Post-Awakening Integration:BATGAP Panel Discussion

Interesting panel discussion (from the Science and Nonduality Conference 2013) about what awakening is and isn't, achieves and doesn't achieve, and what happens afterwards and how that relates to what had already happened before - I'm about 2/3 of the way through and there's lots that rubs me up the wrong way but also lots that's really interesting, about all kinds of different stuff - mind/body non/duality, awakening as biological process, different types of awakening, and different types in diverse traditions, embracing 'samsara' vs transcending it, etc.

(for me there's some particularly fascinating discussion of Kashmir Shaivism which I'm interested in at the moment, which gets a mention as a tantric practice designed for householders - and on that note, I've also been going back to some of David Chapman's stuff, which again sometimes rubs me up the wrong way but is great food for thought).

batgap.com/discussion-igor-kufayev-jac-okeeffe-francis-bennett/

I was there. I remember being surprised to find such open, lucid discussion on the topic. Much of what went on at the conference felt pretty mushy for me but this panel had it going!

I'm about 25 minutes in, and my initial reaction is that the panelists are discussing some practical ideas mixed in with a teeny-tiny bit of science, and a heaping helping of woo. A lot of what they're talking about can be described much more adequately and accurately using current neuroscience, in my opinion.

I'd like to add that my comment above was not intended to be dismissive of other points of view. We all fit our experiences into stories that make sense, and then convey them to others with the hopes that the information will help them in some way. I don't doubt this information could be very helpful those who hold similar points of view as those expressed in this discussion.

The woo is funny because one person's woo is another person's poetic embrace of the human spiritual experience. So there's me, who embraces angels and God and demons and so on, but when the woman at the beginning was going on about the spiritual evolution of the human species and energy body stuff I started rolling my eyes and went off to do something else. And the neuroscience angle often causes a similar reaction, less because it's unrealistic than because it often feels to me so dry.

Yeah, neuroscience can be dry, but it's based on the presentation of it. When it's woven into moving case examples, where people's lives are changed for the better, it can really be quite moving.

And "yeah" also to one person's woo being another person's treasure. I'm working on focusing more on what's helpful than what's "true" or "real." Sometimes woo helps, if that's the way to reach someone where they're at. And I don't mean "where they're at" in a pejorative way, as though where I'm at is so much better. Just to be clear

I'll have to listen to the rest of that talk, but to wander off on the tangent at hand, it strikes me that not only is it very important to speak to people where they are at (and I never think of this as pejorative myself, rather as much more helpful than blathering about what's relevant to you while not hearing what the other person is trying to figure out)...

but it's also relevant to recognize that everyone is speaking FROM where they are at. The two are interlinked. By being good listeners and having empathy and experience, it's easier to hear where other people are coming from and respond in ways that improve communication. Sometimes both parties can do this, sometimes they can't.

I used to listen to a lot of BatGap interviews, and then began to tire of them, as the questions from the host always seemed to be aimed in the same general direction.... because that was where HE was at. When I write a blog post, it's often spinning off of some theme that has been relevant to where I've been at the last few weeks. And so on.

My problem with the 'woo 'thing starts with the terminology - but the problem is, inherent in that is the idea that what one oneself believes is not 'woo.' So for example most people who don't have a meditation practice would see jhanas as 'woo.' Kenneth runs the 'anti-woo' line in interviews, yet elsewhere he talks about how he can astral project. What today is 'hard neuroscience' will be 'woo' in 20 or 50 or 100 years (think phrenology).

Having said that, I don't agree with the, 'all of humanity is evolving toward a higher level of consciousness' position. But hey I'm a glass-half-empty person which may be why I find that a hard claim to swallow...

I don't listen to BATGAP particularly much - a lot of the neo-advaita style people he has don't seem to do that much for me (also, I find it telling that it's called Buddha At The Gas Pump but almost never features Buddhists) and I often find it a little 'hurr hurr' when he and his guest are chummy about concurring on a particular point - one of the things I'd generally like to see in most interviews of any kind is a bit more critical inquiry/analysis. But he sometimes has some really interesting guests, even if one disagrees with them (e.g. recently David Godman, the librarian at Ramana's ashram for thirty years - even if he thinks that the only people ever to wake up 'properly' in recent times were Ramana, Nisargadatta and Krishnamurti)

every3rdthought wrote: My problem with the 'woo 'thing starts with the terminology - but the problem is, inherent in that is the idea that what one oneself believes is not 'woo.' So for example most people who don't have a meditation practice would see jhanas as 'woo.' Kenneth runs the 'anti-woo' line in interviews, yet elsewhere he talks about how he can astral project. What today is 'hard neuroscience' will be 'woo' in 20 or 50 or 100 years (think phrenology).

I see where you're going with this, though I don't totally agree. With the more scientific perspectives comes (or should come) the attitude of, "This is the best we can determine, SO FAR." It's possible to calcify any point of view, even one that is/was based on valid experimental outcomes., but that need not be the case.

What I refer to as "woo" is more the way subtle bodies, chakras, etc., are viewed separately from brain functions as though we didn't already have a good idea of how they happen in (or because of) the brain. For example, the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant in childhood, before the left hemisphere has a chance to develop. The right hemisphere is largely responsible for autobiographical memory, imagery, mediating emotions prior to their connection with the left hemisphere and medial prefrontal cortext, and so on. People tend to become left-brain dominant in American culture, because that's what we foster on the whole. It makes sense, then, that reconnecting with (or re-engaging) the right hemisphere would lead to a greater sense of wholeness, and later, integration.

I don't mean to reduce everything to the brain. But it makes sense to me that someone would FINALLY find relief after FINALLY exercising areas of their brain which were previously underdeveloped for some reason or another.

So, anyway... THAT'S what I flagged as "woo." It's perfectly fine to use pre-rational terminology to describe experience, so long as we do so as a method of practice, and not as some philosophy that we believe in as Truth.

Jackson wrote: ... It's perfectly fine to use pre-rational terminology to describe experience, so long as we do so as a method of practice, and not as some philosophy that we believe in as Truth.

Of course, the problem here starts to become this: there is a worldview held by modern Westerners which is encapsulated in that view. Which means that for all of human history and in all other cultures, whatever it is that people use to explain how their world, bodies and minds work is made up, and we can patronizingly pat them on the head and say "well, if they think the world was formed from the carcass of a whale and that the balance of the four elements creates health and sickness, that's all very quaint and adorable, but of course we know better."

And I don't like the opposite extreme either, where everyone's beliefs get equal weight and science is just another quaint belief system. That's not the point. But I do think many of us are raised so deeply immersed in this perspective (or if not raised that way, find in it a refreshing refuge from whatever dogma we grew up with and hated) that we hold it pretty tightly, even defensively.

I'm clearly at an odd point in my own life, because I grew up in this modern secular culture, studied anthropology, and have practiced in various religious traditions. But much as I can talk about God, for instance, in various vocabularies, there's not a drop of modern secularist in my body or mind when I'm praying, or in my "interior life". It's not "just a practice" or a "do as if." It used to be, but it's gone way too deep for that anymore.

So this issue is complicated for me, and I find myself floating back and forth on things, not sure how exactly to be in social circles that are so diverse.
(eta - also not sure how to integrate this with my own ideas about what goes in the "woo" box, either! pot, kettle and all that.)

You know I love colorfully silly examples!

I suspect not all Buddhisms or Buddhists are as nondogmatic or comfortable with secular or Westernized modifications of tradition, either. There are some Christian teachers who reach towards that same audience with modifications to traditional teachings, an emphasis on the psychological, functional or symbolic aspects of things and more of a "this is a tool for awakening" view and no emphasis on needing to believe anything. Where that becomes not really Christianity anymore, i don't know.

Buddhist cultures can be pretty nasty. I think there's a post in my "practice" thread along the lines of "sometimes I doubt there is dharma" -- and a link to life in feudal Tibet.

Well, not quite. If the dogma is that of awakening being more worthy and the unawakened are considered sub-human... well you've just created a dogma. It's not believer vs unbeliever it is those likely to attain vs. those unlikely to attain. Still nasty.

I wonder if the Dalai Llama would apply that quote from him about being open to science to anything science might learn, because my impression of it was that he said that concerning, like, metaphysical questions about what ultimate reality is ect, similar to the question of whether there is or isn't a God.

I was listening to the BG roundtable on the dark side of meditation yesterday and WIlloughby said she presented her research concerning the dark night and the progress of insight to him. I'm not sure, but I think she may have said that it was videotaped, too

"That damned science, however, tends over time to poke its nose into the domain of religion as the deeper questions of how we got here, how the universe was created, of how things work, are explored. Which leads to one big reason why I love Buddhism - it accepts the facts as they come, makes its peace with the new view of reality and carries on as undogmatically as ever. "

As far as I can see, the science cosmology story has some surprising commonalities with various archaic cosmologies-- for one, it's really overambitious to assume that such fundamental long-view processes are just like ones on a more familiar human history scale-- only stretched WAAAAAAY out to cosmic dimensions. It's possible there's some accuracy to the assumption, but it is at least as possible (if not more probable) that such processes are inconceivably different. I mean, "nothing exploded with a Big Bang and then there was everything, flying apart at an increasing rate and mutating like mad" sounds pretty improbable to me, no matter how much impressive and technologically useful math is brought out as "proof."

There are plenty of Buddhisms with quaint (to modern sensibilities) cosmologies; however, the more agnostic ones like Ch'an and Zen that came out of Indian Buddhism influenced by Daoism demonstrate the wisdom of "not going there" in painting pictures of why the cosmos is as it is, and how it got to be that way. They pretty much stick to the human scale-- and so I find them more appealing.

But this is a digression, and I'll have a look/listen to the panel.

Jackson wrote: What I refer to as "woo" is more the way subtle bodies, chakras, etc., are viewed separately from brain functions as though we didn't already have a good idea of how they happen in (or because of) the brain. For example, the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant in childhood, before the left hemisphere has a chance to develop. The right hemisphere is largely responsible for autobiographical memory, imagery, mediating emotions prior to their connection with the left hemisphere and medial prefrontal cortext, and so on. People tend to become left-brain dominant in American culture, because that's what we foster on the whole. It makes sense, then, that reconnecting with (or re-engaging) the right hemisphere would lead to a greater sense of wholeness, and later, integration.

Interesting, coincidentally my friend just published an article about this - where she says, and as I understand it, the latest findings are that there's not such a thing as right-brain or left-brain 'dominance' (but of course, I'm not a neuroscientist!)

Chris, I tend to think that your view of Buddhism as undogmatic and accepting of change, is actually not a view of Buddhism, but a view of 'Buddhist Modernism' - have you read McMahon's book on it, or Lopez's on Buddhism and Science?

One of my issues with scientific-materialist-truth discourse is that I understand that a scientific finding is always a best hypothesis with the present knowledge available - but I tend to find that neither the general public, nor scientists themselves, usually present it this way (and I think this has something to do with the fact that if everyone actually understood that, it would diminish the prestigious role of 'science' in Western culture and worldview).

Also, I'd really encourage everyone to persist with this discussion if they haven't - I just finished listening to it at the gym this morning, and the dude talking about Indian systems and constantly insisting they're physically true and talking over the top of others bugs me a bit, but there is some really valuable stuff in there - particularly around 1:09, and again just before the end.

every3rdthought wrote: Also, I'd really encourage everyone to persist with this discussion if they haven't - I just finished listening to it at the gym this morning, and the dude talking about Indian systems and constantly insisting they're physically true and talking over the top of others bugs me a bit, but there is some really valuable stuff in there - particularly around 1:09, and again just before the end.

I do intend to finish listening to it. Thanks for pointing out the highlights, though I should listen to everything, not skip around.

Here's a part I think is very interesting: one of the guys talking about how important preparatory trainings are, because awakening "stirs up the mud" so to speak, all the shadow stuff gets thrown up. So if awakening is sudden and the person hasn't dealt with any of that, it's very disturbing and harsh. Preliminary practices are intended to be cultivated over years, to deal with that stuff slowly, so that the person is more prepared and the process is less violent.

And two of the speakers agree that it's actually harder to work on some stuff after awakening, because the motivation to "be a better person" or do self-improvement stuff tends to be diminished.

On the former idea, I agree. On the latter, I think it's usually hard to see your stuff much before awakening gets underway, and it seems this process of self-awareness and a real motivation to clean up ones act tend to grow through awakening (4th path), but many people I know have had relatively quick awakenings with less preliminary practice, so often have a lot of mud thrown up, so that may be relevant to how much one feels motivated to clean up ones bad habits or unskillful behaviors post awakening.

Thoughts?

And one other bit was where the Talky Guy used the term kriyas to encompass all movement (of prana), whether bodily shaking (the way the term is more commonly used) or emotional upwellings, facial expressions, laughter and tears, dreams, etc. He said it just means "movement" - not necessarily of the body itself.

This reminded me of something from a discussion last week (here? with a friend privately? can't recall) about all the expressive stuff in our path being the reaction of the system being overwhelmed. That is, that ecstatic stuff, bliss states, altered states, visions, shaking of the body, tensions, waves of joy, waves of fear, etc etc are all the same thing - a kind of overflow of overwhelm. Rather than seeing some of them as signs of progress and others as punishments, they can all be lumped in the "body/mind system unable to cope with insight process and releasing that overwhelmed-ness like milk boiling over".

Thoughts?