A Krishnamurti Millisecond




Asemic Circles, by P. Bralley

I’ve mentioned that I have migraines. Curiously, over the past few years they’ve changed. They have gone from seemingly an obvious physiological pathology that sometimes gave rise to a spiritual experience to the exact opposite: a spiritual experience that makes the body sag as it tries to biologically support “the vision.” And sometimes, there is just this weird in-between state. My vision gets altered and I feel a little headachy and definitely nauseated. Not at all your classic migraine, but for lack of a better term, I just call it a migraine.

My doctor always asks how they are going (not that his by-the-book-medicine understands a thing about the spiritual) but, to give him something of a reply, I explained to him that something happens to my vision: I lose the ability to process vision in the normal manner. I don’t get the flashes of light or bizarre distortions that are ripe within the migraine literature. Rather, my vision becomes “disconnected” from the normal higher processing center.

It has become very obvious to me that vision is a process composed of a hierarchy of processes or functions. Most basically, the retina picks up light and the signals are processed in to a flowing image. We “see” the world around us and then at another level this image gets processed further. Another level of brain activity gives rise to meaning, interpretation, linguistic labels, and ultimately the logical interaction of “me” with the world I see.
The migraine disconnects this level of interpretation and labeling. When it happens at work, I call it quits and just go home. Last Saturday, it happened while I was driving up to the mountains for a family weekend. My reaction was, “No, no, no – not now!” I rubbed my eyes and rubbed my neck and tried to “reconnect.”

It’s with this background of “spiritual migraines” that I came upon this Blog entry by Nicole Taras, a psychic by profession, and was fascinated by the new angle Nicole provides my understanding. Her disconnect involves the sense of hearing and she calls it a Krishnamurti Millisecond:

It happened while I was watching a video talk by Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti is fun to listen to for me because he always, only, talks about “reality” on the very deepest level which cannot be talked about or understood intellectually so he is constantly frustrated by students trying to understand what he is saying intellectually…
In any case, during part of his lecture, Krishnamurti became very frustrated about this and said sternly, “Just listen. Don’t try to listen. Don’t try to understand. Just simply listen to what I am saying...” (that may not be a direct quote but that’s how I remember it)

He went on talking and I decided to listen without focusing on the concepts or trying to gain any sort of knowledge, or get anywhere further on my spiritual path by having listened.
For probably less than a second, I just listened. It felt as if some sort of filtering or resistance system that I live in constantly had turned off and for that millisecond life was allowed to just be without me slowing it down or counting it out in terms of a process of time before acknowledging it, organizing, categorizing, making concepts, understandings, perceptions, judgments — I saw that my normal processes of perceiving myself and the world around me acts as a filtering system which slows life down and breaks it into categories or measurements of time that I can then count and comprehend...

The best way I can describe what listening was like is that it seemed like a flood of openness...but even a flood is too small...it was just being open and with no idea in the world of a closed comparison…
the question I am stuck with is – how would it even be possible to actually go about living in this state of mind (if that’s what you’d call it)? In hindsight, I’m left with the concept of just how vulnerable it is to not have the filters on.

Krishnamurti says that once you have seen things as they really are there is no going back to the old way of being — I definitely am not there yet — he does not believe in a gradual awakening because that implies time and a goal, somewhere to get to — but my path appears to be gradual.

Yes. My path seems very gradual.
I poked around Nicole’s website and the more I read the more relaxed I became. There’s a sweetness that resonated with me. And before I knew it, my vision was disconnected once again. I wouldn’t call this a migraine. I’d call it witnessing, but then I might not even call it that. Witnessing presents a “radical duality” that by definition establishes a here and there.  I'm noticing that disconnection with my vision is a dropping off of differentiation, labeling, dividing. There's a soupiness or ocean that disorients my normal vision. (Perhaps the habit of vision/nervous system is to WANT to label and dissect.) And, of course, I can see all the cups and pencils and notebooks same as anyone. But, as the vision changes and the relaxation arises, mostly I am aware something dropping away leaving behind a Wholeness - or at least a chunky soup as we all swim about within the same warm pot of ...what?  Wow!  What?

Or, as Nicole summarized:
This moment, along with other milliseconds of sudden conscious shifting in my life helps me see (little by little) my mind with more perspective and with a deeper trust in my Oneness with God.
Well, I hope that makes sense to somebody!

I think it does, at least to me! Thank you, Nicole.

What Was it Pogo Said?

VPI 1915
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

We have met the enemy and he is us.
Pogo

Last week, I submitted the painting you see here to qarrtisluni for their issue on “Transformation.”
I explained that the painting is based upon a photograph my grandfather took in 1915.
(He was a student at Virginia Polytechnic and these are his fellow students in the snow.)
All I did was add a bit of asemic calligraphy and stamped a couple chops.
I also attempted to explain how the inking transformed the image.

The transformation simply amazed me.
Before I set my brush upon the picture,
I never knew that Virginia contained Asia within its energy.
But there before my eyes, I saw the Cadets of grandfather’s world,
Just Like That,
become “Soldiers of the Sun.”
Just Like That,
Western hero became Asian warrior.

I called the painting, “Transformation as a Just So Story”
because I didn’t believe such transformations could ultimately be True.
Really True, I meant.

The editors quickly declined with a polite, “No, thank you.”
I think perhaps they wanted transformations that were Real beyond dispute:
water into ice,
youth into old age.
In short, they were looking for the transformations that happen everyday.

I was addressing something of a different sort.
I was talking about the Other transformation that happens everyday,
but it is not of Nature, but rather, Man.
Everyday our minds take the One and break it into pieces.
Everyday we turn This into That.

I was talking about the transformation pulled off by Maya – that most skillful of Illusionists.
The unreal really happens everyday.
We take our fellow human beings and turn them into other and often enemy.

And we do it Just Like That,
just as easy as the squiggle of a paintbrush.
My calligraphy wasn’t even words. It was asemic and thus by definition without semantics.
Yet, obviously, below the words meaning got conveyed.
How else could I ever make warriors out of boys playing in the snow?

I have been dancing round here for a while now,
writing about labeling, and Dick and Jane, and taking life “simply as it is.”
Now, perhaps we’re getting to practical applications for what so often seems nothing short of the self indulgent ramblings of “Absorbed-in-Self.Com.”

Anyway.

A couple days went by.

Mom sent me this email.
It was a long editorial by Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine.
Tikkun translates as “to heal, repair, and transform the world.”
Rabbi Lerner was describing his experience at the World Conference on Dialogue convened by the King of Saudi Arabia, July 16-18 in Madrid, Spain.

God's will, praise be to Him, was that people should differ in their faiths.
If the Almighty had so desired, all mankind would have shared the same religion. We are meeting today to affirm that the religions that God Almighty desired for the happiness of man, should be a means to ensure that happiness.
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud

Now, Rabbi Lerner is no fan of the King,
and I too am pretty skeptical of the King and his government.
Still, the conference brought together representatives of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism.

And some of Rabbi Lerner’s points really got me thinking:
… this didn't sound like the King I had come to expect from Western media.
This was obviously a new direction being articulated by the King of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it was not just being articulated for a Western audience.
The King had convened a similar meeting of Islamic scholars and thinkers in Saudi Arabia six weeks before…
what the King of Saudi Arabia was doing was …of historic significance….

[I] find myself amazed at the humanity, intelligence, and shared commitment to rationality among all these leaders of the Saudi regime.
NO, I'm not giving up my skepticism, and no, I have not forgotten the barbarism…

I see the fundamental decency of some who are engaged in an effort to "reform from within," and am reminded once again of how ridiculous it is to talk about a whole society as though it represented a single perspective or shared a single worldview….

[T]his conference is a front page story in most of the world,
but is being largely ignored in the US media
who were notably absent from the hundreds of media covering this event.
This is a willed ignorance about the world…

What was also clear to me in this conversation was that these very enlightened Saudis had NEVER met or been in a conversation with Jews who held progressive values and took those values seriously.
For them, it was an exciting revelation that there were Jews who were both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, who could hold both narratives as having elements of truth and elements of goodness...
They too had fallen for the media distortions…

They too had fallen for that squiggle of the brush that can transform,
-Just Like That-
the Virginia boys of the First War into the Kamakazi of the Second War.
And Rabbi Lerner wrote of those who are now calling for a Fourth War…

With sincere apologies for my over simplifications.

To really get a feel of the intricate and insane swirlings that go on upon the surface politic:
You can find Rabbi Lerner’s complete comments here (a site organized under the auspices of Deepka Chopra).
You can find the Network of Spiritual Progressive here.
NPR’s brief comments are here. (It’s true the story was largely ignored. I had not heard a word until I got Mom’s email.)
And the press release of the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington is here. (Well, actually back there. Ain't illusion grand?)

Namaste.

Shadows

Kitchen Towel
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

My eyes seemed starved for red this afternoon. Thus, the choice in photo.

The subject today is shadows, in consciousness and art... and this site is merely shadowing the commentary that is really HERE.

(Actually, I just wanted to keep "art" topics in my art site.)

Christmas Buddha

Christmas Buddha
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I am very behind on my Christmas prep this year.
I am not even going to worry about it either.

Thailand has a national treasure, a large jade buddha.
He is garbed in a robe of gold thread during the cold season.
And so there came to be a Winter Buddha.

And I have one on my altar in my winter meditation room.
This is his reflection in an old, old mirror.

A Christmas card to one and all.
If you go to Flickr you can download him
and print him on the best paper you can find.

Namaste.

Thinking too Much

Pear & Butterfly II
Originally uploaded by Jack Hindmarsh

I’ve been thinking a lot lately.
Making lists of reasonable reasons, if not on paper certainly in my head.
There’s this and this and this and this…

Then, yesterday I received an email from a Nick Forrest, which didn’t make any sense to me at first. It read

Subject: agatha defuse animate

bard bolshoi, chromatography conception bloomfield, defrock combine. compactify allure babyhood actinide dakota bureaucratic conveyance. bottommost capillary dobbin cancelled amos casualty astrophysical chairman cane burette chambers armenia. baxter alexander cruelty boeing angelic bloodstone browne

What is this? It makes no sense.
And then I realized.
This is "asemic poetry."

I’ve got this little asemic connection ,via my painting, to a group of artists round the world doing stuff like “concrete poetry” and this Nick Forrest must be saying hello in his own asemic manner.
That was it.

And then I recalled the poem I posted about a week ago. Yeah, I brought this on myself
probably with that bit of poetry that is actually an instruction on the lab’s centrifuge.

Now, it all was making sense and so I read again what Nick had sent.
And I began to get the feel... to understand.
OK!

So, I wrote Nick back:

Well, I really like "bottommost capillary dobbin," but the rest doesn't really help me make sense of a life that seems to be getting stranger by the moment.

“Cancelled amos casually.”

And I don't know if it’s good when it begins to fall into place. But, "Yeah."
“Angelic bloodstone browne.”

I really meant that, “Yeah,”
And was feeling pleased with making yet another little contact out there in radio-land,
When my email system sent a "failed delivery" notice.

Apparently, “Nick Forrest” is some kind of obfuscated computer dead-end in the UK.
And I had been carrying on, happily conversing with, even finding meaning in, the non-sense of some spam generating computer.

UNIVERSE to PATTY:
"You have gone too far!"
Coyote, you’re hanging in the air and the cliff edge is over there.
Get back, Honky Cat!

Sometimes non-sense is just non-sense…
Unless the intellect/intellectual gets a hold of it and starts thinking WAY too much.


So, (Good Buddhist that I am) from now on I am going with what’s right in front of me,
With That which simply Is.

... (In fact, I’m doing that right now) … (look. No hands) ... (Doing it.) ...

Well, Dang!
I find I still really like the phrase, “bottommost capillary dobbin.”
How very curious and
Delightful

How wonderful!

It all works out
even without a brain churning away.