Guru Bhakti-Devotion - Revered in the East, Resisted in the West

Ganesha

When I travelled around India during 1996-97, I was amazed at the depth of devotion that the people there have to the different Hindu Gods, i.e., Krishna, Ganesha, etc. This level of devotion was alien to my Western mind. Although I studied and practiced Mahayana Buddhism for almost ten years before my trip to India, my devotion was geared to cognitive interpretation and the mental gymnastics I used to figure out what the Buddhist Sutras meant — particularly the Heart Sutra, the one I spent the most time on.

I trace back this "indoctrination of understanding the mind as being most important tenet in Buddhism" to the first retreat I did. On entering the meditation room, I immediately prostrated myself, which I had always done when I sat down to meditate in front of my own Buddha statue at home. It was only when I looked up that I realized that there was no Buddha statue there. I had prostrated myself out of habit, not out of any genuine devotion, and this was a shocking revelation. Where I had expected a life size statue of the Buddha to be, there was an enormous green flowering plant. Later on, the teacher asked us if we were surprised not to see a statue of the Buddha in a Buddhist meditation room. A few of us nodded our heads.

He went on to explain that meditation is not about worshiping an external symbol but about discovering our own Buddha nature by understanding the nature of mind. That's why there was no Buddha statue there.

In the months and years that followed, this experience had a profound effect on my approach to Buddhism. Knowledge and understanding became much more important than devotion, and yet, whenever I looked at the statue of the Buddha that I had at home, I felt a pull I couldn't describe. I would never have called it devotion, but looking back now I was devoted. And now I see how devotion goes hand in hand with knowledge and understanding. It is a balance to knowledge and understanding. The One without the Other is too one-sided.

In the East, the focus is very much on devotion at the expense of knowledge, discernment, and understanding whilst in the west it is the opposite. Nevertheless, both are one-sided. Devotion is necessary because the ego mind is ready to take any spiritual insight and/or experience and convert it into a ploy for its survival.

Without devotion to a Guru, the ego mind is in charge. This results in students following Gurus who turned out to have feet of clay. How so? These students have no frame of reference outside of their own minds. On the other hand, in those teachers/gurus who have achieved a measure of realization, I have noticed  that devotion to a Guru played a significant part in their process. I am particularly thinking about Mooji's devotion to Papaji, who was a devotee of Ramana Maharshi. I have often written that relying on mind alone, i.e., knowledge and understanding to bring about spiritual awakening is like the thief turning detective to catch itself, the thief. It's never going to happen. Devotion and surrender to a Guru is anathema to the ego mind which is why it is so greatly resisted in the West. In the West, spiritual awakening is all about control and "doing it my way." Relinquishing control to somebody else is the ultimate no-no to the ego mind.

How do I know this? I have seen it in myself. Many years ago, I was a part of a Buddhist group and when its leader turned out to have feet of clay, I vowed to myself that I would never give away my power to anyone which is why I have never formally taken a teacher. Everything I have been graced with up to now has been the result of my own intuition. I have taken courses from Landmark Training and others led by temporary teachers, but have always relied on myself. But I have never been a formal devotee of any teacher, which, for many years, was how I liked it.

Now I am changing. I recognize the all pervasiveness of the ego. As human beings we not only have an ego but we are ego, every thought, feeling, emotion is egoic, and this is hard to accept. This realization has come from deep within me and it has been echoed in the prolific writings of a particular sage who has written that the only way to be free of egoic bondage is to "turn" to him and not to get hung up on trying to understand the contents of the egoic mind. I am now at a stage on this path where this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.

The ego's refusal to die on its own is the reason there's so much emphasis on ego death on the spiritual path. A  sage, like Ramana Maharshi, who put himself through a conscious death, had to surrender to the death process in order for his ego to die and for him to emerge from the ashes of the ego as the Phoenix of Enlightenment — inherently egoless.

When the Creator and the Created Are One

Above the apex of the pyramid,
On the other side of the mirror,
In the earth beneath the Great Wall of China,
Is a state of being beyond fear.

The instantaneous creation of
The universe far and near
Emanates from the center of Love
Where all is dear.

Wherever the mind is concentrated,
There God is found for sure;
The Tao, the Way, the Buddha path,
The Christhood in azure.

When subject and object are all the same,
When sense and sensor merge,
When star clusters are everything,
When the perceived is also the urge,

Then reality reveals its essence,
Time and space disappear,
All conscious conceptual creation
Vanishes into thin air.

This stupor ecstatic, this cosmic vapor
That permeates the fields
Of all awareness, all reality,
Lasts until heaven finally yields.

Then the Earth looms large and rushes up,

As gravity returns to feel
Life's struggles, conflicts, and challenges,
Suddenly again real.

This moment of nirvana,
This orgasmic zeal,
Recreates the vessel of the soul,
Adds psychic sense to wield.

When Love and Truth merge into One,
When Will and Body kneel,
God's ecstatic presence is
All the perceivers feel.

And though the meditator tries,
No undoing can congeal;
The changes made are permanent,
No going back is real.

This change of mind, heart, soul, and body
Flows with a synchronistic keel;
The journeyer must then submit
To a life of dreams that heal.    
      ~Neil Bethell Sinclair

This poem is about the experience of Nirvikalpa samadhi. If you've undergone it, you'll recognize it. As I was writing it, I felt a voice speak through me.

Neil Bethell Sinclair grew up in Southern California in the 1960s. At sixteen, his family relocated to the Redwoods north of San Francisco during the heyday of the hippie movement.

After spending the summer of 1973 working in Yosemite Natl. Park, he attended UC Berkeley in the fall as a freshman. Through a series of accidents of circumstances, he wound up living in a fraternity briefly where, during a Halloween Party he underwent a neurological transformation that he came later to understand as the full activation of the Kundalini.

Human Evolution and the Dark Night of the Soul

What if the whole direction of the human mind is to leave the ego behind like a chrysalis, like a larval phase of the evolution of the human being within a lifetime? The ego in this scenario acts like a protective layer to blunt the penetration of external energy into the self.

When Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is within…”, this is what he meant. He was saying — just as Gopi Krishna said so many times — that human evolution in this lifetime is not just a possibility, but a mandate. He and all the great prophets sought to teach this truth to their followers and the whole world.

Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man

In this scenario, the ego deflects criticism and judgment as a protective defense mechanism. All the standard brand psychologies apply, except that when the idea of personal evolution is included, it creates a whole new perspective on the ego and related topics. In this scenario the dark night of the soul is a necessary phase in which the now ready individual can enter the next step in evolution, the arousal of the kundalini. The ego is shed like a carapace, and the butterfly emerges, so to speak.

False spirituality overidentifies with this evolving phase. Because the individual desires to go through this stage of spiritual evolution, this is a conundrum, since the overidentification with one’s goal of spiritual evolution is an attachment of the ego, not a letting go. Thus while the ego can be dismissed through service, prayer, and meditation; seeking self-aggrandizement and adulation, along with self-mutilation and self-abnegation, are  manifestations of egocentric desire.

The great tragedies in human history – Hitler, Stalin, and all the great megalomaniacs and their wars – are caused by the conflict between the desire to take the next step in human evolution and the fear of letting go of the ego and its trappings. Egocentrism and egomaniacs are trapped in a world of ego attachment that creates human misery in this life. The lives of the mystics are about teaching this essential truth: the non-attachment to material things, exemplified by the lives of the prophets expresses it deeply.

Add the 27 years that Nelson Mandela spent in jail to the list of those who shed the attractions of desire and found their truth. The funerals of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mandela show how much world leaders appreciate the sacrifice made to teach this lesson. I draw from this a nonjudgmental understanding of the failings of others. Their confusion and desires, and their ignorance of the real PATH TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH has been and remains the cause of so much suffering, as Gautama said.

The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution

PD Ouspensky’s The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution is another expression of this idea. When the ego disintegrates and the kundalini is aroused, it is the beginning of a new phase of personal evolution. Gopi Krishna encouraged the development of a science around the kundalini awakening process. He believed it would be of tremendous value to those searching for spiritual truth. The whole world could benefit from the spontaneous unleashing of creative genius and spirituality.

Consciousness Rising

You’ve visited imaginary worlds and other dimensions in science fiction movies, in comics and in novels. Are they just the director's hallucinogenic fantasies? Or are these dimensions actually KNOWABLE? If so, how can we prepare ourselves for this type of altered perception?

Jacob’s Ladder, The Matrix, Memento, Altered States. Fictional worlds in which material reality suddenly melts away and the protagonist is left to fend for himself in harrowing, seemingly unreal situations. We’ve witnessed these worlds and believed them to be figments of the writer’s imagination. But are they?

Echoes Beyond our World 

These imaginary worlds are as real as the people, streets, houses, and stores we encounter in our normal daily rounds. Although we cannot see these apparitions in our current state, scientists and other investigators are finding they are real. Moreover, they are not the threatening specters moviemakers would have us believe — they simply exist beyond the reach our limited consciousness.

At a key moment in Jacob’s Ladder, Jacob's friend, chiropractor and guardian angel, Louis (Danny Aiello), cites the 14th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart — “Eckhart saw Hell too; he said: ‘the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you,’ he said. ‘They're freeing your soul. So, if you’re frightened of dying and... you’re holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.’”

This is straight out of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In fact, this film is a fictional interpretation of a Near Death Experience (NDE). At the end we see “Jacob never made it out of Vietnam.” His body is shown in an army triage tent just as he expires. Apparently, the entire series of events turns out to have been a dying hallucination. Jacob's experiences appear to have been a form of purgation in which he releases himself from his earthly attachments, finally joining his dead son Gabe to ascend a staircase (Biblically known as Jacob's Ladder) toward a bright light.”

The science of consciousness, or should we say the scientific investigation of it, inevitably delves into the unseen — that which lies behind the physical. This investigation is now moving forward on two fronts toward the same objective, namely the full unfolding of human potential, or as Gopi Krishna called it: "Knowing the Knower." Much investigation is still outside the realms of traditional science, yet, as metaphysical exploration moves forward, we apply more scientific methods.Who's to say that the same scientific methods we apply in the physical realm won't someday apply to the metaphysical realm? The NDE provides palpable evidence of meta-physicality.

Group 1 explores consciousness from the inside-out while Group 2 explores from the outside-in:

Group 1

The empirical investigators, those who have undergone Kundalini/NDE experiences, and in so doing, written about them from the inside-out, just as an 16th Century explorer kept a journal of his discoveries and encounters during a voyage. Men like: Gopi Krishna, Richard Bucke, J Krishnamurti, PD Ouspensky.

In Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time I described the insights gained in the Energy Continuum thusly:

“After activating the Kundalini-Life Force, I was able to see the blueprint of my perfect body and compare it to my actual state. Amazingly, the Life Force recognized my deformity and immediately began to correct it. I witnessed it slowly reshape my body to the exact proportions in the blueprint.

“The fact that I could see my original design and it is perfect means to me that an unseen sentient entity in nature created it before my being came into this world.”

In The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death:

“Where this blueprint had been stored between the time of my conception and my 35th year, I did not know. Material scientists, geneticists, in this instance, would probably say it resided in the brain, and that is a safe assumption, for it is unlikely that it resided outside the body. Nevertheless, the fact that I saw it and watched the Life Force energy use it to 'reengineer' my body made me think that some sentient agency must play a role in reproduction, and in the design and formation of the body. Why had this blueprint suddenly appeared? Where had it been for thirty-five years? If it had no purpose, wouldn’t it have ceased to exist? So then, it must have a purpose, for it was still there."

Group 2

Those scientists, such as Dr. Harold Saxton Burr of Yale University, who explored field theory in the 30s. “Physicists define a field something like this: when something occurs somewhere in space because something else happened somewhere else in space, with no visible means by which the cause produced the effect, the two events are connected by a ‘field’.”

“As everyone knows, when we sprinkle a card with iron filings and hold it over an ordinary magnet, the filings will arrange themselves in a pattern that represents the ‘lines of force’ of the magnet’s field. And though we can change the filings as often as we like, each set of filings will always assume the same pattern.

“Even by the most pedantic, therefore, the ‘fields of life’ can be considered a scientifically-respectable phenomenon, eligible one day for the imprimatur of the hierarchy. When that will be will depends on how long it takes biochemists to lose their enthusiasm for present fashions and perhaps for economic interests to open their focus to cost-effective natural vs. patented chemical solutions."

If this is true, then:

• The fact that we do not perceive these states/fields means our current consciousness must be inhibited,
• There is consciousness in every field/cell.

As author Sol Luckman points out, “A salient point in the evolutionary model I am elaborating is that evolution of species ultimately is driven not by material, but by metaphysical energy, or consciousness, of a spiraling, “meta-genetic” nature.

“If today we are to embrace a worldview in which consciousness is more important than matter, we need to base our timekeeping on the nonphysical, invisible reality (that gives rise to reality) rather than on the physical.”

The Power of Compassion

Many years ago, I volunteered to work with Crisis over the Christmas period. Crisis is a charity in England that provides shelters for homeless men and women over the festive period. I completed the application form and filled in the enclosed shift booking form. 

Two weeks before Christmas, I received a letter saying that I had been accepted with instructions and directions of where to go and what to do on the first morning of my shift. I don’t remember what my motivation was for working with Crisis as I had never done it before. Maybe I had heard someone speak about it and how great it was and I thought "sounds good, I’ll give it a go." I felt quite excited after getting the confirmation letter.

I arrived early on the morning of my shift and was there with about 10 other volunteers. During the roll call of volunteers, I noted that some names called were not there. We were then assigned to Crisis employees for training. I was assigned to the alcoholics shelter! I really didn’t know what to make of it or what it might mean for me.

The shelter was in North London and I noticed the great atmosphere the minute I went inside. Music was playing. There was a dayroom, a canteen, and sleeping quarters. On each shift, I was in charge of something different. One shift it might be giving out food in the canteen; on another shift, handing out donated clothes and shoes as presents. Some nights I just passed the time speaking with different men and women. After hearing so many heartbreaking stories on these shifts, I realized just how easy it is to become homeless. All it takes is a few incidents that result in life spiraling out of control and people losing everything. It opened my eyes. 

In the dayroom, there was a notice board. One day, I was looking at it and I saw a poem that a man named Jamie had written — about life on the streets. The rawness and purity of it really spoke to me, so I went to find him. Asking around, one of the women pointed to a man in his late 30s early 40s. I went up to him and told him how much I loved his poetry. He smiled and said simply, "I only learned to read and write six months ago." I was stunned, and yet deep down I recognized that his creativity was coming from somewhere fresh and different.  

I asked him if he would tell me his story. Here is what he said:

"On the streets for years an alcoholic and a drug addict, I was walking across Westminster Bridge one evening when I met a girl who was desperate for drugs. I felt so sorry for her that I gave her the drugs I had for myself. I did go and buy some more, but for some reason I couldn’t take them and threw them in the river. A few evenings later I’m sitting in a shop doorway and this man tries to give me a leaflet and I said to him, ‘It’s no good giving that to me, mate. I can’t read or write.’ He asked me if I wanted to learn and, I said, ‘Sure.’ And for three months, he came every week to teach me to read and write. At the end he asked me to join some religious group that he was part of, but I said, 'No, it didn’t feel right so now I spend my time reading and writing poetry.'"

I left Jamie touched and moved by his story and also in no doubt about the power of compassion. My regret is that I never asked him for one of his poems. The last I heard about him was that he was reading English at Cambridge University. I believe that the compassion he showed to a stranger turned his life around in such a dramatic way.

The value of compassion is widely recognized and there is even a specific therapy called compassion focussed therapy. There is also a Charter for Compassion, which has over 100,000 signatures, but if you look at the world, it doesn't seem it's becoming more compassionate.

There is a disconnect between knowing we should be more compassionate and not being so, which begs the question why? What is it that stops us from being more compassionate? One reason might be because we are just too self-absorbed, so much so that we just don't see the other, never mind act with compassion. But rather than labeling our entire species as selfish, could it be that we are naturally compassionate, but showing compassion is painful, especially when we can't do anything about it. So we close this aspect of ourselves down. This is why many spiritual awakening experiences result in compassion — the flowering of that which is already within.

Kundalini and Poverty: Same People, Different Situations

It's often suggested to spiritual seekers that there's no way to care for the poor and reach for spiritual release at the same time. Individual souls are on an individual journey; each person must fend for his/her own soul, find his/her own path. That the outer trip is fraught with insurmountable snares and therefore one should concentrate only on the inner trip. The notion here is that evolution will take care of the less fortunate. A rising tide raises all boats, so to speak.

Back in the 1970s, Isaac Bentov developed this "rising boats" theme along similar lines as today's Kundalini people, who say Kundalini is accelerating evolution by writing changes in consciousness into DNA.

So where does that leave America's poor? Or the poor and disabled around the world, for that matter? Should the rest of us be trying to help?

This week, CNN ran a Special on Poverty in America that focused mainly on women — how easy it is for them to become homeless and impoverished while working more than 40 hours a week.
 

Situation 1: Homeless, Jobless, and Impoverished

Yes, it's hard to believe that poverty has spread to the proportions it has. Life is precarious. We are all under constant threat of annihilation: war, terror, hunger, joblessness, poverty. The Bible warns us not to forget, but somehow we do. In fact, its parables illustrate the fragility of life, even at the highest levels.

Yet, our egos tell us we've come a long way. Were in the home stretch. There's nothing more to accomplish, nothing wrong with wealth. And, per se, there isn't. Just like intelligence, it's what you do with it that counts. Only by balancing the material with the spiritual can we achieve success. The rest is ego driven. Yes, ego was needed in primitive times. No longer in a primitive state, we're still in survival mode, but the rules are changing. We no longer need more. In fact, less is now more! The ego will continue to serve a purpose, but it must be sublimated.

Bentov says we will all be enlightened — after a million more years of evolution. Probably exist in bodiless form. I think we will, if we are able to meet the challenges of survival.

If we didn't inhabit bodies, all our problems would vanish. Negative emotion, war, greed, violence, prejudice, fear would not exist. But we DO live in bodies that control our perceptions and our so-called needs. How do we get persons whose needs are boundless living next to persons who have nothing but a shopping cart full of plastic bags? What mechanism in the brain makes us believe we need more than our neighbor?
 

Situation 2: Cozy, Well-fed, and Upward Mobile

These two images were captured within three blocks of each other, highlighting the contrast between generational poverty and relative security.

Bentov says the people in mental hospitals are the highly evolved. We just don't know how to communicate with them. And because they do not perceive the world in the same terms as "normal" people do or are unable to communicate in the language the material world, we institutionalize them. I don't know if he's joking, but every time I encounter a person with alcohol or drug addiction issues, I come away believing they are searching for redemption, that their issues are more spiritual than material. But they're stuck in an escape syndrome of drugs, alcohol, addiction, domestic violence. They are searching in all the wrong places and they can't find their way out.

When I ask a street person why he/she wants to "get high," they reply in much the same terms as a spiritual person explains why he meditates. It's not by accident that they use the term get high. Both seek release from material concerns.

Although I don't see meditation catching on in homeless shelters any time soon, I don't believe that conventional treatment methods are working either. Poverty has become an endemic issue; it's sapping our resources, bequeathing more of the same to more and more people, many of them yet unborn.

I've got my double latte espresso. What have you got?

And now that countries and states are legalizing not only pot but also heroine and other drugs, more and more people are going to give up and drop out permanently. It's no longer a question of reform; we need a change of consciousness — a high built on true spiritual foundations. Without drugs or alcohol.

Bigger government isn't the answer. That hasn't worked in the past and it won't work in the future. The answer is people turning away from physical gratification, exploring the metaphysical potential within each of us.

Realistically, many eons of evolution are needed before the tide raises all boats. Or so it seems to me. But I'd like it to be generations instead of eons. Surprise me!

How Kundalini is Perceived

If you're out there, dealing with Kundalini, how do you explain it to others, to yourself?

Recently, I had the opportunity to test this. I wasn't giving a talk or a presentation on Kundalini; I had been invited to join a community discussion group with five or six other men and I was attending my fifth or sixth session. Discussion usually skirted around cultural and any number of other progressive topics, but it never touched spiritual matters. And I never brought one up.
 

Prayer or Practice

One day, however, one of the participants — I later discovered he was battling cancer — brought up the afterlife question in a way that flowed seamlessly into the existing context. I can't remember word for word what followed, but I did seize the opening to comment on my research into human energy potential and energy cultivation techniques, as well as my findings that death was not to be feared and was only a transition into a new state of being.

Someone asked me if I could prove it. I cited NDE and Kundalini as examples of consciousness existing outside mind and body. I underlined that this hypothesis was the result of research done in the laboratory of my own body, and it was supported by many similar accounts from all over the globe. Some members continued the discussion; the man who'd started it wanted to hear more. But several others began shouting that Kundalini had no scientific value; it was only a cult.

A cult, a religion, a philosophy, a practice, and an exercise regimen. It's been called all of the above, and probably less flattering names as well, I observed. One man kept shouting it's a cult, it's a cult. I spent two minutes trying to explain that Kundalini was a biological process, that I had no religious affiliations, and that kundalini, despite the unfortunate connotations attached to its name, was the driving force behind evolution. I mentioned that my kundalini experience had begun with breathing exercises, and then morphed into profound consciousness experiences I have documented in several books.

I stated that my experience was not the result of any religious practice. In fact, I told them I practiced no religion nor did I hold any position on God.
 
However, I said Kundalini did trigger many physical, metabolic, mental, psychic, and other effects in my being, right down to the cellular level, on which I could elaborate if the group was interested. I told them these effects had nothing to do with religion. They were the by-product of the biological energy Kundalini produces and they resulted in my becoming immersed in an Energy Continuum, not unlike the Unified Field physicists speak of. My experience inspired me to learn more about higher consciousness, energy cultivation, and the role of Kundalini in evolution. I added that the effects were largely unexpected and showed me that keeping an open mind was paramount if we are interested in the forces behind evolution.

"Cult, cult," he shouted.

It's not a religion or a cult, I said. You can't be "converted" to Kundalini, any more than you can be converted to a heart attack or an orgasm; they just happen. That's the nature of biological processes; they just happen. Some are triggered by external stimuli or practices, like meditation; others are autonomic or spontaneous.

Needless to say, the discussion ended there and that was the last meeting I attended. What's the point? If a person is so closed-minded he confuses biology with religion, there's little room for dialog.

Nevertheless, of the two most excitable critics, I learned that one was a virulent atheist who could not conceive of any middle ground between belief and non-belief in God and the other had been raised in fundamentalist surroundings and had it up to his chin hairs with religion. Both were college professors.

So how do you explain Kundalini? How do others react to your explanation? Did you learn anything from encounters with people whose minds are closed to any investigation of the hypothesis that biology is an expression of consciousness?

Spirit Wants Only to Fly

The title of this blog post is inspired by a quote from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and it answered a question that I have pondered since the death of Nelson Mandela: Why do great leaders of Mandela's caliber die? It seems like we continuously re-invent the leadership and spiritual wheel, particularly the latter. One only has to read about the lives of the great saints and mystics and tribulations they overcame to achieve realization — only to die — leaving a vacuum which devotees of these great Masters did their best to fill. But which are never of equal distinction because the mind and/or heart of the founder has gone. So when I came across this poem it answered a lot for me.

The Spirit Flies Free

   "If I don't manage to fly someone else will.
   The Spirit wants only there be flying.
   And for who happens to do it,
   In that he has only a passing interest."

After reading and pondering it for a while. I realized that the physical vehicle isn't important. It is merely the vehicle through which Spirit flies and the challenge for Spirit is to find willing vehicles through which to fly. But ultimately all vehicles die so what is important and permanent is the flying. And yet Spirit doesn't fly in exactly the same way through every vehicle as we see in the lives and writings of the great realizers. Why is this? If it's one Spirit, why does it result in different manifestations?

The differences that emerge are the result of the mind interpreting the energetic effects of Spirit. It is our subtle body and not the gross physical body which responds to Spirit. That response is different for different vehicles depending on the filter through which they interpret them. In my own case, my experience of Spirit, which I see as Kundalini, was very much an energy that rose from the base of my spine up through the body — a kind of Spirit ascension. For some, it's an experience of energy descending from above. In either case, it is the same energy, but the reports of the observer (from memory) and the level of consciousness attained determines how it will be interpreted and more importantly what it means. For human beings, everything means something, it is hardwired into us to seek meanings for everything so that the brain can make sense of the world.

Many Masters have warned against the lure of Spirit and its manifestations, i.e., visions, lights, etc., and have pointed out that spiritual experiences are not realizations and to seek the former at the expense of the latter is go down a blind alley. When devotees spoke to Osho about such experiences, he downplayed them, pointing out that it made very little difference to the devotees ultimate state of realization, suggesting that these experiences be let go of, just as one drops a bag of rubbish into a bin. He was always at pains to point out that spiritual experiences are not IT.

The more profound the experience, the harder it is to let go of. So when I was first told to let my experience go — to not allow myself to become absorbed by it or to let it disturb my everyday, normal life — I was reluctant to do this. I felt that something special had happened and I didn't want to forget about it or let it go. It is only now, so many years later, that I understand why it is essential to let this kind of experience go. It is because everything changes, even the nature of spiritual experience, and to hold onto it is to limit what is possible in the future. It is necessary to let go of the known to make space for the unknown, and thus move from the known to the unknown to that which is unknowable and thus fulfill our purpose as spiritual human beings.

Leonardo and Mirror Writing

Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook

This post details my experience with Mirror Writing, which I learned from Leonardo da Vinci. This aspect of the great Leonardo’s habits has been a mystery that have influenced my experiences, thoughts, and reflections (no pun intended – or is it a pun at all?).

Starting out
In 1974, I dropped out of school, or into life, whichever you prefer. I was reading all the books I couldn’t read in Chem 1A, Freshman Calculus, and Honors Literature at UC Berkeley. A friend loaned me a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and I, of course, read it.

I was interested to read that da Vinci attributed his artistic preeminence to the fact that “He sketched with his left hand and painted with his right.” Of course, we all learned in school that Leonardo wrote from right to left with his left hand (didn’t we?).

I have never shown any innate artistic abilities. Literature was my thing: poetry, novels, narrative prose. I asked myself, “How could I apply Leonardo’s practice to myself?”

By now, most of us have heard that the brain is not symmetrical left-right. Different higher order functions are found on different sides. As he was in so many other ways, was da Vinci ahead of his time in realizing the brain’s asymmetry?

If sketching for da Vinci was form, and painting was color, then he was implying that form is found in the left hand-right brain and color is found in the right hand-left brain. Neuroscientists may argue this particular description of brain function, but you must give da Vinci credit: he is one of the greatest painters and scientists of all time.

I reasoned that form in writing was analogous to organizational structure, whereas color was analogous to poetic expression. I decided to try da Vinci’s approach: first I would write the structure, the organization of an essay, with my left hand from right to left, and then come back and write the final draft with my right hand from left to right.

I trained myself to write with the left hand from right to left, starting with the alphabet. I found that the physical act of mirror writing is easier than reading it. My hand trained fairly easily; my eyes adapted with greater difficulty.

Our Flip-Flop Nervous System
If one loses a hand in an accident, the other hand can substitute fairly quickly. This is because the actions ordered by the brain to one hand can pass through the corpus callosum — the interconnecting nerves between the brain halves — and go to the other side of the brain and then to the other hand. The bio-mechanical equivalent of writing left to right with the right hand is writing right to left with the left hand.

When we write with the right hand from left to right, we are extending our right arms. When we write with the left hand from left to right, as a typical left-handed person does, the left arm is flexing. The action in the left arm that mirrors the actions of the muscle group in the right arm is extending the left arm, writing from right to left, mirror writing, or writing “backwards."

Thus the transfer of neurological instructions from right arm to left arm through the corpus callosum is only identical in mirror-writing. For this reason, it is fairly easy to learn to write left-handed from right to left, if one is ordinarily right-handed. If one reads it in the mirror, it looks normal.

When I write with my left hand from right to left, my conceptual flow improves. My analytic brain is sharper when writing that way. While in college, after mastering the technique, I began to take notes in class this way and my grades went up from Bs to As.

It is also true that the eyes are left-right oriented, but in this case each eye’s field of vision is separated left-right. In other words, the left half of each eye’s vision goes to the right brain, and the right half of each eye’s vision goes to the left brain. Thus glancing to the left stimulates right brain function, while glancing to the right, the signals go more to the left brain.

The lens of the eye focuses an image on the back of the eyeball that is upside down and backwards. My hypothesis is that in order for the brain to take the visual signals from the photoreceptor and optic nerves of the eyes and convert it to a real image, it needs to invert and reverse the image it receives. This is achieved by the reversal of the nerve bundle as it enters the brain from the spine, i.e. it flips.

Otherwise, we would only see the world as an upside down and backwards imprint, since our nerve sensors can only show us a reversed imprint of the object, not the object itself.

For example, if we grasp a stone, we do not feel the stone in the brain. We feel the reverse imprint of the nerves of touch in the hand, just as the eyes get a reversed and inverted visual image. The only way we get a real image is by the reversal of the nerve bundle. Thus, the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left.

The idea here is that there is not a brain processing center that uses algorithms to interpret reality. Rather, the reversal and inversion are accomplished in the neurological pathway. Isn't Nature efficient in accomplishing such elegance in the physio-neural layout itself?!!

The only part of our sensory apparatus that does not reverse as the nerves pass through the vertebrae and up through the spinal cord is the sense of smell which enters the brain through the forehead. Smell has no spatial orientation. Hence, the old saying, “The nose knows.”

The muscular skeletal system is indeed bilaterally symmetrical, the same on both sides of the body. The cardio pulmonary system is also, with some allowance for the heart. But the gastro-intestinal system is definitely not bilaterally symmetrical. It should not surprise us that parts of the brain are not bilaterally symmetrical either.

Thoughts that originate in the left side of the brain control the right side of the body, and vice versa. Since writing, painting, and other higher order functions of the brain must interface with the muscular-skeletal systems in order to find expression in the world, they use the parts of the brain that are the same left and right.

So, if form is in the right brain, then the nerve signals find a more efficient path traveling directly to the left hand, rather than traveling through the corpus callosum and then to the right hand. Conversely, if color is in the left brain, then it is more efficient neurologically for color to be expressed by the right hand. Whether these distinctions between form and color are the same in all human brains, I can only confirm that my experience and da Vinci’s are similar.

Bio-Logic
Another expression of this idea is in Logic itself. In Logic theory, the inverse of something is not necessarily true, nor is the converse necessarily true, but the inverse of the converse, the contrapositive, is necessarily true. It is the same as the senses – the inverse of the converse is a real image.

For example, let’s assume the premise, “If it rains, I will stay indoors.” The inverse, “If I stay indoors, it will rain” is not necessarily true. Nor is the converse, “If it does not rain, I will not stay indoors,” but the contrapositive, “If I did not stay indoors, it did not rain” is necessarily true.

How can we explain the fact that mental Logic operates according to the same principles as our senses? This is a mystery yet to be plumbed. Yet it should not surprise us.

Another perhaps more surprising aspect of this discussion is in the parting of hair. Parting the hair emphasizes the part of the brain at work by favoring one field of view over the other. Does this mean that parting the hair indicates a philosophical/mental predisposition?

From my years of observing this question, I believe that it does. Some may argue that this silly little habit is meaningless.

I believe in the idea that everything means something. Nothing is without meaning. There must be a reason for the choice of hair parting.

It may reflect or promote the use of the left brain over the right, or vice versa. I will stick my neck out and argue that those who part their hair on the left tend to rely on theory, and those who part their hair on the right tend to rely on data. Of course, in a centered world the neutral center finds the balance of the two. As Dan O’Neill, the cartoonist known for his Odd Bodkins series, once observed, “A bird can’t fly without two wings, and it can’t fly at all without a heart.”

East and West
Another corollary is in the way language is written. Arabic, Hebrew, and phonetic Chinese are written from right to left. Does this affect culture, emphasizing the right brain instead of the left?

These are unconscious choices that were made at some point in history. Perhaps there is a dialectical relationship between the mental habits that are adopted, and the way in which language is written. Perhaps the Eastern proclivity for collectivism is right-brained while the Western tendency for individualism is left-brained.

To this day, I take notes in business meetings with my left hand, prewrite organizational structures with the left, and write poetry with the right. I have found this makes a significant difference. My experience as a film critic bears this out.

Some years ago, I wrote a weekly film review column for a small newspaper. After watching a film, I would outline my piece with a structure left-handed and fill that structure in with detail. Then I would rewrite the piece right-handed, adding “color” to what would be an otherwise dry bit of writing.

It became a popular, a well-liked column. One week I didn’t have time to prep the structure, so I wrote straight from the right hand and did my best. After I submitted it the editor said to me with disappointment in his voice, “This is not your usual stuff.”

My Column - mirror on right