Spiritual – Years Of Being

Perceptual Ontology

I recently read “Beyond Biocentrism”, by noted physician Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. It’s not particularly well-written, employing a style that is decidedly “populist science”, and making those kinds of deductive leaps that sort of waves the hands and implies the authors either don’t have hard evidence, or don’t want to lose readers trying to explain it. Still, the whole premise is one that has always appealed to me, so it was easy to look past that.

The premise? A sort of mashup of the strong anthropic principle together with the idea that we actually create reality, that the universe exists due to our conscious and unconscious participation in the process. The anthropic principle, for those unfamiliar with it, suggests that the universe has a set of independent constants with values that, if they were only very slightly different, would make life impossible. These are constants as disparate as the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the fine-structure nuclear constant, the strength of weak and strong force, and the like. As the book’s title suggests, the authors believe that the universe depends on life to exist, and not the other way around. That existence and consciousness are necessarily interdependent and intertwined.

As interesting as that is, it is set of notions that I have long considered and been interested in, and in fact think highly likely. The reason I am writing this essay is to present a new idea that I had not thought about before reading it in Beyond Biocentrism. Let me explain.

Imagine walking through a city park, or hiking in the woods. Unless it’s late autumn or winter, what is the main color that you experience? Green of course, in a wide range of shades and hues, but basically green. And why do we see all this green? Because all those leaves are green, you answer. And why are they green? Anyone who took high school biology knows that it is due to the chlorophyll present in these leaves, a substance quietly and continuously converting sunlight into stored energy, the sugars and starches that form the bedrock of the entire food chain on this planet. So, it’s the green chlorophyll that creates this green panorama.

But wait, what does it mean to say chlorophyll is somehow “green”? Here’s a funny thing: chlorophyll is everything but green. In fact, chlorophyll absorbs every color of the spectrum other than green. Green is rejected, it’s the color chlorophyll doesn’t use, and so it is the color that is reflected back to our eye, and so we see green. That is what all color perception is: seeing the wavelengths that are reflected rather than absorbed from all the substances in our view.

But wait further. What exactly is “green”? And I’m not talking about the old conundrum of “is the color I perceive as green is the same color someone else sees?” No, the question here is much deeper than whether we all perceive the same colors. Because, green is something more fundamental than a “color”. It is a set of wavelengths, a set of frequencies associated with electromagnetic waves. What arrives on the rods and cones of our eyeballs is not a color, but electromagnetic waves that produce chemical and electrical responses in those rods and cones.

But an electromagnetic wave has no color per se. It is a continuously varying electric field propagated perpendicular to a continuously varying magnetic wave, traveling at the speed of light. In a very real sense, it is not anything at all. Certainly it has no inherent color. To say it another way, there is no color at all “out there” in the world. Whatever color (and shape and texture, etc.) we experience is all constructed within us, within our brain and our consciousness.

This is a deeply profound realization, once you understand the full implication. Look out the window or around the room. Everything you see is not ”there”, at least not in the way you see it. This is not to say there is nothing out there; you walk into a wall, you will experience the solid wall (but more about that later). But what it means is that everything you experience is experienced internally, within the confines of your brain and consciousness. There is a complete representation of the world inside your brain, and that is the ONLY representation you can experience.

There are no colors “out there”, only invisible electromagnetic waves. There are no “smells” out there, only odorless molecules that generate an chemical and electrical response in olfactory neurons. There are no “sounds” out there, only compression waves traveling through the air that create chemical and electrical responses in auditory nerves, which are translated into the sounds and speech we experience. Even touch, which would seem to involve those solid objects that are out there, ends up being a set of nerve impulses that our brains and consciousness translate into “cloth” or “skin” or “smooth” or “rough” or even “a punch” or “a bump”. Everything that we experience is a complicated translation of sense perceptions into images and other constructs, that only exist within our brains.

(This seems a good place to point out that, even those solid objects we all admit are definitely “out there” are entities that we never actually come in contact with. No finger ever actually pressed a keyboard. In the nanoscopic world at the boundaries of physical objects, it is ultimately electric fields that repulse each other. No molecules in your finger ever actually touched molecules in the keyboard. Though that is admittedly splitting a very fine hair :).

The takeaway from all of this is kind of mind-blowing, at least for me. It is that there is nothing in my experience that has an intrinsic quality: there is no color, nor shape, nor sound, nor smell nor tactile essence in the world I experience. All of those attributes are supplied by my brain, and realized in my consciousness. The external world supplies only physical modulations in a variety of mediums: EM waves, sound waves, molecules, field interactions. This is not to say that those modulations are non-existent and can somehow be ignored. Radiation can kill, sound waves can deafen, molecules can poison, field interactions can pierce and maim. The brain and body can, and will, die and decompose.

Consciousness? Well, that’s another thing altogether. And the subject of another essay at another time.

The Way We Were Who We Were

My high School class (Cullman High, Cullman, Alabama: 1969) will be having our 50th reunion this summer. That fact starkly stands before me as an ultimately sobering thought. Life has its “odometer” moments: turning 21, 30, 50, 60. And one’s 50th high school reunion jumps right up there like a giant neon sign on life’s highway. Just doing the math gives one pause to consider all the water that’s passed under all those bridges, including the ones I burned behind me.

I’ve been designated as the “technical guru” for a group of people who, by and large, preceded by about 10 years that cohort that became comfortable with computers, either by growing up with them, or being forced to adapt to them. My classmates generally missed that bus. I am the outlier: for a variety of reasons, many accidental, my career path lead me right out on the bleeding edge of technology. I spent 35 years at Intergraph, a company that has been pushing technical boundaries in computer graphics since 1969 (it was a coincidence they started when I graduated from high school. Or was it? Gibbs (NCIS) Rule 39. Look it up).

Anyway, as almost the sole person in my class who actually knows how all this stuff works, I took it upon myself to build a fairly involved web site for our 40th reunion. That magic was highly appreciated by my less computer literate classmates (“any sufficiently advanced tehnology is indistinguishable from magic to the uninitiated” – Arthur C. Clarke, more or less). So much so that I was prevailed upon to update the effort for our 50th (“No good deed goes unpunished.” – Wicked). In so doing, I decided to make better quality images from my senior annual. Which brings me at long last to the crux of my essay.

As I went through the process of scanning each page from the Senior section, then cutting and adjusting the individual photos, I could not help but reflect on those faces, faces from 50 years ago, many of which I never saw again after leaving those “hallowed halls.” Oh, there were several who were good friends, and not as many who remained good friends: life sends us down whatever paths it will, and divergence is almost guaranteed to some degree. But there were many faces I never really knew, names that had never been imprinted on my mind, people whose lives had never really even crossed mine, not then, nor in the intervening years.

I am keenly aware that high school is in many ways no longer remotely comparable to the way it was in 1969. Beyond the bedrock of how and what things are taught, the norms and mores of teenage life cannot be more drastically different when today’s youth go to high school than when the Ancient Ones (ie, me and my cohorts) attended school. Music, language, pasttimes… there is likely no aspect of modern teenage life that I would understand. And likely be astonished by. Hell, the cell phone alone has forever redefined not only teenage life, but even what it means to be a social entity on this planet.

Nevertheless, I would be willing to wager a considerable sum that one aspect of high school life is still in effect. Groups still form, cliques coalesce, exclusion exists. That is basic human nature. As is the concomitant cruelty that teenagers so easily and carelessly inflict on each other.

My point is that this eternal social dynamic was obviously also in effect in 1969. We all gravitated into our social circles, orbiting around each other, obeying an implicit hierarchy of “coolness” and awareness, and all trying hard to present a worldly knowledge that we were all stumbling around trying to learn. But the hard rules of cliqueishness too often raised impenetrable walls between “Us” and “Them”, however us and them were defined.

And so, in the three years I attended Cullman High, I only partially knew so many of my fellow stumblers. I may have never shunned people (I pray to God I did not), but then I never went out of my way to engage them either. The Comfort Zone of the Clique is a powerful insulation, and nothing ever happened to push me out of that zone.

Now, I am looking at all those pictures, closely. Age may not bring wisdom, but I do believe it has given me an awareness of Intelligence and Awareness when I see it someone’s face. The eyes, really. But all those decades ago, like everyone else, I only saw superficial exteriors. And I missed so much. I can see in so many of those faces in my annual the Light that I have learned to recognize and treasure. The glimmer of clarity and awareness that signal real curiosity and awareness.

Now it is five decades further down everyone’s world line. The people in those pictures have all gone on to become whatever life lead them to be. I know, without knowing the specifics, that for far too many, their path lead to some form of extinguishing that Light. Life is long. Life is hard. It is not fair, and circumstances too often simply beat down the human spirit until it can do nothing but wake up every day and go to sleep every night. On automatic.

Some will have gone on to do great things, creative things. They are the ones in whom that Light I see in those photographs never died, but instead blossomed and burned brightly. There will be some who have made a life of giving care and comfort and solace. There will be many (most?) who will have turned in the end to a deep form of religion, thinking themselves in personal communion with God and Jesus (this is Alabama, and therefore satori is much less likely). By the same calculus, it is likely many (most?) will even be Trump supporters. My own bias leads me to believe that those individuals will have been the ones whom life beat down the most. But who can say? The human animal is nothing if not a walking mass of contradictions.

The lesson, learned too late for almost everyone but the saintly and truly spiritual, is to somehow overcome the willful stupidity that we adopt so early and so easily. To recognize the Potential and Inner Mounting Flame that burns in people and places where we do not believe it can. And to not ignore it when we feel it.

“I Only Want To Say” – NBC’s Superstar

I anticipated NBC’s live production of Jesus Christ Superstar with some definite trepidation. Oh, there was never any doubt I would watch it. I bought the album when it came out, back there as a freshman in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama. Heck, I wore out the grooves on that album, knew every lyric. Learned the riff to “Heaven On Their Minds” and played it ad nauseum. I even played Pontius Pilate in a production at Giles Heritage Theatre. Screaming “Die if you want to/ You innocent puppet!” was incredibly cathartic. My band Bimini Road even played several Superstar songs at a gig one night. The reviews were mixed. “Daring choice.” “Very enthusiastic rendition”.

So there was no doubt I would watch. But I confess, my expectations were severely inhibited by NBC’s track record on these live productions. The very first one also attempted to deliver one of my long time cherished favorites, one that went even deeper into my youthful psyche. NBC’s kinescope airing of Peter Pan was an annual Christmas season event for me growing up. It provided me with a lifelong philosophical underpinning: “Never Grow Up/ Never grow up/ Never grow up/ Not me!” More than that, the incredible songs sung by Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard and the rest of the cast never failed to bring the lump to my throat, the misty tearing up in my eyes. And when Peter tells the adult Wendy she cannot go with him back to Neverland, because “you’re all grown up”… even writing this now, I have the same emotional reaction. To have never lost the innocence is such a powerful hope. And yes, I played Hook/Mr/ Darling as an adult, and yes, I stole every nuance I could recall from Cyril.

“‘Tisn’t fair! I say it as though it were my last breath – it isn’t fair! Pan, who and what art thou?”

“I am youth. I am joy. I am freedom!”

But NBC butchered Peter Pan. I couldn’t even watch it to the end. It was sterile, and nobody in the production got it. They made it all about themselves, and missed the point of eternal youth. I didn’t even give Sound Of Music a chance. Watched Hairspray, after the fact, and found it to be quite good. But all in all, I felt apprehensive.

I can now safely attest, along with essentially everyone else in the world, that NBC definitely got it right with Superstar. The adjective “stunning” is not hyperbole. This was an outstanding production in every regard. The talent was amazing, the technical aspects were amazing, the music was amazing. The directorial choices made were amazing. The set was beyond amazing. I was a little surprised at the longitudinal emphasis, with the gigantic wall off stage right. But then of course, the way it was used during the show, and especially in the finale, was nothing short of spectacular. I felt a keen excitement in my gut as the show opened, and it only became more and more exciting, and emotional, as things progressed.

The principals were incredible of course. I confess that my old man persona is not aware of the star stature of John Legend, but the man can definitely sing. What he lacked in the “screaming” songs (eg, “Gethsemene”) he more than made up for in the songs where emotion needed to come through.

(I must point out that, for the screaming, NO ONE has ever held a candle to the original album Jesus, sung by Deep Purple’s Ian Gilliam, who was doing rock and roll screaming before Robert Plant or Roger Daltrey made it de rigueur. But Gilliam lacked Legend’s emotional range.)

Sara Bareilles may have been the best Mary Magdalene ever. And casting Alice Cooper as Herod was simply inspired.

But of course it was Hamilton‘s Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas who carried the show. Confusing Superstar as being about Jesus is a common mistake. The show is, and has always been, centered on the character of Judas. Dixon was absolutely perfect in this role: voice, acting, everything. It is always rewarding to have talent at this level on stage. In a show that means so much to so many, it was beyond rewarding. It was transcendant.

The choice to have Judas’ ladder fall to symbolize his suicide was, I think, inspired. We know what happens; trying to make it visually realistic can only detract. And of course, the transfiguration after the crucifixion was a piece of staging that took the last breath away.

I do have 2 quibbles to raise. There is a whole internet discussion centered around the change of the lyric “One thing I’ll say for him, Jesus is cool.” Taking that lyric out was just stupid. Every Superstar aficionado noted the change, and nobody agreed it was needed or made an improvement to the show. Me, too.

The other lyric change seems to have escaped general notice. But for me, it is much more substantial. During “Gethsemene”, Jesus sang “God, thy will be done/ Take your only son.” That may sound more religious and obedient to the Divine Will. But the original lyric is:

God, Thy will is hard
You hold every card

The original lyric is existentially deeper and harder to accommodate. It puts the eternal question of Free Will front and center. It puts the Essential Problem explored in Superstar in sharp perspective. Is Judas the worst villain in Christendom, or was what he did absolutely necessary? Did he even have a choice?

“Why don’t you just do it”
“You want me to do it”

This is a question that anyone who has ever thought deeply about the Passion of the Christ has had to come to grips with. Judas’ betrayal was absolutely imperative to the whole narrative. Without it, Jesus doesn’t get arrested, doesn’t die on the cross, never redeems humanity. Yes, God does hold every card. Why skirt the fact?

But now I’ve detoured into metaphysics and theology. Putting that aside, as a piece of stage craft, NBC absolutely (and I permit myself this small pun) nailed it on this show.

I can only hope that, like my annual sojourn to Neverland, NBC will present this yearly.

Ignoring the Vengeful God

Many Christians insist that the teachings of Jesus require accepting the entirety of the Older Testament (ie, the Torah, Wisdom literature, the prophets, etc) in order to properly appreciate his new wisdom. Now, it is impossible to understand what Jesus taught without an awareness of the world (and religious underpinning) in which he lived. But it seems to me that in order to derive the available benefits, one need only read what Jesus said and ignore any supposed prior context.

Yes, I am of course aware of his “jot & tittle” comment, but basically every substantial commandment or suggestion that originated directly from Jesus flies in the face of the vengeful maniac who presided over the Older Testament. Buddhism is not Hinduism, though it has its roots there. Christianity is not Orthodox Judaism, though it grew out of it. Jesus, like Gautama Buddha, was an ethical and religious genius who was able to formulate a radically new morality while living in the midst of a millenia-old world view. Love thy neighbor. Turn the cheek. As ye care for the prisoners, so ye care for me.

I don’t need to reconcile Jehovah and Jesus. I’ve read most of the Older Testament. Taking that dark and vengeful “god” literally would be to willfully partake in the insanity his words and actions imply. The main takeaway, the truly positive idea, that came from Abraham and Moses (mainly the latter) is monotheism, and even that concept may have originated with the heretic Egyptian Akhenaten, a sort of “one-termer” pharaoh who, during his reign, forced the Egyptians to solely worship Aten, the sun. Oh, and I guess the codification of the Ten Pretty Obvious Commandments was another sort of breakthrough, though even those had their origins in previous Mesopotamian cultures. But then you have to also deal the 100 or so “minor” commandments in Exodus, not to mention the endless city ordinances in Leviticus.

No, I don’t care to reconcile YHWH with the red text in the New Testament. I have no problem whatsoever in reconciling Jesus and God, since there is no ontological reconciliation necessary: they are two completely separate entities. The latter, under the rubric of “I AM”, and depicted in the first several books of the Bible, is of course an embarrassing myth, but perhaps the best an unsophisticated tribe of nomads in 1000 BC (or so) could come up with. Like I said, their major theological leap was monotheism.

And what I mean about “YHWH as myth” is strictly the Older Testament depiction; I do not want to suggest that I deny a Creator, only that YHWH is a very flawed example. Every ancient description of The Creator/ Sustainer suffers from the mythological trappings of the specific cultures in which they occur. And all of those descriptions therefore obscure whatever transcendence must obtain to such an entity (if “entity” can be used to imply what is meant, which is problematic).

The genius moment that happened in the far mists of the past was when some human mind(s) made the leap to conclude that there was a beginning, and that something caused it. To anthropomorphize that cause, and imbue it with the powers of storm and lightning and fire and earthquakes, the most powerful forces imaginable, was the most natural next step. And certainly these attributes accrued to the chief god of the pantheons of all ancient religions.

And then someone (Moses?) made the reductionist conclusion that, given that power, a pantheon isn’t required: just make YHWH the sole mover, responsible for everything. Unfortunately, they maintained the anthropomorphism. And also unfortunately, that concept of monotheism never leapt from within the confines of the Hebrew tribes (I AM a god for your people; don’t pray to other peoples’ gods). Even Jesus mainly constrained his teachings to Judah and Israel. It took Paul to combine Jesus’ message with various aspects of Greek philosophy and Mediterranean “god-men”, and thus liberate Chrsitianity unto the Gentiles. But Jesus and Paul were men, which is one up the reality ladder from myth.

I maintain my conviction that Jesus was in many ways a theological genius, meaning that he was able to create Brand New Ideas. Most creative people just sort of reorganize whatever exists. It’s the Newtons and the Einsteins and the Buddhas and the Jesuses who make the gigantic leaps ahead, conceptual leaps so huge they almost seem like they came out of nowhere.

Teacher

I wrote this in honor of my high school mathematics teacher, Virginia Guthery, who celebrates 80 years of a most influential life this month. Not everyone is so blessed, but many of us in fact owe a tremendous debt to one or two extraordinary teachers, people who were instrumental in leading us to a never-ending search for illumination. Ms. Guthery was that kind of special teacher.

Teacher

In Honor of Virginia Guthery

How far beyond measure
Is the worth of the true teacher.
That rare soul who
Can lead your soul
To follow the endless search
Into what lies below
And what soars above,
And what connects it all.

Mentor, yogi, rabbi, shaman,
Teacher. The one who
Will not accept less
Than the best you have
And then demands that
Which is beyond your best.

The one who won’t reveal
The answer, but instead
Points to a path that leads there.
Who imparts knowledge,
But especially that knowledge
Which, when unwrapped,
Unfolds into a map.
The secret places do exist,
But only for those who seek.
They are not merely given.

We all sojourn alone.
The barrier between souls
Is infinite, but not
Impassable.
Students trudge in rows,
Endless empty faces,
And the chance is small
That any will encounter
A jewel in the classroom,
Will look up and see
A bright flare that ignites
Their fire to learn,
The zeal to discover.

There is no metric
That measures the worth
Of the ones who make
The universe your doorstep.

In Memory Of My Mother

We buried my mother, Martha Evelyn Black Puckett, four years ago today. I wrote this at the time. It bears repeating and remembering.

This day is done, and we pass into a future already permanently altered, folding the day’s events into our hearts and minds. We have bade our last farewell, given a nod to the past, while simultaneously, though tentatively, accepting the future. We bow our heads in the acknowledgement that we are now unequivocally a generation on our own, a generation that must either either offer wisdom or else pretend we know it. Too much depends on this eternal fiction that must now transform into an ever-recurring truth.

I say a last farewell: Mother, Father, frail humans who did the best they could with the adventures Aslan sent them. If we do better, it is only because we carefully watched your footsteps and saw where and how you strove against the pitiless winds of existence, dealt with every success and triumph, how you were forged and tempered on the anvil of God.

If we do not, is only because we closed our eyes and ignored the lessons we were taught.

Thanks be to God.

The Indistinguishable Phusis

From my earliest forays into the spiritual (which formally began in high school, though I had been thinking on these matters since early adolescence), after I had started my survey of the world’s religions and their key figures, I had recognized that there was a strong similarity among all of them. A very strong resemblance in the case of Jesus and Gautama Buddha, but one also easily recognizable, for instance, in the sayings and actions of Lao Tzu, and Moses, and a host of others. From this, a working hypothesis emerged: that all these figures had, in some supreme MOMENT, apprehended the Godhead, the True Reality, the Truth Behind the Veil. For lack of a better phrase, they all experienced an overwhelming Religious Experience, in which, for one brief shining moment, they were at one with the wordless expanse and glory of the Infinite Being.

But, being finite (as we all are), the Infinite could not be “maintained”; they were forced to return to the Here & Now. And they were then required, by the power of their experience, to somehow relate that experience to their fellow human beings. But (and here’s the crux of the matter), they only had the symbols and myths and culture in which they lived to translate the Ineffable, the Wordless, the Beyond Description. And so, each key figure attempted to translate the essence of their experiences using the ideas and notions familiar to them and their listeners. Jesus spoke in parables that are steeped in Jewish culture and history. Siddhatha used the symbols and metaphors available in Hinduism. And so on.

The actual experience is, I believe, the same, and forever incapable of accurately transmitting to their listeners. The message that they deciphered from the experience, the way of life they all urged, is also fundamentally the same: we are One, Love unites, there are consequences for our actions, give aid to those who need it without regard to recompense. Reduce the Self and listen for that “small, still voice” that speaks “when your heart is strangely warmed.”

Some claim that, in the fullness of time, we will all come face to face with the Inevitable and experience this fullness individually and as a conglomerate whole. The religions that adhere to an “arrow of time” world view, wherein there is a Beginning, a Traversal, and an End to everything, are most likely to consider this apocalyptic notion. Whether the Veil is ever lifted, in our lifetime or ever, is debatable. Is there an End of Time, where all is resolved for eternity? “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.” Ask Horatio; I know not.

There does seem to me a slipping backwards at work in our present world, a tendency, in the face of a world that appears ever more terrifying, to relapse into fundamental literalism. Not just in Christianity, for there are similar trends in Hinduism, and of course the other religions “of the Book”. But I do believe that the overall arc of history is towards enlightenment and (if you will) a revelation. Towards unity among all peoples. Consider how the long story has evolved: from isolated tribes in prehistory to villages and cities, coalescing into small kingdoms and then larger kingdoms, then empires, ever ebbing and flowing, but always moving inexorably towards a global culture.

Now, thanks in part to technology, our interconnectedness is truly amazing. This blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc, are all examples of how that interconnectedness works. We all know, more and more frequently, what happens everywhere, all the time. This global neural network is staggering in its import. We have not yet learned how to manage such a maze, and the capability seems at times daunting. The arc of history may point toward a global village, but it does not guarantee it will ever exist.

It is easy to despair, hard to hope. But keeping our eyes on the prize makes it possible.