The Unity of Everything E-Book

Nish Dubashia

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 40

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

What happens when a Buddhist mystic meets one of the world's greatest living scientists to discuss the structure of reality and its relation to the process of spiritual enlightenment? In January 1991, Nish Dubashia, a young student of Buddhist meditation and mysticism, was invited by Professor David Bohm, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century and the man whom Einstein believed was his intellectual successor, to Birkbeck College in London to discuss Dubashia's thesis that a rather simple process of emergence and dissolution underlies reality, and that what physics is now also discovering in this regard is the same essential truth that underlies many of the surface differences between the great religious and mystical traditions of the world. For the first time, Nish Dubashia is making available to the public the fascinating discussion that ensued. What lies at the ground of all being? How does the unity of the universe appear to us as a multiplicity of things and events? Why is there so much conflict in the world? This dialogue, and the models of reality which were discussed, at least made a promising start to answering these ultimate questions.

Leseprobe

Nish Dubashia

The Unity ofEverything

A Convers ation with David Bohm

Copyright © 2018 Nish Dubashia

Publisher: tredition, Hamburg, Germany

ISBN

Paperback:

978-3-7439-9299-3

Hardcover:

978-3-7439-9300-6

eBook:

978-3-7439-9301-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

I dedicate this book to

David King

for his tireless work over decades

as we together explored

and tried to make sense

of the human mystical experience

Adi Da

for showing me

that all historical traditions

are just branches

of the One Great Tradition

and to Shilpa

for travelling with me

and always supporting me

on this strange journey

that we call our life

CONTENTS

Prologue

Introduction

1. The Part and the Fragment

2. The Observer and the Observed

3. The Ground of all Being

4. Creation and Evolution

5. Mind and Matter

6. Krishnamurti

7. Evolution and Transformation

8. The Transformed Being

Epilogue

Appendix

• The Model applied to Hinduism

• The Model applied to Buddhism (Mahayana)

• The Model applied to Taoism

• The Model applied to Judaism (Kabbalah)

• The Model applied to Christianity

• The Model applied to Neoplatonism

• The Model applied to the philosophy of Krishnamurti

• The Model applied to the philosophy of Ken Wilber

• The Model applied to the philosophy of Aurobindo

• The Model applied to the work of Adi Da

Bibliography

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.

-  David Bohm

PROLOGUE

In 1984, while a Mathematics student at Warwick University, I began to seriously practice Buddhist meditation under the guidance of various Buddhist monks who would periodically visit the university, a practice that would continue unabated for the next thirty-four years.

At this time, I also discovered the writings of the Indian mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings bore a strong resemblance to what I was learning and experiencing as a Buddhist. Krishnamurti’s descriptions of what he referred to as “choiceless awareness” mirrored almost exactly the techniques of Buddhist meditation (vipassana and zazen) that I was practicing.

“Observe, and in that observation there is neither the “observer” nor the “observed” – there is only observation taking place.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti ("Fear and Pleasure", The Collected Works, Vol. X)

As a student of Applied Mathematics, I had a basic familiarity with the concepts of quantum mechanics, and I began to notice certain similarities between some of the findings of quantum physics and some of the insights and teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, the school of Buddhism to which I was the most attracted.

For example:

“"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."”

– Max Planck (Originator of Quantum Theory)

Soon after this, I discovered the writings of David Bohm, one of the greatest living physicists and quantum theorists, who was developing a theory of reality in which, like Krishnamurti had already asserted, the observer and the observed were deeply interconnected, and like in Mahayana Buddhism, the whole of the manifest universe emerges or arises out of a deeper order of reality or wholeness in which both consciousness and matter find their common ground.

“In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders” – David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. p. xv.

David Bohm has been described as one of most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Bohm worked for many years as a professor at Princeton University, where he worked closely with Albert Einstein. In addition to physics, Bohm became deeply interested in the nature of consciousness and the role of thought in creating human conflict. His work in this area was developed even further as a result of his friendship and subsequent interactions with the Indian mystic Krishnamurti, in whose teachings Bohm saw insights quite compatible with those he was developing in quantum physics.