Paradigm shift

The metaphysical revolution of the paradigm shift has began. The foundations of the society in which we live is shaking and cannot sustain itself at the current pace and the results we are seeing today are disturbing.

Famine is the greatest killer in a world right now despite the fact that we have the technology of feeding over 7 billions of people, but we don't just because they don't have money. Also AIDS which is a curable disease makes millions of deaths in Africa because they are poor and they don't afford treatments like people in developed countries. Ghandi said "The deadliest form of violence is poverty".

1% of the population owns more than 40% of the planet wealth, 20% of the worlds population consumes 80% of its resources, more than 50% of the population is working under 2$ per day and more statistics can be depicted in the beautiful referential movie Home (which I invite to see if you didn't until now). So this gap between the rich and the poor is becoming increasingly larger with what it seems to be an exponential change.

One alternative to our society is expressed in the philosophy of the Jacque Fresco's Venus project, which for some is merely an utopia.

One argued on a blog:

I agree whole-heartily with it, but one question I've always had about the Venus Project is how it proposes to handle fair distribution of goods and services. One can't expect everyone to be all 'selfless' all of a sudden and if everything is free, there would be those who took unfair advantage. Controls would need to be put in place and then the whole cycle of crime starts again.
I feel that the problems we face now are not with political, economic and social systems, but with us, individually. We need a radical revolution (or evolution) of mind and spirit on a massive scale from which truly just systems will arise. I've also heard it said that once 10%-20% of humans wake up it would be enough of a shift to initiate real change, primarily by allowing awakened leaders (corporate and political) to emerge.

The change should also be along with one in consciousness in which one should not desire more than what it needs. This "waking up" that everyone is talking about, this paradigm shift is starting to emerge from within all fields, biology, neuroscience, astro-physics, philosophy... and will converge to what we are talking right now, to the revolution of the mind. This is going to be our revolution. And what we expect now? A leader, because no one has the guts to do it on his own. Some of us did it, but the change was small (like Christopher McCandless or Ghandi). In order this to work it must be at a global scale.

The Internet will play a big role and the best example is the recently Egyptian revolution (25 January). The upper elite knows that the power is at the people but they try to keep us as separated as possible. The roman method of "divide and conquer" is working even now. But we must remember that we are the pyramid and the upper elite will fall if the pyramid will crumble.

The revolution of consciousness is referring to the elimination of the ego (or the self) that has been fed with false concepts about the reality, about what our needs are and that is decaying in a general anxiety. This metaphysical revolution will basically create the ground of acceptance of the new radical ideas expressed in the Venus Project. Until then, these ideas will be regarded as a return of Marxism or Communism and they will be criticized and blamed of repeating the history.

Thomas Kuhn said that there are some phases that lead to a change of paradigm.

1. The existing paradigm encounters an anomaly
2. Initially the anomaly is ignored or rejected
3. People try to explain the anomaly with the existing paradigms
4. A new paradigm is proposed in which the anomaly is resolved
5. The solution is rejected often ridiculed (the creator and followers are seen as heretics)
6. The solution finally gains acceptance.

The social anomalies of this society paradigm are wars, famine, destroying mother nature, wasting resources, money... People lived in ignorance or they were eliminated because of their radical ideas (like Ghandi). We are in the phase 4-5 of the revolution or change of the current paradigm of consciousness. There is no one better than Peter Russel to explain this in his great talk, "The Primacy of Consciousness".



We have the power to change but the change must be with their own weapons first. The radical solution would be to try to be independent of money. But first of all, think at what you buy and how you can change the world. This may be the first non-violent step to take as expressed in the movie Home.

Quotes

"Your reverence", asked Huai-jang, "what is the objective of sitting meditation?"
"The objective," answered Ma-tsu, "is to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang picked up a floor-tile and began to polish it on a rock.
"What are you doing, master?" asked Ma-tsu.
"I'm polishing it for a mirror", said Huai-jang.
"How could polishing a tile make a mirror?"
"How could sitting in meditation make a Buddha?"

"The perfect Way [Tao] is without difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and choosing.
Only when you stop liking and disliking
Will all be clearly understood.
A split hair's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart!
It you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind." Seng-ts'an

"When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful,
there is already ugliness;
When everyone recognizes goodness as good,
there is already evil.
"To be" and "not to be" arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited;
Before and after are mutually sequence."

The illusion of significant improvement arises in moments of contrast, as when one turns from the left to right on a hard bed. The position is better so long as the contrast remains, but before long the second position begins to feel like the first. The vacuum arises because the sensation of comfort can be maintained only in relation to the relation of discomfort, just as an image is visible to the eye only by reason of a contrasting the background. The good and evil, the pleasant and the painful are so inseparable, so identical in their difference-like the two sides of a coin. [...]
Zen has no goal. A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only "getting somewhere" as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance. One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible, the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to. For points of arrival are too abstract, too Euclidean to be enjoyed, and it is as very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between. [...]
In swordsmanship one must not first decide upon a certain thrust and then attempt to make it since by that time it will be too late. Decision and action must be simultaneous. [...]
In archery, the releasing of the bowstring had to be done "unintentionally", then the arrow would shoot itself." Alan Watts in "The way of zen"

Max Planck said: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

"How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up ?
By throwing it into the sea." Samsara (2001)

Change is driven by Gravity

A lot of change happened recently that stopped me of having enough time to blog something about anything. You must remember, that one of the fundamental point of Buddhism is the idea that the world is in a permanent flux of change. The sense of frustration arises from a person failure to accept this basic characteristic of life: the lack of permanent self and perpetual change of everything.

Everything in our universe is in constant change since the beginning, the Big Bang. From galaxies to simple sub-atomic particles, all things are in a constant flux. Also it's difficult to pin down anything because of this change. In quantum physics the uncertainty principle states that one cannot assign exact simultaneous values to the position and momentum of a physical system. These quantities can be measured only with uncertainty.

Moreover, for each particle physicists have assigned a wave making them inseparable. The duality of particle-wave is the result of the basic rule that governs our universe. But how something so palpable and solid as matter particles can easily be associated with a wiggly wave of energy, an ethereal moving substance ?

I believe the force of gravity is the driver of this constant change. From the beginning the gravity formed everything by organizing chaos. This is how atoms were formed, then planets and life itself. I cannot imagine this universe without gravity. The Secret shows that the Gravity works not only at the physical level. Gravity is the only force in the Universe that hadn't been united completely in the Theory of Everything due to it's strange nature despite the other four forces (electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces).

Only exotic theories like the string theory or E8 theory tried to unite these forces. Both of them are difficult to prove because they require the existence of higher dimensions in this universe and even parallel universes from which gravity can leak in our universe.

A rather new simple Theory of Everything states that atoms are mini black holes where protons are attracted to each other by gravitation rather than a mysterious strong force.



Also, there is the resistance to change. If there is no resistance to it, everything will go from beginning to the end in an instant. So there must be always some resistance to change for the wonderful manifestation of form to exist. This may be a good definition of time, as being this resistance to change.

The degree you are going with the stream, you are not resisting change, time will not affect you as much as it does to others. If you learn how to completely let go, you will experience nirvana but you must realize this without purpose, without intention.

Thermodynamics

The laws of Thermodynamics are the physical laws that governs the entire universe, from smallest known subatomic particle to galaxy clusters. They describe the transport of heat and work during thermodynamic processes.

The fundamental law of thermodynamics states that:
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

This impossibility of creating or destroying of the energy is the basic reason of our existence in this infinite cycle of life and death which we call life. Life is changing energy. So if we had the capability of tapping the energy of the entire universe and use it, what could we do with it ? We can only use it to transform it into another form... nothing more.

This laws refers only to closed systems. In nature there are no "closed systems". Until recent years, it was thought that only the universe can be an enclosed system and the laws of thermodynamics can be applied to it as a whole. But with recent discoveries this also cannot be true taking into account "Multiverse" theories as explained by Dr. Michio Kaku in this video.



The question remains how many times this recursion of parallel universes, one on top of the other may exist ?

We live within a fractal universe, where the smallest part resembles to the whole. The atomic level can be associated at some level with the planetary system, the Mother Earth (sphere) with Father Light (as depicted in christian philosophy) can be associated with the male spermatozoon and the female egg. At every level we find the same principles. Now scientists discover that animals have feelings and can think and can even communicate with humans in some way.



Interesting cooperation and fairness within animal world... not so frequently adopted by humans.

The second law of thermodynamics states that:
The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

Entropy can be thought as a measure of disorder within an isolated system.

If we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world we'll increase our state of disorder, and as a fractal enter in the realm of chaos. Thus, we have to find ways of lowering our entropy and we can do so only when we are in full contact with nature, where we dissolve the boundaries and be one with the entire universe.

This can be achieved only when the mind is in the higher planes of consciousness and realizes that it has to let go... and merge with the rest which is a part of itself.

A more fun way of connecting to nature than meditation is through practicing sports that require outside work, for example: jogging, swimming, mounting, riding bikes, etc.


In conclusion we see that all systems tend to achieve equilibrium, which is the state of energy balance, the middle way of the Tao.

True mind is no mind

If one's mind can comprehend the notion of Infinite, for example in Mathematics, then it's mind has to have this property also. Fractals are a way of mapping something infinite in something that looks finite.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.
Alfred North Whitehead

On the other hand, in eastern philosophy the concept of the mind is different.

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.
Taoist sage

Alan Watts depicted this eastern principle of "Buddha mind" that the "true mind is no mind" (wu-hsin) and he is basically sustaining the principle of Tao that does not "know" how it produces the Universe just as we do not "know" how we construct our brains. We do not think to breathe we just do it. The Tao's principle is Spontaneity also known as wu-wei (non-doing, non-striving).

Chuang-tzu noticed the true state of consciousness in the Tao is in somehow similar to one's being drunk.

A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's; but he meets the accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from whine, how much more is to be got from Spontaneity ?

Though the main process of the mind is thinking it must have a counter process also which is driven from unconscious processes. Alan Watts said: "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think except thoughts. So he looses his touch of reality and lives in a world of illusion"...