I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Knowledge and Ignorance

by Michael Dolan, B.V. Mahāyogi

I think it was Socrates who said “the only thing I’m sure of is that I know nothing,” although he was echoed by Newton over a thousand years later. When Sir Isaac was awarded some recognition for his knowledge, he accepted saying “Well, the difference between us is that you think I know something, where I know I am quite ignorant. That puts me in a better position than you, so I accept the prize.” I’m sure I’ll get lots of corrections from friends who remember it differently. But my point is about knowledge and self-knowledge.

Dylan had a good line: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Mark Twain noted, “When I was twenty I thought my father was a complete idiot. When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

I was absolutely convinced that I knew everything when I was in my twenties. As I grow older I am convinced that I know very little if anything.

I have friends who assure me that the earth is flat, that the sun goes around the earth, and that we never went to the moon. Others tell me that vaccines are bad for you, that we should all carry fire-arms, that Coca Cola causes cancer but cider vinegar cures it.

As a teacher I have learned from my students that young people always have all the answers and never lie. Meantime, the television assures me that the Mexican Peso will never be devalued that the President’s wife is chaste and that the President himself is an honest man. While surfing the internet I discover that Christian men are destroying their coffee machines to support the election of a child molester in Alabama. Americans paused the mass murder of fellow citizens to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, honoring the memory of the native peoples who were murdered while we were stealing their land to construct our cities.

My Mexican friends always wonder about Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday they don’t quite understand. If I tell them it’s a day when families get together they wonder why don’t they get together on other days? I explain about the turkey and the big dinner, but no one believes me. Turkey, they feel, is not delicious. Besides it’s a mess to prepare. How could there be such a big deal about eating turkey?

Well, I explain, it’s all about the pilgrims and the Indians. I tell them the story of “Squanto the Indian” and how he helped the first colonists survive the bitter winters of Virginia.

But my Mexican friends are not fooled. They know what happened to the “Indians” and how they were massacred and exiled to Mexico. Many tribes escaped the reservation by going South to the Sonoran desert. Why would the Gringos have a feast day in their honor? Thanksgiving hysteria can’t possibly be based on family, food, or Indians.

I throw up my hands and confess my ignorance. My friends are sad they have put me on the spot and are left scratching their heads. There must be some reason the Gringos go crazy on this day in November, but they can’t get their heads around it.

I must confess at this point that I do not eat turkey or spend the day sitting around a table repeating platitudes about “family” and “giving thanks.” You should know by now from reading this blog that I’m a card-carrying Hare Krishna, and Thanksgiving is not a day on my holy calendar.

Thanksgiving is not a day on the Vaishnava Calendar

I don’t even eat meat, much less turkey. This has provoked any number of discussions and family arguments whenever I have gone home to be with relatives for the holiday season.

But I have learned not to argue with or preach to family members. It only brings grief. As Andrew Carnegie once said, “The man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

And yet, I have found that even amongst the Krishna people there are disagreements. While I try to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet, my friends tell me that sugar is poison, gluten is worse than poison, genetic tomatoes cause mutation, and that Monsanto is the devil. Cookies and macaroni contain eggs, processed cheese has rennet--an animal ingredient, and even bread is based on yeast which is a tiny animal. So one must not eat meat, fish, eggs, macaroni, cookies, coffee or tea, and even milk produces animal cruelty. The poor cows. Fasting is a virtue.

On the other hand, I am told, Veganism is bogus, we are not members of the cow protection society, and that one must eat to keep one’s strength up for preaching. It’s hard to know what to eat anymore.

While I consider myself “well-read,” I am also ignorant of the many conspiracy theories that explain why the world is drifting into a bad place. Apparently NASA scientists in league with the Deep State have brainwashed us into believing that the world is round and that satellites work.

Friends assure me that The New York Times and Harvey Weinstein were responsible for 911 and that professional actors involved in perception management staged the recent massacre in Las Vegas. I’m not sure this stuff really withstands journalistic scrutiny, but I don’t think I can really trust the news anymore.

It’s amazing how ignorant I am. My lack of knowledge is astounding. What a conundrum. I have spent a lifetime reading, studying, and trying to learn. But where once I was convinced I knew absolute everything, now, I’m not so sure.

This predicament reminds me of the words of Bhaktivinod Thakura, the great Bengali saint and teacher. Having spent his life as a high court judge, Bhaktivinod later decided to dedicate everything to the devotional life. In his song cycle Sharanagati, He laments the time he spent in learning and reconciles himself to surrender in divine love:

Bhaktivinod Thakura as High Court judge

1.bidyara bilase katainu kala,
parama sahase ami
tomara carana, na bhojinu kobhu,
ekhona sarana tumi

2. porite porite, bharasa barilo
jnane gati habe mani
se asa bifala, se jnana durbala
se jnana ajnana jani

3. jada-bidya jato, mayara vaibhava,
tomara bhajane badha
moha janamiya, anitya somsare,
jibake karaye gadha

4. sei gadha ho’ye, somsarera ‘bojha,
bhavinu aneka kala
bardhakye ekhona, sakti na abhave,
kichu nahi lage bhalo

5. jibana jatana, hoilo ekhona,
se bidya abidya bhelo
abidyara jwala, ghatilo bisama,
se bidya hoilo selo

6. tomara carana, bina kichu dhana,

somsare na ache ara
bhakativinoda, jada-bidya chari
tuwa pada kare sara

Confidently, I spent my time in the pleasures of mundane learning and never worshiped Your Lotus feet, O Lord. Now You are my only shelter.

Reading on and on, my hopes grew, for I considered material knowledge to be life’s true path. How fruitless was that hope, and how feeble that knowledge proved to be. I know now that all such knowledge is ignorance.

Knowledge of this world is knowledge born of Your illusory energy (maya). It impedes devotional service and makes an ass of the eternal soul by encouraging his infatuation with this temporary world.

Here is one such ass who for so long has carried on his back the burden of material existence. Now in my old age, for want of the power to enjoy, nothing pleases me.

Life has become agony now, my knowledge has proven itself worthless, and ignorance has penetrated my heart with the intolerable, burning pain of a pointed shaft.

O Lord, I seek no other treasure in this world than Your lotus feet. Bhaktivinoda abandons everything to make them the sum and substance of his life.

Bhaktivinod Thakur as devotee dedicated in surrender

Atma and Reality

ATMA

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Look into the night sky. We see the same stars and constellations that were observed by Greek astronomers eons ago. We see the stars and wonder: what if the stars could see us?

Is the universe sentient? Is the cosmos aware? Scientists are unsure of the true nature of consciousness. How we think and feel is still a mystery in spite of all attempts to decode the mind and create an artificial intelligence. If consciousness exists it seems to pervade everything. But how can life exist in the vastness of space?

In trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe we must consider: is space a new frontier or the gateway to timeless wisdom? Can it be possible that in our attempts to reach for the stars we shall finally discover the inner self?

The light you see from the stars is millions of miles distant. In fact, some of the stars in the night sky burned into supernovas centuries ago, but their light still reaches us. What you see with your eyes no longer exists. Their light is only fugitive energy from a once proud star.

Remarking on the almost supernatural power of music, Shakespeare once remarked, "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" We invest almost supernatural power in mathematics. In fact our understanding of the physical reality of our universe is based on mathematics: It is a mathematical model of dead starlight. Astronomy is supposed to be a hard science, based on objectivity. But mind and matter are inseparable. And if we cannot objectively discover how mind and matter interact, then how far is subjectivity responsible for our analysis of reality? How can we know the universe if we do not know the self?

Given the materialist bent of conventional thought we begin with material reality and mind evolves out of matter. But the words mind and matter are no more than conventions. We must dive deeper to know the truth. What we hear, smell, taste, and touch is supposed to be "matter," but in many ways this concrete reality is a mental construct. We use the word "mind" to describe a wide swath of conscious phenomenon from mere sentience to emotion, humor, mood, thinking and cognitive function. But what is the true "stuff" of reality? How is it constructed? Where does it come from? And does it have any meaning?

Astronomy is the hardest of science: we study space dust eons old at the final frontiers of the universe. But then even the stars we see in our telescopes are mental constructs. Millions of light years hence many of these stars have already faded into oblivion. We examine their light as through a time machine, but the stars themselves are gone. We study long lost stars, knowing that these lights that still guide our ships no longer exist. The Hubble Space Telescope, for example, can see objects that existed only in the past. When we see a picture of a galaxy 100 million light years away we are in a sense traveling through time; we see that star system as it looked millions of years ago. How it looks today is impossible to know. Some of those stars have long since ceased to be active. They have exploded into supernovas millions of years ago and yet their light still reaches us, telling the story of a reality that no longer exists. 

While their stars burned out long ago, their light is real. And what will remain of our own sun, a million years hence? Long after the sun explodes, the light from own solar system will survive for millions of years into the future as it is beamed across the universe. Radio waves traveling at the speed of light will carry news of the first atomic wars beyond Alpha Centauri and past the Dog Star into the Orion Nebula thousands of years after the earth planet has ceased to exist. Our beamed earthly TV programs and Twitter musings will penetrate far-off planets long after this world has faded into oblivion.

Will extra-terrestrial life-forms have the intelligence to decode our civilization based on the evidence of radio waves millions of years hence? Will they be able to reconstruct our own reality as easily as we pretend to deconstruct the mysteries of the Big Bang?

And what, in any real sense, will remain of what you now see and hear and feel? The 3rd law of thermodynamics is called entropy. The idea is that any organized system tends to disorganize over time. Science tells us that the entire space-time continuum will erode into chaos, leaving nothing more than an empty, motionless void; a vast sea of nothing. In that weird nirvana time will no longer exist and space will have no content.

Our imaginary extra-terrestrial watching reruns of would be disappointed to learn that the earth no longer exists. He would certainly feel cheated if he could travel at warp speed to find a vacuum in place of a solar system. Where great civilizations once ruled he would see nothing but space dust. How easy then to conclude that it was all a lie, an illusion, a strange hologram. But if nonexistence was the rule before the universe came into being, and if everything ends in nonexistence, how could anything be said to exist? In the end our reality of concrete matter is no more than a momentary illusion, a kind of hologram.

If consciousness really is the background of all reality, the idea of a hologramatic universe is not as far-fetched as it appears to be. Our own human brain constructs a 4-dimensional hologram of reality. This version of reality is reinforced by social conditioning and a kind of mass hypnosis into an interpretation of matter, space and time.

Time is an especially difficult problem; it is certainly an aspect of this hologramatic reality; but if nothing existed in the past and nothing exists in the future, how can anything be “real”? If a thing has no existence in the future, if it had no existence in the past, how does it have any concrete existence at all? Time would seem to give meaning to existence, but while science may try to understand how and even why things work, science is neutral when it comes to meaning. To understand how things work is a different task from understanding what they mean. And insofar as science ignores meaning it ignores what it is to be human.

But as humans it is only natural for us to wonder what things mean. The French Philosopher Albert Camus felt that since life has no meaning the noblest act would be suicide. His point of view animated much of the 20th Century and continues to be felt today. Insist on the concrete nature of reality all you want. It dissolves for all of us at the moment of our death.

So what is real, after all? We want to believe in concrete reality. But stone turns to dust. What about the subjective nature of reality then? Is that the key to existence and meaning? After all, does dust evolve into consciousness? Or is this entire time and space continuum a kind of quantum hologram that depends on consciousness?

As astronomers gaze into the light of dead stars, quantum physicists in the twentieth century turned their attention to the secrets of the atom. Just as the macrocosm raises important questions about being and the origin of the universe, the microcosm holds powerful mysteries about the subjective nature of existence.

Einstein, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Erwin Schrodinger, and Robert Oppenheimer were strange mystics who unleashed the secrets of the atom. Nuclear weapons and fireballs capable of world destruction were only mythical nightmares until these men showed the practical application of their insights. But while researching the freak movements of electrons and protons they stumbled on the strange world of quantum reality where the line between consciousness and matter blurs. They discovered that observations made at the subatomic level affect the very reality under study. At some point, they found, consciousness determines subatomic reality.

So, is the mind in the world? Or is the world in the mind? Is mind and consciousness a mere product of chemical and electrical transactions created in the human brain? Or does consciousness have an existence apart from physical reality? Consciousness itself becomes what is known as a “hard” problem for science, since its very study enters the realm of the metaphysical.

The 20th century pioneers of quantum physics created a paradigm shift that is not well understood even today. What is the intersecting point between perception and reality? And how is it possible that, in this age of technology, while so much attention has been devoted to how things work , so little has been focused on inner life?

The East has often been dismissed by the West as “Third World” but yet many ideas born in the east have much to teach us. The ancient yoga philosophy of India, for example, has gradually gained in popularity throughout Europe and the Americas. This is, in part, because the Vedanta and its essential commentary the Bhgavata provides us with a remarkably supple and flexible way of seeing into the self, the atma, and beyond.

The Vedanta was known to the quantum physicists and atomic scientists of the 20th Century. According to its synthesis, material reality exists as a kind of mass hypnosis. The time-space continuum, in this view, is a function of what is called Atma--the stuff of being.

Atma may be translated as consciousness, but this is misleading. Since consciousness is a “hard” problem, different disciples define consciousness in terms of its phenomenological functions. Again, since science is interested in “how things work” and not in “what things mean,” the “problem” of consciousness becomes a question of defining its functions.

So, we find that “consciousness” in scientific language becomes divided into such terms as “sentience, awareness, nervous reaction,” even “thinking, cognition, metacognition.” If all of these can be mimicked by machines then they have no metaphysical component. If a machine can be made to “think” or “feel” then the problem of metaphysics ceases to exist. This has been the life mission of many geniuses at important universities and corporations internationally.

The destruction of metaphysics is an important mission, since the absence of metaphysics means that we no longer need “meaning.” Scientists often feel a prick of conscience when reminded that their research focuses not on meaning but exploitation. The consequence of 150 years of petroleum exploitation, for example, has left the world devastated. But since the time of Comte and Spencer, we have been reminded that “meaning” is not a part of science. The attempt to kill metaphysics through analysis dates back to the conflict between Plato and Aristotle. Plato felt that it was important to consider the ideal world. Aristotle was convinced that it was sufficient to classify the workings of the “real” world. Aristotle is known as the first scientist.

Plato and Aristotle

The destruction of metaphysics extends to problem of consciousness when it is determined that there is no need to search for our inner self. The inner self as such does not exist, since after all we are only talking about various functions of an organism.

Awareness is one function, sentience another. Self-awareness may be a higher-level function. But functions are verbs, what a thing does. Western thought finds that as long as we define consciousness through its effects, there is no need to arrive at its essence.

Vedanta has quite a distinct take. The Atma is a given, an axiomatic truth. It is a simple waste of time to deny one’s own existence in the name of some contorted view of “objectivity.” The 20th Century physicists proved that the dividing line between subject and object disappears at the subatomic level. Western science and philosophy has yet to adapt fully to this finding.

This is, in part, as a consequence of the anti-scientific current in European life as represented by the Church and its followers. Scientific thought since the time of Galileo was persecuted in the West for contradicting religious dogma. The reaction was powerful. Scientists became determined to eradicate metaphysics. But the determination to pursue a political line has also polluted the so-called truth-seekers of science with deleterious effects. The anti-metaphysical dogmas of Western scientism are well-known and prevent true intellectual curiosity. The attempt to destroy consciousness by defining it out of existence is one such example.

If consciousness is not a “pure” scientific definition of Atma, one may look to spiritual texts and consider Atma as “soul,” but the problem is that it also stands for “world-soul” or collective consciousness. The atma is the living force that pre-exists this universe and will survive it when all has turned to ashes.

Vedantic interpretation holds that once the incredible power of Atma is allowed it becomes a facile matter to understand the universe in terms of a hologram, a kind of mass hypnosis quantum multiverse, if you will. 21st century scientists are only beginning to detect “gravity waves.” Gravity is a subtle force that keeps us from floating off the earth planet. It can neither be seen, touched, felt, or tasted. The Atma is not detectable by mind or senses or through such mundane instrumentation as microscopes and telescopes.

Some conception of “atma” is found in Western science and philosophy, but it is generally quite primitive in comparison to the yogic science. French Philosopher Rene Descarte, for example believed in an absolute distinction between what he called “mind” and body and is usually taken as the point of departure for such study. He felt that the mind was located in the pineal gland. The truth is more subtle. How exactly atma interacts with physical reality at the molecular plane is impossible to ferret out, since at some point the process involves too much subjective observation. The truth about the soul is far subtler than the Cartesian paradigm would admit.

Atma, or consciousness, is all-pervading, ever-present, and indestructible. To describe its mechanism is to enter into a tautology, for only through Atma can we observe and discover the nature of Atma. Only through atma can we practice the earthly art of observation and only through sensual observation can we describe the mechanisms that we consider to belong properly to the world of time and space. But since atma exists beyond time and space, this is a hopeless task.

Vision is evidence of the eye, but the eye cannot see itself. We see atma only with atma. Only when the eye of soul is fixed upon the infinite may it begin the true process of self-discovery. But the process of self-discovery exists beyond the scope of mere sensual observation. We may see the self-evident atma by means of consciousness. But we cannot observe consciousness through the senses, since sensual discovery and mental activity operate below the level of consciousness.

Observing the self through mechanistic analysis is something like running outside the house and looking in the windows to try and see yourself at home.

You are much more than you seem to be. There is more to the universe than atoms in the void. Academic rivalry between the followers of Aristotle force us to define biology in terms of physics. But this is a false argument promoted for the sake of dissolving metaphysics. You know who you are. But the ancient yoga school of the Vedanta says, “Go deeper. This life is meant for self-discovery.” Mechanical detection of the atma through physical technology is impossible. But why live under the restrictions of those who would reduce us to mere physical objects?

Conventional wisdom holds that what we know as mind or consciousness or awareness is somehow generated from matter. As such it can give only a partial and distorted idea of reality. After all there are different "states" of consciousness: waking, dream, deep thought, alpha and so on. Which interpretation of reality is correct? The "mind" has an ephemeral quality. Scientists feel it is more "objective" to begin by putting "matter" in the center of their model of reality. According to this model, inorganic matter somehow generates organic biology which "evolves" into higher life forms. While this model is based on a number of speculative and unverifiable assumptions, scientists feel more comfortable with the idea that mind is based on matter than the idea that mind or atma generates the entire material cosmos. Unfortunately for the model, no one has any idea what matter would look like in the absence of mind.

From this perspective, mind is a phenomena or function of matter and has no independent existence. But what if the reverse were true? If we are capable of looking outside the paradigm, we will find quite a different reality, one far more in keeping with our human experience. If we consider the power of consciousness as a separate energy form, more elusive than light or gravity but equally influential, we may find that the world is the product of mind and not the other way around. Were it possible to awaken to the potential of the atma, what would we learn about reality? While conventional science is concerned with unlocking the secrets of how the universe works, what if it were possible to probe the meaning of consciousness? The answers are not easily discovered. But perhaps the questions are worth asking. An interesting place to look is within the mystic system of the Vedanta. The ancient yoga systems and teachings of meditation are worth exploring, for it is in their wisdom teachings that we may find the key to the nature of reality and consciousness.

Seek and ye shall find.

Faith

It seems to me that it all comes down to faith. One who has been touched by God has faith. There is no proof for this. It is an audacious statement. How do we know who has been “touched” by God? But this is just the point, isn’t it. Knowledge and faith are really quite separate. Knowledge implies certainty reached through judgment; faith is beyond judgment.

Take the soul. There is no proof for the existence of any such thing as “soul.” Even to use the word “consciousness” strains the credulity of logic. After all, consciousness, awareness, mind, sentience, and thinking all refer to different things. A computer is a machine and is certainly not sentient in any real sense. And yet, machines “think.” Don’t they? And if “thinking” is not what machines do, what is it then?

If we reserve thinking for humans, then what exactly is it that cephalopods do? Can an octopus think? Are plants sentient? And if they do, then do they have souls?

There is no proof for the immortality of the soul beyond what we ourselves can see and feel and intuit. But then, if something is self-evident should we deny it simply because we lack the linguistic tools to explain subjective experience in purely objective terms? We can create no mathematical model for spirit or soul. But mathematics is a language we have invented to describe an objective world. We have no mathematics for spiritual experience. Are we then to conclude that spiritual experience is invalid, since we cannot break it down into a symbolic language meant to describe material experience?

We cannot “know” the soul in the same sense as we “know” material and phenomenal things. But since the world “out there” is a function of the world “in here” it is impossible to “know” in any absolute sense.

Plants and insects experience reality very differently than we do. Is the human experience of reality the “only” and therefore “best” version?

Like a child determined to fit a round peg into a square whole, the materialist wants to show how all phenomenal experience is a product of what he calls “matter.” But “matter” itself is elusive. “Matter” is impossible to define.

Materialists reject subjective reality as counter-intuitive. “I know what I see; this is matter.” But so many truths are counter-intuitive, or else we would all conclude that we live on a flat earth. That the earth is round is counter-intuitive, a conclusion arrived at through some serious thinking. The natural observation of day and night leads us to the conclusion that the sun moves around the earth. Our natural observation also leads us to conclude that matter creates spirit. Both ideas are incorrect. Matter does not create spirit any more than the sun moves around the earth. These are “objective” conclusions which avoid deeper ways of interpreting reality.

There is no mathematical proof that you or I or anyone else exists. And, if we begin with such dry logic it is absurd to say that there is anything like an eternal soul. But in the East, where human wisdom was born thousands of years ago, the existence of the soul or atma is a self-evident truth; an axiom which must be considered before anything else.

We have no objective proof for the subjective world. But then again the phenomenal world of objects must be based on the subjective world of consciousness. Without the subject there is no object.

Don’t take it from me. I am only a frog in a well, croaking obscenely. My voice is insignificant. Buy we may take hope and inspiration from the learned and realized souls who have gone before us. The immortality of the soul has been affirmed throughout human history from the time of Krishna, Vyasa and Shukadev in ancient India, to Jesus Christ and his apostles at the dawn of the present era in Jerusalem. Philosophers and thinkers from Plato to Plotinus to Hegel, Schopenhauer and the modern mystics and saints have affirmed the version of Vedanta. So many greater, nobler and wiser souls have walked on the path before us.

Can we so easily dismiss their hard experience of the self-evident character of the soul? Or should we not rather do our best to discover this self-evident reality for ourselves?

They tell us, “Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall open.” The background hum of the universe fills the air with the underlying sound of reality: “Om.” Om is the universal sound of affirmation, meaning, “Yes. It exists. Divinity is real. Soul is eternal.” Listen closely and you can hear it.

Faith has its own eye to see reality. It is curious that you and I can see, but we can’t see the eye, which is the instrument of sight. I can’t see the eye, but I have sight. Should I conclude that the eye doesn’t exist, since I can’t see it? We see with the eye of the soul, but we can’t see the soul itself. Should we conclude that soul doesn’t exist? Or should we rather think that although I can’t see the soul, it must exist.

Argument can be useful, of course. But argument works through negation. “It is not this,” leads us to “This is it.” A good argument eliminates options just as a detective spends a long time eliminating potential suspects. We arrive at truth through the process of elimination. But trial and error is insufficient to arrive at the truth. And the tendency to negate is not checked when it arrives at the soul. So that when logic and argument is faced with subjective reality it turns upon itself. Thus “objective” argument cannibalizes the “subjective” self. And so argument never arrives at its “object.”

Through argument the subjective self tries to discover itself by applying an objective language used for objects. Since the subject cannot be turned into an object by this artificial process the result is circular, a tautology. The self trying to contort itself into an object through argument fails to discover itself through this method. It is a fatal redundancy for logic. The process is akin to trying to see yourself in your house by running outside and looking through the window.

And when logic is unable to recover from this fatal error it declares the self nonexistent. This is the fatal flaw of logic and argument.

Argument can be useful to some extent when we want to try to give some backing to a theistic view. But as Kant insisted, reason has its limits. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. We may use argument to convince someone to open their eyes, but we can’t make them see. Sight exists quite apart from rational thinking and spiritual vision is quite distinct from logical argument. As long as one believes that vision will distract from critical thinking there is no hope of convincing them to open their eyes.

Therefore it is said, “Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door will be opened.”

Why I write

ON

Writing

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Some people question why I write. It's a waste of my time, I should do something more productive and useful like carpentry or plumbing or selling cellphones. Who am I to say anything? Why should anyone listen or read? It's all been said before and better by better men and women than me. After all, writing like all art is mere vanity.

I face quite a bit of opposition, not least from my own laziness. After all, I’m not famous and I don’t make any money doing this. But not everything is done for money and fame. We live in a society where money is appreciated and fame is important. But when money and fame are the only important things, real value is lost. In today’s world every human transaction is tracked and monetized. But I do not write for money. I write because I have to.

I have no choice in the matter. Humans have a natural instinct towards language, says Darwin. I believe this is true, insofar as “instinct” is true. I write from instinct. It is my dharma.

“Dharma” is a funny word. It sounds like “karma.” Dharma and karma are related ideas. But dharma is more about who you are, where karma is what you do. Dharma is about how “the self in the world” relates to consciousness and divinity: society consciousness and God consciousness. In other words, “religion, duty, essential being.” The dharma of sodium is to be salty. The dharma of glucose is to be sweet. Separate sweet from sugar and it is no longer sugar. The dharma of the human soul is an interesting question, one that may be explored in terms of proper activity or mysticism. Proper activity in dharma is ethics, morality, and religion. Mysticism in dharma is the attempt to unravel the spirit on the path of self-realization. Dharma is about “who you are,” especially in relation to your eternal function as spirit.

Karma has more to do with the world of action and reaction. We think of karma as what you do and how that action creates a reaction. Where dharma is both essence and ethics, Karma is work, energy, action and reaction.

Karma and dharma are related in the sense that “What you do” and “who you are are” related. For example if we ask someone, “What are you?” they say, “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a carpenter.” So there is a natural way of identifying our dharmic sense of “who we are” with “what we do,” or our karmic activity.

The Vedic system attempted to divide society according to dharmic characteristics in the system known as varnashram-dharma. Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita that this system is God-given: cātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ “According to the three modes of material nature and the work associated with them, the four divisions of human society are created by Me.”  According to one’s quality and work, he finds himself positioned in a particular sector of society where his dharma manifests itself through karmic activity. Thus karma reflects dharma. What one does is related to what one “is” socially.

So, karma and dharma are connected in the sense that “who I am” is connected to “what I do.” If you are highly educated, love to help people, and concerned about health, you are a doctor. That’s who you are. You heal people: that’s what you do. I am athletic, a natural leader, and love arms and contests, I am a soldier. It’s who I am. Going to war is what I do. Karma and dharma are related.

So I don’t write because I want name and fame or money. I write because it’s who I am. It’s what I do.

Chaitanya Mahāprabhu warns against the pride of a poet. In His Śikśāstakam we find:

na-dhanaṁ na-janaṁ na-sundarīm

kavitāṁ vā jagadīśa kāmaye |

mama janmani janmani īśvare

bhavatād bhaktiḥ ahaitukī tvayi || 4||

“O almighty Lord, I have no desire to accumulate wealth, nor do I desirebeautiful women, nor do I want any number of followers. I only want ẏour causeless devotional service birth after birth.”

A devotee of Krishna is not interested in mundane wealth and fame. His service is unconditional. Still, we cannot avoid having our service be tempered by our individual karma and dharma. Unconditional service may be required by my spiritual preceptor. And yet each of us is qualified in particular ways according to our karma and dharma. Sometimes the mission needs money. Some people are especially qualified to do business. Others are not. The guru often gets involved personally in charging particular students with particular tasks, given their dharma and karma or their qualifications.

Personally, I am quite introverted. When I first joined the mission I was asked to go out and collect. I did so on a daily basis, selling Prabhupada’s books in the street; in airports, at K-mart shopping malls. I dressed as Santa Claus and collected donations by handing out candy canes and exhorting people to help the mission. I even went out in a clown suit and sold Barry White records. On the basis of a vow of obedience and the determination to help the mission, I accepted any number of tasks and did my best to perform them.

At a later date I was asked to transcribe the lectures of my guru Shridhar Maharaja and compile and edit them into books. I found that in order to fulfill this duty I needed to become more erudite. Shridhar Maharaja for example explains that “Subjective Evolution of Consciousness” may be explained and understood with reference to the idealism of Bishop Berkeley. In order to better defend the ideas of my Guru Maharaja, I took to studying Berkeley and Hegel. Now, studying Berkeley and Hegel isn’t for everyone. It may not be the appropriate dharma or karma for the general public. But since it was my dharma to defend the ideas of my Guru Mahārāja, I took it upon myself to become more erudite with a view to properly editing his books.

Shridhar Maharaja had a particular gift. He was able to speak truth and at the same time speak without offending others. This is a great ability. Many devotees, determined to advance their cause, speak boldly. They have no concern for the feelings of others; they must only speak the truth. But while Shridhar Maharaja’s arguments were both brilliant and subtle, he also took care not to alienate non-believers.

This often gives an oracular quality to his speech. Now that he is no longer with us, we have only his books and the memories of his followers to guide us. But often the oracular quality of his speech makes it difficult to understand his purpose. His speech seems to appeal to both sides of some questions. An oracle sometimes needs interpretation.

The point of my blog, then, is to try to support Shridhar Maharaja’s point of view. Where at times his message was subtle, I try to spell it out. Where at times his message was general, I try to explain things more specifically. And where he would veer off and drop a reference showing how Hegel or Berkeley support the conclusions of Chaitanya Mahāprabhu, I have tried sometimes to shade in or color their ideas, to better highlight his meaning.

I believe that Krishna Consciousness has a universal message. I believe it goes beyond what someone wears or eats or how they talk. And this is what inspires me as I write. Unfortunately I often face a tremendous amount of criticism by those who want me to cleave to their beliefs. And yet by trying to follow some line in the sand, I find that the line shifts and the sand withers with the tide.

Shakespeare felt that his writing was immortal. In his Sonnet XVIII, he proudly claimed, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” I make no such claim for this blog.

I know these words are ephemeral and whatever I write here will be forgotten by the time the sun moves to the horizon. Still writing has somehow become karma and dharma to me. I cannot avoid it. I hope then that you, dear reader, will find something of value here.

Writing for me is my way of holding mysterious communion with my readers. I hope that our life is somehow enhanced by that communion. I write, then, because I have to, because I have been ordered to do so, because it is karma and dharma to me. I write to discover my own ignorance and to see what I know. I write to try to dispel ignorance in myself by not writing what I don’t know.

So thank you for joining me in my journey to discovery, the journey to surrender.

Magical Realism and the Suspension of Disbelief

Wish-fulfilling Talismans 

and Supernatural Power

Stories about the supernatural withstand the test of time. They invoke the imagination of story-tellers of milennium to tell and retell them. Stories of magic amulets and talisman capable of invoking the supernatural have drawn the attention of readers and writers for centuries, not merely for the morals they draw but also for what they tell us about the life of the soul and mind. The Monkey’s Paw is a popular story about the dangers of wish-fulfillment, but while it hints at the supernatural it leaves the deeper themes undeveloped.

Supernatural stories involving wish-fulfilling talisman are as old as the Arabian Nights and Aladdin’s lamp. Like a winning lottery ticket, the idea of a magic talisman capable of granting wishes tempts us even while straining our credulity.

The story of the Monkey’s Paw terrifies us, not for its appeal to magic, but for the realistic elements in the story. It is at once a transcendent promise and a cautionary tale: don’t try to change your karma, lest you create an unexpected reaction. Told to children on a rainy night it still serves to terrify and instruct. It has components of magic, but the story seems “real.”

A more terrifying and effective tale of magic and wish-fulfillment is found in The Wild Ass’s Skin or Le Peau de Chagrin, by Honore de Balzac.

My connection with the story is personal. My curiosity about Balzac was not aroused by late night sessions with a seductive French lit teacher, but had to do with my wanderings through the city of Raymond Chandler.

When I was a boy growing up in Los Angeles, one of my favorite things to do on Saturday’s was to go for long hikes on my bicycle and see the city for myself. I would get on my bike at six o’clock in the morning and set out to discover the city. I lived in the Pacific Palisades, near the beach. I would ride up Sunset Blvd. over to Santa Monica Blvd., or Wilshire or Western Avenue Some Saturdays I would go downtown, others I would head for East or Central L.A. I would simply pack a sandwich and a couple of oranges and head for parts unknown.

My old neighborhood: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles

Back in the sixties I saw a strange variety of urban life on my bike hikes. I would wander along in the streets of L.A. and observe as I rode. I saw the surfers and wannabe actors and writers in Santa Monica preening and drinking green juice at sidewalk organic cafes; I rode past guitar stores and bookshops and gas stations. Sometimes I would ride over to the black section of town in Central L.A. with used car lots and pawnshops and soul food restaurants. Sometimes I’d go out to China town and try the Chinese food: Won Ton Soup, Spring Rolls. Or I’d ride up Western Avenue to Fairfax near Wilshire where Jewish delicatessens sold Knishes and Bagels and Lox on Fairfax Avenue or out to Echo Park or East L.A. with its tacos and burritos and Latino music blaring out of low-rider cars. In my adventures around Los Angeles one of my favorite spots was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Blvd near Fairfax.

La Brea Tar Pits

It was near the La Brea tar pits where dinosaurs and wooly mammoths fell into massive pools of black goo and surfaced millions of years later for school-kids to see and wonder at.

In those days it didn’t cost much to get in. I can’t remember if they charged admission or if it was free for kids. But I whiled away a few Saturdays looking at the golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamen or the impressionist paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

Inside the museum was fascinating. But outside the museum was pretty cool too. There were always musicians out front busking. One Saturday I saw a brilliant flautist serenade the crowd outside with an amazing performance of a Bach Suite. Later there was an brilliant banjo player who did a lightning speed version of Lester Scrugg’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

And presiding over this strange melange of creativity was a huge statue installed on the steps of the museum. It was a weird figure of a half-melted giant sculpted in bronze by Rodin. At that time I really didn’t understand the sculpture. It didn’t seem “beautiful” in any traditional sense. In fact it was hideous. I looked at the identifying plaque: “Balzac” by Rodin.

"Balzac" by Rodin

Rodin was one of the best sculptors the world has seen, after Michelangelo. I later learned that the statue in front of the museum was one of several that he had done as studies for a final work. I was left wondering, “Who was this Balzac character?” And why was he so important that someone like Rodin would create a giant sculpture like this? The statue was incredibly hideous. I didn’t get it. I respected Rodin, but how could this be art. And why did he make so many studies of this particular author in bronze? Balzac has been called, “The Limburger Cheese of literature,” for his uneven quality and appeal to sensationalism. And yet, the great sculptor Rodin, when commissioned to create a statue of Balzac, spent years of his life trying to get it right. What special insight did Balzac have that made him such an important figure in French letters?

Balzac at work with coffee-maker

The Wild Ass’s Skin by Honore de Balzac is perhaps Balzac’s most famous work, and certainly the most influential. Oscar Wilde is said to have drawn on it for his Picture of Dorian Gray, and Sigmund Freud identified with the hero and the themes of this novel, especially at the end of his own life. Unlike many works of fantasy, this is not overwhelmed by its fantasy, but retains a truthful and grounded reality and in that sense may be said to be the forerunner of Magic Realism. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the greatest proponent of Latin-American “magical realism” once explained that his technique involved creating such a palpable reality that his “magical” elements seemed entirely natural. Garcia Marquez certainly knew of Balzac and had read his works before writing his own masterpiece, 100 Años de Soledad. 

“Magic Realism” (el realismo magical) was an expression first forwarded by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in 1949. He coined the phrase to describe the offhand mix of both fantastic and quotidian elements in his fiction. While Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and even Jorge Luis Borges contributed elements to “magical realism,” I think it may be argued that the real pioneer of this technique was Honoré de Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin, translated as “The Wild Ass’s Skin.”

The Wild Ass's Skin

When I was older I found a dog-eared copy of The Ass’s Skin and couldn’t resist the temptation to try to discover Balzac’s value for myself.

Looking back, I’ve been through many of Balzac’s works and have a better idea of how he earned his reputation and why he is considered great. The Wild Ass’s Skin is considered a masterpiece of French literature and focuses on the nature of a talisman or wish-fulfilling device. Stories about three wishes are inevitably fraught. Somehow those who try to extract from nature more than the share karma alotted to them by their karma will pay with interest to the farthing, as we have seen in the story of the Monkey’s Paw, which is representative of the genre.

Balzac is known for his realism. His account of post-Napoleonic Parisian life is intimate. He describes such mundane details as taxi fares, the price of a pair of yellow gloves, or cup of coffee or the rent of a hotel room on the Left Bank of the Seine between the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Pierre. Balzac has a gift for revealing his character’s psychology through detailed descriptions of their very real environment. His prose reveals an obsession for the material details of how money is made and spent.

But where many of Balzac’s story’s deal with the worldly foibles of his characters and their dilemmas as they descend into moral turpitude, “The Wild Ass’s Skin” is a complete departure. It is a window into the mystic world and the source of Balzac’s genius.

The apparently materialistic elements of his technique, his capacity for dwelling on the details of bourgeois Paris, instead of vitiating the mystical elements of his story, anchor the magic of “The Wild Ass’s Skin” in a frank realism.

But in this mystical tale the focus shifts. Instead of merely detailing his patient’s symptoms and probing the vicissitudes of lust, anger, greed, pride, illusion and envy--the hidden sins of high society-- that color works such as Father Goriot or Cousin Pons, Balzac creates in The Wild Ass’s Skin an alternative world of magic realism. He is concerned with the mind as touchstone and the consequences of using the creative fire. The author himself will burn from inside out. His own creative fire will result in his brain exploding from too much creativity. In this novel he searches for the link between mind’s gift of creativity and the demon power of a magic talisman that will consume its owner..

While originally created as a standalone novel, The Wild Ass’s Skin was enfolded into Balzac’s Comedie Humaine as on of the Études Philosophiques, or Philosophical Studies.

In the Wild Ass’s Skin, Balzac weaves a mystic story: A magic donkey skin fulfills its owner’s every wish, but shrinks as each desire is fulfilled. In the end, the owner’s own life shrinks as well until he is confronted with the prospect of inevitable death.

The plot is simple, yet brilliant. Inspired by Balzac’s contrasting ideas about the nature of the will and the expenditure of necessarily finite vital force, The Wild Ass’s Skin is the first and probably the greatest of Balzac’s “Philosophical Studies,” a subdivision of The Human Comedy. One cold Parisian evening Raphaël de Valentin, inspired by poverty enters a casino where he bets and loses his last coin at roulette. Desolate, he walks through the bitter streets of Paris, to the River Seine, in which he intends to drown himself in the freezing waters. 

He feels that it is still early. There may be a witness. He decides to kill a few hours. Near the banks of the river is an old antique shop. There the strange proprietor, a curious old man offers him a magic skin. It is the skin of a wild ass, charmed to provide its owner with all his desires.

All wishes will be fulfilled but the skin will shrink according to the quality and quantity of the desire. And finally, when it has shrunk into nothing, its owner will die. Echoes of this theme are found in many stories about wish-fulfilling devices, including “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” by Oscar Wilde.

The old man is anxious to rid himself of the charm. He has achieved longevity by freeing himself from desire. Disregarding the old man’s warnings, the young Raphaël declares that he wants to achieve all his desires.

Ecstatic at first with his new wish-fulfilling charm, he wants money, sex, and power. He holds drunken orgies with oriental dancing girls, artists, and poets. He does his best to erase his misery with drunkeness. The morning after the orgy subsides, Raphaël learns that he has inherited the vast wealth he had wished for but sees that the skin has shrunk. It is only half the size as before. He can understand that he can attain all that he desires, but at the cost of his life. He will get whatever he wants, but every want will reduce his life’s power. He wants now to do nothing, but cannot cease desiring. He finds himself in the classic dilemma faced by a student of Buddhism who wishes to dissolve the ego by ending desire.

Buddha

The ass’s skin is a ‘talisman’ that comes from the world of the supernatural, bursting the bounds of earthly existence. It has the power to fulfill any wish, but shrinks whenever its power is used, shrinking also the life and power of its owner. And while it can grant any desire, the insidious effect of the skin is to shorten the life of its owner.

Raphael, an angry young genius, soon finds himself in a struggle to conserve his life force against the power of desire and the wish-fulfilling impulse of the talisman.

The hero reaches the Buddhistic conclusion that desire must be shunned. To live free of desire is the only way to preserve his life against the mechanism of the talisman that fulfills wishes even as it shrinks his life force. The key to his survival is the adoption of a wholly habitual, routine way of life, free from desire and ego. Raphael’s only escape from the power of the wish-fulfilling talisman, is to follow a life from which all desire, almost all action, has been banished.

Even mental desire is a form of wishing. Even mental desires are also confirmed and fulfilled by the talisman which is bound to shrink with every fulfilled wish. The reaction is fatal.

The cruel twist of fate is that the wish-fulfilling device brings death; the only way to escape the fatal pact is to give up desire--to stop wishing. Balzac was fascinated with oriental philosophy and here, he explores a theme that Buddha explored long ago: how to give up desire.

Unlike the Buddha, Raphael fails miserably. Unable to conquer his desires he succumbs to the power of the talisman.

As Marceau, Felicien puts it: “The novel extrapolates Balzac’s analysis of desire from the individual to society in general; he feared that the world, like Valentin, was losing its way due to material excess and misguided priorities. In the gambling house, the orgiastic feast, the antique shop, and the discussions with men of science, Balzac examines this dilemma in various contexts. The lust for social status to which Valentin is led by Rastignac is emblematic of this excess; the gorgeous but unattainable Foedora symbolizes the pleasures offered by high society.

“To be reading Balzac is to be allowed to wallow, to be consumed by his world view, to give yourself fully . Here is a writer paid by the word and who made sure his books were filled to the brim with them. He allowed digressions, meandering thought and plot, and sometimes seemed to have little regard for plot. “

(Marceau, Felicien. Balzac and His World. Trans. Derek Coltman. New York: The Orion Press, 1966.)