Dharmavidya

Men & Women

In the modern world we like to think that the difference between the sexes is incidental and minimal. This is probably largely a function of the need of our economy for men and women to do similar work, which was not the case in the past. The obvious difference between men and women is in their different roles in reproduction which give the reproductive functions a different value to the different sexes. In nature, a woman is concerned to see her off-spring reach adulthood alive. In nature, a man's priority is to have as many off-spring as possible. Also, when fighting was hand to hand, there was a big premium on being a strong man. Hence the most common system in traditional societies is that in which men band together under a dominant male leader who generally has several wives and thus many children. This means that women leave their own family to go to the man's tribe. Consequently women have evolved within an alien environment in which their safety and prosperity depended upon their relationship with the man and other women were often a threat, whereas men have evolved in groups in which their safety and prosperity depended upon their relationship with other men who were their protectors or henchmen. Modern psychological research on risk taking and co-operation shows that, despite popular ideas to the contrary, men are more likely to co-operate with men and that women are also more likely to co-operate with men. This tendency alone is enough to ensure that men dominate in areas like politics. Notwithstanding the fact that in most modern countries women outnumber men, democratic elections almost invariably produce an over-whelming male majority of people elected. This is because men vote for men and women tend to vote for men too. The basic evolutionary factors also mean that for a woman the sexual relationship is more important than it is for a man. In nature the woman needed the man in order that her off-spring survive whereas the man's strategy was to simply have many off-spring so that some of them survive. This has obvious consequences in terms of behaviour which we still see. For men the act of sex is important whereas for women it is the relationship that is important. Men tend to wander so women have to scheme to keep them or get them back. Freud famously said that to be happy we need work and love. It tends to be the case that for men work is primary and love is a support whereas for the woman it is the other way around. All of this means that actually men and women are pretty different and it is a wonder that we manage to get along at all.

 

So how does this work out in spirituality? I take it as axiomatic that the divine encompasses each and all simply as are. Whether one is male or female does not affect the essence of the matter, but it may make a lot of difference to the opportunities that one has. In the time of the Buddha there were many women who became spiritually enlightened, but they were mostly people who had "escaped" from the social position expected of most women. They were widows, prostitutes, runaways, or women whose male protector had become a monk. There is even one story of a wife who wanted to hear the teachings who was not allowed to go to see the Buddha so she sent her servant to go and hear the teachings and bring back reports. Even today I have heard women in India sing a song the lyrics of which go something like "My husband will beat me but…I'm going to see the Buddha; my mother will lock me in the cupboard but…; my brothers will detain me but…; my sisters will scold me but… I'm going to see the Buddha." However, there are also stories of young men going on hunger strike when their parents would not let them go and follow the Buddha. Spirituality has always offered freedom, but often at a big social cost. Society is shaped by our evolutionary characteristics. Spirituality seeks to transcend this situation, not in the manner of modernism by imposing an artificial "equality" that still leaves us with a highly hierarchical structure, but by helping us to liberate our hearts and minds.

The secret of happiness

Commentary on recent conversations with friends in Spain. Life is mysterious and paradoxical because it is whole and we can only ever concentrate on one part at a time. Things present before us and we can love them or hate them, but beyond them there is a shadow, an irony, a context, a possibility, many possibilities. We can be positive, but we grow through negation. We struggle with our nature, and with nature, and must rise above nature, yet only because it is our nature to do so; we defeat nature, but nature must always triumph in the end. If we just left all to nature we would have no civilization, no spirit, no consciousness, and we would be kept in check by nature's methods which are famine, predation and disease. We try to triumph over these. We try to make every life sacred where nature's way is to over-reproduce and then cull, but although we succeed sometimes, we can only do so by drawing on our natural energy. Our hate drives our creativity. Our greed empowers our love. Our delusions lead us to triumphs of spirit. Growth comes out of inchoate depths. The lotus grows in the mud. The mud is not glorious but it is essential. We are not glorious, but we can become the instruments of glory. There is more going on than any one of us can comprehend and it is the bigger process that matters. Travel light, lend a hand where you can, ask the difficult questions, be willing to fail, leave no trace and trust what gods there be to guide your steps. 

Breakfast conversation: Hegel, Nature, Spirit & the EU

This morning at breakfast conversation roamed over Hegel's theory of the conversion of nature into spirit, the individual and collective dimensions thereof, the ever present risk of reversion to nature in the form of madness in the case of the individual and social breakdown in the case of the collective, the relevance of all this to the stage of development of the European Union considered as perhaps the most ambitious peace project of modern times. Humans build towers toward heaven and in doing so are expressing a creative potential in nature that ever tends toward spirit, but this tendency is a moving outward and as the line of extension grows the risk of collapse also grows - the under-current gains power. A successful project in civilisation must at once overcome nature and at the same time draw its strength from nature. Ideally this is a kind of gardening in which there is co-operation between the various forces. Such cultivation needs continual attention, however.

Civilisation is a project in going beyond ego but what does operate beyond ego? Spirit on one side and madness on the other. For Hegel that spirit is a property of nature, but also an evolution beyond nature and also a collective venture. The fear of madness is what tends to keep ego in place and inhibit the movement toward spirit, yet that movement cannot happen without energy drawn from nature. The ego itself tries to hold on to a fragile stability by stoicism and cynicism. So the drive toward spirit is beset by the ego's attempt to bring about an end of change in defiance of reality, a defiance that may end in another breaking out toward spirit or a backward fall toward insanity and disruption. In the case of the EU, a period of stagnation was disrupted by expansion into East Europe which added new energy - an influx of nature - which gives a new possibility of advance or chaos. All currently hangs in the balance.

Hegel is difficult, everyone agrees, but the difficulty is essentially that of presenting a middle path that does not simply reject the extremes but rather sees their place in the scheme of things. This makes for a complexity that encompasses the individual and the collective in a common but by no means certain project. Nature is wasteful. In the attempt to go beyond herself she does not seem to mind how many civilisations are attempted and then cast aside - but we do. In that sense we are trying to defeat nature, yet nature is our nature too and hence we are caught in an unavoidable dialectic that gives dynamism to our lives or, just as easily, can cast us into despair. Indeed, the at least occasional intrusion of despair is, Hegel would say, a necessary part of the whole process, there being no possibility of creativity without it. 

Because he is difficult, many seek to refute him seeking the comfort of simplicity but many of these supposed refutations are probably actually tilting at windmills, refuting positions attributed to him that he did not actually hold. He is not simply historicist for there is nothing certain in this world, but nor is he rejecting of the notion that history can show progress. Whether we here in this continent can show continuing progresss and not fall into our old ways of xenophobia that make for war remains to be seen.

The life and death struggle of the spirit - Hegel & Buddha

Buddhism is about staying alive spiritually. To clarify this we need to see what dying spiritually means. To die spiritually is to fall under the power of Mara. What does that look like? There are many people today who go to work to do a job that does not mean much to them except that it yields the money with which to keep up the lifestyle that one needs in order to qualify to do such a job. This is a kind of spiritual death. Such a life means little. There are many people who have worked out a way of thinking about life that is largely concocted from popular liturature, the media, fashionable opinions, and mere habit. There is nothing in it that the person would die for, and yet such a person probably would go and die for something that they did not understand if somebody in authority ordered them to go and do it because they have no strength of principle sufficient to get them to say no. Such a mentality is a kind of spiritual death. There are many people whose major motivations in life are a mix of insecurity and indulgence. That is another kind of spiritual death. Again I often encounter people who envy me my life but would never undertake such a life themselves, yet nor have they found any other existence equally satisfying. That is spiritual death. The spiritually dead mentality is, in Buddhism, called vijnana.

The philosopher Hegel describes schematically how humans at the most primitive level struggle and are either allied or opposed and such opposition is a "life and death struggle". Later, the life and death struggle transmutes into a master-slave society. Rather than destroy one's opponant, it makes more sense to reduce him to a commodity who can work for one. Rather than be killed it makes more sense to submit and survive. En passant, I read that slaves in the American south used to call the process of acquiring the outlook of a slave "learning sense". Later still, as those with slave mentality become more and more, ways of semi-liberation are sought within the parameters of the slave situation. Religions come along that offer the prospect of personal salvation without social change. One can emancipate one's soul while still living a humiliated existence. This, however, gives rise to what Hegel calls an "unhappy consciousness". Buddha advocates rejecting the living of a humiliated existence, even if escape therefrom costs one everything, one's possessions, one's status, life itself. Hegel's idea is similar. Spiritual life is not just inward, as many seem to assume, it is about taking action to change one's manner of life in such a way that one no longer lives a humiliated existence. 

Modern society is one in which "masters", in Hegel's sense, have virtually disappeared. All are slaves. One of the most refined outward institutionalisations of this is the ubiquity of debt. A person can have something that seems to be their own house by going into debt. They can have an education and the prescribed status that follows by going into debt. This position of indebtedness is the social marker that indicates the unreality of the supposed freedoms that slaves have won for themselves. Debt works much better as a means of social control than chains and barbed wire because the slaves co-operate.
Here we come to the great paradox. The modern ego is the slave mentality that believes it is free because it chooses. This is the essence of self-delusion. He or she chooses  slavery and even chooses the type and style of his chains, the decor of her prison. This is self-administered opium and it is fed by all manner of means of social propaganda.

Buddhism, we all know, is about getting beyond the ego. Ego, in Sanskrit, is svabala, which transliterates as self-power or own-power. Svabala leads to svabhava, self-becoming, which is the self-deluded existance of the slave. The self-delusion consists in the fact that the slave tells himself that since he has chosen to be a slave that means that he is really free because he is doing what he chose; what is freedom, after all, other than choice? The point is that the choice is not authentic because it is not made in full honesty nor with fullness of heart. 

However, when we are honest, we have to face the fact that we are not omnipotent and this is not an easy admission. We shall get sick, grow old and die. Projects that we set our heart upon will fail, friends may betray us and enemies may prosper. We are dependent, vulnerable, limited, often mistaken, and very small. It is easy to see why one might settle for being a slave. It is also easy to see why one deceives oneself about the nature of the situation. Buddha advocates that first we need to be honest about the dukkha. Some have, however, turned even this into another opium doctrine.

The alternative to svabala is parabala. This is commonly rendered "other power", tariki in Japanese, in order to emphasise the contrast with ego, though the "para-" more correctly means "beyond". There are a number of other important Buddhist terms that contain this element. Thus paramita, para-(m)-ita, means "other shore" (ita = shore), or, simply, the Beyond. Paravritti means a turning around or, colloquially, a change of heart, a going beyond one's former limited mentality. Paravritti enables an authentic action, free of slave thinking. Paratantra is the "thread" of other power that runs through our life whether we recognise it or not. Vasubhandu says that lives are a plait of svabhava, paratantra and parinishpana, the last being that aspect of existence that is completely free of dross. 

The common translation of para- as "other" emphasises the negation that is implied, the negation of the ego of servitude. However, the Sanskrit terms all also allude to a positive assertion of connection with the Beyond, which we can stress in English by giving "Beyond" an initial capital. Buddhism is not just deconstruction, it is rather a contacting of a vision (dhi) of liberation and the living out of that vision, especially the latter.  

Paramita is the domain in which we are not slaves. It is the realm in which we do not have to be ashamed of ourselves. The parabala is the voice of freedom that emanates from that land. That is what is meant by the voice of Buddha. To hear that voice is awakening. A Buddha is not a Buddha if, upon hearing that call, beings are not awakened. When that call of freedom becomes a power - an influx into our life - we are roused to a mighty struggle. 

There are many powers or influences at work in our world and by no means all are wholesome. Nationalism, advertising and fashion are all influences and we are all exposed to them. So Buddhism is not about weaking the ego in such a way as to leave oneself exposed and defenseless in the face of any influence that happens to come along. However, nor does Buddhism think that the ego is a sufficient or even trustworthy defense in this respect because the ego is a voracious consummer of such seductions. The only real defense is recognition of the voice of liberation. Taking refuge not just a higher form of slavery because the Buddha makes no demands, he simply shows this world and the other. After that it is up to us. This is a crucially important thing to understand. Many people who consider themselves to be Buddhist, who believe that they have taken refuge, have actually not emancipated themselves thereby, because they have taken the Buddha to be just another demanding master. They now feel that they have got a lord who demands that they meditate regularly, keep various ethical precepts, stay within particular cultural norms and so on. They have become spiritual slaves and do not recognise the true Buddha.

Buddha smiles when I am authentic and I am authentic when I listen to the voice of liberation; when I know who and what I am; when I am not deceiving myself. Then my life is poetry. Then I am living at a pitch such that I will die for what I know to be right. This is because the voice is not the voice of demand, it is the voice of freedom. I love what I encounter as lovable. I rejoice in what is beautiful. I am true to what I encounter as genuine. I cannot pretend any of these things. My view may and does shift with increasing depth of encounter with the facts of existence, but I canot pretend and I am not a slave.

Those who let their life be led by this voice and this knowledge are, in Hegel's sense,  masters, but they have no need to destroy others nor to reduce them to slavery. In fact they rejoice in seeing others throw off their chains. This does not mean seeing others become clones - it means seeing them become genuinely free and seeing this freedom not just in their achievement of a clever way of thinking about their enslaved existence, but in the authenticity of their actions. It is reality that is the true teacher and Buddhas merely point it out. Such are not masters in the primitive sense - they are spiritual masters. Nor do they need recognition - they know. Nonetheless, their path is a life and death struggle because their authenticity is on the line every day. 






 

Spirituality for real people

I was recently asked by my friends in Hawaii what my current main interest or project is. They asked this because I am going there soon and they want to plan a series of meetings, workshops and tals. However, the question left me thinking. It is always a useful and interesting question. What is your edge? What is the point or issue or concern that is hottest for you at the moment?

A lot of my recent writing has been about the nature of love. The philosophy of love seems to me a fruitful way to approach the fundamentals of life. However, as I think about it I can see that there is a particular angle on this subject that interests me especially. This is the question of how to develop a philosophy and a spirituality for real people.

I am repeatedly struck by how so many popular writing - and I have done it myself - follow a formula that first identifies something wrong with the world as it is or people as they are commonly experienced, then goes on to set up an ideal in opposition to this lamentable common state of affairs, then sets out a path or means by which to get from where we are now to that blissful summit of spiritual achievement, and when you look closely at this proferred path - set out in all good faith and with fine intention - one finds that it consists essentially of he overcoming and elimination of some ineradicable part of basic human nature. It is, in a word, unreal.

I want us to get back to reality, which includes the reality of actual human beings. When we talk of love, for instance, it will not be the case that we are ever going to love everybody, nor are we going to love anybody completely unconditionally, nor are we going to understand one another totally - indeed, the mystery of the other is, I argue, in Love and Its Disappointment, an essential ingredient of love. Nor even are we ever going to be completely transparent, or even totally honest - we do not understand ourselves well enough to do so. Nor are we going to become totally conscious nor practice 24/7 awareness, nor eliminate suffering from our lives.
For many people it seems that to be spiritual means to spend one's life attempting to do the impossible and, unfortunately, all too often, expecting others to do so even more than one has achieved oneself. This is a sham.

One of the problems of modern spirituality is that what used in the past to be attributed to the gods has been appropriated by humans. This is a distortion of humanism. Humans are not gods. The whole point of gods is that they are not us. The worship of gods enabled humans to worship idealised qualities from afar. They need to stay afar for us to maintain some healthy balance in our lives. They should be relegated to the heavens. That is the right place.
Humans are different. We are partial in both senses of the word. We are not whole and we have preferencies. To live a spiritual life to me means to live in such a realm of partiality in a good spirit. Doing so I can enjoy the things that I like and I can experience the chagrin of encounter with the things I d not like, but the latter will not appear to me as an affront to my very being or to the foundations of my philosophy. Life just does have ups and downs. 

The downs can then be as much spring-boards as the ups. The sages emphasise patience and equanimity. Patience and equanimity do not mean indifference and they will certainly never be perfected, but they flow naturally from an appreciation of the real nature of our situation. When I see that the next person is as prone to make mistakes as I am, has some reserves of shame and smugness, as I do, enjoys successes and hates failures, like I do, and has his preferencies, just as I do, then I am likely to turn out more patient and equably than when I am struggling to realise an unattainable ideal, suffering in the process, and wondering, possibly resentfully, why others seem to be making less effort than I am.

So, yes, I am deeply concerned about the nature of love, its tribulations, conflicts, triumphs and disasters, but love for real people, of real people, by real people, not just the attainment of unattainable ideals.  

The Conditions and Limits to Intimacy

I have been reading "El Camino del Encuentro" by Jorge Bucay. Learning Spanish is opening up for me a new universe of thought and literature which is absolutely wonderful. I am only a third of the way through this book, so I could still change my opinion before the end. Reading in a language not one's own slows one down a bit. Nonetheless, so far, I am finding his approach refreshing and stimulating. You know that feeling that you get when you read a book that says clearly things that one has felt intuitvely for a long time?

Here I'd like to share just one bit of his philosophy. He is looking at the question of intimacy. What does it take to have an intimate relationship? He is not just talking about couples. Intimacy can occur between friends, between family members, even sometimes in work situations, though in the latter case it is going beyond the requirements of the job. Intimacy is that type of relationship in which one can drop one's defenses and be willing to take the risk of being more completely available to the other person and inviting them to reciprocate.

Bucay asserts that there are three necessary conditions for intimacy: love, attraction and trust. He then goes on to point out that none of these are within the range of one's will. I can choose to respect you, but I cannot choose to love you. I cannot choose to find you attractive. I cannot choose to trust you. Either I do find you trustworthy or I don't. Either I do find you attractive or I don't. Either I find you loveable or I don't. There is not much I can do about it from my side.

Of course, from your side, you can choose to act in ways that may lead me to find you more loveable, attractive and trustworthy or in ways that will undermine these for me. Similarly, the other way round. I can act in ways that will make it more likely that you will love me, trust me and find me attractive. 
Bucay claims that all three are necessary. It is as a three legged table. It cannot sand without all three legs. This all seems to me liberatingly realistic. Injunctions to love everybody, find everybody attractive and trust everyone are not grounded in the real world. Injunctions to live in such a way that more people will love one, trust one and find one attractive, however, do have some grounding in reality.
This implies, of course, that one does not have a right to be loved, that one will not, in fact, be loved by everybody, that one does not actually love every other person, nor trust them, nor find them attractive. This is the real world. Spiritual awakening is not a matter of pretending that some unreal ideal is the case, but of waking up to how things actually are.

In this real world there is every reason to act well. It will, in general, lead to more intimacy and thus to more peak experience. Many people, however, exist in life situations where they think that they should have intimacy with this or that person and that such and such person owes them intimacy, but if the three factors of love, trust and attraction are simply not all there, it will not happen and no amount of pretending will make it so.

In my book Love and Its Disappointment I take it that love is a fundamental part of human existence, but not that one loves everything. In the approach that I used in that book, Bucay's "love2 and his "attracion" are conflated. I have to agree with him, however, that trust is also a very important variable. One can love a person and find them intensely attractive, but if experience tells you that they are not to be trusted, enduring intimacy is impossible and short term intimacy generally leads to pain and grief. On the other hand, one may have a comrade who is totally trustworthy and one may even share secrets with such a person, but there has to be something more, something in the realm of personal attraction or positive chemistry before one will, in practice, open one's heart to them fully.
Sometimes we proceed as though we think that all human problems can be solved to the point where we shall enjoy intimacy with everybody. This is unreal. It is not true that if we just communicate enough we shall reach such a point. With those whom we find loveable, attractive and trustworthy, yes; with others, no. Furthermore, the "others" are likely to be many. Yet, is this really a problem? Not really. A person needs some intimacy; they do not need intimacy with everybody.

Discussing the Art of Loving and reflecting on my changed perspective

We recently had a seminar at The Buddhist House on the ideas of Erich Fromm, especially his thesis on The Art of Loving. It was apparent to me that his approach to the subject in the now classic book was very different to that which I took in Love and Its Disappointment. In Fromm's approach love is something rare whereas in mine it is extrmely common. In Fromm it is a high art attained to only by a few whereas in LAID it is the essence of life and the basic source of motivation for everybody. Fromm does, however, emphasise the importance of loving rather than being loved. Much literature in popular psychology emphasises the need that each person has to be loved. Fromm and I agree in emphasising the need that individuals have to love over the need to be loved.
Fromm sees love as rooted in the experience of separateness and asserts that (a) much that is commonly called love is actually a pseudo-love based on the need to reduce the displeasure of feeling separate and (b) true love can only be practised by those who have overcome this particular sense of lack: "the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love". My approach is rather different. I do not see love as rooted in or arising from some other need. I see love as fundamental - as itself the root motive. I see the problems of love arising from the conflict of loves rather than from failure to master the art.
However, both Fromm and I see narcissistic preoccupation as one of the primary pathologies of love. Since Fromm's time, narcissistic preoccupation has become a lot more socially acceptable than it was in his time. The goal of many followers of contemporary pop psychology is to learn how to love themselves. For Fromm real love is an urge to give and "For the productive character, giving... is the highest expression of potency." He thinks that the "productive character" needs to develop a strong sense of self. I feel that there is some contradiction here between the renunciation of narcissism on the one hand and the necessity of self-development on the other. In my view, "productive character" flows from practice in the act of loving rather than being a prerequisite for it and such character does not depend upon a developed subjective sense of self at all, but upon a positive engagement with the life-world.
Fromm's emphasis upon the non-possessive nature of true love narrows his subject. This makes his work akin to many contemporary theses in which an ideal that is beyond what is found on earth is posited and then the means to its attainment set out, such means being the eradication of something that is ineradicable in human nature. I once found this approach inspiring but nowadays find it less than satisfactory. I am very taken with the need to speak to andfor real human beings who are not going to give up all possessiveness, not going to attain to a completely unconditional or universal love. Real people love specific others - things, people and metaphyisical objects and ideals. They love them passionately and this passion involves them in conflict with others and with themselves. This is the struggle of life.
I do value the ideal, but as something to worship from afar rather than something to consider to be within one's grasp. A greater humility is called for. This does not require a strong sense of self, but rather a willingness to see one's own faults and limitations and, through them, to find fellow feeling with one's comrades in this life.
When I was young I was greatly inspired by Fromm's ideas and the shift of emphasis from needing to be loved to needing to love was and still is a liberating idea. On this central plank of his argument I can still join him even though I have moved a long way since those days in how I now contextualise the philosophical task.

7th May: Pre-conference gets immediately to grips with key issues

The Amida Pre-conference got off to a good start in the afternoon. Susthama gave some words of introduction and we then plunged into a gathering that lasted three times as long as originally envisaged. We became engrossed in questions of structure, content, format and style, looking at issues of hierarchy, role, organisation, and planning, both as they relate to this forth-coming conference and also more broadly. What do you do if you are the kind of person who hates hierarchy on principle but actually finds it difficult to function without a clear instruction? What is the role of authority in Buddhist training? Is the leadership role isolating? These and other related questions are old chesnuts but they were clearly relevent since there had been a pre-Pre-conference struggle over then within the group that prepared the ground for the current meeting and it was appropriate that that struggle be now shared with the group that is beginning to assemble. Also, it does seem that there are related issues in the sangha as a whole in that what a sangha is about substantially is the transmission of the Dharma from generation to generation and the process of transmission includes the gradual accession of new individuals and groups to positions of responsibility. In Amida, for instance, we have recently seen in the last couple of years the appoiontment of acharyas, an expansion of the teaching team, the appointment of a third officer of the trust, and the delegation of many day to day functions; we have also seen the founders become relatively less accessible at any one location as they travel more as the sangha expands internationally. This means that the task of "carrying the Dharma" becomes more widely spread, yet, within that process, some people will take on the task with more alacrity than others, some will show themselves to be more in the spirit of it than others. The process of succession is not something that happens all at once when the founder retires or dies: from one perspective, it is the central purpose for which the sangha exists - to transmit the lived life of the Dharma into the future.  

12th April: ideas about mysticism, time, non-post-modernism, set theory, and grace

On the plane journey to Japan I had read a well argued article about the Person Centred Approach (PCA) as a non-post-modern theory and some Juan de la Cruz. Both had yielded significant insights and I was full of ideas. I notice that there is a correspondence between the stages of medieval mysticism (purgation, contemplation, union) as in Juan de la Cruz and the Buddhist threefold training (sila, samadhi, prajna). The Christian stages are about relation to a personified theos whereas the Buddhist ones are, in "self-power" Buddhism, abstract; but this makes one wonder whether they should not be reframed in other power Buddhism in a manner somewhat closer to the Western model - something to think on. This also chimed somewhat with the review of Rogerian ideas. Ellingham argues that Rogers' theory is not part of the "post-modern porridge" because it has a coherent metatheory that claims universality whereas post-modernism is the denial of validity to all such meta-theories - though, as he points out, such a denial is itself such a meta-theoretical claim. Rogers' actualising tendency in the individual is part of a Formative Tendency in the universe. Rogers thus has two levels of explanation of human growth. In the ordinary case a person is striving towards the goal "to be that self that one truly is", a phrase from Kierkegaard that Rogers liked. On the other hand, Rogers does also occasionally talk about people transcending what they are. Ellingham does not say this in so many words but one has to assume that such transcendence is a result of the Formative Tendency overwhelming, as it were, the actualising tendency of the individual. This structure of ideas provides a meta-theory in much the same was as, say, evolution does. However, what then occurs to me is the question whether the Formative Tendency is distinguishable from an abstract account of God. Looked at in that way, bridges appear between Rogers and the Christian mystical tradition, at least, and, perhaps, also the Buddhist one, or, perhaps even more with the Buddhist one precisely because the Buddhist one often does speak of the theos in abstract rather than personalised terms.

These speculations then cross fertilised with the thoughts I had been having about the flow of time based on the comment I had held on to from the QUG conference. These thoughts had been enriched by chance reading in the airport bookshop on the subject of sets in mathematics. Set theory became a powerful tool in mathematics until Bertrand Russell pointed out a difficult paradox at the heart of it. This paradox is worth mentioning in its own right. It is as follows: first we note that some sets are members of themselves (thus, for instance, the set of "all methematical concepts" is itself a mathematical concept and so is a member of itself, whereas the set of all odd numbers is not itself an odd number and so is not a member of itself). Now consider the set of "all sets that are not members of themselves". Is that set a member of itself. Think about it carefully and you will see that if it is then it isn't, yet if it isn't, then it is. This paradox has caused mathematicisns many sleepless nights.
Leaving that paradox aside, if we say that the present comes out of the past and we take that to be an exclusive statement then we could say that the present is a sub-set of the past. Similarly, we would go on to say that the future is a sub-set of the present. However, this suggests that history is running down, generating less and less possibilities. I would want to assert the opposite, the the past is a sub-set of the present and that the present is a sub-set of the future. This is the idea of an expanding universe of possibilities. Restating it, this says that everything that has been in the past is in some sense present in the present but that does not exhaust what the present is. Similarly everything that is present in the present will be in some way part of the future, but that does not exhaust what the future can be. Although this may sound technical, it embodies a difference (and, arguably, a fallacy) that under-pins the thinking of many ordinary people.

If you agree with this second formulation, there then arises the question "What else is there in the present other than the past?" and "What else will be in the future other than the present?" Common sense says that these are unknowns, but what is the nature of that unknown? We could say that what the present has that is not simply the past moving forward is "spirit" or "other power". If we take this "extra" out of the equation we have only a running-down universe. The running down universe is the already-dead world of karma, the realm of Mara. The extra is life-grace-love which is the mysterious other power.

The poem of Juan de la Cruz describes how the soul goes forth to meet this other power when "mi casa" es "sosegada" - when its house is silently asleep. In other words, it is when the ego is asleep that the soul can slip out to commune with her beloved. The ego, here, is, substantially, the aggregate of all of the "rescue remedies" (see entry on Quaker Universalist Conference two days ago). When these are left aside, as Buddha advises in the second Noble truth, the house becomes silent, which is nirodha, and the soul can then go on its path, which Buddha then elaborates in eight terms of wholeheartedness. This interfaith integration has a satisfying feel.

Incidentally, the "dark night of the soul" in Juan de la Cruz is also generally misunderstood. It is not necessarily a time of spiritual anguish - though anguish may contribute to it - but a time when the ego ceases to function (is asleep as in the dead of night) thus enabling the soul to, as it were, slip out to an asignation with her Beloved.