Baby Mind
The Recursive Loop of Free Will
Ask most people if they have free will (defined here as “the ability to think and act outside of the laws of cause and effect”) and they will tell you that they do. Ask them to describe in detail how they create a thought and they cannot. After reflection, some will accept that thoughts appear […]
The Great Illusion Of Self
New Scientist is getting on the bandwagon with their series “The Great Illusion Of Self“. This intuitive sense of self is an effortless and fundamental human experience. But it is nothing more than an elaborate illusion. Under scrutiny, many common-sense beliefs about selfhood begin to unravel. Some thinkers even go as far as claiming that […]
Time To Wake Up
I got a very rare email from Sailor Bob himself this morning… I think this is first email he’s sent me in ten years! Anyway, he sent me this video which I think will blow your mind. I chatted with Bob on the phone last week about the scientific versus the mystical approach to non-duality […]
Defining Awareness
If you’ve ever spent five minutes around Advaita (translation ‘non-duality’, from Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy dating from the 5th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism), you’ll have heard people say that your true nature is awareness or consciousness. What do Advaitans really mean when they talk about “awareness” and “consciousness”? Those words typically refer to something that happens inside the […]
The Story Of The Little Wave
Once upon a time, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a long, long way from the shore, on a very still day, while the sun was shining with all its might, there appeared a wave. Why did the wave appear right then and there? Well I don’t know, to be honest. I’m not an […]
Freud On Ego.
I am grateful to Árni Sigurðsson for introducing me to the conversations between Romain Rolland and Sigmund Freud. Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. He was also strongly influenced by the Vedanta philosophy of India, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda, and he […]
Happeness
I was wondering today about the connection between the words “happy” and “happen”. It turns out that both derive from the old Norse word “happ” which means “good luck, chance”. A few hundred years ago, the word “happy” was used mostly as an adjective meaning lucky, as in “a happy coincidence”. If someone was “hapless”, […]
What Happened Before The Big Bang?
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” – John Lennon, I Am The Walrus. When discussing the nature of what each and everyone of us is – i.e. the undivided, eternal, infinite universe – people sometimes ask me “but what happened before the Big Bang?” It’s […]