermined to do it!" "You could have chosen no to do it, and then that would be what was predetermined." "That's a logical phallacy." "I don't think so. And even if it was and you were really predetermined to do it, you still have behaved like an arsehole and the least you could do now is apologise." "No I can't. I'm predetermined not to. Can't you see?" "You frigging idiot! If you just apologise now then that'll be pretedermined too! Whatever you do you'll always be able to say it was predetermined, so why not do the predetermined right thing instead of behaving like a predetermined cretin?" "You're being so unfair and judgemental. I would like to apologise, but I can't. All the things I have said to you really were predetermined, as is what I'm saying now. I can't possibly stop the laws of physics determining my thoughts and my actions." "Okay then, you be a predetermined cretin."

Tricky indeed. It sounds reasonable to say "If everything is predetermined there's nothing I can do to change the course of events, so I may just as well stop striving to achieve what is predetermined anyway," whereas it sounds incoherent to say "Knowing that the future is predetermined I will try my hardest to achieve what is already predetermined." One doesn't strive to achieve what is predetermined; that's ridiculous. One strives precisely to have an impact on what would otherwise be the course of things. And you can indeed change the course of things if you try, but the trying and the change are predetermined as well. You are predeterminedly predetermining the future. Does that sound convincing?

We could also say that there is no contradiction between determinism and free will, or that determinism, even if it is true in some sense, is irrelevant to our lives. How can this be? The reason why determinism sounds so depressing is because it seems to divest us of our free will, but that is just one way of looking at it. For free will to exist we should be free to choose, not the physical laws. But what are we? What is the deciding agent in us? Not our toes or our lungs, are they? It is our mind, our personality, our feelings, our thinking. That is what decides, whether or not we believe in determinism. But then thinking is a function performed by the brain, which is physical and abides by the physical laws. It doesn't make sense to say that we are helpless against the neural and, more fundamentally, physical processes that take place in our brains, because we are those processes. (Or are we?)

Nonetheless, if a robot one day said she is depressed because she is powerless against the predeterminedness of the decisions made by her circuitry, we wouldn't tell her she's being stupid and look for the bug in her software that is causing such misperception--not me anyway. On the contrary, we would sympathise with that longing for true freedom, whatever that is, and acknowledge the emerging existential and moral dimension of that computer. Perhaps the moment one feels free or longs for freedom, something new arises, and our existence takes on a new dimension. It seems that to reduce that dimension to the physical is at least misrepresenting it.

So what if the world was not deterministic and we were really, truly, existentially, morally free? Where would our choices come from if not from the physical activity of the brain? We've already discussed that counsciousness can't be convincingly reduced to the physical (convincingly meaning "in a way way that convinces me", of course), and that since we think and talk about consciousness it does influence the physical world. In other words, there is something non-physical, the laws of which we know nothing about, that has an impact in the (allegedly) otherwise physically explainable universe. If consciousness, something that is obviously not physical, and obviously has an impact on the physical realm, exists, then a non-deterministic view of the universe seems plausible. Perhaps free will is not an illusion, in the same way that consciousness, despite being such a philosophical inconvenience, is not an illusion.

But then an interesting problem arises. Imagine that Ralph encounters a situation in which he must make a decision of ethical significance. He, for example, has the chance to steal some money that would buy him a very nice 10mm lens for his camera. After some inner struggle he opted for the unethical course of action, he grabs the money and leaves the scene whistling a tune. Let's now play God: let's grab the remote control of the universe, go back in time to the moment just before Ralph's temptation, and hit "play". What would he do this time? If we repeat the experiment several times and Ralph always walks away with the money in his pocket, it would seem that he was predetermined to do it--he couldn't have chosen otherwise. But what if he sometimes nicked the money and sometimes didn't? Would that proof the existence of free will or that of chaos? I don't know about you, but if I look at it like this I almost find determinism more reassuring than the alternative (indeterminism, undeterminism, antideterminism?). It seems to me, however, that there's something fishy about this thought experiment. It sounds way too simplistic. And the moment we are playing God in this manner, replaying poor Ralph's predicament over and over again, free will kind of goes down the toilet anyway.

So what do I believe about free will then? This might sound like a cop-out, but the answer that I find more intellectually honest and more spiritually meaningful is that the truth about free will (as well as other existential issues) probably lies beyond what our logical minds will ever be able understand or verify. There are reasons to be optimistic and pessimistic, to believe in one thing or the other, but I think that if you believe in a theory that exaplains free will away you are clinging to illusory certainties.

If it can't save everyone, it can't save me.

One of the things I like about Buddhism is that it offers a clear and simple method for spiritual growth. No matter what ups and downs you're going through, the only thing you have to do is meditate, thereby calming your mind, purifying it, and gaining understanding of the true nature of reality, and, if you work hard enough and happen to believe in it, attaining nirvana. A simple and elegant answer for everything, but not for everyone. What about those who can't meditate? Children, people suffering from serious mental disorders or neurological conditions, people in great physical or emotional pain. Buddhism has nothing to offer them (apart from the idea that their circumstances are a product of accumulated karma, but that's too insulting to even consider). What does Buddhism have to say to a committed meditator in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, which will eventually make him unable to even understand what Buddhism means? "Don't worry, everything passes, you'll be dead in a few years time"?

I cannot possibly settle down for a set of beliefs that bestows meaning upon my life and those of the mentally fit while leaving the rest of humanity to drown in the absurdity of existence. I'm not into monstrous gods that save some people and damn others. I need spirituality to make me believe (okay, let's be optimistic: make me realise) that the life of every single human being is worth living and has a meaning. It often seems to me that the only way to ensure that is to believe in an afterlife in which you would be taken by the hand and ushered into a place of unfailing love, where all your wounds would heal and you just wouldn't know what to do with that much happiness. That's the only compensation that's close to good enough to make up for the tragedy of a man tortured to death, or a young girl raped by an entire platoon, or a woman disfigured for life by the acid poured on her by her husband, or a man who sees his children starve to death, or a nun who is repeatedly penetrated with an electric cattle prod, or a boy whose hand is hacked off by another boy's machete, or a woman buried up to her waist and stoned to death for adultery. If there isn't an answer for these people, something that makes their lives and deaths truly meaningful, all the spiritual practices in the world are only a collection of hollow techniques to generate some warm, fuzzy feelings that we naively take to confirm the idiotic belief that everything's hunky dory with the universe.

I annoys me when some people say that it's only through our ignorance that we bring suffering upon ourselves, or when they (e.g. Alan Watts) tell us that the real nature of the universe is playful and we're just taking it too seriously. I don't know, I have some trouble with the idea that Auswitch is the universe being playful. We could also enlighten this man by telling him that he should take a more light-hearted approach to life. Preposterous ideas aside, tragedy is only too real. A spirituality that can't acknowledge that and weep for humanity doesn't deserve my respect. This is an issue to which Christianity provides an unlikely but comforting answer: although the purpose of suffering remains a mystery, God himself chose to experience it himself in an rather extreme form, as if to reassure us that it does have a meaning, even if we don't understand it yet. I know, I know ... That's just my own interpretation. What Christianity actually says is that God, incarnate in Jesus, let himself be crucified to pay for our sins, which amounts to saying that God killed himself to appease himself. God couldn't be that dumb, could he?

So it seems that I have two options. One is to believe in an afterlife in which a loving God (or some other benevolent being or beings) that would make everything okay, wipe every tear, soothe every pain, and ultimately make us understand the transcendent purpose of this seeming nightmare. And the other one is ... I can't remember.

The social and the spiritual

Between the ages of 18 and 21, when I was still a Christian, I used to go to a church that was unusually liberal (for instance, sexuality wasn't even an issue) and had a thriving youth "scene". It was organised in different groups, each made up of some ten members plus two facilitators (one male, one female), that held weekly meetings, most of the time with a rather loose agenda. Different groups would get together for celebrations, prayers and other events. Sometimes, notably in Easter, we (maybe a hundred people or so) would go to some retreat house in the mountains and participate in all kinds of celebrations and group activities, each more sentimental than the previous one, where the success of the activity was measured in terms of the emotions they elicited (the more people that cried, the better). Everyone was kind and touchy-feely. Everyone was on a spiritual high. Then ones that were more over the top, the ones that most uninhibitedly displayed their love to Christ (and to everyone else for that matter), the ones that shouted "hallelujah!" and prayed as if God was literally there in front of them, those were the most admired (or secretly despised for their hypocrisy).

Rituals, symbols, physical affection, hormones, nature, intimacy, shared faith, all blended into a state of exaltation that everyone tried in vain to cling on to after the experience was over. For many of us it wasn't really about Jesus. Perhaps about God. But in any case what really moved us, what made God come alive, was the intensity of the social experience. A few years later I went on several four or five-day personal growth workshops (as part of my training as a psychotherapist) and I was struck by their resemblance to those Easter celebrations. Likewise, I later realised how those groups at the church were clearly inspired by the way therapeutic groups (self-help, encounter groups, etc.) typically operate. In retrospect, I think what I got from that church was an invaluable therapeutic experience, where spirituality wasn't just the excuse, but an essential part of the experience.

Certainly most religions wouldn't encourage this kind of overemotional approach, but almost all of them involve powerful group experiences. Hindu festivals can congregate absurd numbers of people (70 million people attended the 2001 Kumbh Mela). Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca gathers some two million Muslims every year. The pope can easily gather one or two million in any of his trips round the world, although as a lapsed Catholic I find them terribly dull. These are overwhelming and exhilarating experiences for the participants. The sense of communion, of being part of something infinitely larger than yourself, must be deeply touching. Football fans probably get a somewhat similar kick out of cheering their team on the stadium along with thousands of fellow supporters. Not that I'm comparing God to Wayne Roonie, but the experiences created around them have elements in common.

On a much smaller scale, followers of most religions regularly go to their temples to participate in collective rituals. That helps them to keep their faith alive, or their brainwashing in place, or their conscience clean, or their reputation intact, or their place in heaven secured. But let's leave religious indoctrination and enslavement to one side. I'd like to focus on free spirituality, the one you choose in a free and informed decision, not out of fear, coercion or inertia. (I'm aware that the difference is not always clear cut.)

Religious practices are much more powerful when shared with others. For instance, meditation is usually easier and more rewarding when done in a group. To begin with, you don't have to rely on self-discipline; the group expects you to take your practice seriously, and your social instinct will make you live up to that in order not to disappoint the group. You're also more convinced of what you're doing: by meditating in a group you strengthen your sense of belonging to that group, which in turn strengthens your shared beliefs and commitment. In other words, the group validates itself. But apart from this somewhat sceptical analysis (I'm sorry, I can't help it), meditating with other people does indeed feel different. As I said above, it is a more powerful experience. Why is that?

We're social creatures. That's not just sociable or able to socialise. We simply cannot conceive of a life without other people--it would be unbearable, meaningless. Our psychological life is structured around our social bonds and needs. They are fundamental to our existence, they create meaning in our lives, they define us as individuals. It seems that for most of us the social informs the spiritual as well as vice versa. As with emotions, I distrust those that look down on social needs, or that oppose them to spirituality. A good example of that is the radical Catholic sect Opus Dei, whose members are warned against "special friendships", for they are "detrimental to charity with others" and "end up in true slavery" (that is the founder, St Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, quoted here [in Spanish]). Two friends of mine are former members of that very sect (now one is a Marxist and the other one is gay--woohoo!), and they confirmed that real friendships (that is to say the ones with no ulterior motives) indeed had to be kept on the quiet. What kind of madness is that? What a perverse way of turning vulnerable people into tormented freaks! But anyway, didn't I say that I was only going to talk about free spirituality?

The idea would be to let the social inform the spiritual and vice versa, though not in a pre-determined from-the-top-down way, but in accordance with the actual experience of the individuals involved. I personally resent not having the opportunity to share my spirituality with others--my oversensitivity to bullshit (pardon my French) in its multiple forms makes it difficult for me to find suitable spiritual companions. A group of spiritual sceptics is a strange-sounding idea after all, but I think a necessary one as well. It's about time we freed spirituality from rigid traditional structures and hierarchies and gave it back to the individual. It's about time we brought spirituality into the 21st century. There must be some people out there who share these ideas, but I'm afraid they've all moved to California.

The emotional and the spiritual

You sometimes hear people speak as if spirituality and emotions were, or should be, two separate things, as if emotions were even a hurdle to overcome (or, euphemistically, an "opportunity"). You know, all that enslaving clinging and aversion ... I, on the contrary, think that most of what we call spirituality has an emotional motivation behind it. When I say emotional I'm not just referring to the usual five or six basic emotions (anger, sadness, joy, etc.) but also to the countlesss subtler ones, such as trust, admiration, awkwardness, expectation, and to all those intricate emotional states that can't be described with a ready-made label. As I understand it, the spiritual search is a response to disillusionment with life, longing for meaning, helplessness in the face of suffering, bereavement, existential restlessness, curiosity, etc., all which are, at least in some way, emotions. It is also concerned with achieving certain mental states, like inner peace, acceptance, reconciliation, trust, compassion, awe, adoration or bliss, that are also of an emotional nature.

Even if you're practising meditaton with the aim of developing equanimity, cultivating a mental state above emotions (or is is below?), both your commitment to the practice and the benefits you expect it will yield have a strong emotional component. (In a sense, emotion and motivation ar often aspects of the same reality. Emotion: anger; associated motivation: punching and kicking. Emotion: embarrassment; associated motivation: hiding under the table.) For instance, imagine that you get up early in the morning in time for your daily meditation session, but you're terribly sleepy and just want to snuggle back into bed. While you're considering whether to give in to temptation you hear the resounding voice of Dharma urging you to stick to your commitment to the practice, giving you an anticipatory taste of guilt. You consider the alternatives, choose to be good, sit on your cushion and sleep-meditate with a clean conscience. The emotional dimension of this simple event is quite clear. And as to the results, you're expecting the practice to lead to a happier, more fulfulling life (the stated aim of the Buddhist path is to erradicate suffering), which is obviously an emotional goal.

Emotions are what makes us human, what ultimately gives meaning to (or takes it away from) our lives. A spirituality that claims to be above the emotional, that looks down on emotional needs, sounds grotesque and self-delusional. For example:

[I]f your partner is also a Vipassana meditator, whenever passion arises you both observe it. This is neither suppression nor free licence. By observing you can easily free yourself of passion. At times a couple will still have sexual relations, but gradually they develop toward the stage in which sex has no meaning at all. This is the stage or real, natural celibacy, when not even a thought of passion arises in the mind. This celibacy gives a joy far beyond any sexual satisfaction.

(S.N. Goenka in The Art of Living, by William Hart, chapter 5)

The comment I pencilled below that paragraph some three years ago reads "BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS". I haven't changed my mind since. Natural celibacy? Celibacy giving joy? Sex having no meaning? Give me a break! Another example from Goenka:

[H]ow can I go to a baseball game or a football game and not react?

You will act! Even in a football game you will act, not react, and you will find that you are really enjoying it. A pleasure accompanied by the tension of reaction is no real pleasure. When the reaction sops, the tension desappears, and you can really start to enjoy life.

So I can jump up and down and yell hooray?

Yes, with equanimity. You jump with equanimity. [handwritten comment: "COME ON ..."]

What do I do if my team looses?

Then you smile and say "Be happy!" Be happy in every situation!

This seems to me the basic point.

Yes! [handwritten comment: "LUDICROUS"]

(ibid., chapter 7)

And I wonder, is it okay to react to your girlfriend leaving you, to the departure of a loved one, to the diagnosis of an incurable cancer, to a terrorist attack? Or do I also have to "act", smile and be happy? What a whole load of BS. Emotions are there for a reason! They are a precious gift! Unless it gets you into trouble (in the case of anger, for instance), there's nothing wrong with feeling emotions and acting (or reacting, if there is any difference) from them. And unless you are going through an emotional rough patch that demands some action to break self-defeating patterns, there's nothing wrong with letting emotions sweep over you, be they pleasurable, painful, lustful, joyous, sympathetic or otherwise. By just observing them from ten feet above the ground and never "reacting", in the hope that your passions will eventually subside and make way for the real, blissful, equanimous, enlightened you, you will turn into a self-deluded arrogant cretin! I've met many of them: people acting enlightened, ignoring, misinterpreting or fabricating their feelings, hiding behind an unconvincing and irritating persona. What a sad way of generating a greater pathology than the one you were running away from in the first place.

Emotions are what gives human existence all its depth. Without them friendship would be a habit, music would be a succesion of notes, sex would be a biological function, death would be a formality, stories would be detached factual accounts, wars would be a complication, life would be a period of time, spirituality would be a branch of philosophy. So then, emotions or no emotions?

The aesthetics of spirituality

I am a Hindu because of the sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one's arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of the flames of arati lamps circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word—faith.

(Life of Pi, by Yann Martel)

First let me get this out of the way: I'm not a Hindu because the caste system is alive and kicking, because millions have been killed by Hindu-Muslim violence, because estimates of the prevalence of bride burning cases in India (the dowry paid by their families was deemed insufficient by the grooms') range from 600 to 25.000 cases every year. (Not that most religions would fare any better, anyway.) And yet Pi's reason for being a Hindu (he's also a Muslim and a Christian, all at the same time, for similar reasons) strike a chord with me.

If there is a place where spirituality is palpable that is Varanasi, the holy city of Hinduism. Temples of all shapes and sizes round every corner, half-naked saddhus puffing away at their chillums, crumbling buildings that look several centuries older than they actually are, whiffs of incense, an undecipherable maze of allyways, cripples lying about waiting for death to take them with her, funeral processions that will run you over if you're not careful, monkeys causing trouble in the balconies overhead, the sound of bells, stacks of firewood ready for the next cremation, crackling radios playing classic bollywood tunes, cupboard-sized shops displaying religious paraphernalia along with toiletries, the ubiquitous sacred cows, women washing their laundry in the Ganges only metres away from a funeral pyre, an enormous Coca-Cola sign as the backdrop for dozens of pilgrims bathing and praying in their holy river, ...

I, like Pi, cherish the aesthetic experience of religion while not giving a fig about (or positively rejecting) the doctrine. And it's not just Hinduism and Varanasi. The simultaneous call to prayer of several muezzins in their respective minarets in the old quarter of Marrakech, the pitch of their one-note songs rising slowly but constantly, intermingling in a random atonal counterpoint, the erratic direction of the breeze making them softer or louder. The uninterrupted chanting (listen to it live!) of the Guru Granth Sahib (the holy scripture of Sikhism) inundating the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Converging strings of tattered prayers flags spreading mantras across the Himalayas. Om mani padme hum carved on hundreds upon hundreds of stones piled up along the roads of Ladahk. Fierce, voluptuous and brighly-coloured goddesses. Tibetan monks in sleeveless robes singing otherwordly chants. The reverberating silence of an empty cathedral. Tombstones worn out and polished by thousands of feet down the centuries.

Sounds, smells, atmospheres, mythology, architecture, clothes, iconography, rituals, calligraphy. You might think that these things are not spirituality but mere distractions. But then, what's left of spirituality if you strip it of aesthetics? Would people go to meditation retreats if they were held in office blocks? Would they be attracted to Buddhism if Tibetan lamas wore suit and tie? Would they respect sadhus if they ate at McDonald's? Would there be statues of the Buddha all over the place if he was depicted sitting on a chair? Would Krishna be as popular if he traded his flute for a saxophone? I suspect not.

We must be aware of the importance of the sensual vis-a-vis the spiritual, and of what is it that we're looking for. It's not that we are into spirituality (those of us who are) just for the aesthetics that surrounds it. If that was the case we would go to a museum and not bother with the rest. We yearn for transcendence, but not from the physical per se, but from the ordinary, and the sensual can be our best ally in that pursuit. Non-duality might (or might not) be the ultimate goal, but give me some good old Hindu temple with its ancient gods carved in ancient stone, the pure sound of a singing bowl in an otherwise quite meditation hall, the golden glow of dozens of butter lamps, and you can keep non-duality for yourself. What am I getting out of all this? Mystery, warmth, awe, stillness. Here and now. Free. Satisfaction guaranteed. Who cares about enlightenment? As far as I'm concerned it might not even exist! (That's half tongue-in-cheek.)

Consciousness

Consciousness

/ˈkɒnʃəsnəs/

The very word has an irresistible aesthetic appeal, doesn't it? Like a Western version of ॐ (that is Aum, in case your browser is not rendering it properly).

Consciousness is quite simply the most amazing thing that exists, and also the weirdest. Everything in the universe (galaxies, planets, flowers, cows, microwave ovens, life, chemical reations) is physical and can be explained in physical terms, or at least it looks like we will be able to explain it physically at some point in the future. Everything except consciousness, that is, and some of the stuff associated with it, like intentionality. We really don't have a clue what this strange property of brains is all about. We know that apparently you need a working brain to generate conscious experience, and that's about it. As to how the brain generate conscious experience we have no idea whatsoever. To be rigorous (and on this particular point most scientists aren't), we don't even know whether it is the brain that actually generates it. (How does a TV generate the nine o'clock news? How does a wardrobe generate moths? How does the night generate stars?)

But our ignorance goes further than that. Not only do we not know how consciousness is generated or how it comes to be associated with brains; we don't even know what consciousness is, what it's made of, what its properties are. We just know that we have it, and trust that everyone else does as well, for we can only be certain of our own consciousness. We cannot explain it in terms of anything but itself. If you have been born blind, all the information I could give you about the physics of light and the neural processes involved in seeing wouldn't bring you any closer to knowing what seeing feels like. Describing the experience itself wouldn't help either. (There is a famous thought experiment by Frank Jackson called "Mary's room" that makes a similar point, although I've always found it a bit confusing. Interestingly, the author later rejected his own argument.)

Consciousness is irreducible. The kind of physical laws we currently know offer no hope whatsoever of ever being able to account for it. It seems to be out of the physical world, to be an altogether different thing. Perhaps, contrary to what is assumed, it isn't even generated by physical processes. Perhaps we're floating in a sea of pre-existing consciousness that crystallises around certain physical structures imbuing them with subjectivity. Perhaps consciousness is some kind of substance that doesn't abide by the same spatio-temporal laws as matter and energy, and cannot possibly be apprehended through them because it manifests only partially in the known dimensions of the universe. Who knows?

Apart from being an utter mystery, consciousness is our most fundamental reality, the only thing we can be completely sure of (that's what Descartes meant when he said cogito ergo sum) and also what makes us and the universe truly alive. Just imagine a universe without subjective experience, with no one in it to perceive it. Imagine human beings (if we could still call them so) with no consciousness. They'd be as good as dead. It is for a reason that these hypothethical people with no consciousness are called zombies in the philosophy of mind. As for the universe as a whole, consciousness could be construed as the way it has developed to know itself.

The issue of the existence of subjective experience, sometimes referred to as the "hard problem" of consciousness, divides the philosophical community in several camps (not so much the scientific community, where the philosophical subtleties are usually overlooked). There is no such thing as a moderate, tentative, provisional view on the hard problem. People tend to be passionate believers in their respective positions, as is my case. There are reductive physicalists (consciousness is the physical state of the brain, full stop), non-reductive physicalists (consciouness is physical but it isn't reducible to the physical activity of the brain; it supervenes it), epiphenomenalists (consciousness is a by-product of brain activity with no causal role), eliminative materialists (subjective experience doesn't exist, it is some kind of misconception [crikey!]), substance dualists (mind and matter are two different substances; not a very popular view nowadays), ...

A very interesting consideration to make concerns the causal link between consciousness and the physical world. The vast majority of philosophers would ridicule the idea that consciousness has any kind of causal role. It would, at best, be an epiphenomenon mirroring the physical state of the brain. The physical world is causally closed: anything that happens in the physical world is caused by something else happening in the physical world. Consciousness doesn't make any difference: it is pretty much irrelevant, a nice but useless bonus. In other words, if consciousness didn't exist in our universe, everything else would be exactly the same as it is. This leads to the logical possibility of the existence of the aforementioned philosophical zombies: people that would be just like us, except they wouldn't have subjective experience. They would be physiologically happy, structurally sad, functionally angry. They would talk about philosophy, listen to music and fall in love, but they wouldn't actually feel a thing. They would be like machines or computer programs. That's some grim science fiction scenario, but it is logically possible. The weirdest thing is that those zombies, as they are identical to us in every physical respect, would also be baffled (funtionally, that is) by their having consciousness (which they don't have). They would write books and blogs about it, and they would even wonder (again, functionally, like a computer program) about the possibility of there being people like them except with no consciousness (not being able to know they don't actually have it), i.e. zombies (not know that that's exactly what they are), and they would regard that as a grim science fiction scenario.

That is mad, but it is the logical conclusion of most philosophers' position. Many of them reject the validity of zombie thought experiments. Some wouldn't even let you carry on after saying "if consciousness didn't exist in our universe", objecting that consciousness as you understand it already doesn't exist. In any event, the most widespread position is that our thinking that we are conscious has nothing to do with our actually being conscious. David Chalmers is the best known advocate of this position, which is a shame, because he's one of the cleverest chaps in the field of consciousness studies, but this idea is completely bonkers. He suggests that our being conscious and our thinking that we're conscious must have their roots in the same processes, that give rise to both consciousness and the idea that we are conscious. The problem with that is how can we be sure we are conscious? That argument might well have been proposed by a zombie! I could be a zombie and I wouldn't know! Why not do away with consciousness altogether then? Consciousness poses an impossible problem to our conception of the universe. It is something that we would think we have regardless of whether or not we actually have it. There are two possibilities then: 1. we really are conscious, and the problem of explaining consciosness remains, or 2. we think we are conscious, but consciousness doesn't exist, so we only have to explain why we're fooling ourselves (which is something we do all the time anyway). Why would a philosopher choose to believe the much more complicated first possibility? For fun?

My view, somehow more traditional, is that we think we're conscious because we actually are, and if we weren't we wouldn't be able to understand what consciousness is. In other words, zombies wouldn't be able to understand the concept of consciousness. That implies that consciousness makes a difference in the physical universe (we think about it, talk about it, write about it) which is absolutely taboo in today's science and philosophy, but to me it is so self-evident that there is no way I would capitulate to the zeitgeist. The only "professional thinker" I've come across that holds this view is Avshalom Elitzur. He's not very well know at all but it is worth listening to what he has to say on the subject. You can check out his article "Consciousness makes a difference: A reluctant dualist’s confession" (you can't get more self-explanatory than that!).

I hope it is clear what's so special about consciousness from a philosophical standpoint. But what does it have to do with spirituality? To begin with, the conscious mind is where all the really important stuff happens: joy, sadness, love, pleasure, beauty. Everything that's relevant to us ultimately relates to a conscious mental state. All our motivation, no matter how shallow or deep, derives from the pursuit of certain kinds of mental states and the avoidance of others. Then the question arises of what's left when you strip consciousness of its usual objects (through the practice of meditation) or whether consciousness can exist with no object. You can become aware of ever subtler kinds of objects. You usually begin with your breathing, thoughts and coarse physical sensations. Then you see behind that and become acquainted with sensations you had never really paid attention to (one doesn't often pay attention to the feeling of wanting to open one's eyes, the feeling of a posture, or the feeling of "what am I doing this for"). You then go beyond that and get to a feeling of just being, of presence, a kind of inner aura of indeterminate consciousness. It is a calm and mysterious place. But you can get even beyond that. Or so they say. You can go deeper and deeper and eventually "penetrate to the ultimate ground state of consciousness, prior to the conceptual demarcations of subject and object, mind and matter, and even existence and nonexistence. This primordial consciousness, is metaphorically described as being empty and luminous, and its has never been sullied by afflictive imbalances of any kind." ("A Science of Consciousness: Buddhism (1), the Modern West (0)", by Alan Wallace) In other words, you blow you mind out in a way that makes everything fall into place and you understand everything that needs to be understood. That's where I have to take their word for it, and at the same time be sceptical about it. In any event, this consciousness thing is cool beyond words, and everything seems to suggest that playing with it is the way forward.

The belief in God as an act of ontological poetry

How pedantic does that sound! Let me explain.

"You are a part of God." Many intelligent people (among them my friend Elena, who inspired this post through her no-nonsense / blank-stare attitude towards spirituality) would think that's a bunch of crap. Now, if you decide that God is just another name for the universe, and you're obviously part of the universe, you're therefore also a part of God. You see?

"We are God knowing itself." Again, we decide that the universe equals God. We are part of the universe; therefore we are a part of God. We know and perceive things, which are a part of the universe, and therefore part of God. In conclusion, we are a part of God knowing and perceiving a part of God, i.e. we are God knowing itself.

"God is the reason why the universe exists." Note that I'm not saying that God created the universe! If there is a universe it seems reasonable to hypothesize that there is a reason why it exists, which I craftily decide to call God. That was easy!

"God is love." The same thing again. Love exists; I choose to think of all the love in the world as a whole and call it God. Love is God, God is love. Any problem? That reminds me that some years ago I came up with the idea that perhaps God was some kind of transpersonal entity that was made up of every individual consciousness, the whole being more than the sum of its parts. I'm sure someone has written about that.

"But why would you choose to call the universe God in the first place? Why not just call it the universe? What is the point of calling things something else?" protested my friend. And then it occurred to me that calling the universe God is doing ontological poetry. You're saying the same thing, only trasmuted by a sleight of hand into something spiritual. Then the universe becomes something you can worship and God becomes tangible. You can take ontological poetic licence as far as you like: there is a point where you start dreaming up Shivas, Vishnus and Avalokiteshvaras. Where you draw the line is up to you. I would say that as long as you're aware that what you're doing is poetry you're safe.