Dis-ease & the Return to The Sense of Wholeness

What follows is one of two similar essays that I wrote, inspired by a video on YouTube between a famous spiritual teacher and three scientists.  It is rather academic yet somewhat inspired, so perhaps it’s not for every client.

At the end of this essay is a hyperlink to the embedded video.

Note: Brain damage and injury, deformities, physical disease, neurological issues, and brain blood flow issues are generally excluded from the concepts discussed in this essay and the related video-taped interview.

All disturbances of the psyche, all unease, and all states of mind that are not in thermodynamic balance, i.e., in the state of equipoise and equanimity, are agitations of the underlying field, which is ultimately the ground of being.  The universe is made of fields upon which ideation is imposed, and consciousness is the activity, change, and movement of that ideation.  The basis of genuine spirituality is the recognition of the underlying fields as the ground of creation and the divine infinite nature of their natural state.  The solution to any disturbance is the return to the natural state of the underlying field or divine ground.  The nature of that state is thermodynamic equilibrium, equipoise, harmony, balance and stillness, and dreamless sleep.  It is all possibilities open yet not manifest, i.e., in potentia and free from any and all bondage.

J. Krishnamurti, in his discussion with Sheldrake, Bohm, and a psychologist named Dr. Hidley,* correctly stated that the self (meaning the ego) is the source of all disorder and disturbance.  He proposed that such suffering and disorder or dis-ease is an inevitable fate of all humans.  He only implied that selfishness and self-centeredness are inevitable facts of all persons. That is because the ego-self is like all things that arise in creation – agitations of the underlying field.  In its apparent differentiation from the underlying ground or source, it is in a state of apparent disunity.  The focus and attention given to this wave function is a turning away from the calm ocean, the turning away from the non-dual reality, and the forgetting of the unified whole of which the wave, the ego, is only a disturbance, a wave is a wave, and nothing more.  Dr. Rupert Sheldrake pointed out that this kind of attention to self, this selfishness, is also prevalent in the animal kingdom.  He points out that for people, emphasizing the person’s particular suffering and trying to fix it is actually the act of sustaining it.  You cannot help a person by making him further focus on the ego wave.  He can only come to wholeness by recognizing his undifferentiation and becoming less self-concerned.  Real transformation cannot be a superficial modification of the wave; it must be a return to the source of the wave.  No self-centeredness can be permitted to continue, ending that ego-centered view.  I say that for a person, it is a function of the arising of the wave that it can sense or see itself. Humans have self-awareness, a power that they share with God, for God’s self-awareness is the impetus for creation, while man’s self-awareness is his key to unlocking the cage of limited existence and suffering. We should not confuse self-centeredness (an abstract vice) with self-awareness for they are two different things.

The existentialist would say this separateness and self-concern is a fundamental condition or requirement of being human and cannot be avoided, so there is no way to avoid the ensuing suffering.  In contrast, the religious person would say that the self can be dissolved into the source, and therein lies total transformation and the end of all suffering.  Some point to the Christian cross as the ultimate symbol and sacrifice of the ego-self to the Greater Absolute (God). For Jesus, the event was contextually different than for the modern person as the physical aspects of it was of symbolic import for the ages and all of mankind. Transformation or liberation from bondage must not be achieved by physical destruction. But can it be achieved without some form of self-annihilation?  The state of the individual ego is loneliness because it is self-recognizing its individuality, which is, by definition, its separateness.  So we suffer.  So what we feel is vulnerability, which is the lack of absolute security (the main point where Krishnamurti purposefully took the conversation).  The feeling of insecurity is a state of fear which in itself is a form of suffering.  Can we free ourselves from that?   Only when total attention is given to the unified field, the divine ground, to the ocean from and of which we are and not to the wave we see ourselves as.  But how can a person give such attention to where it is due while maintaining the demands and responsibilities of life and for dependants?  It is a heroic task and essentially the mandate of the spiritual aspirant.

When God thinks, it is an agitation that creates waves that are the manifest universe, and we are that which means we are not quite what we think we are; we only seem to be something other than a quantum wave-like event arising from the mentation of the original thinker, the observer, so in this way, we are both the observer and the observed.  There are no separate things or persons.  We are all part of each other and all part of the One; we are all but waves in the same ocean.  Yet, as Shankara explains in the Brahma Sutra, the jiva or “individual soul,” being a part of or an effect of Brahman (the Hindu name for God, the absolute infinite source of all), cannot directly experience the perception of other souls.  I liken it to a ray of light from the sun; each ray has its trajectory and experience, separate from the other rays, but they are still of the same sun.  Each “wave” arising from this infinite ocean of existence, knowledge, abiding has its own characteristic disturbance, some of which are quite beautiful and others of which are quite awful.  So, in essence, there is unity in the source but separation in the manifestation, like the sun and its subsequent rays.

Quantum field theory, which diffuses the paradoxes of particle physics and supports the recognition of the apparitional nature of particles and material existence, explains that there are six underlying fields, three of which are force fields (electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak nuclear fields, and matter fields of leptons and baryons).  We can think of these fields as layers or substrates for the various types of manifestation that we will encounter in material existence, and atomic and quantum events are expressions of these fields.  The interaction of the various fields causes the emergence of quanta, a fragmented, seemingly separated, although connected piece of a field.  The important thing to remember is that each manifest thing, each manifest event, and each ideation is but a wave that arises upon its respective field destined to emerge, cresting and receding back into its source just like ocean waves that arise in an otherwise calm sea or a perennial plant.  At this level, the dynamic encounters of the various fields are prompting the rising of the wave. In people, in regards to our conversation’s topic of mental and emotional suffering, the wave, representing the state of mental disturbance, the complex, or the possession, is an aspect of the potentiality of the depths of the field. The point of encounter with another field is the activation of the qualitative potential.  In physical terms, the wave pattern is equivalent to the essential archetypal pattern of “eternal return” (birth, growth, senescence, and return to the source only to rise again).

As quantum field theory does not address consciousness, a pervasive self-evident reality, we must add another field to QFT to satisfy this evidence.  That field should be the informational field, which we shall call the akasha or akashic field upon which all other fields in manifestation rest.  It is, in fact, the very stage for the play of God in the initial act of self-awareness and the field upon which all lesser forms of self-awareness, reflection and projection, and information rest.  In that sense, it is the field upon which all subsequent fields of QFT and the archetypal qualities are superimposed.  Hence, the operational features and behavioral equations of QFT likely also apply to the dynamics of the informational and archetypal fields that are constituent parts or layers of psyche and consciousness.  It can also be considered the field upon which God rests, acts, dreams, thinks, reflects, and projects.  

By the way, these creations do not constitute an actual change in the ultimate reality itself, for God (the source of all) remains transcendent.  The personal God is a temporal manifestation (like a wave through cosmogony) arising from an impersonal non-dual infinite substrate or source, what the Hindus call Para-Brahman or Nirguna Brahman (without qualities).   Again, this represented or expressed self-awareness of God is but a macro model of the subsequent wavelets or disturbances in the otherwise calm ocean of impersonal Brahman or God.  This disturbance constitutes creation.  Hence, so many self-concerned egos arise that can be likened to a seemingly infinite series of mirrors and reflections or tiny wavelets experiencing self-recognition, which causes forgetfulness of the ultimate ground of being / non-being.  Similarly, the Maya or veiling aspect of creation that draws our attention outward from the Divine Indwelling or light of being to the dreamlike apparition of the material world and our ego structures’ interaction with it causes the SELF-forgetfulness of our true nature, which is actually whole and undisturbed.

The nature of manifestation is fractal replication (expanding symmetry), whereas the nature of manifestation itself is disturbance and the tension of opposites as awareness and the implication of something other than the Self-Aware One, ultimately manifesting waves of light (wave/particle dualities) that set things in motion and are the impetus of apparitional causation.  As creation unfolds, so do good and evil, equanimity and imbalance, and various other qualities.  The problem with the human psychological makeup, or the human mind, is its susceptibility to such disturbances and the resultant focus of mentation or fixation that engages and orients us to these waves.  What is actuated is forgetfulness of the original state of calmness, peace, and balance.  Instead, a drawing of attention towards the wave and a resultant attachment to it takes place.  What needs to be remembered is the ground, the source, the calm ocean from which all things arise and to which all things recede.  This remembering is the purpose of religion and spirituality, providing us with security and a sense of not being alone.  

A sense of belonging to something far greater is accessible via religious practice. Subsequently, our little disturbances, fears, guilt, regrets, and ghosts of the past that haunt us pale in comparison and fade into the distant background – and that is the movement towards wholeness as best as we can expect in our ordinary existential routine.  The disturbances in the psyche, essentially, are just like all things temporal that arise in creation.  The goal of any therapeutic reorientation is the collapse of the wave function and a return to the state of equanimity. 

Smaller fields, weaker, lesser, and unwholesome (meaning incomplete) fields that disturb the mind are subsumed and overrun by greater, stronger, more wholesome fields.  The greatest of those fields is the divine origin.  That is the baseline with which orientation should be reinforced.

The introduction of the spiritual energy, the spiritual force field, and the field of wisdom and love, which is the recognition of the underlying unity and the giving up of the illusory self (ego) to that ultimate unity, is the curative field and the nectar that feeds the soul and heals all wounds.   The self-remembering of one’s true nature becomes a panacea from that which is the cause of the sense of dis-ease of the mind, anxiety, fear, loneliness, frustration, and trauma.  A spiritually endowed and competent guide, therapist, or facilitator can introduce that field.  Still, he or she must be a carrier of that spiritual force in order to spark and transmit that grace.

                                                                                                                             – M. P. Tinghitella   2015