Speciation accidental

Just saw this in the New Scientist...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527511.400-accidental-origins-where-species-come-from.html

Mark Pagel shows that speciation occurs at a random rate not something you would expect if it required the accumulation of genetic errors and selection. Obviously random events like geological or climate changes would effect speciation but whole trees exhibit this character of exponentially reducing length of non-speciation e.g. 1/5, 1/5*1/5, 1/5*1/5*1/5, 5^-4, 5^-5 ... (if probability of speciation is 1/5).

Now this strikes me as correct. The forms that we see in nature are a combination of developmental restraints (symmetry) , adaptation (evolution of water-tight coverings) and accident (why are female peacocks like big tail displays?)

Just looking at some excellent VRML models of insects yesterday really showed up the extraordinary shape of nature... and also its arbitrariness. Why did this help consider the problem? In VRML the possibilities are infinite save only the creativity of the modeller. Thus when the modeller copies natural forms they are inadvertently copying shapes that have hidden causes. A butterfly is a very complex form - with a long, long, long genetic history and unnumerable physical, chemical, biological restraints: none of which are present in a VRML environment. The only restraint in that environment is physical consistency so that for example a keg cannot spiral around through the body. The shape that is being copied is the product of an as yet incompletely defined function: life. It makes it more vivid how undefined it is when we see the modeller having to apply his skills to all those legs and hairs and joints without necessarily understanding why this is this and that is that.

Does it "have" to look like this is the question? What would aliens look like given the same raw physical environment, but a different family tree and random events?

here also...

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/03/evolution_and_accident.php

Adder Stones

 

Well didn’t know this: there is folk lore attached to those pieces of flint with a hole in that you sometimes find… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_stone

here one from the Thames a few years ago… and another made roughly into a necklace (in about 5 mins). The can’t remember where the latter was found.

Self

The Sierpinsky triangle contains “itself” in that each level (zooming in) is composed from exactly 3 of the previous larger level. The triangle set runs to infinity so each smaller copy is in bijection to its parent (every point is countable and in 1:1 correspondence). The only difference is size… and the fact that the set tops out … i.e. there is a largest final set (the starting triangle) in which all the others are bounded. In this sense each copy is exactly that: a copy, and so in strict sense does not have the “same” identity. Badly phrased but all I am saying that the triangle contains an infinite number of triangles which are only similar: the set does not “contain itself”.

It is this sense of self that I am trying to find a concrete example of. A mathematical expression of identity: because I realise that the SRH is actually saying it is this type of Self that is impossible. Isomorphic copies of the self are fine because they are only possible because they are different things, and different selves. Godel numbering or any other type of countability is only finding names for things by which to reference them – it is not actually dealing with “self”. In a sense self-reference is a misnoma: one can only reference the “self” via something which is not self and which bears a resemblance or unique connection with the parent thing… and that connection implies a meta language which I’m arguing in one place here cannot exist in either the self or the thing which is the reference. That is well documented already in the literature W.V.Quine’s “mention” and “use”. But there is the other problem that “self” because it can only expressed by the “self” itself is beyond analysis and expression… or something like that.

Interesting after some thought that the Mandelbrot set is unique. There is no other fractal like it. I’ve looked for something and found nothing and all the other sets like Phoenix etc are bad imitations. The Buddhabrot is interesting because it expressed the Mandelbrot set better than the usual rendition. What is not obvious from the usual Mandelbrot rendition is down densely the set extends into the usual coloured region. The set is created from all the points that are visited by each iteration that do not escape in magnitude (if the final iteration does not escape then any of the points in the path do not escape either). The size of the set is actually a lot bigger than is shown in the usual set rendition and it is easier here to see the way that rotations of the set produce the final shape. Never-the-less amazing that so simple a condition as Z=Z^2+C should have such a complex solution. But the existence of self-similar symmetry is not a common feature as this is unique set.

The Choice

 

So why would I choose my experience of love over my experience of Jhana, or vice versa?

I think I have to accept that they are both incredibly powerful experiences and neither one is really better than the other. A nun once said on a TV program that had she known how powerful sexual love was (i.e. love for someone of a different sex) she would never have become a nun! The wise chose “peace over pleasure” – or so the Chinese proverb goes – and this I know is true, but to actually take the long view is incredibly hard. What spurs me on is that sexual love is fraught with difficulty, imperfection and compromise – none of these ailments afflict True Spiritual Love which is infinite, unconditional, eternal and perfect.

So why do I come to think of sexual love so much after a decision to embark again on spiritual awareness? I think this is the sticking ground that has swallowed me up before. The first level of energy I now know is associated with the basal chakra and energy at first awakens this – our thoughts turns to sexual love. But, as I have discovered not all beings are so spiritually long sighted and sexual love is often trivial, carnal and basic suffering as I have found from all the imperfections of mortal existence – heart break, disappointment, loss and death.

There is only one real choice in Life. It is the choice we are offered in retreats at my last temple: our attainments can either be for the improvement of this life or may they be for the journey to realisation and liberation. The short sighted seek to improve their current lot: the feelings of their senses and the feelings of their heart. But in time we come realise that this is only building sandcastles on a beach at low tide: and while they will be splendid and afford us moments of intense joy they will be tainted by a short life. Maybe this only heightens the pleasure to be had that it is made special by its fleeting existence: but such tastes of heaven only make us want the real thing more. I don’t care what umpteen million teachers say – to have tasted the pleasures of the mortal world is to have sold ones soul to death. They say that we can both taste these pleasures and then like a bee leave the flowers behind – but I don’t see how this is really possible. To taste is to love, is to need, is to miss, is to suffer. That which we do not desire we cannot enjoy (is this sense). Passion (as in Christ’s passion) is suffering: our soul is tortured on the rack of desire for without this what real pleasure actually lies in gaining the objects of our desire. Suffering cleanses the soul and punishes us for our foolish yearning and from this we can either learn to compromise with Life and its imperfect cruel allocation of resources or we can learn to be free.

I realised yesterday that want I seek most deeply is love. Yet I know that if I take the bait again I will be hooked on a line which leads to all the things that I detest: bound to worldly capital; the weight and confines of property, money, responsibility around my neck: and within this the limits of a single mortal carnal knowledge. How insulting to the spirit is this existence! really!

So the choice is to take the spiritual path (either alone or with a partner or with friends) and seek once again to raise my energy above the level of the worldly, carnal and mortal.

Man On Wire

 

Interesting film in that it raises one of the key questions about Life… but its doesn’t fit into a nutshell. The issues of destiny, achievement, fulfilment, attainment, self-realisation, beauty, event, situation, possibility and death are all rolled into one here.

The philosophy of the film we all experience: that moment when we are absorbed fully into that which we are meant to be is a moment of complete joy, peace and certitude.

It is I imagine most commonly associated with “love” – when we meet and form a partnership with the person who we will spend the rest of our lives with is a moment of destiny, attainment etc.

But that is just one example of what can be such events every day of ones life if we are able to balance between life and death and appreciate and fully live our life. I experienced this as the essence of my time with “my muse” – I even feel it now when recalling her as though my time with her is still alive – but is my destiny so narrow and limited (I fear it is and have always known that my only destiny is with a girl – which is untenable because one needs a destiny in money and basic living to raise a family etc).

But I am also sceptical. Man on Wire could also have more defeatist and cynical interpretations. Was it simply an egotistical challenge to prove to someone with a strong ego that they were the best. Such people have the self-belief and self-love which attracts weaker people into their fold. Devotees like to live under the shadow of a great dreamer because it gives them a reason to exist. The arch dreamer can continue to live the narcissistic self fantasy because it is supported by people who accept their world view without question. I hate to write this because it is so negative in the face of what was a remarkable event (viz the film) and one which could be so positive.

My reason to write that is to raise the question: can a life that has as its high point the deliberate mundane be heroic? It is bad to avoid that which you are scared of because it means that we become defined by fear. But, if that can be separated from pure mundanity which is simply that which is ordinary, common place and deliberately un-showy and not interesting: is this heroic? In the same way as they have a grave for the unknown soldier – is there a secret grave for the unknown hero?

I think I challenge here the apparent need in our society to “prove” oneself – especially in the eyes of other people. It seems it is good enough to get some accolade, fame or attention these days for one to “achieve”. But we also challenge ourselves in irrelevant ways to escape the stigma of being a failure or the belief that we cannot achieve things.

It is a fact that there are some things we cannot do. And, it is a fact that it doesn’t matter that they are not done. Stories abound where people have achieved the impossible. We are supposed to be inspired to do the impossible ourselves. We yes that is good because it forces us to break the boundaries of our own fossilised minds. But, if we could do the shattering with some mental hammer then why do all these irrelevant things? Cutting this to the point – is it possible that the greatest are really the people we wouldn’t even notice? And the “best” that we can be is really not even worth writing about?

Do we need to be slaves of stories and an audience who demand that we do something interesting to distract from the mundaneness of their own lives? Do we have to break boundaries to ironically make up for them not breaking boundaries?

I’m only posing these questions because they cut at the root of the problem of what is Life… but for now is Life any the less for not having been a hero?

Sexuality

So within 24 hours of my resolution I am faced with sexuality again. A sudden pure realisation that I am being foolish with a particular girkl and making a big mistake by not contacting her. Crystal clear realisation from no where – it is like with “my muse” again.

So am I wise to cast aside these temptations? This I suspect is exactly the first route that pure resolution and spiritual energy seeks – the dutiful union with a girl. But Buddha would frown for sure. Who attains only such a union attains only death – that is hardly a worthy prize! “Friends forever” my muse used to say “my love forever” I used to say – mismatched desires the least problematic point - “forever” by far the bigger mistake!

"So I find “The Greeks & Greek Love” by James Davidson in the library. Pausanias is saying that Aphrodite has two sides Urania and Pandemos. The latter the superficial erotic desire which grows weak when the object ceases to be beautiful anymore. Urania loves more deeply and more permanently the person. The rules he expounds for avoiding relations under 18 years of age based upon the test of these. Urania the noble long lasting love, Pandemos the superficial and changeable. It takes until 18 for the person to grow and anyone be able to determine who they are – Urania works with time, Pandemos works against time. So the Athenian view starts to get expounded and I run out of time with lunch appointment on the horizon. It is easy to see here the ancient script from which I at least was working with “my muse” – was my love Pandemos or Urania? I hope it was both – I fear it was only Pandemos! My problem with love is that I don’t experience Urania or so it seems, or at least if I am to deny Pandemos then why not deny Urania. Urania in my mind is simply friendship and you do not have sex on the basis of friendship – yet it is quite right to say that you love friends. Companionship is the word that couples use – but this isn’t sexuality in my thought, it is no reason for male/female union. My seeking union with “my muse” was founded upon a seeking of Urania. I wanted a bond that would not break, yet one that was not just a yoke but had some substance beyond my reasoned will that it should exist. Is Urania just the keeping of the marriage vows through brute force duty or is there some passion and substance to it? My questions since the beginning of sexual activity. Do we look upon a woman as beautiful through the power of Urania or is it only Pandemos?

What I have experienced many times is a sexual love born of admiration for some quality or skill. Pausanias notes this as a noble form of love. Not so naive then Napoleon Dynamite saying that you need skills to get a girl! An unattractive girl who used to play 1st Horn at school gained my sexual love when I heard her playing! Suddenly she was beautiful – is this Urania? “My muse” in addition to gaining my attention for her physical beauty had my admiration because she was Hindu (and so I believed familiar simply through her cultural heritage with the wisdom of the Gita – mostly a mistake I feel tho I have still not had the required intimacy to test the belief but I have some Buddhism wisdom since then so gained that by a different path) – she also had my admiration because she had that skill most venerated amongst the ancient bards and Plato: the power of spontaneous poetry. This is recognised everywhere as the form of Truth. Buddha for example speaks in verse for the most important sections – maybe a left over of suttas which once were entirely verse I don’t know. Pausanias writes that devotion to someone on the basis of gaining some worthy skill is entirely noble, and to gain the art of poetry and truth was exactly my reason for devotion to, and the reason I call her, “my muse”.

So that she is so long standing in my mind and continues to represent Womanhood and Sexuality in my mind even after her death and despite the old adage that “there are plenty of fish in the sea” is because she began her existence in my life as the resolution to the question of whether Urania really exists. When she goes there is not time in one Life to devote that much energy to another and the quest for Urania a failure.

But all this poses problems for my spiritual path. What if Urania exists? What if it is a noble love? Although Buddha says to ignore these things, maybe I am not ready yet for devotion to him. I feel that I was born to discover Urania – it is what I have felt most deeply since a child. But on growing up and surveying the world that we have made I do not see a place for Urania. The very difficulties posed by family life, employment, property, illness, death, insurance, wealth, schooling, travel etc dull the value and joy of it so that I can’t make out any value anymore. Where is the Urania against the backdrop of struggle that works us to the grave? Yet the founders of these societies seem to think that this is a worthy world we have created – what cheap and shallow hopes they must have had for mankind – how little they must have valued their own kind.

If only I could have just resolved all this properly with “my muse” then I could close the book if that is what was to happen, or stay bonded if that was what supposed to happen. I have sort some answers in pornography. Society criticises pornography and it is certainly not a noble quest, but then we aren’t gods yet either. If the mind is a hall of broken mirrors then the world pornography is this broken world reflected in another hall of broken mirrors. Certainly “beware all who enter here” – and so society’s reservation is to be respected. Features of pornography that are the wrong doors are those that seek directly to humiliate or degrade individuals. Yet this is implicit in most pornography because in its root the erotic experience involves the stripping away not only of clothes but of the higher person to reveal the raw passions that can overwhelm the self all together – or so was argued in the first edition of “Philosophy Now” back in 1993. Thus a girl may become fuck-drunk to coin a phrase myself which would be a high goal of the erotic male impulse. This I would agree with but not also the power relations and presence of the male ego (since it is the male in pornography who invokes the stripping – if the girl strips, it is for the male). And, even this makes sense since the male introduces a penis into the female and the female for her part accepts the penis – she does not and logically is not required to actively “do” anything other than passively accept. Egotistical females may dislike the egotistical implications of this arrangement and wish it otherwise but this is how it is. Thus the female adopts a psychology of drawing the male in, while the male adopts a psychology of pushing his way into. Were genitals otherwise sexes would adopt different strategies. And yes the female is as active in sex as the male, but the point is the psychology that leads to one seeking entry and the other accepting entry. Acceptance of entry is the male goal and logically, and in line with the issue of gradually seducing the female to let go of her social and whether as physical layers, the male seeks as much entry as possible. This logic is present in a lot of pornography.

The male/female inequality is a two sided weapon because the female depends upon the male for gratification in a different way to the male – she has to accept him, while he need only gain entry which leads to the inequality and source of criminality. A female cannot illegally accept a male entry! This inequality it seems to me means that women are particularly vulnerable to unsatisfied desire and that is my great sin, because in all my procrastinating and uncertainty female desire that involves me is likely to get frustrated and that leads to negativity. It is almost a male’s duty to satisfy a woman’s desire. That is something that I still find hard to comprehend fully since in my own logic the greatest respect you can show a woman is to overcome your desire for her – after all where is the skill in satisfying ones own desire (or so I seem to have implicitly calculated since a child)? I see here one residual contradiction in my thinking :-) AN obvious thing here also is the mutual interest of males and females to satisfy the other both out of kindness but also as a matter of pride. This is the other side of the coin of sexual satisfaction that to satisfy oneself if only half the equation, one has to satisfy the other to gain complete perfect satisfaction… if such a thing exists. Certainly fear of being unable to satisfy a woman is a key feature myself especially in matters of money and property – sexual desire in this view extends way beyond the narrow confines of the sheets. Basically I am a failed male – or at least do not want to be burdened with the task of being a successful one. This is another contradiction.

The existence of the door of masochism and sadistic which I became aware of at a young age troubles me enormously because it contradicts the very goal of being a human or being alive even. Those who enter this door question the very principles of life – but not constructively: there are other fruit ways. However it is logical: giving and receiving pain is simply another currency in the process of seduction and stripping away the self. This is more complex but linking with the last paragraph the refusal to satisfy the other is also a form of sadism, and oneself masochism – and through that a form of erotic experience… and so the mirrors begin to fragment more!

On the subject of female beauty I once saw appended to a picture of a beautiful girl a message in Chinese. The machine translation from google, partial and incomplete as one expects for Chinese was, “beautiful girl, heroic feeling”. But that is exactly it – the feeling of pure female beauty creates in the male a surge of noble feelings like heroism, courage, duty etc. Is this testosterone? I doubt it – such feelings don’t cause the fight they only give the strength and will to execute it. Quite how all this works I experience but don’t understand.

Where all dimensions of pornography and human relations in general become sullied over is if hatred or negativity enters the picture. It is not the pornography itself which is wrong but the possibility that the power relations and interactions may be vehicles of hatred. If we are feeling suffering or pain ourselves it is almost inescapable not too seek a relief by giving that pain to someone else. This can be through a harsh word to a colleague in a moment of anger, non-co-operation in a passive way, wishing someone fails in another passive way, actively spreading lies about people, and in pornography seeking to humiliate and gain power over people. It seems obvious that a sexual act to humiliate like for example making fun of a girl in a pornography film is to be distinguished from an erotic act like for example persuading her into anal sex – yet the distinction is fine and subtle and what is cruel can seem erotic. Let our karma be the judge of our minds and those who enter such doors.

What I seek to resolve is exactly what desire is it that I seek to satisfy. Is it a particular girl or type of girl, a superficial fetish, a simple experience of profound sexual orgasm, some state of power relation with a girl, some deeper level of sexual union, an energy bond (some tantric quest) there is a huge list – exactly what does Pandemos want on its altar?

I describe in depth some of the dimensions of Pandemos. What I sort with “my muse” became drawn in this direction as she explored Pandemos with other men which introduced jealousy, anger and negativity and could I fear made made me quite bad! She it seemed was most fascinated by Pandemos – maybe not intellectually, maybe just instinctively. I realise that almost half her poetry was about Pandemos! Naive me seeking Urania and spiritual wisdom was trying to go get away from Pandemos – how could I have yoked myself to something going the wrong way? Altho there is no wrong way when all is Truth at root. I wonder whether I should have encouraged “my muse” toward Urania rather than have her draw me toward Pandemos. I was not strong enough because Pandemos is a strong god, one that I seek urgently the surpass if I am to progress. This has become the unwelcome legacy of “my muse” where I was hoping through her to quieten and solve this distraction.

I should think and read more to understand the ancient scripts from which have tried (unsatisfactorily) to build my life.

===

Just thinking I remember how the logic works. Meet the most perfect girl in the world who creates the greatest desire (and I mean not insane uncontrollable lust desire but pure energy desire - if that distinction makes any sense) - and then satisfy ones sexual desire perfectly through her. This way so the logic goes one becomes free from the burden of sexual negativity stemming from imperfect satisfaction of sexual desire… BUT isn’t this crazy on reflection? Just as Buddha says – I who am subject of birth why do I seek things that are also subject to birth – isn’t it even more true to ask that I who am suffering from unsatisfied sexual desire why do I seek objects that stimulate that desire? So that once it is large I can satisfy it? Isn’t the chance of getting more unsatisfied present.. YES here I am! Also in parallel with Buddha – I who am subject to imperfectly satisfied sexual desire why do I seek those who are also subject the imperfect sexual desire. The answer is that we believe that alone we are unsatisfied but between us something mutually satisfying may happen… that is the seductive thought – but is sexual desire ever perfectly satisfied? I’ve been seduced by the thought that it can, I thought I had met the person who could do that, but the chance has decayed and now maybe the thought that it is possible is decayed too…there is nothing more to explore behind these doors now…

=== 19/3/2010 addendum

interesting thing in news, a repeat of that famous study in the 1950s but in the format of a game show.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100317/ten-torture-game-show-draws-nazi-compari-8a3eada.html

This explains aomething out porn also that in front of the camera a "pressure" is created to play along and complete a narrative. Exactly as the woman saying that she went along with the game show because she didn't want to spoil things I wonder whether the camera has the same effect in porn. It is almost as though porn has a destiny quality to it that like a self-fulling prophesy, where the camera is both the means of creation but also the reason for creation also. Unless we do something the camera cannot record it, but the presence of a camera seems to turn this on its head and offer us the reality of the destination before we do anything. Then we are only reading a script and fulfilling what never needed to be. The woman in the game show doesn't realise that the show hasn't been made yet. If she refused to take part then it wouldn't be made. Yet she talks as though the show "has" to be made as though it was something tangible before it has even happened!

I don't get this; in fact I am the opposite of this woman. Faced with a destiny I actually step aside and test the destiny. If it truly meant to happen then it doesn't need me to do anything. Likewise if the game show really has to be then it doesn't need me. On the other hand if I am to take part then it follows that I can decide whether it happens or not. You can't take part and not have a say - that is a contradiction. If you are taking part in an essential way then the outcome depends upon you and so you can change the outcome. If you are not taking part in an essential way then it doesn't matter what you do and you may as well step aside anyway. Never however is the situation where you are taking part in an essential way, but you can't change the outcome - that simply doesn't make sense. Thus as I've argued before I don't accept "taking orders" as meaning anything. You either chose to do it or you didn't - there is no other way. Maybe you would have been shot for disobeying orders but as argued before this is the sad truth we have to understand before we join the army. If we join the army we agree then to doing things that we may actually morally disagree to - in other words we have still chosen to do them. If we were conscripted into the army again we don't actually have to join. We can join a resistence movement, become a terrorist within the army, flee the country, go and hide in the woods, disable ourselves deliberately to avoid being signed up. There are endless options. If we join the army then we are never following orders but agreeing to what we are told to do. There is no such thing as "following orders". In the exteme case we could kill ourselves rather than do what we doubt. Every Nazi was guilty of exactly what they did or did not stop happening. Every soldier in Iraq is guilty of every murder they perform, and every murder they do not stop. Any other thinking is doublespeak, you can't make someone do something unless they let it happen. Even under hypnosis, evidence I've heard is that people are really only "going along" with what they are told to do. Anything serious and they come out of hypnosis. Porn then I imagine is the same. While the actors may regret what they do afterwards, within the frame they are being duped into going along with something that they do not have a strong moral attitude to. They may also not want to let the situation down and so perform what is expected rather than what they want.

Now I need to be careful and I've analysed this in depth before too, but we are all actors because meaning itself depends upon enacting social customs. To say we "want" to do what we do is a myth. We get married because it is custom and we act along. We get a job because it is custom and we act along. We get a house, a car ... We "want" them because we "want" to be accepted by the society. I am different I realise this morning, as argued before because I don't believe that I have to "accepted" by society - I believe it is already in me and I am already a part of it. My ego may feel insecure that there is no proof that it has been formally accepted unless I wear a tatoo or symbol but my intellect knows a priori that I already am : I speak English for example, a member of the English speaking community automatically etc etc. So we don't have to do anything to be accepted, and any rejection we think we experience is a trick by fakes and scammers. The government fakes and scams membership all the time trying to provide documentation to "prove" our membership - as argued before I don't accept the legitimacy of the government on this (they didn't sprout from the soils of England any more than I did). It is first of all their job to prove that they are socially accepted before they start judging others.

So I have to accept that I am different and I stop today trying to be the same. My moral consciousness is primary and I simply cannot compromise my own decision, responsibility and choice in everything I do. If there is a script to perform I will be the first to go off script to the boos of the audience because I don't care. I think bosses hate me because they can't become my boss, only ever my advisors in things that I don't know about. But I never follow orders, I can't, I don't understand what following orders is. As argued it doesn't exist.

5th Jhana

So the day before yesterday lacking enthusiasm for the self-reference proof I came to read the “Ariyapariyesana Sutta: The Noble Search” at www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.026.than.html

It has a very simple exposition of Buddha’s quest. But then it goes on to something I have only once and very vaguely heard about: the “Formless Jhanas. What I read was the most total wake up call I could ever receive…

“Then again the monk, with the complete transcending of perceptions of [physical] form, with the disappearance of perceptions of resistance, and not heeding perceptions of diversity, [perceiving,] 'Infinite space,' enters & remains in the dimension of the infinitude of space. This monk is said to have blinded Mara. Trackless, he has destroyed Mara's vision and has become invisible to the Evil One.

"Then again the monk, with the complete transcending of the dimension of the infinitude of space, [perceiving,] 'Infinite consciousness,' enters & remains in the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. This monk is said to have blinded Mara. Trackless, he has destroyed Mara's vision and has become invisible to the Evil One.”

I don’t know if I have blogged this – though I must have – but for the first time I have found exactly the experience I had a child in the world’s written texts – “infinite space”. The description I gave of the experience to my father was “my mind expanded to fill all of space, even the space behind my head”. This last bit was what most struck me: that the visual space we are normally aware of only goes out in front of us, and we only imagine the space behind our heads – normally therefore space as we experience it is heterogenic and made up different types of space, in different regions of our senses and our minds. But when I rose above this my mind was no longer fragmented into all these different arenas of space, it became the same as a space that was all around and without a boundary (that is what infinite means here) – it doesn’t stop at the nearest wall for example, or strec=tch through a window and then stop at the horizon. This space was also self-illuminating, or sort of; because it was filling the darkness as much as the light of my room. It was the “implication” and the transcendence of an unintentional meditation of a circle of light and the spontaneous realisation that the circle only existed because of the darkness that surrounded it – that darkness was the universe (more or less). It was not a mental investigation, I was doing home work, it was a spontaneous enquiry that occurred below the level of thoughts, that is, I was seeing what I was thinking directly.

The object of meditation is as simple as this but do in a dark room so the black extends in all directions. Have I drawn a white circle on a black background, or is this black card with a hole in it on a white background?

The point is that the very fact that there are two equally valid interpretations means that the picture is of neither! What it is a picture of is actually a dialectic between black and white. The white defines the shape of the black and the black equally defines the shape of the white. There is not actually a circle there in its own right. What we call a circle is only the apparent illusion caused by an interaction. The area of white depends upon the black and the area of black depends equally on the area of white. Our attention is drawn to the area of white by the area of black and our attention is drawn to the area of black by the area of white.

This is the first time since that experience in early 1984 that I have philosophically understood the experience. It was exactly the “dependent origination” that I have been learning about for 10 years in Buddhism. So why having experienced it in the 5th Jhana did I not “know” what I had seen?

The answer to that is the difference between “thoughts” and “reality”. 26 years is a long time to codify an experience, and that is even with the explanations in front of my eyes. This is how far apart the enlightened mind and the mind that understands are. This I imagine is why Buddha was not inclined to teach his realisation and why he took his life to find a way to teach it. This is why the deputy grand master of my temple said that “no-one in the world today really understands the Buddha”. This is why enlightenment it is so unfathomable.

What has shocked me is that my tender adolescent mind was shocked for a moment by what appears to be 5th Jhana (or even the 6th given that my mind expanded to fill all space). The details are not important. It is the realisation that I WAS on The Path. There can be no doubt now. I have asked teachers before and never got a clear answer and have doubted whether that experience meant anything at all. Just an hallucination is the easiest way to forget about it. My father thought I was going mad. In a world that has no recognition you lose faith in what you see and yourself. You rewrite it in your mind so that you can forget about it. Thinking, Science and Philosophy were the safe answer and I turned to them to find The Path. How misleading a path that is I now see. Yet I still maintain a resolution from then that I will never attain anything that I cannot explain and get others to attain…. tho a seconds thought now seems to throw that resolution into peril. Maybe it is right to seek attainment first and worry about helping others attain it later?

How did I attain this? That it is easy and I have documented that in this blog before. However the path to attainment I misunderstood at the time. It was not intellect that led here at all but simply Purity.

On confirmation to the Christian Church in Nov 1983 I kept a habit of praying every night and then lying in bed mentally silent listening for God before I slept. This effectively was meditation. I made vows to be “my best”. Worked hard in everything at school, kept promises and was Noble. This is the key word – remaining Noble. Nobility has been made a dirty word in the west by the jealous poor. But actually the dirtiness is just the jealousy of those who do not have as much as others. Nobility – being a gentleman - is the highest attainment. One must be strong in ones duties and resolutions, clear, honest and reliable; able to cut away temptations that will seek to grow up the walls that ones purity has built.

Sila is what the Pali calls it. Morality uprightness. This is not about being good, it is about being accurate, correct and precise in ones behaviour. It is the source of strength that the mind can build upon and see reality for what it really is.

Now I have faith again and understand how to attain the path I need only try once again to complete the duty to enlighten.