From: psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell)
Subject: More... (long, read at own risk)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:51:35 EST

10-Jan-93 22:50	quixote@cix.compulink.co.uk (Aurelio Barranco)	Re: more guts

>Why do you need to excercise the body in order to effect the mind or
>soul. If the soul is indeed independant of the body as I understand
>you are suggesting then yoga may indeed be very much a waste of time.

There are a couple of notions in Yogism/Buddhism.  One idea is that the soul
is perfect, and only the body needs to be "brought into harmony."  This is
essentially what I am talking about.  

>I don't say this in a flippant manner, but your dismissal of the
>purely intellectual pursuit of 'enlightenment' seems based upon
>*practice*. Did not Nietsche practice, even if it was in a sedentary
>manner.

*Thinking* alone, is unrelated to spiritual progress in most eastern systems
that I know of.  Combined thinking with breathing exercises is an eastern
idea, with the notion that by directing one's thoughts, one tunes in with the
perfect soul.  The importance of one's thoughts being pertinent only in their
capacity to direct you to the omnicience of the spirit generally.

>Why doesn't electricity need a light bulb?  It just don't hunny. (my quote)

Sorry. I am a chronic smartass sometimes.  In the system that I practice
(called Kriya yoga), the body/mind are like outcroppings of the essential
spirit.  The spirit created the body and the mind, and they serve only as
manifestations/appendages to the oversoul (please don't cite Nietzsche to me
here).   This is our belief--we never proselytize.

> but then I don't believe my soul is electric in nature.

Okay so we differ.  I do believe that electricity provides an excellent
analogy to spirit.  How does one determine this in a meaningful way?  One must
either be satisfied with one's own experience or with external (scientific
verification).  I don't care about sci. ver. because my experience in
meditation is as visceral as getting drunk, or having sex...  I don't need a
scientist to tell me I'm drunk or to give me a recitation on the nature of the
experience.

> Physiological changes ...... if it's physiological changes
>you want take up body building, marathon running or beer drinking
>.... all of these produce well documented physiological changes.

Exactly, but to what end?

>and of course unless you are capable or brilliant enough to realise
>all implications and all possibilities yourself, reading the works of
>other thinkers may very well bring to light alternatives that may
>have escaped you. Be they eatern or western in origin.

This is only true in the world of the intellect.  One feature of eastern
philosophy (and even in Christianity) is that knowledge is a property that
exists in the universe.  In Christianity, God is the dispenser of all that is
to be known.  A big difference between Christianity and eastern religions, in
my view, is that *largely* Christianity asks you to take this on faith.
Eastern religions have a practice by which you personally attempt to attune
yourself to that source.  Not to say this constitutes "proof" in the
mathematical sense.

>Of course what we are taliking about here is purely philosophical
>debate. Something that is not covered by mathematics or any science.
>It is all opinion and subjective insight. No one can produce a set of
>credentials to validate their beliefs. This therefore makes statments
>like 'who are you and how do you know ?' pretty pointless. All a
>person can do to validate any statement is show that they have indeed
>given the matter considered thought, not just a quick opinion over a
>pint of newcastle brown.

My point precisely.  The product of any intellect (where it is exclusively
intellectual/dialectical discussion) is worth no more than the credential of
the person sitting before you.  Yes, they may possess genius, yes they may
have a photographic memory of all preceding philosophers and the capacity to
synthesize vast bodies of thought, but what of that is meaningful in terms of
truly understanding the nature of existence on this planet, life, death,
baldness, lack of good sex...

I believe that most eastern philosophy is based on the premise that there is
law in nature, that there is extant consciousness in the universe itself, and
the point in deep meditation (and study) is to attune with that.  In the west,
we have separated all of this.  We have Christianity, which (in general)
stands for the subjugation of nature, not attunement.  And in fact
Christianity is pretty darn straightforward--believe and you're in.  Clearly,
in Christianity, there is only miniscule emphasis on meditative practice.  And
what there is of the practice is limited largely to cloisters.  I just don't
think the emphasis in Christian thought or practice is the same at all as
compared with say, Taoism.

Further, virtually every reference to my posts has pointed to Nietzsche, Kant,
Spinoza, blah blah blah... never acknowledging that in regards to any of
these, there is absolutely no such thing as a practice related to their
thoughts.  This was my original point.  I don't really want to attack
Christianity as much as to point out that western _thought_ and western
_religion_ are much more separated than in the east.  And it seems to me that
there is a fundamental presumption in the east that thought without practice
is empty.

My God, I just remembered a useful quote from a Big Name(tm).  Perhaps the
best western expression of what I've tried to say came from Einstein:

    "Religion without science is blind.  Science without religion is lame."

Of course a lot of people will argue "who cares if there isn't a God to begin
with."  But that isn't my issue.  My view is that the west has long ago parsed
out the need to search for truth from the need to search for fact.  Philosophy
in the west is quite separate from religion, and even science.  An easterner
would more likely be looking for the connections between them all, and be
unsatisfied until these connections were found.

>Included in amongst the people that can't tell you what is or what is
>not is ... yourself. We can only discover for ourselves what may be,
>or what we believe may be. It's called belief, the basis of all
>religion be it on a bed of nails or in a church.

Well, I agree partially.  But if (for example) I have the perception that I am
exiting my body through my mouth and expanding into the stars, fusing in white
light with limitless consciousness...  that's enough for me.  I need no more,
and while it may be called "belief" or a big hallucination, that doesn't
matter to me at all.  I need more of such hallucinations.  

>Your apparent dismissal of western philosophy is to your detriment.
>Who are you .... and how do you know anyway ?

Indeed, I am no one.  And who cares?  I think we have to find out for
ourselves, and I think reading Nietzsche is a fascinating and useless
exercise.  On the other hand, reading Nietzsche constantly while breathing
deeply, fasting and chanting for hours... who knows?  But there certainly is
no defined Nietzsche-ist practice.

Mary Malmros gets to the point by challenging my hairsplitting and asking me
to define eastern and western as terms.  She is correct.  All we have done
here is talk.  I must say that through this discussion, I am definitely going
to make a hobby of Nietzche (I have all his basic writings), and will pursue
Kant, Spinoza and company.   But without a practice, I will only be boning up
on thoughts.  There will be no enlightment--perhaps an epiphany now and again,
but no enlightenment.  

In partial answer (in partial completion of this degree?) to Mary's challenge,
I would say that I am defining eastern thinking/philosophy/religion, as that
practice which attempts to provide the seeker of knowledge with a unified set
of practices and thinking towards attunement with the natural/spiritual
universe.  And that the eastern... is unwilling to separate concerns of
religion and thought,

			WHEREAS

...the knowledge gathering of the west long ago separated church from
philosophy and from science.  Western churchly practice is based entirely on
believing alone, with minimal emphasis on making one's experience become a
laboratory for experimentation with one's beliefs about life and the universe.

In other words, there appears to be no general (in western church, science or
philosophy--note: distinct entities) of how energy in the body and energy in
the universe may be related, how to get in touch with it, how to understand
it... and so on.  

			WHEREAS

...eastern religion/philosophy is filled to the brim with methods and systems
claiming to provide these connections, and satisfying a good many of us that
they do.  

In this vein, I am talking about individuals testing their hypotheses about
existence within themselves, where _meaning_ is derived by and for themselves,
not based on a scientist's experience or discussion, not based on a religious
person's experience or discussion, not based on any particular philosopher's e
or d. In fact I would further assert that in eastern
thought/religion/practice, there is convergence at a certain point, where the
practice and thought of say, Sufism and Yogism are really just different
methods towards the exact same enlightenment.  Quite opposed to the western
view, which seems to feel that enlightment (via philosophy, separate from
religion) is derived by logical supposition, dialectics, and in general the
act of hypothesizing and refuting--notions, none of which is ever really
"tested" per se.  Science is a kind of controlling factor for the suppositions
of the philosophers, but only in a very general way.  They really are separate
disciplines.  

			WHEREAS

In my definition of "east", enlightenment and revelation are matters of
personal significance and only minimally dependant upon one's own thinking.
My _thinking_ has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of the sun
and earth (for example), but my experience tells me they have substance.
Meditation broadens the parameters of one's experience.  

I argue that in general, the west, (okay geographically if we must) including
(perhaps exclusively) western europe and America, has severed ties with the
desire to find _connection_, and has opted for a path of separation of
thought, feeling, science, art, philosphy and religion.  It has long ago
thrown away notions of making primal contact with the essential universe in
favor of separating out its religion, that places humanity is a position above
all else, and science, which explores a lot of fact, irrespective of _meaning_
to any given human.

But of course these are only my simple-minded observations of the western
influence.  Other writers are correct in noting that "the great western way"
now holds pre-eminence in the world.  No, it's not all bad (even to me).
Perhaps the Chinese will eventually come up with better implementations of a
democratic society that we have, based on the writings of people like Locke,
Hume, Jefferson...

Funny though, if democracy ever is implemented, I think we will evolve towards
some permutation of society modeled on a civilization that is truely
western--that of the Native Americans.

Yeah, east is where your mind is (IMHO).

Abyssinia,

	Peter



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