Transpersonal Philosophy

  Following Patanjali we have said that Yoga is samadhi. And that the Yoga of Knowledge, the Ñana (Gnana or Jnana) Yoga, would then be “being the Consciousness of Samadhi”, which is a Consciousness of Bliss (Chidananda Rupa). Let's focus our Buddhi mind on samadhi for a moment. Sankaracharia, one of the great teachers of Hindu Advaita Vedanta, speaks of two types of samadhi: savikalpa (subject to differentiation) and nirvikalpa (not subject to differentiation). Savikalpa samadhi is the conscious state of “mind of Bliss” in which the Subject and the objects of knowledge maintain their own identity and difference from one another. With an example. Suppose you contemplate a rose and its beauty intoxicates you so much that your Soul transforms its configuration and you enter a state of absorption in Beauty. In this state of samadhi, you are intermingled with the rose, but the different identities of the rose and you are maintained. As Sankaracharia says, in this stat...

  The study of Indian religions is a whole school of the Art of Being Human . The mythopoetic stages of humanity coexist and overlap in a way that is as fertile as it is chaotic. It would take at least a three-year course to initiate us into all the subtleties and doctrinal and devotional variants of those religions, a commitment that the vast majority of you would not be able to attend to due to the practical issues of life. I have been giving you some keys learned and matured in the last 40 years of my life, many of them synthesized in the “Path of Beauty”, a book that I intended to make simpler but that I see now, after several months of your reactions in the Blog, how it requires a whole arsenal of prior knowledge for its complete understanding. I would like the most direct and simple proposal of the book to be clear: let yourself be found by Beauty and surrender to It . I would also like it to be clear what the path of non-dual knowledge (Advaita Vedanta) consist...

  El estudio de las religiones de la India es toda una escuela del Arte de Ser Humano. Los estadios mitopoéticos de la humaidad conviven y se solapan de una manera tan fértil como caótica. Se necesitaría como mínimo un curso de tres años para iniciarnos en todas las sutilezas y variantes doctrinales y devocionales, un compromiso que la inmensa mayoría de vosotros no podría atender por las cuestiones prácticas de la vida. Os he ido dando algunas claves aprendidas y maduradas en los últimos 40 años de mi vida, muchas de ellas sintetizadas en el “Sendero de la Belleza”, libro que pretendí hacer más simple pero que veo ahora, tras varios meses de vuestras reacciones en el Blog, cómo exige todo un arsenal de conocimiento previo para su completa comprensión. Me gustaría que la propuesta más directa y simple del libro quedase clara: déjate encontrar por la Belleza y ríndete a Ella . También me gustaría que quedase claro en qué consiste el camino del conocimiento no dual (Ad...

  M usic is not just sound, in fact, sound is not really the foundation of music . Can a ballerina dance without sound? Of course, and it's still a musical experience. According to Leibniz , music is a n experience of the soul in relation to the order of time, performed by counting, albeit an unconscious counting process . Can we count unconsciously? Leibniz seems to suggest that arithmetic, or more precisely, the action of counting natural numbers, i s a fundamental mental process that occur s out of the focus of our attention. Therefore, unconscious counting , or better, our experience of the unfolding of order and harmony in the course of time, would be a full liminal action. It is an action in the limit, sub-limen action, and sublime action. It happens in the threshold of conscious formation, and therefore with a transforming potential for individual identity as no other art form has. There is a basic intuition of the experience of time that music and mat...

  The form of the ordinary mind, the parrot mind, or Manas mind, the monkey mind that jumps from one tree to another and operates with the literal meanings of existence as given to it by the senses, is a very powerful veil that leaves us trapped in scenarios of automatic and repetitive vitality. For this mental form, the separation between subject and object is unquestionable: objects are materially real. The Manas mind expresses a dualistic metaphysics that believes in matter. The materialist believes in matter as something final and definitive that requires no further explanation. Such a belief is not experienced as such, as something that comes from a thinking, feeling and desiring subject, but as something independent of the subject: matter, with the form given to it by the human mind, is the final reference of the Real. From this point of view, knowing is knowing matter, and matter is uncritically considered to be what makes our everyday life. To have your feet on...

  La forma de la mente ordinaria, la mente cotorra, o mente M anas , la mente del mono que salta de un árbol a otro y opera con los significados literales de la existencia tal y como le vienen dados por los sentidos, es un velo muy poderoso que nos deja atrapados en escenarios de vitalidad automática y repetitiva. Para esta forma mental, la separación entre sujeto y objeto es incuestionable: los objetos son materialmente reales. La mente M anas expresa una metafísica dualista que cree en la materia. El materialista cree en la materia como algo final y definitivo que no requiere más explicación. Tal creencia no es experimentada como creencia, como algo que parte de un sujeto pensante, sintiente y deseante, sino como algo independiente del sujeto: la materia, con la forma que le da la mente humana es la referencia final de lo Real. Desde este punto de vista, conocer es conocer la materia, y de manera acrítica se considera que la materia es lo que hace la vida cotidiana....

  In "Path of Beauty" you will read the expression "implicate order". The roots of this concept go down to the very origin of the myths of Universal Law, from which the main religions that persist today and philosophy would emerge. The experiment of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen served for a later formulation of the concept by David Bohm, who traced its lineage from the thought forms of the great spiritual traditions. Here I attach some videos that can serve as an entry portal to the "implicate order", and thus be able to better understand the use I make of this concept in "Path of Beauty".    

  Where does our idea of Infinity come from? Certainly not from experience, which is all limitation, narrowness and bond. Is it then the result of a mere denial of the finite? A denial of the finite is still something finite. Only a continued and endless denial of the finite would qualify as a denial of Infinity, that is, the denial would have to become infinite. Therefore, Infinity is not the opposite of Finitude, since contrary things are understood one from the other, and Infinity is understood – when rarely it is understood - from its own nature. If it is neither an experience nor the result of a mere logical denial of the finite, Infinity must be a pure intuition. Kant spoke of space and time as pure intuitions, as conditions of possibility for any of our experiences. But if Infinity is not an experience, it cannot be associated with either space or time, since neither space nor time are conditions of something that is not in experience. Neither space nor time ar...

  ¿De dónde procede nuestra idea de Infinitud? Ciertamente no de la experiencia, que es todo limitación, angostura y lazo. ¿Es entonces el resultado de una mera negación de lo finito? Una negación de lo finito sigue siendo algo finito. Solo una negación continuada y sin término de lo finito calificaría como negación de la Infinitud, es decir, la negación tendría que hacerse infinita. Por lo tanto, la Infinitud no es lo contrario de la Finitud, pues las cosas contrarias se comprenden una a partir de la otra, y la Infinitud se comprende -cuando raramente se comprende- desde su propia naturaleza. S i no es una experiencia ni el resultado de una mera negación lógica de lo finito, la Infinitud tiene que ser una intuición pura. Kant hablaba del espacio y el tiempo como intuiciones puras, como condiciones de posibilidad para cualquiera de nuestras experiencias. Pero si la Infinitud no es una experiencia, no puede estar asociada ni al espacio ni al tiempo, pues ni espacio ni ...

  Liminality. Liminal : Adjective for social and individual actions or processes with fuzzy principles of identity. Something is liminal when is neither this nor that. If a social action is liminal it is dangerous and unstable. It is stabilised in the process of its repetition, in its incorporation into rituals and social dramas, becoming liminoid by this repetition. A liminoid action, has traits of the liminal action but it has been deprived of the dangerous and unstable components. The purpose or final cause of a Community is to maintain its homeostasis, its equilibrium in self-development, and it does it through those social actions (economic or narrative) that transform liminal social actions into liminoid actions. Those actions incorporate the unfamiliar into the familiar, the danger of existence into the safety of social values. It is done by religion, by science, by art, but also by the safe repetition of the scenarios of everyday life. Liminal Times: ...

  The ego is the force of psychic centroversion, that which establishes points or frames of reference. Without the coordinate point (0,0) we cannot orient ourselves or act. The ego is the force that builds an unlimited number of references, of centers around which different formations of the Soul will appear. In Sanskrit it is called Ahankara. Aham means “I”, kara is “the process of doing or carrying out”. As a compound word, Ahankara means “the process of making or uttering the ‘I’ ( aham ).” The ego is an action, a force that establishes or says the “I”, that lays a fundamental reference stone with respect to another action. For example, the human organism spontaneously performs the physiological action of seeing, the organ of sight is set in motion automatically, and automatically a force also appears that assigns another action to the function of vision: the action that says “I ”. The synthesis is “I see.” It also happens in animals, for the action ...

  El ego es la fuerza de centroversión anímica, aquello que establece puntos o marcos de referencia. Sin el punto de coordenadas (0,0) no podemos orientarnos, ni actuar. El ego es la fuerza que construye un número ilimitado de referentes, de centros entorno a los cuales apareceran diferentes formaciones del Alma. En sánscrito se llama Ahankara. Aham quiere decir “Yo”, kara es “el proceso de hacer o llevar a cabo”. Como palabra compuesta que es Ahankara, significa “el proceso de hacer o proferir el ‘Yo’ ( aham )”. El ego es una acción, una fuerza que establece o dice el “Yo”, que pone una piedra referente fundamental con repecto a otra acción. Así por ejemplo, el organismo humano espontáneamente realiza la acción fisiológica de ver, el órgano de la vista se pone en marcha automáticamente, y automáticamente también aparece una fuerza que a la función de la visión le adjudica otra acción: la acción que dice “Yo”. La síntesis es “Yo veo”. Ocurre también en los animale...

 

  There is a spontaneous way for understanding the flow of our life experience, a pathless path that comes natural and need no effort. The Taoist call it Wu Wei, doing without doing, or a non-forcing action in relation to our interactive experience with the Universe. Wu Wei starts from an ontological stand but it turns quickly into practical action. (…) The sage manages affairs without action And spreads doctrines without words ( The Natural Way of Lao Tzu. #2. ) Wu Wei is not easily grasped. In fact, it is a source of continuous confusion and misinterpretation. Its difficulty resides in its simplicity. We usually think that something is difficult to grasp due to the intricacy of its conceptual frame, but we believe that applying effort and time we will eventually understand it. However, it is much more difficult to grasp simple processes or basic simple concepts, and extraordinary difficult to grasp something that would never be understood applying t...