Thesis Chapters by Jean MacPhail
Having completed the presentation of three mahavakyas that appear to relate to the other-you-with... more Having completed the presentation of three mahavakyas that appear to relate to the other-you-within a sequence, I now attempt to present another threesome that focuses on I, the subject: I am He; I am Brahman; I am the universe. I expect the materials on I to be more introverted in its focus than the you quotes, in the light of a more interior observer. In order to study the materials to this end, I compare the contexts in a vertical manner based on another convention of the non-dualists, what is known as the chatushpad, four steps of the Atman, which these eighth-century non-dual pioneers no doubt experienced directly in their meditation. The first is the most concrete and separated, which I expressed in human relationships as you. The second-what we are working with here-is brilliance, from inner inspiration (I) of emotion and creativity, the third the first experience of the Atman abiding in the deepest recesses of the heart; and the fourth (chatur), the final, direct experience of What Is, Ultimate Reality, which cannot be expressed in any external form, but radically affects and controls everything. In this progression we are laying the foundation for the whole study and will later present mahavakyas that seem to present materials in that framework.
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THE XVIII CONFERENCE ON FAMEMS AND THE IV WORKSHOP, 2019
This paper builds on previous work on the invariance principle as expressed between four differen... more This paper builds on previous work on the invariance principle as expressed between four different models of consciousness, each ranging from the mediated perception of the physical world to the deepest, most transcendental level currently described within each discipline. The focus of the present paper is on the occurrence within each of these models of the principle of complementarity, originally propounded in quantum physics: two dynamic entities embedded together in the same system but
apparently irreconcilable with each other. Further, in keeping with current thinking that this principle can be expanded to include the human psyche, I select the complementaries concept and experience as relevant to this article. After indicating in general how this principle is expressed in the models of my original study (2017), I present in more detail the data and methods within in models #2 and #3, as the
first does not go into the issue of complementarity and space precludes inclusion of the fourth at this point.
The first model was developed in a therapeutic environment as a rule of thumb for assessing needs, the second is developed from standard Western physical science and presents theoretically the need to resolve complementarity between our current perception of the physical world and the inner perceptions thus far ignored by Western science. The desired result is an expansion of the scope and meaning of science itself
from mere mechanism to a deep, urgently needed wisdom. The third model contrasts the findings on consciousness of Western neuroscience with the age-old teachings of India on the phenomenology of self-transformation. This comparison brings out the limitations of the Western view and indicates ways to resolve complementarity between it and the Asian model.
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Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Sonsciousness, 2013
HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson V of Ramakrishna’s Integral... more HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson V of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holistic Consciousness and How to Live It in Everyday Life
ABSTRACT
This paper is the final one in a series of five. The progression presented in the series is conceived of as relating to the development of human consciousness, starting with commitment to the physical world as the whole of reality (materialistic humanism) through the consecutive realms of imagination (yoga), deep, intuitive discernment of transpersonal reality (maya) and a culminating transcendental experience of whatever is behind all three (holovolution), supporting and validating all of them and all other possible realms of experience. These four levels of experience reflect the classical Vedantic chatushpad or four steps, first proposed in the 6th Century CE by Sri Gaudapada. At that time only the fourth, transcendental stage was given full validity, but later developments in India opened out “downwards” through the “lower” stages and into the modern world, where the interface between Western imperialists, driven by raw materialism, and Vedanta, still adhering to its traditional stance at the fourth, or “other end” of the series led to a mass of counterintuitivity and a dire need to resolve the conflict. This paper presents how Sri Ramakrishna offers a fifth stage of consciousness that brings the depth insight of the fourth into all levels of conscious experience, radically transforming the whole range of human experience and making it possible for even materialism to be accepted as a valid part of the whole continuum. Sri Ramakrishna terms this level vijnana or higher knowledge, as did Sri Aurobindo at a later date. In eleventh century Kashmir Shaivism it is known as turiyatita, or “beyond the fourth.” Ken Wilber has also used this level in the development of his lattices. In this work I have opted for the term holism, in which not only is the part in the whole, but the whole is in the part. As always, the temporal transmission to Vivekananda was through a five state progression of consciousness and led to a bicameral presentation of the entire content—Indian and Western content that is at this stage fully integrated. This work appeared for the first time in my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness (2013).
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Learning in Depth: A Case Study in 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, 2013
HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson IV of Ramakrishna’s Integra... more HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson IV of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holovolution, the Cosmology Synthesizing Spiritual Evolution and Involution
ABSTRACT
Lesson IV in the transmission from Sri Ramakrishna to Vivekananda is concerned with how the “evolutionary” process from matter to spirit—what we look at as spiritual development moving “upwards”—is balanced by an equal and “involutionary” process from spirit to matter moving “downwards”. Traditionally, matter-based evolution is more emphasized in the West, especially since the eighteenth century, and involution by the mystics from time immemorial, and relating to the process of “creation” or “emanation” from the divine source. Speaking from his habitually humanistic perspective, Vivekananda termed these two processes realization and manifestation, which take place not “out there”, but within the person or culture itself. In the mind of both Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda these processes are totally interrelated within the same system. As this material brought to mind the coinage of holomovement by the quantum physicist David Bohm, I opted to term the whole process holovolution.
As in the previous three lessons, this topic or theme is explored through the same five state changes in Vivekananda’s psyche, and in the same place and period of time—in short, following the progression of the chatushpad in parallel with the process of Lessons I through III. In holovolution the first three classes are a form of introduction to the topic, and Class IV the occurrence of the samadhi that opens up the full meaning of the topic, enabling Vivekananda, as after samadhi in the previous three lessons, to grasp the full meaning of the subject. Vivekananda opts to emphasize involution in India, not as divine creation but as how we manifest interior spiritual experience in action in the physical world. In the West, he gives evolution the meaning of how through spiritual development we arrive at the underlying reality of the whole process and thereby give materialist evolutionary theory a rationale in and of itself and logically linking it to involution. Both exegeses are clearly radically interrelated.
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Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, 2013
In this article I present Chapter 23 of my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twi... more In this article I present Chapter 23 of my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness. Here Sri Ramakrishna opens up the mystery of maya, a Sanskrit term that has been variously explained as magic, confusion, ignorance, partial vision, etc. Basically it relates to the difficulties in facing irresolvable contradictions, "squaring the circle", resolving complementarity, reconciling the world of matter and the world of spirit, and similar projects normally considered impossible. The subject comes up in the history of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda interaction after Vivekananda's second samadhi, which opened up the whole process of yoga, thereby permitting him to go more deeply into the depths of his own mind, where he was to encounter precisely all of the baffling aspects of maya, or his habitual mode of thinking. The key that Sri Ramakrishna gave him to solve the conundrums was, quite simply, to modify the way he looked at things. This may seem like a rather ordinary, humanistic way to approach the subject, a doable route around the endless myths, philosophies and ratiocinations that have been brought to bear on the subject. However, just how drastic this solution was to be is revealed in this chapter: a total "makeover" of Vivekananda's psyche and an apparent complete turnaround of philosophical outlook. As well as a saltation from the level of yoga to the very door of the Atman itself. As before, this whole process occurs over five different states or stages, running alongside the developments in both spiritual humanism and yoga as a science and throwing them into a different light than what we have seen thus far. The same format is followed of aligning the statements and actions of Sri Ramakrishna with the later interpretations of Vivekananda himself at comparable stages of his own teaching, as well as Vivekananda's habit of applying the more practical statements to the needs of India and the more transcendental to the West.
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Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, 2013
HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integra... more HOW SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LEARNED THE MESSAGE OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Yoga as a Science: The Pragmatic and Systematic Approach to
Self-transformation-2
ABSTRACT
This post is the second part of my posting on April 10th of Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Yoga, in which Sri Ramakrishna walks Swami Vivekananda through the four classical yogas and his own vision of their natural interrelationship in any human individual, not as separate and competing entities. The text is from my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, Chapters 21 and 22.
The progression that is followed in this material is that of the classical chatushpad or four steps/stages of consciousness developed in Vedanta for millennia and systematized by Sri Gaudapada in the 6th Century CE. In addition, there is a fifth in this present series, generated by Sri Ramakrishna’s grasp of vijnana or turiyatita, beyond the fourth. This fifth stage or state of consciousness is able to reconcile the fourth, transcendental state with the first, a healthy engagement with the physical world. This is an achievement that most traditional religions have not as yet embraced or developed.
The previous post presented material relating to the first two stages/states up to a major samadhi in Vivekananda. The material in this post deals with how the third through fifth stages, building on the insight of the samadhi, add dimensions to yoga that dramatically go beyond the more traditional aspects of its meaning and lead naturally to the awareness of the interconnectedness of all of them and their various aspects into a whole picture.
This methodology of study, while not familiar perhaps at the present, was in fact proposed by the early non-dualists such as Sri Shankaracharya and Sureshwaracharya in the 8th Century and later given phenomenological reality by the Kashmir Shaivites around the beginning of the second millennium.
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Learning in Depth doctoral thesis, 2013
Lesson II of this series on how Sri Ramakrishna trained Swami Vivekananda deals with the subject ... more Lesson II of this series on how Sri Ramakrishna trained Swami Vivekananda deals with the subject of self-transformation or yoga, which purports to train the mind-body complex to expand and refine Spiritual Humanism, the subject of Lesson I, dealt with in a previous post. Like Spiritual Humanism, there are within it five "classes" or stages of expansion of context, the series starting at the same time as Spiritual Humanism, but coming to the fore at the second stage when Vivekananda experiences his second samadhi. Like the first samadhi associated with the beginning of Spiritual Humanism, this second samadhi opens up the whole subject of yoga and invests it with the capacity to expand towards infinity. This subject of yoga, the intentional transformation of the inner human world, is unique in classically having four different elements of the human psyche within it-the yoga of work, of love, of intellect and of intuition. These were all perfected in India centuries if not millennia ago, but at the time of Ramakrishna had grown into quite separate and even competing disciplines with apparently quite different methods and goals. Sri Ramakrishna's contribution was to see through vijnana or integral vision all of these as united in one and the same psyche, not separate from, but supportive of the others. One might speculate that each yoga relates to one or other of the human faculties. Accordingly, he trained Vivekananda in all four, but in the unusual mode of working with all four simultaneously. This methodology permits of seeing that each yoga follows the same pattern of interior stage development within its own context, mode, or faculty and leads all of them to the same final state of transcendence. This discovery may have been part of Vivekananda's frequent statement that yoga can be regarded as a science of the interior human world, comparable and not inferior to the methodology of Western science of the exterior world. There is, therefore, a large amount of this detailed material, necessitating two posts. A very condensed version of this material was originally published in Vedanta
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LEARNING IN DEPTH
A CASE STUDY IN TWIN 5X5 MATRICES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ABSTRACT
This case study is ... more LEARNING IN DEPTH
A CASE STUDY IN TWIN 5X5 MATRICES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ABSTRACT
This case study is of Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth century Indian monk who modernized India and introduced yoga to the West. In Section A he is presented as a historical figure with an enduring influence on Western spirituality, through his own highly noetic personality and through his introduction of yoga to the West.
In Section B I show how Vivekananda’s worldview is compatible with an expansive and inclusive vision of human potentiality and therefore with emerging Western concepts of Transpersonal Psychology. I then proceed in Section C to a study of Vivekananda’s views on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, showing how his insights into the classic text on yoga are compatible with the categories currently being discerned in the ongoing study of spirituality in the West. In addition I discuss the possible genesis of samadhi, an event that results in permanent changes of personality and worldview, conspicuous in Vivekananda’s life and teaching.
I then proceed in Section D to an in-depth study of Vivekananda’s own formative years under the spiritual direction of Ramakrishna. I show how Vivekananda passed through the five state-stages of consciousness established in Vedantic spirituality for millennia, and that all through this process Ramakrishna presented to Vivekananda in contemporary idiom a spectrum of five conceptual levels reflecting and expressing the content of these states.
Aligning these two parameters of Vivekananda’s development orthogonally, I determine that the meeting in Vivekananda’s psyche of a state-stage with a level of the same ontological content results in samadhi. A succession of five samadhis later resulted in his highly integrated worldview and ability to address any state or level with magisterial skill.
This orthogonal combination of state-experience and explanatory concept is the basis of what I term a matrix of consciousness. In addition, I discern from my materials two such matrices, one more related to state (experience) and the other to level of explanation (logical). Basing my analysis on historical facts, I correlate the content and import of the logical matrix to Vivekananda’s Indian teaching and the content and import
2
of the state matrix to his Western work. I also demonstrate how these two matrices can be integrated with each other.
This matriceal model has great potential for reconciling not only India and the West but also the debates in the West about science vs. religion, state versus level, or indeed other contentious dichotomies that can arise when experience and concept are not fully integrated with each other within any prevailing worldview.
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ABSTRACT
This paper is an invitation to recognize the connecting links
between four different mod... more ABSTRACT
This paper is an invitation to recognize the connecting links
between four different models of spirituality or consciousness,
ranging from contemporary physics to emerging integral thinking,
and to see how such links serve to expand and deepen our
notions of what spirituality/consciousness actually is and how it
functions in various levels of human endeavour, including clinical
practice. I pinpoint and discuss an emerging six-point model of
spirituality in the contemporary world of health care as presented
in issue 6.2 of Journal for the Study of Spirituality. With a view to
relating it to its historical precedents and other disciplines
that may be thought at the moment to be irrelevant, tangential
or even hostile to it, I point to the Western and East Indian
traditions of a stepwise, hierarchical approach to spirituality or
consciousness. I go on to study three contemporary vertical models
in tandem – one from physics, another from consciousness studies,
and the third from integral spirituality – to illustrate not only the
basic structure of the model but also the invariance principle, which
states that models related to the same core structure can be related
to each other despite their lack of the same descriptive language.
My intention is to make it easier for the health care community and
others to recognize a possible relationship between their own
preferred models and those in disciplines that may not currently
appear cognate, as well as to enrich and further define themselves
with what is offered in those disciplines.
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Talks by Jean MacPhail
Ireland celebrates its native daughter who contributed hugely to the fight for freedom in India a... more Ireland celebrates its native daughter who contributed hugely to the fight for freedom in India and set an example of what can be accomplished by an inspired and fearless woman who is capable of seeing the bigger picture and making the struggles of others her own.
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He who has seen her has seen the essential form of man, the form of the spirit . . . She is to b... more He who has seen her has seen the essential form of man, the form of the spirit . . . She is to be respected not because she was a Hindu, but because she was great. She is to be honored not because she was like us, but because she was greater than we.”
As these soaring words are spoken with the utmost gravity and feeling, images of Margaret’s life appear behind her bier, slowly moving from Ireland to India; from there to the Himalayan peaks and finally up into the endlessly moving clouds above the Himalayas.
In the words of Dungannon’s mayor, Nivedita demonstrated “the power of selfless sacrifice and how it is possible to change society through individual efforts.”
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I understand that this audience is well-acquainted with the life and work of Vivekananda, but per... more I understand that this audience is well-acquainted with the life and work of Vivekananda, but perhaps not as familiar with the work of his Irish disciple, Sister Nivedita. In a few words I shall try to give an impression of who she was and her impact on India and the West.
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Lecture to Postgraduate Students in the Department of Philosophy,
University of New Mexico, Albuq... more Lecture to Postgraduate Students in the Department of Philosophy,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, May 4, 2010
As I understand that this is a group studying Vedanta, including Swami Vivekananda, I don’t think I will have to give much explanation as to what the title of my talk might mean. However, I should give a few definitions and some history, jut to set the scene, as what I have to say may not conform to your concept of Vedanta. Like everything else, Vedanta – though a very ancient and venerable tradition - does evolve and has recently evolved quite dramatically, and I will be talking about some contemporary thinking on the subject.
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During this weekend I would like to tell the story of Swami Vivekananda’s relationship with Mothe... more During this weekend I would like to tell the story of Swami Vivekananda’s relationship with Mother Kali. On the whole, the stereotype we have of Swami Vivekananda does not emphasize or even accept that he had much to do with Kali, the black goddess - but we shall find that he did, indeed, and that the idea of divine power - of which Kali is the symbol - is a central one in his teachings.
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This paper focuses on the British attempt to denationalize the Indians (epitomized in the passage... more This paper focuses on the British attempt to denationalize the Indians (epitomized in the passage of the Indian Education Bill in 1836), the mentality that lay behind it, and the problems for both the British and the Indians which it represents. The presentation then moves to the work of Swami Vivekananda, who articulated a psychology, philosophy and spiritual path that gave Brits and Indians a common identity as human beings grounded in the divine. By accepting the validity of the material world as well as the spiritual, he validated the achievements of both West and East and offered ways in which each could grow in the domain of the other. Grasping the tremendous power of education and environment from his observations of Irish immigrants in New York in the nineteen eighties, he launched into an East-West educational process of vast proportions, spearheaded by his Irish disciple, Margaret Noble or Sister Nivedita. Nivedita spread the integral philosophy of her guru in East and West and at the same time demonstrated the type of human being that can rise from the ashes of colonialism and the cultures of colonizer and colonized that lay behind it.
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Thesis Chapters by Jean MacPhail
apparently irreconcilable with each other. Further, in keeping with current thinking that this principle can be expanded to include the human psyche, I select the complementaries concept and experience as relevant to this article. After indicating in general how this principle is expressed in the models of my original study (2017), I present in more detail the data and methods within in models #2 and #3, as the
first does not go into the issue of complementarity and space precludes inclusion of the fourth at this point.
The first model was developed in a therapeutic environment as a rule of thumb for assessing needs, the second is developed from standard Western physical science and presents theoretically the need to resolve complementarity between our current perception of the physical world and the inner perceptions thus far ignored by Western science. The desired result is an expansion of the scope and meaning of science itself
from mere mechanism to a deep, urgently needed wisdom. The third model contrasts the findings on consciousness of Western neuroscience with the age-old teachings of India on the phenomenology of self-transformation. This comparison brings out the limitations of the Western view and indicates ways to resolve complementarity between it and the Asian model.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson V of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holistic Consciousness and How to Live It in Everyday Life
ABSTRACT
This paper is the final one in a series of five. The progression presented in the series is conceived of as relating to the development of human consciousness, starting with commitment to the physical world as the whole of reality (materialistic humanism) through the consecutive realms of imagination (yoga), deep, intuitive discernment of transpersonal reality (maya) and a culminating transcendental experience of whatever is behind all three (holovolution), supporting and validating all of them and all other possible realms of experience. These four levels of experience reflect the classical Vedantic chatushpad or four steps, first proposed in the 6th Century CE by Sri Gaudapada. At that time only the fourth, transcendental stage was given full validity, but later developments in India opened out “downwards” through the “lower” stages and into the modern world, where the interface between Western imperialists, driven by raw materialism, and Vedanta, still adhering to its traditional stance at the fourth, or “other end” of the series led to a mass of counterintuitivity and a dire need to resolve the conflict. This paper presents how Sri Ramakrishna offers a fifth stage of consciousness that brings the depth insight of the fourth into all levels of conscious experience, radically transforming the whole range of human experience and making it possible for even materialism to be accepted as a valid part of the whole continuum. Sri Ramakrishna terms this level vijnana or higher knowledge, as did Sri Aurobindo at a later date. In eleventh century Kashmir Shaivism it is known as turiyatita, or “beyond the fourth.” Ken Wilber has also used this level in the development of his lattices. In this work I have opted for the term holism, in which not only is the part in the whole, but the whole is in the part. As always, the temporal transmission to Vivekananda was through a five state progression of consciousness and led to a bicameral presentation of the entire content—Indian and Western content that is at this stage fully integrated. This work appeared for the first time in my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness (2013).
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson IV of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holovolution, the Cosmology Synthesizing Spiritual Evolution and Involution
ABSTRACT
Lesson IV in the transmission from Sri Ramakrishna to Vivekananda is concerned with how the “evolutionary” process from matter to spirit—what we look at as spiritual development moving “upwards”—is balanced by an equal and “involutionary” process from spirit to matter moving “downwards”. Traditionally, matter-based evolution is more emphasized in the West, especially since the eighteenth century, and involution by the mystics from time immemorial, and relating to the process of “creation” or “emanation” from the divine source. Speaking from his habitually humanistic perspective, Vivekananda termed these two processes realization and manifestation, which take place not “out there”, but within the person or culture itself. In the mind of both Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda these processes are totally interrelated within the same system. As this material brought to mind the coinage of holomovement by the quantum physicist David Bohm, I opted to term the whole process holovolution.
As in the previous three lessons, this topic or theme is explored through the same five state changes in Vivekananda’s psyche, and in the same place and period of time—in short, following the progression of the chatushpad in parallel with the process of Lessons I through III. In holovolution the first three classes are a form of introduction to the topic, and Class IV the occurrence of the samadhi that opens up the full meaning of the topic, enabling Vivekananda, as after samadhi in the previous three lessons, to grasp the full meaning of the subject. Vivekananda opts to emphasize involution in India, not as divine creation but as how we manifest interior spiritual experience in action in the physical world. In the West, he gives evolution the meaning of how through spiritual development we arrive at the underlying reality of the whole process and thereby give materialist evolutionary theory a rationale in and of itself and logically linking it to involution. Both exegeses are clearly radically interrelated.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Yoga as a Science: The Pragmatic and Systematic Approach to
Self-transformation-2
ABSTRACT
This post is the second part of my posting on April 10th of Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Yoga, in which Sri Ramakrishna walks Swami Vivekananda through the four classical yogas and his own vision of their natural interrelationship in any human individual, not as separate and competing entities. The text is from my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, Chapters 21 and 22.
The progression that is followed in this material is that of the classical chatushpad or four steps/stages of consciousness developed in Vedanta for millennia and systematized by Sri Gaudapada in the 6th Century CE. In addition, there is a fifth in this present series, generated by Sri Ramakrishna’s grasp of vijnana or turiyatita, beyond the fourth. This fifth stage or state of consciousness is able to reconcile the fourth, transcendental state with the first, a healthy engagement with the physical world. This is an achievement that most traditional religions have not as yet embraced or developed.
The previous post presented material relating to the first two stages/states up to a major samadhi in Vivekananda. The material in this post deals with how the third through fifth stages, building on the insight of the samadhi, add dimensions to yoga that dramatically go beyond the more traditional aspects of its meaning and lead naturally to the awareness of the interconnectedness of all of them and their various aspects into a whole picture.
This methodology of study, while not familiar perhaps at the present, was in fact proposed by the early non-dualists such as Sri Shankaracharya and Sureshwaracharya in the 8th Century and later given phenomenological reality by the Kashmir Shaivites around the beginning of the second millennium.
A CASE STUDY IN TWIN 5X5 MATRICES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ABSTRACT
This case study is of Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth century Indian monk who modernized India and introduced yoga to the West. In Section A he is presented as a historical figure with an enduring influence on Western spirituality, through his own highly noetic personality and through his introduction of yoga to the West.
In Section B I show how Vivekananda’s worldview is compatible with an expansive and inclusive vision of human potentiality and therefore with emerging Western concepts of Transpersonal Psychology. I then proceed in Section C to a study of Vivekananda’s views on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, showing how his insights into the classic text on yoga are compatible with the categories currently being discerned in the ongoing study of spirituality in the West. In addition I discuss the possible genesis of samadhi, an event that results in permanent changes of personality and worldview, conspicuous in Vivekananda’s life and teaching.
I then proceed in Section D to an in-depth study of Vivekananda’s own formative years under the spiritual direction of Ramakrishna. I show how Vivekananda passed through the five state-stages of consciousness established in Vedantic spirituality for millennia, and that all through this process Ramakrishna presented to Vivekananda in contemporary idiom a spectrum of five conceptual levels reflecting and expressing the content of these states.
Aligning these two parameters of Vivekananda’s development orthogonally, I determine that the meeting in Vivekananda’s psyche of a state-stage with a level of the same ontological content results in samadhi. A succession of five samadhis later resulted in his highly integrated worldview and ability to address any state or level with magisterial skill.
This orthogonal combination of state-experience and explanatory concept is the basis of what I term a matrix of consciousness. In addition, I discern from my materials two such matrices, one more related to state (experience) and the other to level of explanation (logical). Basing my analysis on historical facts, I correlate the content and import of the logical matrix to Vivekananda’s Indian teaching and the content and import
2
of the state matrix to his Western work. I also demonstrate how these two matrices can be integrated with each other.
This matriceal model has great potential for reconciling not only India and the West but also the debates in the West about science vs. religion, state versus level, or indeed other contentious dichotomies that can arise when experience and concept are not fully integrated with each other within any prevailing worldview.
This paper is an invitation to recognize the connecting links
between four different models of spirituality or consciousness,
ranging from contemporary physics to emerging integral thinking,
and to see how such links serve to expand and deepen our
notions of what spirituality/consciousness actually is and how it
functions in various levels of human endeavour, including clinical
practice. I pinpoint and discuss an emerging six-point model of
spirituality in the contemporary world of health care as presented
in issue 6.2 of Journal for the Study of Spirituality. With a view to
relating it to its historical precedents and other disciplines
that may be thought at the moment to be irrelevant, tangential
or even hostile to it, I point to the Western and East Indian
traditions of a stepwise, hierarchical approach to spirituality or
consciousness. I go on to study three contemporary vertical models
in tandem – one from physics, another from consciousness studies,
and the third from integral spirituality – to illustrate not only the
basic structure of the model but also the invariance principle, which
states that models related to the same core structure can be related
to each other despite their lack of the same descriptive language.
My intention is to make it easier for the health care community and
others to recognize a possible relationship between their own
preferred models and those in disciplines that may not currently
appear cognate, as well as to enrich and further define themselves
with what is offered in those disciplines.
Talks by Jean MacPhail
As these soaring words are spoken with the utmost gravity and feeling, images of Margaret’s life appear behind her bier, slowly moving from Ireland to India; from there to the Himalayan peaks and finally up into the endlessly moving clouds above the Himalayas.
In the words of Dungannon’s mayor, Nivedita demonstrated “the power of selfless sacrifice and how it is possible to change society through individual efforts.”
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, May 4, 2010
As I understand that this is a group studying Vedanta, including Swami Vivekananda, I don’t think I will have to give much explanation as to what the title of my talk might mean. However, I should give a few definitions and some history, jut to set the scene, as what I have to say may not conform to your concept of Vedanta. Like everything else, Vedanta – though a very ancient and venerable tradition - does evolve and has recently evolved quite dramatically, and I will be talking about some contemporary thinking on the subject.
apparently irreconcilable with each other. Further, in keeping with current thinking that this principle can be expanded to include the human psyche, I select the complementaries concept and experience as relevant to this article. After indicating in general how this principle is expressed in the models of my original study (2017), I present in more detail the data and methods within in models #2 and #3, as the
first does not go into the issue of complementarity and space precludes inclusion of the fourth at this point.
The first model was developed in a therapeutic environment as a rule of thumb for assessing needs, the second is developed from standard Western physical science and presents theoretically the need to resolve complementarity between our current perception of the physical world and the inner perceptions thus far ignored by Western science. The desired result is an expansion of the scope and meaning of science itself
from mere mechanism to a deep, urgently needed wisdom. The third model contrasts the findings on consciousness of Western neuroscience with the age-old teachings of India on the phenomenology of self-transformation. This comparison brings out the limitations of the Western view and indicates ways to resolve complementarity between it and the Asian model.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson V of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holistic Consciousness and How to Live It in Everyday Life
ABSTRACT
This paper is the final one in a series of five. The progression presented in the series is conceived of as relating to the development of human consciousness, starting with commitment to the physical world as the whole of reality (materialistic humanism) through the consecutive realms of imagination (yoga), deep, intuitive discernment of transpersonal reality (maya) and a culminating transcendental experience of whatever is behind all three (holovolution), supporting and validating all of them and all other possible realms of experience. These four levels of experience reflect the classical Vedantic chatushpad or four steps, first proposed in the 6th Century CE by Sri Gaudapada. At that time only the fourth, transcendental stage was given full validity, but later developments in India opened out “downwards” through the “lower” stages and into the modern world, where the interface between Western imperialists, driven by raw materialism, and Vedanta, still adhering to its traditional stance at the fourth, or “other end” of the series led to a mass of counterintuitivity and a dire need to resolve the conflict. This paper presents how Sri Ramakrishna offers a fifth stage of consciousness that brings the depth insight of the fourth into all levels of conscious experience, radically transforming the whole range of human experience and making it possible for even materialism to be accepted as a valid part of the whole continuum. Sri Ramakrishna terms this level vijnana or higher knowledge, as did Sri Aurobindo at a later date. In eleventh century Kashmir Shaivism it is known as turiyatita, or “beyond the fourth.” Ken Wilber has also used this level in the development of his lattices. In this work I have opted for the term holism, in which not only is the part in the whole, but the whole is in the part. As always, the temporal transmission to Vivekananda was through a five state progression of consciousness and led to a bicameral presentation of the entire content—Indian and Western content that is at this stage fully integrated. This work appeared for the first time in my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness (2013).
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson IV of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Holovolution, the Cosmology Synthesizing Spiritual Evolution and Involution
ABSTRACT
Lesson IV in the transmission from Sri Ramakrishna to Vivekananda is concerned with how the “evolutionary” process from matter to spirit—what we look at as spiritual development moving “upwards”—is balanced by an equal and “involutionary” process from spirit to matter moving “downwards”. Traditionally, matter-based evolution is more emphasized in the West, especially since the eighteenth century, and involution by the mystics from time immemorial, and relating to the process of “creation” or “emanation” from the divine source. Speaking from his habitually humanistic perspective, Vivekananda termed these two processes realization and manifestation, which take place not “out there”, but within the person or culture itself. In the mind of both Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda these processes are totally interrelated within the same system. As this material brought to mind the coinage of holomovement by the quantum physicist David Bohm, I opted to term the whole process holovolution.
As in the previous three lessons, this topic or theme is explored through the same five state changes in Vivekananda’s psyche, and in the same place and period of time—in short, following the progression of the chatushpad in parallel with the process of Lessons I through III. In holovolution the first three classes are a form of introduction to the topic, and Class IV the occurrence of the samadhi that opens up the full meaning of the topic, enabling Vivekananda, as after samadhi in the previous three lessons, to grasp the full meaning of the subject. Vivekananda opts to emphasize involution in India, not as divine creation but as how we manifest interior spiritual experience in action in the physical world. In the West, he gives evolution the meaning of how through spiritual development we arrive at the underlying reality of the whole process and thereby give materialist evolutionary theory a rationale in and of itself and logically linking it to involution. Both exegeses are clearly radically interrelated.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Vedanta
Yoga as a Science: The Pragmatic and Systematic Approach to
Self-transformation-2
ABSTRACT
This post is the second part of my posting on April 10th of Lesson II of Ramakrishna’s Integral Yoga, in which Sri Ramakrishna walks Swami Vivekananda through the four classical yogas and his own vision of their natural interrelationship in any human individual, not as separate and competing entities. The text is from my doctoral thesis Learning in Depth: A Case Study in Twin 5x5 Matrices of Consciousness, Chapters 21 and 22.
The progression that is followed in this material is that of the classical chatushpad or four steps/stages of consciousness developed in Vedanta for millennia and systematized by Sri Gaudapada in the 6th Century CE. In addition, there is a fifth in this present series, generated by Sri Ramakrishna’s grasp of vijnana or turiyatita, beyond the fourth. This fifth stage or state of consciousness is able to reconcile the fourth, transcendental state with the first, a healthy engagement with the physical world. This is an achievement that most traditional religions have not as yet embraced or developed.
The previous post presented material relating to the first two stages/states up to a major samadhi in Vivekananda. The material in this post deals with how the third through fifth stages, building on the insight of the samadhi, add dimensions to yoga that dramatically go beyond the more traditional aspects of its meaning and lead naturally to the awareness of the interconnectedness of all of them and their various aspects into a whole picture.
This methodology of study, while not familiar perhaps at the present, was in fact proposed by the early non-dualists such as Sri Shankaracharya and Sureshwaracharya in the 8th Century and later given phenomenological reality by the Kashmir Shaivites around the beginning of the second millennium.
A CASE STUDY IN TWIN 5X5 MATRICES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ABSTRACT
This case study is of Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth century Indian monk who modernized India and introduced yoga to the West. In Section A he is presented as a historical figure with an enduring influence on Western spirituality, through his own highly noetic personality and through his introduction of yoga to the West.
In Section B I show how Vivekananda’s worldview is compatible with an expansive and inclusive vision of human potentiality and therefore with emerging Western concepts of Transpersonal Psychology. I then proceed in Section C to a study of Vivekananda’s views on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, showing how his insights into the classic text on yoga are compatible with the categories currently being discerned in the ongoing study of spirituality in the West. In addition I discuss the possible genesis of samadhi, an event that results in permanent changes of personality and worldview, conspicuous in Vivekananda’s life and teaching.
I then proceed in Section D to an in-depth study of Vivekananda’s own formative years under the spiritual direction of Ramakrishna. I show how Vivekananda passed through the five state-stages of consciousness established in Vedantic spirituality for millennia, and that all through this process Ramakrishna presented to Vivekananda in contemporary idiom a spectrum of five conceptual levels reflecting and expressing the content of these states.
Aligning these two parameters of Vivekananda’s development orthogonally, I determine that the meeting in Vivekananda’s psyche of a state-stage with a level of the same ontological content results in samadhi. A succession of five samadhis later resulted in his highly integrated worldview and ability to address any state or level with magisterial skill.
This orthogonal combination of state-experience and explanatory concept is the basis of what I term a matrix of consciousness. In addition, I discern from my materials two such matrices, one more related to state (experience) and the other to level of explanation (logical). Basing my analysis on historical facts, I correlate the content and import of the logical matrix to Vivekananda’s Indian teaching and the content and import
2
of the state matrix to his Western work. I also demonstrate how these two matrices can be integrated with each other.
This matriceal model has great potential for reconciling not only India and the West but also the debates in the West about science vs. religion, state versus level, or indeed other contentious dichotomies that can arise when experience and concept are not fully integrated with each other within any prevailing worldview.
This paper is an invitation to recognize the connecting links
between four different models of spirituality or consciousness,
ranging from contemporary physics to emerging integral thinking,
and to see how such links serve to expand and deepen our
notions of what spirituality/consciousness actually is and how it
functions in various levels of human endeavour, including clinical
practice. I pinpoint and discuss an emerging six-point model of
spirituality in the contemporary world of health care as presented
in issue 6.2 of Journal for the Study of Spirituality. With a view to
relating it to its historical precedents and other disciplines
that may be thought at the moment to be irrelevant, tangential
or even hostile to it, I point to the Western and East Indian
traditions of a stepwise, hierarchical approach to spirituality or
consciousness. I go on to study three contemporary vertical models
in tandem – one from physics, another from consciousness studies,
and the third from integral spirituality – to illustrate not only the
basic structure of the model but also the invariance principle, which
states that models related to the same core structure can be related
to each other despite their lack of the same descriptive language.
My intention is to make it easier for the health care community and
others to recognize a possible relationship between their own
preferred models and those in disciplines that may not currently
appear cognate, as well as to enrich and further define themselves
with what is offered in those disciplines.
As these soaring words are spoken with the utmost gravity and feeling, images of Margaret’s life appear behind her bier, slowly moving from Ireland to India; from there to the Himalayan peaks and finally up into the endlessly moving clouds above the Himalayas.
In the words of Dungannon’s mayor, Nivedita demonstrated “the power of selfless sacrifice and how it is possible to change society through individual efforts.”
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, May 4, 2010
As I understand that this is a group studying Vedanta, including Swami Vivekananda, I don’t think I will have to give much explanation as to what the title of my talk might mean. However, I should give a few definitions and some history, jut to set the scene, as what I have to say may not conform to your concept of Vedanta. Like everything else, Vedanta – though a very ancient and venerable tradition - does evolve and has recently evolved quite dramatically, and I will be talking about some contemporary thinking on the subject.
In approaching spirituality in the West the challenge is to reconcile the vastly flexible, “subjective” processes and more or less unknown phenomena of spiritual transformation with the classic dependence in the West on third-person, “objective” testimony:
Subjective” data is summarily dismissed as untenable and invalid.
I shall present four different takes on this basic problem.
1. Nicholas Maxwell’s Aim-oriented Empiricism
2. Evan Thompson’s Waking, Dreaming, and Being
3. Harald Walach’s Quantum Complementarity
4. Vivekananda’s Integral Vedanta
Fewer, I think, know of the life and work of Swami Vivekananda, senior to Sri Aurobindo by nine years, and the teacher of what I term Integral Vedanta. Even less do they know the model of consciousness his work demonstrates, and which he learned from Sri Ramakrishna.
The Integral Vedanta model is the outcome of the five year interaction between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, who respectively represented Indian experiential shamanism and the acme of modern Western conceptualism—a dichotomous pair if there ever was one. This model was created purely from the massive data available about the transformation of Vivekananda by Ramakrishna as well as Vivekananda’s subsequent reproduction of the model in his teaching work in both India and the West.
Debashish’s Seven Quartets of Becoming1 helped me flesh out and understand more fully the systematism in the work of Sri Aurobindo (another Indian who spent his life reconciling the dichotomous relationship between India and the West) and afforded me the opportunity to compare it in some detail with the model I had developed for Integral Vedanta.
Before beginning the exposition on this rather complex subject, I think some disclosure about my own position is necessary. I am a sannyasini or fully professed nun in the Ramakrishna Order of India—though now an independent scholar--and have been trying to live Vedanta for fifty three years, since first encountering the Bhagavad Gita. Although my subjects at school were art and science, as initially a very committed Scottish Presbyterian I have always had a deep interest in the Western Christian tradition and over the years have read many of the classics of its history, psychology, philosophy and theology, but as the spirit moved me, not in a systematic way. It was, therefore, a great treat for me to read the recently published Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities edited by Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher (which I shall refer to as Models). In that volume more than eighty scholars including some Jewish and Islamic, provided essays on different facets of the developmental history of Christianity, while a rather limited selection on some of the Indian traditions, including Vedanta was presented by both Indian and Western scholars.
I was quite fascinated by the various elements involved, and especially in what I saw as a definite progression within the Abrahamic traditions over time, something I had never quite grasped before. My particular frame of reference is one that I developed in my doctoral thesis , namely, that human consciousness has two sides: conceptual and experiential, and that combining them in a harmonious equilibrium is by far the most advantageous way to go. This conclusion was reached from studying contemporary Indian material in which this is what indeed happened. For the most part, however, we tend to emphasize one or other and that is what I saw in the Christian tradition, which, though arising from the more or less experiential Greek tradition, soon morphed into an extremely conceptual mode that we call Classical Theism, a subject delved into in depth in Models. Over time this classic conceptual position was softened, adapted and finally challenged, especially after the first Christian Millennium, by a rising need for a more experiential mode of understanding that climaxed in the modern period and is presently taking all manner of quite remarkable forms.
I have been able to trace this vision to his experiences with Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and also to how he implemented the various stages of its unfoldment in his life during his period of public work:
Religion for a Secular Age presents the efforts of noted philologist and Orientalist Max Müller (1823-1900) and Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), Vedantic monk and scholar, to salvage an empiricist, naturalistic, historically sensitive spirituality from the burgeoning of reductionistic materialism sweeping through science in the mid nineteenth century. Müller aimed to instill into religion the importance of personal interior experience that alone can withstand the onslaught of ever-proliferating, scientific theses based on purely external, materialistic assumptions. His mature view was that such interior power is most fully developed in Indian non-dualism (Advaita Vedanta).
As Müller selected as the prime living exemplars of Vedanta Vivekananda and his spiritual teacher Ramakrishna (1836-1886), Green undertakes to present the resonances between Müller’s thought and that of Vivekananda, supported by the literature generated by Indian reformers contemporary with Müller. The result is an interesting thesis, but one that cannot explain the obvious deviations of the worldview of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda from traditional Advaita (non-dualism) which, emphasizing the purely transcendental, declared “the world” to be “unreal”, thus creating for humanity a situation as problematical in its own way as the paradigm dominant in the West today that the physical world is the only reality, and all other alternatives are at best “epiphenomena”.
Green’s presentation appears to conform to the sequence of consciousness known in Advaita Vedanta as the chatushpad, or four levels of consciousness, from the physical to the purely transcendental. In this way he arrives at a workmanlike insight into the parallels between Müller and Vivekananda. However, as the levels “expand” in sequence towards the transcendental and Vivekananda’s thought becomes visibly non-conformist to traditional Advaita, Green is obliged to introduce as an explanatory model the notion of “immanent monism”.
I suggest that the difficulties arise from the lack of inclusion of the actual, subjective experiential data and their meaning behind Vivekananda’s work. In this review article I offer the missing data behind the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda paradigm as presented here, including the evidence for an emerging fifth level of consciousness—turiyatita, literally “beyond the fourth”. This level of consciousness presents a continuum in which the physical and transcendental levels are part of a total picture and can, even must, work together harmoniously for real “non-dualism” to exist in the form of secularized spirituality. I offer a matriceal model that seems to correspond to the structure of this level of consciousness.
As Müller selected as the prime living exemplars of Vedanta Vivekananda and his spiritual teacher Ramakrishna (1836-1886), Green undertakes to present the resonances between Müller’s thought and that of Vivekananda, supported by the literature generated by Indian reformers contemporary with Müller. The result is an interesting thesis, but one that cannot explain the obvious deviations of the worldview of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda from traditional Advaita (non-dualism) which, emphasizing the purely transcendental, declared “the world” to be “unreal”, thus creating for humanity a situation as problematical in its own way as the paradigm dominant in the West today that the physical world is the only reality, and all other alternatives are at best “epiphenomena”.
Green’s presentation appears to conform to the sequence of consciousness known in Advaita Vedanta as the chatushpad, or four levels of consciousness, from the physical to the purely transcendental. In this way he arrives at a workmanlike insight into the parallels between Müller and Vivekananda. However, as the levels “expand” in sequence towards the transcendental and Vivekananda’s thought becomes visibly non-conformist to traditional Advaita, Green is obliged to introduce as an explanatory model the notion of “immanent monism”.
I suggest that the difficulties arise from the lack of inclusion of the actual, subjective experiential data and their meaning behind Vivekananda’s work. In this review article I offer the missing data behind the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda paradigm as presented here, including the evidence for an emerging fifth level of consciousness—turiyatita, literally “beyond the fourth”. This level of consciousness, also known as vijnana or “beyond knowledge” presents a continuum in which the physical and transcendental levels are part of a total picture and can, even must, work together harmoniously for real “non-dualism” to exist in the form of secularized spirituality. I offer a matriceal model that seems to correspond to the structure of this level of consciousness.
The author gives a very rounded overall approach which he delivers with amazing parsimony . I focus especially on his treatment of the issue of child development and the role that adult spiritual maturity plays in helping children to maintain an open, "right brain" approach without being overwhelmed by the dominant left brain, "scientistic" approach characteristic of the contemporary West.
The very title—Secular Spirituality—is itself a complementarity, an oxymoron; purportedly a unity, it aligns secular—which explicitly excludes spiritualty—with spirituality itself. Just how the author proposes to resolve this issue is the big question.
Vivekananda highlights the deeply subjective nature of Vedanta, in which God is not "out there", but to be found in the depths of all souls. We learn about the social and philosophical structures that supported that inner discovery, as well as the self-transformative practices that promoted it and helped it to evolve over time. We see how this tradition adjusted to a thousand years of invasion and imperial domination from the West, with its belief in an extra-cosmic God and deep distrust of the subjectivity of Vedanta.
From his training with Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) Vivekananda speaks from vijnana, a level of consciousness that integrates the subjectivity of Vedanta with the objectivity of the West so that finally there is the possibility of conciliation between the two--and, indeed, between all world traditions.
Jean C. MacPhail
Investigation into the structure that seems to appear in and through the story.
This is a request for input on data about recurrent patterns in life-stories that could be used to develop a well-substantiated model of structure and meaning behind human histories.
The answer to the first question seems to lie in the observation, developed at length in New Age Religion and Western Culture by Wouter J. Hanegraaff (3), that the West was moving rapidly away from its Judeo-Christian tradition of the past two millennia towards what we now call the New Age. As Dr. Hanegraaff sees it, this transition had taken a series of steps, which we shall use as a framework for our discussion. First had been the emergence of the esoteric tradition at the time of the Renaissance. Basically, esotericism developed from the non-dual, holistic counterculture that had been running alongside dominant, dualistic Judeo-Christianity, but very much in the shade; and, between the twelfth to seventeenth century, actively condemned and persecuted. At the Renaissance, it came to the fore as various gnostic movements, such as Hermeticism, the Jewish and Christian Kabbalahs, Rosicrucianism, etc. Along with these gnostic movements came the beginnings of modern natural science which shared with them the central idea that knowledge is primarily acquired through one's own direct experience. Again, such knowledge is obtained by means of consciously directed struggle and not through the dogmas and rituals of any external agency, no matter how long-established or revered.
Right now it seems like a ridiculous dream, but as the post-wildfire wasteland can and does become a beautiful, inspiring reality, so our human family can and will survive and move towards the new culture of full integration of all the various forms that make up our world, with its roots deep in the inner knowledge of our shared existence and the freedom to think in a fresh way that moves not only us, but our planet and probably the universe, forward. Can there really be peace in any other way?
The form in which these events occurred within the four cycles prepared my mind to receive the ancient Vedantic form of the chatushpad, or a series of levels of consciousness, again in contradistinction to the usual Western model, which at the moment seems largely to posit only the material world and a theoretical “Consciousness”, without any distinguishing features. While hoping for corroboration of my experiences, I present some circumstances that may have predisposed me to this unusual mode of experience and some background evidence that for me supports my orientation to the chatushpad as well as its possible relationship to quantum theories of learning.
For Western Vedantists seeking an answer to the question: Am I a Hindu? an article circulating a couple of years ago, The Kalpataru and the Christmas Tree by Swami Sunirmalananda comes as helpful input. The swami, recently transferred to our center in Brazil from India, shares with us some of the thoughts and feelings aroused in him by what he sees going on around him, perhaps for the first time. As a candid snapshot of how Western ways strike a Hindu it is really very much appreciated, as it opens doors for dialog and possible resolution of some of the knotty issues we face over the Hindu–Western Vedantist divide.
Jean C. MacPhail, PhD, MD
Thank you for opening this discussion of what are called paranormal events in academese, or psychic phenomena in transpersonal psychology. What is so interesting is that the contents of your premonitory dreams were documented as later, actual events, validated by public authorities.
Although these experiences have been recorded in all cultures in all ages and regarded as normal, in our present circumstances, i.e. rampant materialism that totally denies reality to anything but matter, they are swept away as at best “epiphenomena” or delusions or possibly premonitions of oncoming mental disorder. I think it is commonly known, and certainly in my experience is real, is that large numbers of people have this type of experience, but are afraid to talk about them because of the ridicule or even hostility they may encounter from so-called “normal” people.
Your questions struck me as very pertinent. They reminded me of what I went through myself when transitioning from Christianity to contemporary Integral Vedanta and I felt challenged to try to provide some suggestions that might answer some of them.
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion. The subject matter, A Non-philosophical Approach to the Sociology of Religious Pluralism, emerges from the very distinct and specialized field of contemporary French Roman Catholicism, taking many things for granted that for me and possibly for many others, are not immediately accessible.
However, we do grasp at once that Laruelle’s portfolio is radical change in what he characterizes as a form of Christianity characterized by “particularism, exclusivism and fanaticism”. In effect, over a period of nearly a thousand years, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—suffered and perished because of non-agreement with conceptual dogmas generated by an élite body of sacerdotal authorities.
Thank you for your invitation to participate in this discussion. I believe that the issue of East/West understanding is vitally important globally and take the liberty here of presenting my understanding of the implications of Sri Ramakrishna’s vision in that context.
I first responded to the appeal on June 11, 2023, with Lived Life Cycles: Experiences Along the Way: Eighty Years of Noetic Experiences in Four Cycles with Recurring Internal Patterns.
Despite the wide range of experiences suggested by this title, I provided detail about only one noetic event of huge significance to my life and posted a description of it in Academia in a reproduction of all of the graphics and comments involved: https://www.academia.edu/106413209/LIFE_EXPERIENCE_JPEG
Some months later the SAI requested me to provide an hour’s worth of material, which turned out to be quite an undertaking, as my tale spilled over the allotted time and I opted to omit two major experiences, both of which I recorded years back in my memoir: A Spiral Life, 2010, 333-335 and 352-354.
The end result is a video of the program, given on February 17, 2024:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb-HRIjn6p4&t=148s
In Part II, to which I am now turning attention, I first present the mantra in its original context in the Kaushitaki Upanishad of the Rig Veda, followed by Vivekananda’s discussion on how the principle of Atman/Brahman can be interpreted as the underlying link between precisely I and thou in ordinary understanding. He then exhorts humanity to recognize this massive potential behind it, and to finally get beyond all traditional sanctions and separations that divide humanity to this day. We learn to love and serve what previously we have seen as “others” and to structure our behavior and institutions on the principle of universal Selfhood. Along with each step of the argument I present material from Buber that seems to echo what Vivekananda is saying, but with a definite, humanistic position that can be regarded as one of the defining features of Abrahamic and Western thinking and tradition. Finally, Vivekananda expresses his own I-Thou relationship with Sri Ramakrishna, that gave him the ability to see things in this way and to devote his life to setting up institutions dedicated to going beyond the endless sense of human separation and hostility.
I conclude with consideration of an array of historical relationships with Sri Ramakrishna and beyond which seem to illustrate different stages in the development of the full I and You understanding and its impact on human behavior.
This is the first in my overview of fifteen Upanishadic mantras, five of which are classical mahavakyas and the other ten “auxiliaries” to them. This mantra is, in my view, a key to understanding the often-indirect meaning of the other mahavakyas themselves, all of which call for the capacity to abandon dualistic dogmas and to open out more and more to the experience of the deepest levels of human consciousness from one level to another.
Swami Vivekananda quoted this mantra on many occasions and in considerable depth. The result is a quite large text, which I have decided to present in two parts. The present, first text focuses on the role the human mind habitually plays in this ancient, apparently never-ending drama. In Part II Vivekananda goes into historical contexts of how the insight into the mantra developed in India especially and how this phenomenon contrasted with the views of cultures contemporary to it. These remarks set the stage for later cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, which conclude the second part of this work.
This present paper goes on to give a closer look at how such misunderstandings have given rise, not only to confusion in individual thinking, but also to historical animosities and radical separation within and between cultures, in India as well as internationally. Vivekananda gives an overview of how following an internal ‘evolutionary’ path from the multiplicity of matter seen externally to the direct experience of undivided Reality at the core of everything, there is resolution of misunderstanding and ill-feeling. In discussing this path, he introduces the idea of a chosen ideal that directs all of one’s efforts, meditation that helps to remove the idea of multiplicity and a final embrace of the total picture in which there is no separation or misunderstanding.
It concludes with Vivekananda’s exhortations, first to the West, and secondly to the Indians, to study and embrace the view of reality that is called for in this venerable saying, pointing to the advantages and considerably more peace and goodwill that are generated by embracing its content and meaning.
I have opted to retain in this paper the same Introduction as I utilized in Part I. There I present my own understanding of the import of not only this mantra, but also its relationship to the classic and well-known mantra Tat twam asi: you are That, and also Twam aham: I am you, a much less known mantra, but one which might be said to fulfill the meaning of the two better-known mantras. I see it as drawing out from Vivekananda himself illustrations of just how much fellow-feeling and love can be developed, even in relating, within the framework of you and I, the most separative of relationships in the overall array of mahavakyas. For, as we shall see, the mahavakyas range all the way from dualistic you to identity with the totally immersive Brahman and even beyond.
This is the first in my overview of fifteen Upanishadic mantras, five of which are classical mahavakyas and the other ten “auxiliaries” to them. This mantra is, in my view, a key to understanding the often-indirect meaning of the other mahavakyas themselves, all of which call for the capacity to abandon dualistic dogmas and to open out more and more to the experience of the deepest levels of human consciousness from one level to another.
Swami Vivekananda quoted this mantra on many occasions and in considerable depth. The result is a quite large text, which I have decided to present in two parts. The present, first text focuses on the role the human mind habitually plays in this ancient, apparently never-ending drama. In Part II Vivekananda goes into historical contexts of how the insight into the mantra developed in India especially and how this phenomenon contrasted with the views of cultures contemporary to it. These remarks set the stage for later cultural misunderstandings and conflicts, which conclude the second part of this work.
A CONNECTING “PSYCHOLOGY” OF THE PRIMARY INSIGHTS OF VEDANTA
Class lecture delivered at the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Hollywood
May 18, 2004
Amended, April 21, 2022
ABSTRACT
In this communication I introduce my first public presentation of insights into the great sayings of Vedanta (mahavakyas) as commented on by Swami Vivekananda. In it, I give to a group of interested people in Los Angeles a broad overview of his approach to these key elements of Vedanta and how they seem to interrelate with each other in an apparently coherent manner.
This material was intended as an introduction to a later presentation of the actual content of his interpretations on each of the shlokas (verses) Vivekananda had commented on. In this basic plan I also included other shlokas that seemed to share the same purview or “psychology” as the core material and on which Vivekananda had made frequent comments
I had identified these materials from 1973 to 1991 and arranged them under the Veda and Upanishad to which they classically belong. This made it possible to discern the interconnections and correspondences between the classical range of insights in Vedanta as well as, of course, the original thinking that Vivekananda brought to interpreting them.
Six years later in MacPhail, 2010 I gave an academic interpretation of this overall approach, indicating the content of each shloka with headings from Vivekananda’s compiled commentary. The layout that I developed for that presentation I will utilize here and add to it the “psychology” that seems to underlie the whole system. This psychology was developed in full in my doctoral thesis (MacPhail, 2013, 348-369) in connection with the occurrence of samadhi, the classical turning-points in the experiential progression from level to level of consciousness that I perceive as enshrined in the overall array of mahavakyas. Utilizing this recondite material here is intended to give more gravitas to the more general discussion of the subject in the classes in Los Angeles.
Since the publication of my overview of Vivekananda’s “take” on the development of Vedanta historically (Gayatriprana, 2020), I have been arriving at the importance of the notion of chatushpad, or four steps of the Atman, in codifying these different levels of consciousness. I first discerned the classical four in the mahavakyas, and beyond them the present emergence of a fifth step that seems to be of major significance in meeting the demands of contemporary human existence.
Meeting with considerable resistance to this turn in my thinking, I have recently written what might be called a history of the chatushpad, with the proposed title A History of Consciousness from a Vedantic Point of View: A Belated Response to Max Velmans’s Question: Is the Universe Conscious? A further extension of this enquiry will include a study of the Western point of view that rejects this mode of understanding and also some examples of those who can see value and meaning in it.