The mind tells us many things. The one thing it always bugs us about is the need to be “successful”. The need to do something. The need to always become…something other than what we are now. We are then haunted by mind making us regret the past and fear the future.
What would success be from the perspective of the “Self”, “Buddha Nature” or our true reality?
It would be helpful to first understand our “normal” reality. It is one that is controlled by the mind. It is unconscious and mechanical.
Gurdjeiff described the levels of our consciousness pretty well: “Gurdjieff maintains that man as he is asleep, but can awaken with super effort. The greatest obstacle to awakening is the fact that we think we are awake. According to Gurdjieff, there are four levels of consciousness, sleep, waking sleep, self-consciousness, and objective consciousness. In sleep, there is very little consciousness of the outside world though there is some. In waking sleep, we think we are fully conscious, but we are so conditioned and identified that we do not see things as they really are. In self-consciousness, we remember ourselves and are aware of our relationship to the inner and outer worlds. In objective consciousness, we see things as they really are.”
To have a meaningful life we need to rise above the waking-sleep state and become self-conscious. A waking-sleep life that appears successful in the conventional sense has no meaning. Its like calling a machine such as a computer successful. It has no meaning to the machine. To be truly human is first to just BE. To awaken. To be self aware. Aware of the “I AM”. We can then claim true success in life. So we could call an unemployed homeless person successful. As long as they can know in every moment that “I AM”.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Spiritual Black Swans - Part 2
In part one of this essay I looked into what Nicolas Nassim Taleb had to say in his book the “Black Swan”. I ended the essay saying that Taleb completely ignores one thing that could solve the issues raised in the book – spirituality.
The central point in the book is the completely random, unpredictable nature of reality and the limitations of the human mind in grasping this.
The first part of the book deals with the limitations of the human mind. The mind operates on a collective subconscious map of reality. This reality is a fragmented and insanely complicated. Events are explained in terms of cause and effect reasoning without any holistic perspective.
How does the spiritual person deal with this? Well he steps out of the collective delusion. He steps out of the mind. He transcends the problem of black swans as she knows there are no swans! A swan is part of the delusion of reality generated by the human mind; the map rather than the territory. Spirituality sees reality as one non-dual undifferentiated whole. All distinct entities that are perceived are therefore transitory illusions the mind generates to make sense of the world. A spiritual person knows that you can never truly know anything. In addition to this there are no simple cause and effect explanations for events. Every element of the universe is related to every other element in one undivided whole. It is not possible to isolate parts of the whole and claim to explain it.
Taleb explains that humans use 2 modes of thought –
System 1 - Experiential , intuitive and based on heuristics.
System 2 – Cogitative , logical, self-aware, what we normally call thinking.
Taleb claims System 1 is inherently flawed as it is based on a number of defective modes of thinking. The tendency to explain events in terms of simple cause and effect, the extrapolation of the past into the future, the inability to see black swans are all due to System 1 mode of thinking. The advice he gives is to deliberately use System 2 logical thinking to overcome the “intuitive” thought of System 1 by rationally understanding black swans and acting to mitigate their effects.
This is where the spirituality disagrees completely with Taleb. The true source of knowledge is intuition. What Taleb claims is intuition is the subconscious part of the mind. The same mind that fails to perceive the one spirit and instead sees a fragmented collective reality. True intuition arises when the mind is silent. This would be difficult for someone like Taleb, who is immersed in mental reality, to grasp. This intuition is responsible for all creativity. It connects one to the infinite intelligence of the one source. The “thinking” mind may be blind to black swans but the intuitive mind, the pure consciousness will not be. In silence can emerge knowledge that may seem utterly impossible to the “thinking” mind. In silence the working of the infinite intelligence is revealed.
In the second part of the book Taleb deals with the problem of prediction. Taleb claims that black swan events are completely random so not predictable. To a spiritual person there is no randomness in the universe. The universe is purposeful and is guided by the one source. Though the process of entropy is well known the opposite process of extropy is not. Life is a highly improbable event that is getting more improbable all the time as it evolves into ever more complex life forms. This is the process of extropy. It should logically not exist. It does. A spiritual person taps into the intelligence of the source that guides this process and gets an intuitive understanding of where the universe will jump to next. As he is one with the universe his goals align with that of the universe. Elaborate plans and predictions are not needed by the spiritual person as he is guided by the source. Indeed planning and prediction may rule out the serendipitous non-deterministic events that are the essence of the universal intelligence.
As black swans are unpredictable according to Taleb he advices us to experiment, tinker and explore in order to maximize the chance of catching a positive black swan. In other words try and maximize out luck. The spiritual person on the other hand makes his own luck. The universe will let you know in advance if you use your true intuition
The key then is silence. A Zen master once said “Don’t seek the truth. Just stop cherishing opinions”. We can then hear the sound of one hand clapping and see a world without black swans.
The central point in the book is the completely random, unpredictable nature of reality and the limitations of the human mind in grasping this.
The first part of the book deals with the limitations of the human mind. The mind operates on a collective subconscious map of reality. This reality is a fragmented and insanely complicated. Events are explained in terms of cause and effect reasoning without any holistic perspective.
How does the spiritual person deal with this? Well he steps out of the collective delusion. He steps out of the mind. He transcends the problem of black swans as she knows there are no swans! A swan is part of the delusion of reality generated by the human mind; the map rather than the territory. Spirituality sees reality as one non-dual undifferentiated whole. All distinct entities that are perceived are therefore transitory illusions the mind generates to make sense of the world. A spiritual person knows that you can never truly know anything. In addition to this there are no simple cause and effect explanations for events. Every element of the universe is related to every other element in one undivided whole. It is not possible to isolate parts of the whole and claim to explain it.
Taleb explains that humans use 2 modes of thought –
System 1 - Experiential , intuitive and based on heuristics.
System 2 – Cogitative , logical, self-aware, what we normally call thinking.
Taleb claims System 1 is inherently flawed as it is based on a number of defective modes of thinking. The tendency to explain events in terms of simple cause and effect, the extrapolation of the past into the future, the inability to see black swans are all due to System 1 mode of thinking. The advice he gives is to deliberately use System 2 logical thinking to overcome the “intuitive” thought of System 1 by rationally understanding black swans and acting to mitigate their effects.
This is where the spirituality disagrees completely with Taleb. The true source of knowledge is intuition. What Taleb claims is intuition is the subconscious part of the mind. The same mind that fails to perceive the one spirit and instead sees a fragmented collective reality. True intuition arises when the mind is silent. This would be difficult for someone like Taleb, who is immersed in mental reality, to grasp. This intuition is responsible for all creativity. It connects one to the infinite intelligence of the one source. The “thinking” mind may be blind to black swans but the intuitive mind, the pure consciousness will not be. In silence can emerge knowledge that may seem utterly impossible to the “thinking” mind. In silence the working of the infinite intelligence is revealed.
In the second part of the book Taleb deals with the problem of prediction. Taleb claims that black swan events are completely random so not predictable. To a spiritual person there is no randomness in the universe. The universe is purposeful and is guided by the one source. Though the process of entropy is well known the opposite process of extropy is not. Life is a highly improbable event that is getting more improbable all the time as it evolves into ever more complex life forms. This is the process of extropy. It should logically not exist. It does. A spiritual person taps into the intelligence of the source that guides this process and gets an intuitive understanding of where the universe will jump to next. As he is one with the universe his goals align with that of the universe. Elaborate plans and predictions are not needed by the spiritual person as he is guided by the source. Indeed planning and prediction may rule out the serendipitous non-deterministic events that are the essence of the universal intelligence.
As black swans are unpredictable according to Taleb he advices us to experiment, tinker and explore in order to maximize the chance of catching a positive black swan. In other words try and maximize out luck. The spiritual person on the other hand makes his own luck. The universe will let you know in advance if you use your true intuition
The key then is silence. A Zen master once said “Don’t seek the truth. Just stop cherishing opinions”. We can then hear the sound of one hand clapping and see a world without black swans.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Spiritual Black Swans
Just read “Black Swan” by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. He’s quite the man around town these days. He happens to have predicted the whole financial mess way back in this book. His book is all about the limitations of human knowledge and the prediction business as a whole.
A black swan was assumed to be impossible as Swans were “known” to be white. Well, black swans were discovered in Australia showing the limitation of our knowledge. A “Black Swan” event according to Taleb is a huge completely random event that is never predictable. The reason we get hit the most by these “Black Swan” events is that we never expect them or are never ready for them. Even after they happen we don’t accept them has random events of fate. Instead we tend to formulate “logical” explanations for them. All this stems from the fundamental limitations of our modes of thought.
Taleb systematically examines the limitations. We form mental models of the world and tend to reinforce the models we already have. Anything that challenges the model is rejected and anything that reinforces is it is actively sought out. Now this model we have to remember is not reality. The map is not the territory. It is just a hazy limited representation. But we behave as if it is actually the complete reality. We assume the world is predictable and look for “causes” for everything. All these patterns of thought make us blind to black swans.
In addition to the problems with our minds is the problem of “Extermistan”. Taleb classifies reality into “Mediocristan” where events are predictable, mediocre, without any large degree of randomness and “Extremistan” where things are fundamentally extreme and unpredictable. Human physical attributes such as height would be within a predictable range and hence in “Mediocristan” while individual wealth would have an extreme range and thus be in “Extermistan”.
The fundamental message of the book is the world is far more complicated and random that we think it is. We should just accept that whatever we know is tiny and that fundamentally we don’t know.
What should we do then? Adopt an empirical approach and be as skeptical of conventional wisdom as possible. In fact be skeptical of your own knowledge as well. The remedy is to suspend the mind and....Experiment, tinker, explore! Try lots of experiments in order to maximize positive black swan events or what we would call Serendipity. We can never know what will work. Another google might be just round the corner. But… be ready for negative black swans.
Taleb explains all of this convincingly but totally leaves out one thing that could explain all of this – Spirituality.
A black swan was assumed to be impossible as Swans were “known” to be white. Well, black swans were discovered in Australia showing the limitation of our knowledge. A “Black Swan” event according to Taleb is a huge completely random event that is never predictable. The reason we get hit the most by these “Black Swan” events is that we never expect them or are never ready for them. Even after they happen we don’t accept them has random events of fate. Instead we tend to formulate “logical” explanations for them. All this stems from the fundamental limitations of our modes of thought.
Taleb systematically examines the limitations. We form mental models of the world and tend to reinforce the models we already have. Anything that challenges the model is rejected and anything that reinforces is it is actively sought out. Now this model we have to remember is not reality. The map is not the territory. It is just a hazy limited representation. But we behave as if it is actually the complete reality. We assume the world is predictable and look for “causes” for everything. All these patterns of thought make us blind to black swans.
In addition to the problems with our minds is the problem of “Extermistan”. Taleb classifies reality into “Mediocristan” where events are predictable, mediocre, without any large degree of randomness and “Extremistan” where things are fundamentally extreme and unpredictable. Human physical attributes such as height would be within a predictable range and hence in “Mediocristan” while individual wealth would have an extreme range and thus be in “Extermistan”.
The fundamental message of the book is the world is far more complicated and random that we think it is. We should just accept that whatever we know is tiny and that fundamentally we don’t know.
What should we do then? Adopt an empirical approach and be as skeptical of conventional wisdom as possible. In fact be skeptical of your own knowledge as well. The remedy is to suspend the mind and....Experiment, tinker, explore! Try lots of experiments in order to maximize positive black swan events or what we would call Serendipity. We can never know what will work. Another google might be just round the corner. But… be ready for negative black swans.
Taleb explains all of this convincingly but totally leaves out one thing that could explain all of this – Spirituality.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Snubbing Destiny
This paragraph is from Nicholas Nassim Taleb's book "Black Swan". It sums up his approach to life.
Snubbing destiny appeals to me. There is no better way to live than to just flow with the tao without any arbitary standards to judge life.
From the "Black Swan"
"I once received another piece of life-changing advice, which, unlike the advice I got from a friend in Chapter 3, I find applicable, wise, and empirically valid. My classmate in Paris, the novelist-to-be Jean-Olivier Tedesco, pronounced, as he prevented me from running to catch a subway, "I don't run for trains." Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of _elegance__ and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. _Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!__ Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking. You stand _above__ the rat race and the pecking order, not _outside__ of it, if you do so by choice. Quitting a high-paying position, if it is _your__ decision, will seem a better payoff than the utility of the money involved (this may seem crazy, but I've tried it and it works). This is the first step toward the stoic's throwing a four-letter word at fate. You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself. Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop's fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic _prior__ disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts. It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself. In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what _you__ do; so make this your end."
Snubbing destiny appeals to me. There is no better way to live than to just flow with the tao without any arbitary standards to judge life.
From the "Black Swan"
"I once received another piece of life-changing advice, which, unlike the advice I got from a friend in Chapter 3, I find applicable, wise, and empirically valid. My classmate in Paris, the novelist-to-be Jean-Olivier Tedesco, pronounced, as he prevented me from running to catch a subway, "I don't run for trains." Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of _elegance__ and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. _Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!__ Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking. You stand _above__ the rat race and the pecking order, not _outside__ of it, if you do so by choice. Quitting a high-paying position, if it is _your__ decision, will seem a better payoff than the utility of the money involved (this may seem crazy, but I've tried it and it works). This is the first step toward the stoic's throwing a four-letter word at fate. You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself. Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop's fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic _prior__ disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts. It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself. In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what _you__ do; so make this your end."
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