From India, to England, to The Hague
I have been traveling a lot recently — to the subcontinent of India, where it was warm and nice, then to the cold rain of late winter London, then in March to the sunny but crispy cold weather at The Hague in the Netherlands.
In each of the places, I had a unique experience of consciousness, each of which reflects the ongoing journey taking place in the consciousness of many of us.
In India, I was the guest of Bhakti Vendanta Institute for their conference in Trichi in Southern India on the first anniversary of the passing away of Dr. TD Sing, a great scientist/spiritual teacher. TD Sing spent many years trying to integrate science and spirituality, and I became acquainted with him in that capacity.
What was interesting for me at the conference was talking to the students who attended my talk. Now, mind you, these are serious students of engineering of the famous Indian Institute of Technology. As such they are supposed to be gung-ho materialists, believing not only in the supremacy of matter, but also in the capacity of material technology to change the way humans should live all over the world.
But the students surprised me. They actually enjoyed the idea that science and spirituality can be integrated. They did not mind that this means giving up the idea of primacy of matter; in fact they welcomed it. I was especially surprised by the keen interest the students had in what I call Quantum Activism — how one can use the quantum ideas of creativity, non-local consciousness and tangled hierarchy to change their selves and the cultures they live in.
In Devon, England I was at Schumacher College giving a 5-day long extensive workshop with the title “God is not Dead”, and I presented all the reformation of science, physics, psychology and medicine that we have now completed based on the primacy of consciousness. Here, the audience was more sophisticated. They have already had much exposure to alternative scientific thinking; many of them are ecologists or transpersonal psychologists. Here, my overall impression was of the many people among us ready to tackle the more subtle details of the new paradigm. And I had enormous fun thinking through, once again, these subtler details of our research.
In particular I will share with you a conversation that I had with Satish Kumar, one of the directors of Schumacher College. Satish was explaining the etymological origin of ecology and economics.
“Eco” comes from the Greek word “Ikos” meaning “place”; “logi” comes from the Greek word “logis”, meaning “knowledge”. So “ecology” means “knowledge of place”. This I already knew.
But then said Satish “The ‘nomi’ part of ‘economics’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘management’”. So, he said, “economics” is about “management of the place we live in”. We had a marvelous discussion about Satish’s theory of economics as a discipline which should really value the place, the locality where the economic activity is taking place.
The same afternoon, I had a wonderful revelation. What Satish said is certainly correct, but can be further generalized.
Because in Truth, we don’t just live in the physical place. We live mainly in our mind which means not only our mental body, but also our vital energy body and even the intuitive archetypes that define the supramental body. So I could immediately see that the spiritual economics about which I have been thinking recently has a fundamental validity even in our etymology. Economics should be dealing with the management of the physical place we live in, but also the vital, mental and supramental well being.
In The Hague, the organizers did not arrange a conventional conference, but a dialogue between 60 or more people on the subject of multiculturalism. Obviously there were people from different cultures there, and for 2 days we discussed how multiculturalism can help us be creative and to communicate in a better way. In the first phase of the conference I was asked to give the keynote talk; at the end I passionately invited everyone to become quantum activists.
We split up in small groups for the dialogues that ensued. I will share with you the contrast between the two groups with whom I dialogued.
With one group, which consisted mostly of men, we got into the intellectual clarification of various aspects of quantum activism. In the second group, however, which was primarily women, the interest was more about how to be quantum activists. The discussion very quickly became quite personal, and unfolded in spontaneous sharing from the participants at the table. I didn’t do anything but say a word or two setting the context once in awhile.
One evening at The Hague, I had a public dialogue with Swami Veda who is a spiritual teacher of some repute in Rishikesh, India. We covered a wide range of things, and the convergence of science and spirituality seemed to be amazingly seamless.
I’m studying for a masters in the philosophy of the body – eastern and western perspectives, at the university of Wales Lampeter. This includes a module on the Subtle Body(ies)which I am, studying at the moment. (Completed modules include Ayurveda and Holistic approaches to public health.)I happened to come across a brief reference to Dr Goswami’s, whom I had never heard of previously. Searching online, I found that he had written numerous books, and I ordered 3 of them. Dr Goswami makes everything relating to subtle energy, the vital body etc make sense. Although I qualified as a homeopath nearly 25 years ago, I had never properly understood homeopathy, until I read Dr Goswami’s books. All of a sudden, I saw what Dr Samuel Hahnemann meant by “spirit-like medicine”, and how his concept of the 3 miasms is similar to the 3 gunas – not things that are wrong which must be eradicated, but descriptions of a person’s karmic propensities, which are to be healed/integrated. I also came across a little book by Sri Ramana (whom Dr Goswami quotes a lot). In this book, he recommends inquiry as to “Who am I?” to dispel ignorance and to seek enlightenment. This, too, seems to resonate with homeopathy. It is by asking questions about a person’s desires, aversions, propensities, emotions, etc, that a homeopath finds “what is to be cured” in the person. Sometimes, it happens that the person has never pondered these things prior to the homeopath’s questioning. Sometimes, a patient would say to me, “Well, now I come to think of it…” in response to a question about his reaction to something. In this sense, the homeopath (or any other healer) acts a bit like a mirror…
Well, anyway, after reading these marvellous books, I found out about this film, The Quantum Activist, and Dr Goswami’s forthcoming workshop in London on the last day of this month. I was planning a visit to London for an appointment in central London and an Ayurvedic treatment in North London, but I was uncertain as to exactly when I should go. Well, now I have decided I shall go on May 31st.
I think these are instances of the Quantum Self and synchronicity.