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The Noetic RevolutionToward an Integral Science of Matter, Mind and Spirit

David Paul Boaz(Dechen Wangdu)

Draft, 2011

©2011 by David Paul Boaz, Copper Mountain Institute. All rights reserved. www.coppermount.org www.davidpaulboaz.org (505) 898-9592

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CONTENTS

Introduction: The Emerging Noetic Revolution...................................................................... 3The Unified Quantum Vacuum and the Buddhist View of the Great Perfection..............6 Modernity and its Discontents............................................................................................6 Scientific Knowledge and Ontological Relativity: Kuhn, Bohr, Quine and Alan Wallace.....................................................................9 Quine’s Revolution: Epistemological Holism in Science and Philosophy.................12 Bridge Building: Toward a New Paradigm for Science and Spirituality....................15 The Unified Quantum Vacuum: The Union of Science and Spirit?.............................17 Ontological Interdependence: The Problem of Knowledge Revisited........................20

Principia Dharmata: The Buddhist View of the Nature of Mind..................................22 A Glimpse of the Great Perfection...................................................................................27 The End of the Great Search..............................................................................................31

Space and Time From Pythagoras to Einstein..........................................................................34 Light Before Einstein..........................................................................................................34 Special Relativity: Light Energy is the Wisdom of Emptiness.....................................36The Quantum Revolution............................................................................................................41 The Ultraviolet Catastrophe..............................................................................................41 Being and Time...................................................................................................................43 Post-Quantum Logic: West Meets East..........................................................................45 The Great Quantum Debate: Einstein, Bohr, and a New Ontology...........................47Toward A Post-Quantum Noetic Ontology..............................................................................53 Being Here: The Perennial Mind-Body Problem and the Middle Way.....................53 Cartesian Meditations: The “Hard Problem of Consciousness” and the Nature of Mind....................................................................................................56 One Truth: The Prior Unity of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Metaphysics.........59 The Secret of Human Happiness?....................................................................................64Postscript: Notes on Quantum Emptiness, Ontological Interdependence, and Free Will.....65 Causality..............................................................................................................................65 Ontological Interdependence............................................................................................66 A Rose is a Rose: The Paradox of Perception................................................................67 Choosing Reality: Quantum Emptiness and Free Will................................................68 Human Happiness and Free Will.....................................................................................71 Strange Interlude: Reduction, Paradox and Realization...............................................72 Toward a Secular Ethic of Compassion...........................................................................73

Appendix A: Dzogchen, the Great Perfection.............................................................................75Appendix B: The Idols of the Tribe: The Metaphysics of Science..........................................76Appendix C: The Structures of Consciousness.........................................................................77Appendix D: The Non-Meditation That is Happiness Itself...................................................79Appendix E: Toward an Integral Ecology of Mind..................................................................80Appendix F: Being Here: Reflections on the Nature of mInd.................................................81

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 82

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IntroductionThe Emerging Noetic Revolution

For no light matter is at stake. The question concerns the very waythat human life is to be lived. - Plato (The Republic, Book I)

In the second century CE two great scholar-masters, Nagarjuna in the East and Plotinusin the West, began the nondual knowledge revolution in our great Primordial WisdomTradition that is just now emerging as the Noetic Revolution of the Twenty-first Century.(Nondual here means no essential subject-object, matter-spirit separation). As thedevelopmental dialectic of our species’ emotional, spiritual and ethical evolution proceeds,and the ontological estrangement of the present modern/postmodern worldview of scientificmaterialism/functionalism recedes, this incipient global noetic (mind/spirit) reformation inreligion, science and culture has gently reintroduced to humankind an interior, integral andtranspersonal knowledge paradigm, discoverable through the contemplative injunctions of thespiritual paths of our Great Wisdom Tradition. This Wisdom Tradition teaches of the profounddialectic of the Two Fundamental Truths—our two ways of being here—the Relative Truth(samvriti satya) of conventional spacetime reality, and the ultimate truth (paramartha satya), theinfinite perfectly subjective nondual ultimate reality that transcends, yet embraces it. I will argue herein that this rigorous cognitive coupling of our objective understandingwith the deep subjective realization of this momentous principle of the indivisible unity anddimensional interdependence of these two seemingly incommensurable paradigms—theconceptual Two Truths as the trans-conceptual one truth—is the inherent treasure of mind,our heart’s desire, and both origin and aim of all our seeking. A robust, integral science ofmatter, mind and spirit must utilize this phenomenological “doublet” of both third personobjective (science) and first person subjective (spirit) methodologies if it is to guide ourconscious evolution—individually and therefore collectively—through the ascending lifestages of human psychospiritual development. These primordial wisdom teachings have, at last, been introduced into Westerncognitive science, neuroscience, consciousness studies and philosophy of mind to help resolvethe “Problem of Consciousness,” the “hard problem” of the “explanatory gap” between thedata of exterior objective physical brain states (second and third person data) and the arisingof private interior subjective awareness states (introspective first person reports). Doneurobiological brain processes cause subjective awareness states? If so, how? This conundrumis fundamental to understanding the perennial “mind-body problem.” What is the actualrelationship of our physical body to our mind? Of matter to spirit? Of science to spirituality?Of science to religion? Are these two paradigms—these two ways of being here—as utterlyincommensurable as they seem? Consciousness (first person reports) supervenes or depends upon brain processes, buthow? Clearly, the “irreducibility of consciousness” precludes a naive reduction ofconsciousness to purely physical (third person) brain states or epiphenomena of such states.First person introspective reports of subjective experience cannot be eliminated or reduced tothird person objective data or phenomena, for to do so precludes the very possibility of

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subjective direct first person conscious experience at all. Consciousness then, is necessarilyfirst personal subjective. Merely materialist/functionalist approaches cannot account forsubjective experience. Consciousness gets left outside. With what shall we fill this explanatory gap between our outer objective and innersubjective experience? Objective matter? Subjective spirit? Causal neurochemical correlates?The mind of God? We shall see that this explanatory gap that is the paradox of mind is bridgedby the full Bodhi of samadhi/moksha that is liberation/enlightenment. Let us remember that theconscious formulation of the “hard problem of consciousness” necessarily requires the veryconsciousness that is in question. Perhaps then, there is no problem of consciousness at all. The emerging “new science of consciousness” that unifies and includes Westernneuroscience and Eastern contemplative science (adhyatmavidya) is an urgent juncture in thisperennial “Problem of Knowledge.” Such an incipient unified science is a precursor to a trulyintegral noetic science of matter, mind, and spirit, and an augury to any fruitful and providentintegration of the two paradigms that are science and spirit/spirituality toward a higher,subtler, post-materialist and post-metaphysical unifying synthesis that furthers humanhappiness and well-being. But more importantly, the “hard problem of consciousness” points to that prior, reallyhard mind-body problem, namely the primordial dualism, that split between being and non-being, form and emptiness, the objective finite existence of our bodymind, and our ultimatelysubjective infinite sourceground in which, or in whom everything arises. We shall see that it isthis primary, separative dualism, this amnesis or forgetting of our actual, ultimate “supremesource”—Tao, our Christ/Buddha Nature—that is the root cause of human evil, the egocentric,then ethnocentric and gendercentric ignorance that is fear, anger and aggression—and theirhorrible result—despotism, war, genocide and despair. And it is the recognition, thenrealization of the prior unity of this primal separation of matter and spirit that is our liberationand ultimate happiness. So it is told in the continuity of nondual wisdom traditions that is theprimordial Great Wisdom Tradition of our kind. The emerging epistemic and ontic Noetic Revolution in religion, science and culture isnothing less than a global consciousness shift toward the light. This unfolding developmentalor evolutionary phase transition is the direct result of the decision, during the past century, byrecent and living masters of the primary Eastern wisdom traditions—Buddhism,Veda/Vedanta, Taoism, Sufism—to transmit their hitherto secret nondual view and profoundcontemplative yogic technologies (first person plus third person data) to prepared teachers andstudents in both the West and the East. The resulting view and robust, holistic, yet radically pluralistic methodology of thisnascent Noetic Revolution now begins the integration of the paradigmatic “Two Truths”—relative/finite and ultimate/infinite—that arise historically as the mythic pre-modern, theobjective modern and the subjective postmodern wisdom of our Great Wisdom Tradition. Thusit is told by the masters of this tradition: realization of the perfectly subjective ultimate natureof reality, the very Nature of Mind abides in our relationship to the infinite, that essentialontological interdependence of our painful finite existence, and this always present, awarenuminous matrix of all being. This realization is being Tao, “The Bright” Kham Brahm of theold Vedas, Christos/logos, our indwelling Christ nature, and the “innermost secret” presence

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(vidya/rigpa) of primordial Dzogchen, the Buddhist Madhyamaka Great Perfection that is oursupreme sourceground. As this, our Great Wisdom Tradition arises in the Axial Age (800 to 200 BCE) the greataxial sages—Buddha, Lao Tzu, Pathagoras, Plato—teach that it is this infinite primordialwomb, utterly ineffable nondual Spirit that is Reality Itself that embraces, enfolds and in whomarises all unfolding finite appearing spacetime reality, including we beings who experience andtry to understand it. And wonder of wonders, That (Tat/Sat) is who we actually are—oursupreme identity—undreamt of in the thoughtful slumber of human reason and belief. Yes,this is the nondual “innermost secret” primordial wisdom—by whatever name—that pervadesthe highest or subtlest teaching of the primary traditions that comprise our nondual GreatWisdom Tradition. The urgent task now of our inchoate Noetic Revolution is the integration of thesubjective nondual wisdom and compassion of this primordial tradition with the objective andpragmatic knowledge of the physical, biological and cognitive sciences. Astonishingly, thisprofound epistemic/ontic syntheisis is, in the subtlest nondual view, spontaneously, “alreadyaccomplished,” deep within us, at the spiritual Heart (hridyam) of each human being. Yet, fromthe exoteric relative view we must do something, we must recognize, then realize, then perfectit through compassionate activity in our everyday lifeworld conduct. Why? For the benefit andultimate happiness of all beings, everywhere. The result, according to our great Tradition, is“Happiness Itself” (paramananda, mahasukka), the happiness that cannot be lost. Indeed, a mostamazing paradox. What then, is the contribution of relativistic quantum field theory and quantumcosmology, and the nondual Buddhist view of the Great Perfection to the resolution of this, thefruitful ambiguity that is the ultimate “hard problem” of knowledge and happiness for ourspecies as we participate together in the emerging new integral Noetic Revolution?

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The Unified Quantum Vacuum and the Buddhist View of the Great Perfection

Modernity and Its Discontents

Prelude: seeing is believing. The Western intellectual tradition has largely failed tounderstand that there are realms of knowledge and meaning that lie prior to the natural limitof human reason, the conceptual semantic topology of language with its cultural assumptions,embedded as they are in our concept and belief systems. Can we step outside thisintersubjective cultural “web of belief?” Yes, through “vertical spiritually empirical” (yogic)contemplative technologies, as we shall see. Things appear in the world not so much as they actually are, but as we are at themoment of their arising. Einstein to Heisenberg: “What we see depends on the theories we useto interpret our observations.” Theory (concept and belief) defines and determines what weobserve. Our semiotic conceptual structures do not directly correspond to any external,independent reality. The cognitive sciences, consciousness studies and philosophy of mindagree: “Perception is . . .an instrument of the world as we have structured it by ourexpectancies” (J. Brunier 1986). “. . . The appropriate description for a given input is highlydependent on the way the perceiver chooses to process it. . .” (J.M. Wilding 1982). Ourconscious experience is dictated in large part by our “cognitive unconscious,” that is, our pre-conscious, intersubjective deep cultural background concepts, beliefs and expectations. We think andbelieve what we are culturally conditioned to think and believe. Our knowledge is perspectival.Empirical observation statements are theory-dependent. “All raw data are theory laden”(Quine). Theories are underdetermined by their evidence. Our observation, perception,conception and belief are infected with the unconscious deep subjective cognitive baggage ofthe cultural tradition in which we arise and participate. It has now become very difficult toargue that we can know the world objectively. The perceiving, knowing subject is always partof the equation.

The very notion of unmediated observation now seems highly questionable. Inlight of such discoveries, the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ takes on newmeaning: the very act of observation already entails a belief system that is notbased simply on some hypothetical bare data. All of our observations aretheory laden, and none correspond in any straight-forward way to objectiveobjects existing in their own right independent of our experience. - B. Alan Wallace (1996)

This advent of a new awareness of the inherent subjectivity of our cognitive life is thegood news of the Postmodern reformation. Alas, it’s a mixed bag, as we shall see.

Modernity: the tyranny of objectivity. The Modernist scientific pretension torationality that is the dogma of the contemporary cult of Scientific Materialism arose as the17th Century Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution with Bacon, Descartes and Galileo. Thismonistic objectivist, materialist ideology became the common belief system, the “langue” or“background theory” of the prevailing Western physicalist materialist paradigm(epistemological Realism, scientific imperialism/Scientism). It is descended from the unprovenand unprovable metaphysical assumption of Monistic Physicalism, the ontology that the

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whole of reality is merely and only physical. Why must our ontology of nature be physicalist?It’s merely a belief. This monolithic Western epistemic paradigm—our culture imaginaire—whose roots we find in the dualistic physicalist/ realist ontology of the pre-Socratic atomists,Aristotle, and the Modernist mechanics of Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton,assumes the existence of an objective, separate, independently existing reality (ScientificRealism) of exclusively physical objects (materialism) given to sense perception—WilfridSellers “myth of the given”—through the medium of “sense data” (hyle), distinct and separatefrom the consciousness of perceiving, knowing subjects. This myth presumes that senseexperience may serve as a realist epistemological foundation for objectively certainknowledge. Most philosophers of science, mind and religion have rejected the myth of thegiven, but it is the widely held, usually unconscious belief of the naive realism of mostscientists and the non-philosophical public. Such exclusively representational cognition can bedestructively dualistic for it essentially splits the knowing, perceiving subject from the objectknown thereby undermining realization of the higher truth of the symbiosis, and yes, the priorunity of knowing subject and the object known, of objective matter and subjective mind/spirit.This inherent nondual primordial unity is reduced by Physicalist Materialism (Scientism) tomere separate physical matter (scientific reductionism). “And thus has philosophy beenruined” (Whitehead). As to the religious consciousness, Scientism has reduced the seed oftruth in religion—subjective indwelling spirit/spirituality—with its inherent unity of non-separate, non-transcendent Godhead, to an objective attempt to possess God; to objectify,anthropomorphize and thereby idolize the perfect subjectivity of nondual non-theistic God,the very sourceground (cittadhatu) in which or in whom we and everything else arises. This isone important difference between exoteric theistic religion—whether revealed/transcendental/supernatural, or natural/ rational—and spirituality, non-conceptual direct experiences of ourprimordial source condition, nondual Spirit Itself, beyond belief. The great exceptions to this Modernist materialist metaphysics that became the WesternTradition are Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, the Christian Gnostics Theodus (disciple of Paul)and his great disciple, poet master Valentinus. These masters realized and transmitted ournaked nondual Primordial Awareness Wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe), and rejected Greekmaterial foundationalist Realism while acknowledging a relative conventional ontologicallypluralistic Kosmos or souceground of interdependently arising (bathos/pratitya samutpada), non-reducible dimensional orders: physical/chemical, biological, mental/emotional, and tacitly,sociocultural and historical.

The Postmodern Reformation. The Modernity of the 17th and 18th CenturyEnlightenment was an ideological flight to reason and rationality from the tradition andauthority, and the excesses of the Classical Tradition, and the Christian Age of Faith.Postmodernity was a reaction to this Modernist tyranny of reason and objectivity. In theTwentieth Century the Postmodern Western mind rejected the crude Modernist Materialistontology with its requisite radical objectivist epistemology, replacing it with a reactionarysubjectivist, antinomian, radically perspectivist Nietzschian skepticism; a pathologicallypluralistic, individualistic and relativistic “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Paul Ricoeur’s term)toward holistic metanarratives, toward holarchy, toward Platonic transcendence and unity,hierarchy, exoteric and esoteric religion, and nondual spirituality. The “masters of suspicion”

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were Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, and in theology, Karl Barth. Paul Ricoeur (1978)suggests that such a hermeneutics of suspicion may liberate us (liberation theology) from thelogocentric false idols that are the transcendental absolutes of Western monotheism, therebyopening a way to the divine that abides within each human being, and spontaneouslyexpresses as compassionate conduct in individuals, and through that, institutions. Regardingthis Postmodern project, we must here remember that the dogmatic, programmatic rejection ofall metanarratives is itself a metanarrative that may not survive its own logical deconstruction. For the postmodern mind perceptual and conceptual experience is relativistic andperspectival—merely my relative perspective embodied in the intersubjective socioculturalspacetime of history. Modernist unity and the philosophy of the subject/self is replaced byrelativistic otherness/difference/ differance/ diversity. John Dewey on the Postmodern mind:“The despair of any integrated outlook and attitude is the chief intellectual characteristic of thepresent age.” The Postmodern mind will not transcend its signs, its meta-language to anysubtler or deeper meaning or reality. The nihilistic antirealist ideologues of this post-structural,Postmodern outlook, besides Nietzsche, include the new skeptics, namely theDeconstructionists Derrida and Foucault, the mature pragmatic Wittgenstein, Heidegger, andthe Pragmatists C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and the antirealist NeopragmatistsW.V. Quine, Jergen Habermas and Richard Rorty. These Postmodern philosophers correctlyrejected the 400 year hegemony of the Western “final vocabulary” (Rorty) that is“Foundationalist” Material Realism, demonstrating that science, the very paradigm of reasonand rationality has a theory laden dogmatic, non-rational cultural core that it cannot escape(See Appendix B: The Idols of the Tribe: The Metaphysics of Science). The pragmatists inparticular, offered a practical “radically empirical” (James), naturalistic countervoice tocenturies of invidious metaphysical paradigmatic bickering among the foundationalrealist/idealist and rationalist/empiricist ideologies of the Western Canon. Dewey’s historico-sociological approach in his Reconstruction in Philosophy offers methods useful to the emergingrapprochement between the ostensibly incommensurate paradigms of science and spirituality. Yet, even these Postmodern ideologues, the discontents of the Modernist, materialistrationality of the Enlightenment Project, seem unable to move beyond the limits of habitualreason toward the emerging noetic (mind/spirit) paradigm that synthesizes, then utilizes bothof the defining qualities of human being in form, namely, dualistic reason and nondualspirit—objective rationality and compassionate subjective spirituality. The emerging integral, Noetic Revolution reconstructs the nihilistic pathologicalpluralism of the Postmodern outlook and restores the subjectivity of our Great WisdomTradition. Indeed, the fruition of an integral noetic science of mind (adhyatmavidya) is thereconstruction and transformation of the despair of the relational trauma and conflict inherentin the narcissistic personal and social politics of dualistic “normal neurotic” perception, towardour Great Wisdom Tradition’s compassionate “pure vision” (p.32). Let us now turn to the epistemological and ontological holism that emerged at mid-century, and serves as a bridge from the separative absolutism of the Modernist scientificparadigm and the counter-ethical relativistic nihilism of the Postmodern response, to theemerging pragmatic view that integrates the “Two Truths”—the two paradigms—that aredualistic relative-conventional science, and nondual ultimate spirit.

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Scientific Knowledge and Ontological Relativity: Kuhn, Bohr, Quine and Alan Wallace

When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched toeverything else in the universe. -John Muir

Discourse on Method

Science’s view of science, as exemplified by philosopher of science Karl Popper, is thatscientific method is the apotheosis of rational, logically defensible knowledge. The Westernscientific materialist tradition is seen as the triumphal result of cumulative scientific progress.This tradition outpictures the profound intellectual tension between traditional and historicalhermeneutics.

Against Method: Kuhn’s holistic paradigm paradigm. In 1962, physicist and historianof science Thomas Kuhn shattered this idealized view of objective scientific rationality,knowledge, and progress, along with science’s primary explanatory ideology, LogicalPositivism (with the help of Wittgenstein and Quine), with his immensely influential book TheStructure of Scientific Revolutions. Building upon the work of Alexandre Koyré, Kuhn utilized aclose reading—not of the philosophy of science, and not of the heroic breakthroughs ofscience—but of the natural history of everyday “normal science.” Kuhn’s deflationary, anti-realist sociological account of science demonstrated that scientific knowledge is not rationaland objective, but dogmatic and close-minded as to its fundamental metaphysicalassumptions, and is not cumulative or progressive, other than in an instrumental intra-paradigm sense. “Mature science”—the “hard” physical and biological sciences—are notdivergent but convergent with its own unconscious material realist worldview, opinions andexpectations. Here, scientific research is not, on Kuhn’s accord, so much evidentiary asdogmatic. Such normal science is always governed by a “paradigm,” a temporary generalconsensus among a community of practitioners about current methodology and foundationaland fundamental principles. These paradigms then become ideologically entrenched anddogmatically defended. Eventually “anomalies” arise—problems or “puzzles” that cannot beresolved within the established paradigm. Such unsolved puzzles cause a “breakdown of theparadigm.” This precipitates a “scientific crisis” of confidence and an openness to a competingalternative paradigm. The Standard Model of contemporary physics is a case in point. As thisnew paradigm ascends, the old paradigm recedes and finally a “scientific revolution” occurs.This represents a “paradigm shift” or “gestalt shift.” Competing paradigms are“incommensurable,” that is, they cannot be evaluated by neutral or common methods, makinginter-paradigm comparisons exceedingly difficult. There can be no paradigm-neutralobservation. Unbiased communication across paradigms cannot occur. Withincommensurability follows the untenability of scientific reduction. For example, Newton’sconception of mass is incommensurate with Einstein’s. Here then is the dialectic: a crisis in ascientific paradigm causes a scientific revolution. The dogmatism in the revolutionary newparadigm eventually generates the next crisis and its revolution, and so forth. Cases in point:the transcend and include dialectic of Newtonian mechanics to relativistic mechanics toquantum mechanics.

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Thus, Scientific knowledge occurs within paradigms, but not across paradigms. There isno extra-paradigmatic reality. Moreover, there is no necessary “real world out there” (RWOT)independent of the nomic theoretical contents of the paradigm. Further, scientific observationwithin a paradigm is “theory laden.” What scientists (and the rest of us) observe is a functionof what we believe and expect to see. There is no ideal of objective scientific evidenceindependent of theory. All observation and belief is theory dependent and theory is always“underdetermined by its evidence.” Because of inevitable dogmatic attachment to the currentconstituting theories, ideology and idiom of the paradigm, cognitive “gestalt shifts” acrosscompeting paradigms are akin to a religious conversion. Believers on each side participate in“different worlds.” A scientific paradigm finally succumbs when the old school believers dieoff and a new vanguard achieves academic tenure. Kuhn’s profound deflation and reconstruction of realist, objectivist scientific knowledgecontinues the cynical, antinomian and subjectivist postmodern critique of Modernity’sdogmatic, romantic idealization of scientific objectivity, and truth as correspondence withappearances. Modernity’s rational, realist, materialist project resulted in the unspeakable horror ofthe first half of the Twentieth Century, leaving a Faustian legacy of geopolitical viciousness,insecurity and terror. The Postmodern reformation then, has been a radical anti-realistreassessment of this modernist “Enlightenment Project” with its idealization of Realism,reason and epistemological, political and scientific “progress.” Here both Derrida and Rortyhave sacked the entire modern Enlightenment ideal, arguing instead for a nihilistic andskeptical utopian ideal, free of the invidious rationalist Modernist meaning constructions ofBeauty, Goodness and Truth. Is there a middle Way? (p.53ff) The Western mind is now in recovery from the nihilism of the Postmodernmetaphysical pretension to skepticism, and from the empiricist metaphysics of its Modernistprecursor, the obsessive proto-religion of objectivist functionalist Scientific Materialism(Scientism) with its infernal “taboo of subjectivity.” Indeed, I will argue here that this recoveryis nothing less than a new reformation in religion, science and culture—a pragmatic, anti-foundationalist, anti-realist new Noetic Revolution—with quantum field theory and quantumcosmology, neurobiology, consciousness studies, philosophy of mind and MadhyamakaBuddhist epistemology as vanguards of the way.

Ontological relativity. Niels Bohr, author of the holistic quantum Principle ofComplementarity concluded that the purpose of scientific theory is not the discovery ofintrinsic truths about a representational pre-given pre-existing independent reality “mirror ofnature,” but rather to clarify and explore the relationship of our cognitive perceptualframeworks—our consciousness—to the quantum information bits (qubits) arising from thispresumed atomic reality (Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, 1934). This vital anti-realist alternative philosophy of physics, that the theoretical constructs of physics—waves,particles, fields, forces etc.—are merely pragmatic descriptive instruments, not independentlyexisting “real” things, is called instrumentalism, (or operationalism, or nominalism). Itopposes the Neorealism of Einstein and the “hidden variables” realists (p.48). Both Werner Heisenberg—the author of the other essential principle of the QuantumTheory, the “Uncertainty Principle”—and Bohr understood that the Quantum Theory makes

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no assumptions about an inherently existing “real” objective physical reality, or the objectiveexistence of its elementary particles, but is rather, about the cognitive relationship of theconsciousness of the experimenter/observer to the measurement of quantum event information.Indeed, Schödinger’s “collapse of the wave function” (the state-vector reduction) at the instantof a measurement (or of a perception) by a consciousness, is the persistent quantum“measurement problem” that abides at the margin between subjective “virtual” reality andostensibly objective physical reality, be it microscopic particles or macroscopic cats, persons,trees and stars. Kuhn, Bohr, Quine and other philosophers of science (physics, biology and psychology)have pointed out that the laws of physics are highly idealized nomological cognitiveconstructs that describe the behavior of appearing objects within the context of a theoreticalmodel, and do not descriptively, and should not prescriptively pretend to describe theontological nature or essence of appearing objects, nor the subjective depth of the unbroken,interdependent whole in which they arise. This whole is necessarily closed by the Planck limitand the quantum uncertainty relations to such theoretical conceptual penetration. Suchidealized models are limited by their mathematical formalism and cannot causally enrichspeculative ontology. Scientific laws give us left brain, exoteric, nomic conventionalexplanations of the behavior of phenomena arising through the ultimately subjectivenoumenon, the matrix base that is the Platonic/Kantian diaphanous “thing-in-itself,” Plato’s“first principle,” beyond the exoteric “ambiguity barrier” created by the phenomenologicallimit of discursive theory, concept and belief. To penetrate this ostensible barrier we utilize“spiritual empirical” estoerically objective, first person contemplative yogic technologies. In his excellent Hidden Dimensions (2007), Alan Wallace agrees. He concludes that thereis a “broad consensus among psychologists, neuroscientists, and physicists. . . [that] perceivedobjects, or observable entities, exist relative to the sensory faculties or systems of measurementby which they are detected—not independently in the objective world.” This is of course, theBuddhist Madhyamaka Prasangika and Dzogchen view, as we shall see. Introducing his seminal“Theory of Ontological Relativity” Wallace states:

There is one truth that is invariant (absolute) across all cognitive frames ofreference; everything that we apprehend, whether perceptually orconceptually, is devoid of its own inherent nature, or identity, independentof the means by which it is known. . . Nothing exists by its own nature... Inother words, there is no way to separate the universe we know from theinformation we have about it... Natural science is a science of information,not a science of a world that exists prior to and independent of information.

For Method. Let our next stop then, be a bit of unbridled ontological speculation—not for the metaphysically squeamish—upon this one “truth” that is, most verily the ultimatenature of Reality Itself, the very essence or Nature of Mind, “The Bright” that is the outshining(abhasa) clearlight awareness of mind. Such is the emerging view and method of the epistemic NoeticRevolution that is now upon us. This revolutionary nondual view—introduced in the firstNoetic Revolution in the Second Century by Nagarjuna and Plotinus—simultaneouslycognizes the prior unity of the objective scientific study of nature/matter with the direct

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knowing (vidya/rigpa/epinoia) of our perfectly subjective sourceground (cittadhatu), all-embracing nondual Spirit that transcends yet embraces nature, and in whom everythingarises. Organized religion seeks this ground through exoteric ritual, concept and belief.Esoteric spirituality experiences it directly. We will then return to a less metaphysicallyambitious, somewhat critical inquiry into this radically empiricist methodology, itscontemplative injunctions, theory and practice, and its fruition, that is nothing less thanpsychospiritual liberation, our ultimate individual and, in due course, collective happiness. In this regard I will attempt not to reify, entify or posit metaphysical/ontologicalentities—”transcendental signified” logocentric absolutes arising to consciousness—whetherpropositionally or mythologically/metaphorically, through the modalities of matter/mind/spirit. Rather, I will follow a post-Kantian, post-metaphysical noetic methodology, namely thatthese apparent dimensional strata and states are nondual and non-separate from the dualisticconsciousness that apprehends them, and may be fruitfully, if dualistically explored andconfirmed by the “vertical/spiritual empiricism” (Ken Wilber) of the masters, “those whoknow” and teach the various meditative contemplative injunctions, poiesis and praxis.

Quine’s Revolution: Epistemological Holism in Science and Philosophy

Ontological Relativity. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) is considered by manyin the philosophy trade to be the most important Western philosopher of the TwentiethCentury. His Ontological Relativity (indeterminacy of reference) is the thesis that ontology—”what there is”—is relative to language, that is, to the subjective deep backgroundassumptions in our individual and collective “web of belief.” (Epistemology is how we knowwhat there is.) In his seminal “Ontological Relativity” (1969) Quine develops his thesis thatwhen a theory postulates its existent entities in a given language—its “object language”—itdoes so by translating its theory’s propositions (statements) about those entities into a “meta-language” or background matrix or web of prior assumptions and beliefs. The entities orobjects of the object language are relative to and supervene or are dependent upon the priorsubjective “coordinate grid” that are the assumptions and beliefs of the meta-language.

What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely isnot universality but circularity. A question of the form ‘What is an F’ canbe answered only by recourse to a further term: “An F is a G.’ The answermakes only relative sense: sense relative to the uncritical acceptance of‘G’ “ (Ontological Relativity 1969)

Thus the ontological status of phenomenal reality is relative to something prior. Ontology isrelative to our conventional cultural and scientific concept and belief systems. It makes nosense to inquire about the absolute meaning of a statement or object. Therefore a propositioncannot be empirically tested and shown to be true or false without referring to prior deepbackground assumptions and beliefs in the meta-language matrix. This raises the problem of “auxiliary hypotheses.” For example, the hypothesis “Allcopper conducts electricity” is neither verifiable nor falsifiable in isolation. We need auxiliaryhypotheses from our basis of prior assumptions and beliefs regarding electrical conductance,

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conductance meters, copper wire, the atomic number of copper, etc. Therefore, no hypothesisis testable in isolation from the whole, namely related hypotheses and theories, i.e. prior causesand conditions.

Holistic assault on objectivity. In Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”—the mostcelebrated philosophical essay of the Twentieth Century—he develops his radicalepistemological holism (“confirmation holism” that is also a semantic holism). The two basicprecepts of Quine’s holism are 1) interpretation of an empirical observation is “theory laden” or theorydependent, that is, it is dependent upon prior assumptions, theories or beliefs, and 2) all theory is“underdetermined” by its evidential data, that is, empirical evidence in isolation is not an adequatecriterion of decidability as to theory vindication, verification, or truth. Since the primarymetaphysical assumption—the ontology—of science is foundational Scientific Realism whichholds that scientific knowledge consists of an ontic commitment to real theory-independentphenomena, and also that empirical evidence is suitable to adjudicate theory validity, Quine’sradical naturalistic epistemological holism undermines both common sense/naive Realism andScientific Realism. Thus, the arising, appearing entities of our conceptually reified reality arenon-objective. Objectivity necessarily refers us to a prior subjective base or source. Thereforeour perception and cognition face the vast crucible of Reality Itself nakedly, without theepistemological staff of a foundational “first philosophy,” namely epistemological Realism. This radical holism regarding theory testability and verification, on Qunie’s account, isalso a holism of meaning. In place of the reductionism (meaningful statements are reducible toobservation statements) of the Logical Positivists, Quine asserts that ultimately it is the wholeof science, not mere propositions, that verify our theories and our paradigms. Scientificpropositions or statements are a web of interconnected, interdependent, statements thatultimately constitute the whole of science, if not the whole of Reality Itself. Says Quine, “theunit of measure of empirical meaning is all science in its globality.” The Logical Positivists,fearing metaphysical statements, reduced meaning to immediately observable experience. Whatwas needed was a theory that accounts for unobserved phenomena—quarks, the Big Bang,acupuncture meridians—without falling into spooky metaphysics. Quine here builds upon the broad contextual shoulders of the great logician GottlobFrege (1848-1925), whose holistic “Context Principle” states that a word or phrase derives itsmeaning only from the entire context of a sentence. Meaning then, is context dependent andarises only interdependently, not independently, in isolation from the whole of the base ormetalanguage. As Wittgenstein pointed out, “Comprehending a proposition meanscomprehending a language” (Philosophical Investigations). “A sentence has meaning only in thecontext of a whole language.” (Donald Davidson, 1967).

The Quine-Duhem Thesis. This radical epistemological holism or “confirmationalholism” leads to refreshing consequences fantasque. If the propositions our theories generateabout what exists in appearing reality are underdetermined by the empirical evidential data ofour senses, then empirical observation cannot logically require any changes to a theory. Thusthe Quine-Duhem Thesis states that any proposition can be asserted to be true regardless ofthe data, provided we modify other pertinent internal components—auxiliary hypotheses—within the theoretical system. Conversely, no belief is protected from revisions. There willalways be multiple theories supported by the data. In Quine’s web of belief the data of

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empirical experience interfaces only with the surface boundary of the whole system. So we candistribute the cognitive force of inconsistent empirical insults through the conceptual tweakingof other propositional constituents deeper within the system. All sectors of our web of belief—even the laws of logic (p.45)—are subject to revision. For example, the Quantum Principle ofUncertainty seems to violate the ”Law of Excluded Middle” of the Western logical canon.

Quine is a bridge. It is this Quine-Duhem Thesis that is the basis of Quine’s worldchanging contention that Kant’s foundational analytic/synthetic and apriori/aposterioridistinctions, along with modern empiricist Reductionism are “ill founded,” and serve novaluable scientific or philosophical purpose. In his revolutionary ”Two Dogmas ofEmpiricism” Quine reveals that

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas.One is the belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which areanalytic, or grounded in meaning independently of matters of fact andtruths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma isreductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent tosome logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.Both are ill founded (Quine 1951).

These “Two Dogmas” are the two epistemological pillars of Modern and PostmodernScientific Empiricism with its Twentieth Century incarnation, Logical Positivism (LogicalEmpiricism, Logical Atomism). Quine’s essay constituted a devastating refutation of LogicalPositivism, the preeminent anti-metaphysical scientific physicalist realist theory of the firsthalf of the century. Quine informs us that in abandoning these “Two Dogmas” we will observe“a blurring of the supposed gap between speculative metaphysics and natural science.Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism” (Quine 1951). However, Quine’s holisticNaturalism is not an epistemological Relativism for he believed that our theories could andshould be guided by “simplicity” (parsimony, Ockham’s Razor), and “conservatism” (retainthe best of the original theory).

The traditional destructive separation in our collective web of belief between scientific objectivityand subjective metaphysical speculation, and between speculative philosophy and objective science has,at long last, been logically subdued. The demon of the scientific pretension to perfect rationalityand objectivity is slain. And thus has philosophy been saved. Thus Quine is a bridge from the absolutism of the objectivist Scientific Realism andScientific Materialism (Scientism) of Classical and Modernist ontology (and the fuzzyRomantic and skeptical nihilist Postmodern reactions thereto), to the emerging pragmaticreformation in religion, science and culture that is our radically holistic new NoeticRevolution.

The notion of cognitive paradigms introduced by Kuhn, Quine and Wittgenstein demonstratesthat the “paradigm,” or “web of belief,” or “form of life” in which one is cognitively embeddeddetermines truth, meaning, intelligibility and worldview for the participants in the paradigm. And, aswith the science and spirituality paradigms, these resist translation, evaluation andcommunication across paradigms. Are these paradigms then truly incommensurable? Is therea Middle Way (p.53ff)?

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Bridge Building: Toward a New Paradigm for Science and Spirituality

The inseparability of the two truths, absolute and relative, is called‘primordial Buddha.’ - Kunjed Gyalpo (trans. Chögyal Namkahi Norbu)

The Two Truths are one taste. On the account of our primordial Great WisdomTradition, this all-embracing “one truth” arises and presents as two levels or dimensions ofreality, the perennial “Two Truths” (satyadvaya, denpa-nyis) of the unbounded whole that isReality Itself. We live in two dimensions at once! These Two Truths define the way in whichphenomena appear, and their actual ultimate nature, which is not the way that they appear.Every one of the Yoga Systems of the Hindu Sanatana Dharma, and each of the four BuddhistSchools—the Hinayana (Vaibhashika and Sautrantika) and Mahayana (Chittamtra andMadhyamaka)—subscribe to some variation of the Two Truths. According to Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhism, appearing objects are nominally,relative-conventionally real, but not intrinsically or ultimately real (p.22). This PerennialWisdom conceptual duality of relative and ultimate dimensions is resolved in the non-conceptual “one truth, devoid of its own inherent nature,” yet that includes both. This onetruth is the nondual, discursively unelaborated ontologically prior unity of our Great WisdomTradition’s Relative Truth (samvriti satya), with Ultimate Truth” (paramartha satya), Buddhistemptiness (shunyata), the “perfect sphere” of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, Tao, Ein Soph,Cantor’s Aleph, the set that includes all sets. This one unifying truth is simply the trans-conceptual unbroken whole, that golden thread of radical, nondual truth, the warp that runsthroughout the entire fabric of the “innermost secret” teaching of the major traditions of ourGreat Wisdom Tradition. This ultimate reality transcends yet embraces the dimension of“Relative Truth,” the “truth that conceals,” endless “concealer truths” (avidya/vikshepa) that arethe mass-energy phenomena interdependently arising (pratitya samutpada) in and as the“Interbeing” of empirical spacetime reality. This relative truth reveals conceptual relativeconventional, empirical causal truths while concealing their nondual ultimate nature. Therelative truth of perceptual and conceptual mind, whether as logically valid or invalidconcepts, cloaks (vikshepa/avidya maya) the great primordial nondual one truth. Yet, the onetruth also transcends and embraces Ultimate or Absolute Truth, which is merely our conceptsand beliefs about the non-conceptual Absolute that enfolds everything that arises and appears.With the failure of the traditional representational correspondence and coherence theories oftruth to pass epistemological muster, this “one truth” may be viewed less objectively and morepragmatically, as the meaning of truth for the ancients—aletheia—the uncovering oruncloaking (vikshepa) activity that reveals the Real that abides just prior.

An integral ecology of mind. Thus the Two Truths are Buddhist “emptiness and form,”and dualistic and nondual Vedanta (“nondual”—advaya/gnyis med—means no essentialseparation). The never-ending dialectic of these fundamental “Two Truths” of the nondual,non-conceptual one truth that is Ultimate Reality Itself —Dharmakaya, Tao, Nirguna Brahman—is nothing less than the infinite dance of geometry: involution and evolution, infiniteConsciousness-Being-Itself (cittata/sems nyid) continuously becoming (karma) finite particulars.

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This process is viewed dualistically as the descent (Plato’s Eros, Telos, ontogeny, Kosmos) ofour formless primordial awareness matrix sourceground—Absolute Spirit—into the brokensymmetries of the relative forms of empirical spacetime (cosmos), including we sentientbeings, then the ascent or “eternal return”(agape, evolution, phylogeny)—through theunconscious horizontal and conscious vertical spiritual paths—again to nondual Spirit, oursupreme source (Appendix E: Toward an Integral Ecology of Mind). However, in the nondualview, spirit and matter have never separated, but abide as a timeless nondual unity. NondualSpirit is both pinnacle and base, the pinnacle of psychospiritual development, and the allinclusive base or sourceground of all that arises therein. “Form is emptiness. Emptiness isform” said the Buddha in his Heart Sutra.

In terms of the source, the root of all phenomena, there is no such thing as anobserver and an object to observe. All the phenomena of existence, withoutexception, abide in the supreme source in a condition of birthlessness... As thesupreme source (Samantabhadra), pure and total consciousness, I am the mirrorin which all phenomena are reflected. Although lacking self-nature everythingexists clearly; without need for a view, the nature shines clear. Understandingthe essential unborn condition is not an object to observe dualistically. This isthe great understanding!-Kunjed Gyalpo, The Supreme Source (trans. Namkhai Norbu 1999)

This non-physical or metaphysical sourceground of Reality—Kosmos— subsumes theQuantum Vacuum that is cosmology’s material and physical “Zero-Point Field”/”AkashicField” that is physical/material cosmos. This non-material, non-entity that is ultimatesubjectivity (the prior unity of all subjects and objects), is the vast primordial emptiness(shunyata) potential in whom arises the cyclic non-local interdependent connectedness (pratityasamutpada) of this bright primordial aboriginal stuff becoming matter, beings, minds, stars,galaxies, and universes of the infinite oscillating Metaverse, the very unbounded whole ofKosmos, Ultimate Reality Itself. (Kosmos is the Pathagorean, Apeiron, the divine “One” ofPlotinus that enfolds, transcends and embraces the unfolding “Many” that is the luminousplurality and multiplicity of the merely physical spacetime cosmos.) So, this one truth—unnameable ultimate reality by whatever name—is the conceptuallybut not contemplatively ineffable monadic source or matrix, the ”Zero Womb” of theprimordial Goddess that generates all of the force fields that give rise to material bodies andtheir forces. (This rose, by any name would smell as sweet.) These forces are of course, therelative particles and waves that we have come to know and love—photons (light) and bosons(force)—of arising relative spacetime reality. “What we observe as material bodies and forcesare nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of infinite space” (Schrödinger). According to our Great Wisdom Tradition, phenomena arising from this vastprimordial sourceground (gzhi, kadag, dharmata, chos nyid, Tao) that is perfectly subjectiveultimate Consciousness Being Itself, in due course evolves a witnessing intelligence/consciousness that recognizes the fundamental nonlocal, interdependently inter-connectedprior unity, while abiding in a relationship of identity with all of the parts. This is the processof “the eternal return” to nondual Spirit. All arising spacetime phenomena participate in the

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“primordial purity” (kadag) of this vast consciousness base (gzhi), this primordial awareness(jnana/yeshe) whose spontaneous presence (lhundrub) abides within all things. Thus, although“spacelike separation” of the participating parts of the unbroken whole obtains, there can beno essential separation. There is a vast oneness (longchen, svabhava), an ontologically prior unity.Thus the relationship is, at once, nonlocal, interdependent and nondual. I have called theunifying principle of this non-conceptual “one truth” the Principle of OntologicalInterdependence. Again, this one truth is the nondual monadic, prior ontological unity of theconceptual perennial Two Truths, relative and ultimate. This unity, this “one taste” is a mostprofound subtle ecology of mind. This ontologically necessary yet epistemologicallycontingent prior unity must be the fundamental principle of any theory of ontologicalrelativity—Alan Wallace’s Theory of Ontological Relativity or David Finkelstein’s UniversalRelativity Principle, (Wallace, 2003) or W.V. Quine’s Ontological Relativity (p.12)—and of any“Theory of Everything” (TOE). Let us then briefly consider the Unified Quantum Vacuum that is the zero point energyfield, in its relation to this “primordially present” one truth that for the nondual BuddhistView is the “self-perfected state” of the perfect sphere of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. Wewill then explore Buddhist epistemology and ontology through the view of the GreatPerfection and its potential impact upon the emerging, holistic paradigm in physics andcosmology, whose precursor is the antirealist Quantum Field theory.

The Unified Quantum Vacuum: The Union of Science and Spirit?

The trouble with most poetry is that it is either objective or subjective. -Basho

Philosopher and physicist Ervin Laszlo views Relativistic Quantum Field Theory’sQuantum Vacuum—the vacuum state or the “zero-point energy”—as the basis of all relativespacetime reality, the “plenum void” that is the “Akashic Field” (manakasha/namkhah), a fieldthat “connects organisms and minds in the biosphere, and particles, stars, and galaxiesthroughout the universe.” This view is apparently shared by Alan Wallace (“Vacuum States ofConsciousness”).

There is a deeper reality in the cosmos, a field that conserves andconveys information and thus connects and correlates. . . TheAkashic Field is a universal field, joining the four universal fields ofphysics: the G-Field (the gravitational field), the EM-field (theelectromagnetic field) and the strong and the weak short-rangefields that create attraction and repulsion among the particles of theatomic nucleus. -Ervin Laszlo (2006)

Physicist Paul Dirac attempts a noble description of this luminous quantum emptinessthat is the “zero womb” that enfolds everything and in whom everything arises:

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All matter is created out of some perceptible substance not accuratelydescribed as material since it uniformly fills all space and isundetectable by any observation... It appears as nothingness—immaterial, undetectable, and omnipotent. . .out of which all matter iscreated.

- Paul Dirac (in Huston Smith, 1976)

In 1927 Dirac objectively supports this poetic metaphysical conjecture by unifying theQuantum Theory with Relativity Theory—and predicting the existence of antimatter in thebargain—with the sublime mathematical formalism of his Dirac Equation. This wave equationbecame Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) or Relativistic Electrodynamics and fully integratedclassical Special and General Relativity with the post-classical Quantum Theory. So, Quantum Field Theory predicts that all of space is filled with the Zero Point Energyof the three basic forces of nature, the electromagnetic, the strong and the weak interactions(the fourth force is gravity). This Zero Point Energy Field—the “energy of empty space”—Bohm’s “Zero Point Order” or “Implicate Order,” is the leading candidate for cosmology’smysterious dark energy. This dark energy is the reincarnation of Einstein’s CosmologicalConstant (“The worst blunder I ever made”), and represents a major explanatory challenge forthe Standard Model, as we shall see.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty. The root explanation for Zero Point Energy is Heisenberg’squantum uncertainty relations—the Uncertainty Principle—which states that the more precisethe measurement of a particle’s position, the less precise is the measurement of its momentum(its mass times its velocity), and vice versa. If we precisely locate the particle in a quantumsystem, we cannot determine its momentum. If we determine the particle’s momentum wecannot know its position. It’s not that everything is uncertain. We can measure precisely aparticle’s position or momentum, but not both. That uncertainty, or more accurately,indeterminacy is not a function of measurement or of instruments, but is rather, inherent in thewave-like nature of the light of the Zero Point Energy Field itself; it is intrinsic to the verynature of apparently physical reality. Zero Point Energy is the paradoxical, “spooky” residueof a quantum system when it is “compactified.” “Empty space is not empty” (John Wheeler).The vacuum state is then, a zero point energy state with a non-zero potential. It is not anempty void, but permits momentary electromagnetic waves, particles and antiparticles to enterand exit spacetime reality, and this has quantifiable effects, namely the Casimir Effect, andcosmology’s Cosmological Constant, which any viable T.O.E. must explain. This description ofthe momentary particles of the Quantum Vacuum is reminiscent of Buddhist Kalachakratantra’s empty “space particles,” the root and primary cause of all phenomenal reality.

Unification? This Unified Quantum Vacuum, possibly the long sought unification ofthe four forces in a non-objective “fifth force,” was anticipated by the ancients, and by bothPlanck and Einstein, as the “Luminiferous Ether.” The ether theory was rejected by Einstein inhis Special Relativity theory, then it emerged again as his “cosmological constant.” Thisunifying fifth force would be the ground state or substrate (alayavijnana) of the entire physicalcosmos, the “Zero Womb” (Bohm) matrix of the birth of all universes in the cyclic oscillating“metaverse.” This Zero Point Energy, Laszlo’s “plenum void” is suspected by many physicists

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to be that fifth force that finally unifies the other four forces—electromagnetism, the strongforce, the weak force and the gravity force—into a hubristic “Grand Unified Field,” anoverdrawn “Theory of Everything,” the godlike supreme human intellect’s desideratumdevoutly to be wished.1

Alas, all that has actually occurred is that the “Akashic Field” has set a zero point limit—the Planck Scale—beyond which the human conceptual mind and its reductionist physicscannot penetrate. This conceptual limit is the utterly ineffable estate of the noumenon, thenondual emptiness matrix or base of all arising phenomena, Ultimate Reality Itself. Thus weare led, necessarily, to metaphysics (unobservables that may exist before or beyond theobservable data of physics), or even—yikes!—mysticism (direct non-conceptual meditativeexperience of the simultaneous unity of the Two Truths that are relative and ultimate truth).Thus do we transcend material, physical reality with its objectively vexing, often less thancompelling ontological speculations, and experience directly, subjectively what lies therin. Thealternative is skepticism. We must not however be downcast, for the private abode of information—clever, evenbrilliant conceptually fabricated apparently objective knowledge—is not the last word. The endof consciousness for gross concept-mind is not the end of the primordial wisdom consciousness abiding asthe very heart (hridyam) of human consciousness. Here, Suzuki Roshi’s relative “Small Mind” issubsumed in ultimate “Big Mind.” This assent to the indwelling higher, subtler strata ofknowledge becoming wisdom does not cease at the empirical limit of conceptual philosophicalsurrender. Indeed, it is here, in the mandatory hermeneutic fluidity of intellectual chaos thatour awareness of our original wisdom begins, for those with a fearless ear to hear. However, from the limited view of perceptual and conceptual relative conventionaltruth, the Quantum Field Theory’s quantum vacuum/zero-point Akashic Field is the analogicalkey to understanding the relationship between instantaneous, nonlocal quantumconnectedness (quantum entanglement), and the Middle Way ontological interdependence(pratitya samutpada) and emptiness (shunyata) of Buddhism’s Madhyamaka Prasangika, theprerequisite for the final view and practice of Ati Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. This quantum“energy of empty space” offers a potential for a new, demystified “Two Truths” paradigm—analogous to the Buddhist Madhyamaka Two Truths (relative and ultimate)—to resolvescience’s dogmatic objectivist presumption of absolute matter—its problem of subjectivity—inits quest for ultimate coherence in a “theory of everything.” As we shall see, both the “scientificmethod” and Buddhist (Madhyamaka) epistemology are rational, pragmatic, empirical,objective, skeptical and process oriented (events, not things). Both must be utilized in theemerging integral approach of the Noetic Revolution (p.59)

p in the sky? Is this quantum vacuum then, the union of science and spirit? Is theUnified Quantum Vacuum of quantum cosmology the Ultimate Truth that is nondualAbsolute Spirit, the grail of the union of science and spirit that is the precursor of a “completephysics”? Although Professor Laszlo identifies the Quantum Vacuum with the Hindu“Akashic Record” and Mahayana Buddhist Alaya, this totality of all information of the “three

1 This Unified Quantum Vacuum of physics and cosmology is analogous to the clearlight Primordial Awareness Wisdom(gnosis, jnana, yeshe) of our contemplative tradition, and to the vast expanse of Dharmadhatu, the Absolute Basic Space ofthe perfect sphere of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection in whom all phenomenal reality arises (p27ff).

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times” (past, present, future) is not considered by these traditions to be the non-conceptual,unelaborated, nondual one truth that is the primordial union of the Two Truths. Again, wemust not conflate the ultimate explanatory principle of merely physical cosmos with theoriginal wakefulness that is the Primordial Awareness Wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe) thatpervades our consciousness—all-embracing, perfectly subjective Kosmos, the Ultimate truth ofReality Itself that is Absolute Spirit. After all, are not “physical” and “spiritual” different inkind? Are not samsara and nirvana different modal realities? Or is there a sameness (samata)here? Let’s see.

Ontological Interdependence: The Problem of Knowledge Revisited

There is not the slightest difference between samsara and nirvana. - Nagarjuna

We have seen that our Principle of Ontological Interdependence informs us that theconceptual Two Truths of our Great Wisdom Tradition—the unbroken whole that is nondual,all-embracing reality of Ultimate Truth, and the realm of Relative Truth, the surreal mindscapethat is the reality of spacetime phenomenal particulars arising therein—are always anontologically “prior unity” that is the non-conceptual one truth. Does this mean that theempirical, relative-conventional world of physical matter is merely an aspect or dimension ofan organizing physical or material Unified Quantum Vacuum? Yes. Is this quantum “ZeroPoint Field” the ontologically prior unity of Absolute Truth and Relative Truth that is the onetruth that is the emptiness matrix of non-conceptual, nondual primordial Spirit? We concludedabove that it is not. Why not? The answer depends on the view, exoteric relative or esotericultimate. I have written elsewhere that “Nondual Ultimate Reality that is Absolute Spirit cannot bereduced to, located in, or identified with finite physical spacetime particulars, not even gurus, deities,gods, or the nonlocal quantum vacuum potential.” Rather, physical, mental, and spiritual relativespacetime phenomena, the furniture of the dimension of conventional, empirical Relative Truth—ourperceptual and conceptual reality interpretations and designations—are all “located” in Absolute Spirit(a nontheistic panentheism), and abide in a relation of identity with it (pantheism).

“From the beginning all beings are Buddha” (Hui Neng). It’s not that “everything hasBuddha Nature,” rather,”everything is Buddha Nature.” “All is Brahman.” The greater esotericor “innermost secret” view is that appearing spacetime reality with its perceiving beingsalready is Absolute Spirit Itself that is the nondual one truth, beyond discursive concept-mind.Perhaps we are not yet realized Buddhas, but we are always Buddha. Who am I? We are allinherently the ultimate Buddha Reality (Dharmakaya). We are Atman, “The Bright” KhamBrahm, Nirguna Brahman, utterly empty of attributes. That is our original face, our intrinsicnature. That (Tat) is who we actually are. The radical nondual teaching of our Great WisdomTradition (Dzogchen, Essence Mahamudra, Saijojo Zen, Tao, Advaita Vedanta) is quite clear on thisurgent point. The primordial awareness (gnosis, jnana, yeshe) that is nondual Spirit is “alwaysalready” the actual inherent nature of everything (panpsychism). The Unified QuantumVacuum, all physical/mental reality is nondual Spirit. The quantum vacuum with its quasi-objective spacetime reality arises in or through nondual perfectly subjective Spirit. There is noessential separation. So it is told by the masters of our Great Tradition’s nondual PrimordialAwareness Wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe). Is this weird? Yes! Is this the crux of the matter? Yes!

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Thus, according to this great universal teaching, the nondual wisdom Base or Sourcethat transcends yet embraces the material world is the “spiritual” presence (vidya, rigpa,christos, epinoia, shekina) that is inherently present within all beings, the divine seed(tatagatagharba, hiranyagarbha, christos/logos) abiding now at the spiritual heart (hridyamhsin/kokoro, nyingpo) of each being, whether or not it is recognized. And from this primordialwisdom of emptiness, this radical, non-conceptual, nondual ultimate knowledge,spontaneously arises the moral imperative—compassionate feeling, intention and conduct(karuna, tonglen, nyingje, ahimsa, hesed/charis, altruism) for the benefit of all sentient beings. Andfrom this wisdom of kindness arises—not so spontaneously—a non-oligarchic democraticpolitical economy and with it the empirical possibility of the free pursuit of both hedonicmaterial happiness (felicitas) and ultimate happiness (mahasukka, paramananda, eudaemonia,beatitude). Here then, in this Primordial Awareness Wisdom of our contemplative GreatTradition tentatively rests the ontological foundation for the resolution of the three problemsof human knowledge and conduct: The Problem of Knowledge, the Problem of Morals, andthe Problem of Governance. If, that is, we relinquish the metaphysical dogma of Physicalism(Materialism), the requisite metaphysics of our prevailing Western ontology of ScientificMaterialism (Scientism) that currently precludes any provident rapprochement of science andspirituality. Materialism is, after all, merely part of the total Reality equation. “Science” mustcome to know this. Thus it is, Absolute Spirit, the nondual one truth that is the prior unity of the conceptualTwo Truths—ultimate and relative—subsumes, transcends, and includes all objective physicalmatter, and all subjective mental phenomena, including spacetime’s very organizing principle,namely, the Unified Quantum Vacuum.2 So the physical Quantum Vacuum—David Bohm’s“implicate order” that enfolds the “explicate order” of all arising phenomena participates in,indeed already is the one truth that is Kosmos, all inclusive, primordial nondual Ultimate Spirit.This Primordial Wisdom “presence always present” is the gnosis (jnana, yeshe) driving theintersubjective methodology of our emerging Noetic Revolution. Could it be, wonder ofwonders, that this desideratum is “already accomplished?” Let us then consider the MiddleWay Buddhist view that is the foundation of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection.

2 Our perennial Great Wisdom Tradition teaches of the dialectic of the “Two Truths”: Relative Truth (samvriti), the finiteobjective relative-conventional empirical reality with its physical and mental phenomena, and Ultimate or Absolute Truth(paramartha) the infinite, nondual perfectly subjective unbounded whole, the Ultimate Reality that transcends yet embracesthe phenomenal world of Relative Truth. This world of Relative Truth includes the dyad of outer exoteric and inner esotericreality dimensions. This esoteric dimension then includes yet deeper or subtler strata of hidden dimensions, the “innermostsecret,” and finally the ineffable nondual which is ultimate Reality Itself. The realization of these ascending levels ofknowledge is a function of the psycho-spiritual lifestage development of the spiritual aspirant or knower. As to theexperience of these hidden dimensions, whether conceptual dianoia, or direct contemplative epinoia/gnosis, it is mostimportant to maintain the understanding awareness that these dimensional reality realms—these “many mansions of theFather’s house”—arise in a relationship of interdependence with one another and with the whole, and therefore possess noinherent, independent existence in themselves; not even the nondual Ultimate Reality itself. I have elsewhere referred to thegreat prior unity of these none too tidy epistemological dualities as the “Principle of Ontological Interdependence.” Indeed,our nondual Great Tradition views all objective and subjective entities as ultimately empty of inherent existence (shunyata,pratitya samutpada). This does not however, deny them their reality status as objectively real objects in the realm of RelativeTruth that is empirical, relative-conventional spacetime reality. This principle of the Two Truths is the key to understandingthe emerging paradigm shift that is the resolution of the “explanatory gap” between mind and matter (the “mind-bodyproblem”), and between science and spirituality that is the “hard problem” of consciousness with its urgent need of anintegrative principle between the third person methodologies of Western science and the first person modes of inquiry ofVedic/Buddhist contemplative science.

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Principia Dharmata: The Buddhist View of the Nature of Mind

Without past, present, future; empty awake mind. -Mipham Rinpoche

The crux of the matter. In the Buddhist view of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, and itsfoundation in Madhyamaka Prasangika, even the Ultimate Truth that is fundamental greatemptiness (mahashunyata) is not a frozen absolute, that is, it is not a metaphysical logocentricidol or “false absolute” existing unconditioned and independently as an unknowable “other”transcendent creator God, or some vast substrate, entity, being or thing. Rather, emptiness is arelativized absolute, abiding interdependently, as “dependent arising” or “Interbeing,” a timelessinfinitely vast causal nexus of arising interconnected causes and conditions (vasana/quantumqubits). H.H. The Dalai Lama terms this ultimate paradox the “emptiness of emptiness.”

It is important for us to avoid the misapprehension that emptiness isan absolute reality from which the illusory world emerges... it’s notsome kind of [entity] out there somewhere. . .emptiness must beunderstood as ‘empty of intrinsic or independent existence’. . .form’sultimate nature . . .(It) does not imply non-existence of phenomenabut the emptiness of phenomena . . .its ultimate mode of being . . .thebasis that allows form [to] arise as emptiness.

H.H. The Dalai Lama, Buddhadharma Quarterly, Fall, 2002

How then does emptiness exist? Emptiness is established by relative conventionalminds. Therefore emptiness does not exist ultimately. It exists merely conventionally, as thedependent arising of form. His Holiness explains the seminal relationship of the Buddha’s Dependent Arising(pratitya samutpada) and Emptiness:

First, all conditional things and events in the world come into beingonly as a result of the interaction of causes and conditions. Theydon’t just arise from nowhere, fully formed. Second, there ismutual dependence between parts and the whole: without partsthere can be no whole, without a whole it makes no sense to speakof parts... Third, anything that exists and has an identity does soonly within the total network of everything that has a possible orpotential relation to it. No phenomenon exists with an independentor intrinsic identity... Thus, there are no subjects without the objectsby which they are defined, there are no objects without subjects toapprehend them. . . (H.H. The Dalai Lama, 2005)

The forms of emptiness. Thus, all phenomena arise in dependence upon prior causesand conditions; phenomena arise in mutual interdependence of parts and the unbroken whole;phenomena are absent any separate, intrinsic existence because they exist only in dependence

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on related factors: this absence is emptiness. Thus all phenomena are dependently andconceptually designated, that is, they exist only by way of reified perceptual and conceptualattribution, imputation and designation. Cause and effect—the Principle of Causality—and its subset, karma, is possible only ina Kosmos whose phenomena is interdependently arisen and therefore empty of intrinsicexistence. Thus, as the Buddha’s Heart Sutra expresses, “Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.”Emptiness and the dependent arising of form are a prior unity. No emptiness, no form. Noform, no emptiness. Relative phenomena arise interdependently only from the vast expanse oftheir prior causal nexus, their emptiness base (gzhi) or primordial sourceground (cittata,cittadhatu). This supreme source is Ultimate Truth (paramartha satya) that is Reality Itself(dharmata/chos nyid). This is the ultimate mode of being for all the interdependent things andbeings of the dimension of Relative Truth (samvriti satya). Independently existing phenomena,arising ex nihilo, from nothing, independent of prior causes and conditions is not logically orempirically possible. If the objective and subjective phenomena of reality do not ultimately exist and areultimately ”unfindable” after twenty-five hundred years of philosophical, scientific and noetic(mind/spirit) analysis, we must ask how it is that phenomena appear to exist.

The question is not whether they exist but how they exist. They exist, butnot in the manner in which we perceive them. They lack any discrete,intrinsic reality. This absence, or emptiness, of inherent existence is theirultimate nature. . . It is critical to understand that Madhyamaka does notsay that things are absent of inherent existence mainly because theycannot be found when sought through critical analysis. This is not thefull argument. Things and events are said to be absent of inherent orintrinsic existence because they exist only in dependence on other factors. . .In other words, anything that depends on other factors is devoid of itsown independent nature, and this absence of an independent nature isemptiness. . . Nagarjuna says that things and events, which aredependently originated, are empty, and thus are also dependentlydesignated. . . [He] concludes there is nothing that is not empty, forthere is nothing that is not dependently originated. Here we see theequation between dependent origination and emptiness. . . the path ofthe Middle Way, which transcends the extremes of absolutism andnihilism. - H.H. the Dalai Lama, Buddhadharma, Winter 2004, p.20

How then do phenomena exist? The world is real, not from its own side, but merely byrelative intersubjective conventional designation. According to Buddhist practitioner andphilosopher of science Alan Wallace, this “intersubjectivity lies at the very heart of theBuddhist worldview and its path to spiritual awakening.” The Buddhist view sees theindividual not as an independent ego, but as a self—our bodymind—arising as an interdependentprocess, a causal nexus of prior causes and conditions. In this holistic Middle Way view the

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ego-I exists, as with all phenomena, not permanently nor absolutely, but only nominally andrelatively, through its own conceptual imputation and designation. Ultimately however, all thephenomena of reality are “empty of self-nature,” utterly devoid of any essential or intrinsicexistence. Therefore, there is inherent existence neither in being, nor in non-being. Nagarjuna’s“tetralemma refutation” refutes 1) reified existence, 2) nihilistic non-existence, 3) bothexistence and non-existence, and 4) neither existence nor non-existence. How then do thePrasangika Madhyamikas—Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Tsongkhapa—refute the SvatantrikaMadhyamika and Cittamatra charges of nihilism and skepticism? Once again, nihilism isavoided by accomplishing the delicate balance between negating too much (nihilism) andnegating too little (absolutism). Dependently arising phenomena really do existconventionally, yet are devoid of any intrinsic absolute existence. And this is the “emptiness ofemptiness.”

Emptiness objective and subjective. His Holiness further distinguishes betweenobjective emptiness and subjective emptiness.3 Objective emptiness or the “objectiveluminosity” is a “non-affirming negative phenomenon,” the absence or negation of anyindependent or intrinsic existence, or self. But the Buddha’s Great Emptiness (mahashunyata) isnot ultimately a non-affirming negative. In the highest view of the nondual tantras—the viewof Dzogchen and Highest Yoga Tantra—negated phenomena appearing to a self as relative-conventional reality are replaced by subjective emptiness (nay lug), the affirming luminosity ofthe clear light (‘od gsal/prabhasvara), the nondual cognitive-emotive direct experience presence(vidya/rigpa) of the pure bright clarity of the emptiness of form. This “wisdom realizingemptiness,” whose complementary is the Madhyamaka Great Compassion (mahakaruna), isliberation from suffering—Ultimate Happiness Itself (mahasuka/paramananda). So there remains,after the negation of objective and subjective gross and subtle forms encountered through the form andformless mindfulness, quiescence, introspection and insight practices, a subtler outshining luminosityas the vast expanse of the Madhyamaka Great Emptiness manifests itself from the “primordial purity”(kadag) of the primordial ground or base (gzhi). For Tibetan Buddhists, this fundament of clearlightground luminosity is the ultimate nature of Reality Itself (cho-nyid/dharmata), the nature ofprimordial consciousness, the very essence or Nature of Mind (sems nyid). Regarding theDzogchen view of this ultimate base, the three Buddha Bodies or the “Trikaya of the Base” thatis our supreme source (cittata, kunjed gyalpo): its Essence is emptiness (shunyata), its Nature isluminosity (luminous clarity gsal ba), its Energy emanates continuously as light/motion/form(tsal/rolba), and in human conduct as wisdom/compassion (thugs re). (See Appendix A,Dzogchen, The Great Perfection). “Within the essence original wakefulness which is primordiallypure (kadag) manifests the nature, a radiance which is spontaneously present” (lhundrub).(Mipham Rinpoche). So, we must negate objective and subjective arising phenomena. But, as Tsongkhapareminds us, if we negate too much we depart the Middle Way and fall into dark nihilismwhere our compassionate ethical precepts and conduct are compromised. If we negate toolittle we fall into the opposite extreme of absolutism, reifying then clinging to phenomena andfailing to accomplish the nondual wisdom of emptiness. Our awareness of the separate self-

3 For the finer points of this teaching see The Natute of Mind, The Buddhist View: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen, ©DavidPaul Boaz, 2006, www.davidpaulboaz.org.

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sense, the independently existing ego-I, is at first necessary to develop our view and ethicalsense, Kant’s “moral law within us.” This sense of a permanent self serves as a vehicle formanaging our relative conventional existence, our ostensible development on the Path. Butthis self cannot be an independent, permanently existing entity. It is rather, a dependentlyarising, impermanent and relative existence. Thus do the Madhyamaka schools of the Mahayanaseek a Middle Way between the two extremes of absolutism and nihilism. But let usremember, “madhya” or middle also connotes a negation, so the Madhyamaka is the MiddleWay path that is no-path. Thus we cannot even cling to the Middle Way. Why is the ontological negation, the ontological relativity of the self-sense of the ego-I—the “no-self of the individual”—so important? Because it is the defence of the attachments andaversions of this non-essential self that causes the negative afflictive emotions—anger/aggression, pride/envy, desire/ attachment/greed that is ignorance (avidya/marigpa), theroot cause of human suffering and unhappiness. “All the evil, fear and suffering of this worldis the result of attachment to the self” (Shantideva). The non-conceptual realization of the state of this transcendent perfection of wisdom(prajnaparamita)—the wisdom of emptiness—is decidedly not mere conceptual speculation.The weight of our entire contemplative Wisdom Tradition grounds this view in the practice ofmeditative quiescence (shamatha) and penetrating insight (vipashyana) which, withcompassionate conduct, bears the fruit of liberation or Buddhahood. “The fruit is no differentat the pinnacle of enlightenment than it is at the primordial base” (Adzom Rinpoche).According to H. H. The Dalai Lama, all states of consciousness—negative or positive—indeedall phenomena are pervaded by this clear light luminosity that is the “wish fulfilling jewel” ofPrimordial Awareness Wisdom (gnosis/jnana/ yeshe) (H.H. The Dalai Lama, 2000). From thisground it all arises, dwells, and into this it all returns, with no essential separation at all.

All limbs of the Buddha’s teaching have this one purpose—to lead usto the nondual primordial wisdom. It participates in and pervades allviews and paths for one who is capable of accessing it. . . All thingsflow from emptiness, and return again to emptiness. This isdependent arising . . . the dynamic display of the mind. This is thetrue nature of arising phenomena, the nature of reality itself. -Adzom Paylo Rinpoche (Upaya Retreat, Santa Fe,NM 2002, trans. Anne C. Klien)

Let us then remember, moment to moment, wherever we go, whatever we do, it’s always here.Knowing and feeling: the unity of wisdom and compassion. The Buddhist

Muhamudra, Madhyamaka and Dzogchen traditions agree: nondual realization and perfection ofthe ultimate truth of the Nature of Mind (sems nyid), Ultimate Reality Itself (chos nyid),luminous emptiness (shunyata), Absolute Bodhicitta can be accomplished neither by theambulations of common conceptual mind, nor by the “attentional stability, brilliant clarity andjoy” of contemplative quiescence practices. According to the highest or subtlest Madhyamakaand tantric teachings, even realized contemplative quiescence (realized shamatha) is notaltogether free of conceptual grasping and contrivance (ignorance/advidya)—though it is often

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mistaken to be so. Mind training in conceptual understanding, and also in quiescence must beunified with the compassionate heartmind of relative bodhicitta—the “mind ofenlightenment”—and with the parallel wisdom of penetrating insight (vipashyana), attainedthrough the noetic contemplative analysis of insight practice under the guidance of, and withgreat devotion to a qualified master. As these “two legs of enlightenment”—wisdom andcompassion—are unified, habitual material and conceptual grasping is transcended and realization ofthe utterly unmediated awareness continuum that is the always already present primordial base orground may be accomplished. The ultimate perfection of this process is Buddhahood. (For extensivedocumentation see B. Alan Wallace, Balancing the Mind, 2005, p.230ff., and his The AttentionRevolution, 2006. For esoteric wholeness fundamentals see Anne C. Klein’s UnboundedWholeness, 2006.) To “spiritually” recognize, then realize and perfect this vast emptiness Nature ofMind—the clear light of the mind beyond the “web of belief” that is the mind’s mere cognitivecontents—is to realize the temporal impermanence (anitya) of ego-self in time, and the utterabsence (shunya) of it in space. The on-going failure of realization in the former instance I havetermed objective dualism, in the latter instance, subjective dualism. The result is the two aspects ofignorance (avidya), or “missing the mark” (hamartia/sin). These two are primary ignorance orclinging to the sense of self (the ego-I) in space and time, and secondary ignorance, grasping atphenomena as substantial, permanent, eternal, absolute or ultimate (Boaz, 2004). Therefore, according to the greater esoteric or nondual “innermost secret” BuddhistView—Dzogchen and Essence Mahamudra—this emptiness residue of self cannot be nihilisticnothingness or utter non-being. Rather, this reality is the prior unity of emptiness andawareness that is the very ground luminosity, the potential of everything that arises. This is“The Bright” of the Upanishads (“Upanishadic Monism”), gnosis, radiant essential clearlightbasic mind nature itself. This then is the knowing aspect of liberation. As this PrimordialAwareness Wisdom (jnana, yeshe, gnosis) becomes truly manifest in the lifeworld as thewisdom of kindness, and then permanent and profound loving compassion (karuna) for thewelfare of living beings, it becomes, in direct proportion to that, our own ultimate happiness(beatitude/mahasukha/paramananda), Happiness Itself.4 This is the feeling or emotional aspect(ishta, bhakti, bliss, devotion) of liberation. The indwelling innate, intrinsic presence (vidya/rigpa, lhundrub) of this wisdomhappiness is who we are now. It cannot be found outside, or in the future. All thought, evenour negative emotions are apertures opening into the depth of its primordial purity (kadag)—ifthat is, we can surrender these concepts at the instant of their arising. Indeed, everything thatarises from the purity of the Base is already self-liberated and utterly free of conceptualelaboration and corruption—empty in essence, luminous clarity by nature, and spontaneouslycompassionate in its expression.

4 In the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) Mahayana there are three kinds of compassion, exoteric/outer, esoteric/inner, andgreater esoteric or nondual “innermost secret.” The first is relative, directed toward sentient beings. The second, toward theignorance (avidya/marigpa) that causes the suffering of beings. The third is absolute, the equanimity of resting in the nondualstate of presence of the Supreme Source. This compassion without an object is the unity of compassion and the wisdom ofemptiness. From emptiness compassion spontaneously arises. Through compassion, emptiness is realized. No essentialdifference.

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These two—luminous knowing and feeling—pervade the unity of outer, inner, secret andinnermost secret (nondual) understanding of the emptiness (shunyata), selflessness (anatman),impermanence (anitya) and interdependence (pratitya samutpada) of our Great Tradition’s gradual yetalways “already accomplished” path to liberation from the ignorance (avidya) that is suffering (dukkha).Such a post-metaphysical, post-transcendent, non-conceptual understanding was perfectlyexpressed 800 years ago by Soto Zen patriarch Dogen:

Midnight. No waves No Wind. The empty boat Flooded with moonlight.

Somewhere in Tibet, a Dzogchen master softly speaks to his heart son: “Do you see it?That is what you seek. That’s it.”

A Glimpse of the Great Perfection5

The nature of mind is the unity of awareness and emptiness. . .The nature of mind is clear light. -Shakyamini BuddhaNow is the time to enter into it. - Garab Dorje

Buddha cognition. On the account of the subtlest view of the Buddhist teaching that isAti Dzogchen, the Great Perfection (Essence Mahamundra and the Madhyamaka of the DefinitiveMeaning are essentially the same as to the View), this realm of Relative Truth (samvriti satya)—form (objective reality) and formless form (mental and subjective experience)—arises from itsprimordial energy (jnana prana) within the perfectly subjective pristine cognition of the vastexpanse of Reality Itself (dharmadhatujnana/chos-bying yeshe). According to His Holiness DudjomRinpoche (1991) this unity of the absolute space of arising phenomena (dharmadhatu/bying) withprimordial consciousness itself, is the luminosity of clearlight primordial awareness wisdom(gnosis/jnana/yeshe), utterly free of conceptual elaboration. This is the perfect sphere of Dzogchen.This Ultimate Reality (dharmata/cho nyid) is the Madhyamaka luminous emptiness (shunyata) thatis the inherent nature of relative spacetime phenomena (dharma/chos) whose apparitional orillusory face (dharmin/cho can) emerges from its primordial purity (kadag) of the emptiness base(gzhi) as the limited consciousness of sentient beings who perceive, then reify, then conceptuallydesignate (maya/ignorance/ajnana/marigpa) these appearances as the seemingly substantialphenomena of a reified, imputed, permanent, and substantial everyday reality. Yet all suchinstantiation of phenomenal consciousness is “always already” illumined by the radiant originalface of the primordial awareness wisdom (jnana/yeshe) that is their (our) intrinsic actual nature,the very nature of mind (cittata/sems nyid). And that is the perfect sphere of Dzogchen, the GreatPerfection.

5 See Appendix A, Dzogchen, the Self-Perfected State, and The Buddhist View: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen ©David PaulBoaz, 2006.

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In this profound and subtle “practice of Ati Yoga, which is also secret such that only thefortunate can understand it,” Buddhahood (Buddha-nature/buddhadhatu) is accomplishedwhen the fundamental, primal intrinsic awareness (vidya/rigpa) of the Buddha Body of RealityItself (dharmakaya/chos-ku) is liberated, exactly as it is, directly here and now through therecognition—”brief moments many times”—realization and perfection of the primordiallypure body of Samantabhadra (Kuntazangpo), the Dharmakaya Buddha, who is none other thanthe pristine cognition of the supreme reality that is dharmadhatu, the vast Absolute Space of allarising phenomena, beyond belief, always already present in whatever arises in this verymoment now, here in this very human body of light (rang rig/rang rigpa). This clearlight (‘od gsal) absolute space (bying) of phenomena that is Ultimate Truth mustnot be conflated with the material, contingent relative dimension of spacetime that arises withinand through it. The prior unity of these conceptual “Two Truths” that is the nonconceptual onetruth, the perfect nondual sphere of Dzogchen, is ontologically prior, subsuming, transcendingyet embracing and pervading the physical spacetime dimension, including the “space particles”of the ground state of the quasi-physical Unified Quantum Vacuum. The great paradoxicalconclusion then is this: ultimately there is no difference! In the pristine cognition of equality—Buddhacognition (samatajnana /nyam-nyid yeshe—the Two Truths are equal. One and the same. A unity. Theprimal duality of the conceptual binary that is the Two Truths resolved in this one great nondual truth.“There is not the slightest difference between samsara and nirvana” (Nagarjuna).

The Quantum Vacuum and the Great Perfection. Thus, from this ultimate view, the ZeroPoint Energy of the Quantum Vacuum arises from the alayavijnana, the substrate consciousnessthat arises from the primordial wisdom consciousness (jnana/yeshe) that is not other than theemptiness base (gzhi). And from the Quantum Vacuum arises chitta/sems, the human bodymindalong with the entire spacetime mansion of Relative Truth. These are the three consciousnessdimensions—citta, alaya and jnana—of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist view. O wonder of wonders, allbeings are Buddha, samsara and nirvana are One! And all this, always here, now outshinesperfectly just as it is, the natural state, “natural mind” the very nature of your mind. Mahasuka,great joy. Nothing special (wu shin). As we begin to see this post-metaphysical, post-mystical “ordinarymind” as the very Nature of Mind, we wake up. “Now we spontaneously generate the love that istruly a refuge for all living beings.” (Vimalakirti). The great 14th Century Nyingma Dzogchen Master Longchen Rabjam (Longchenpa)transmits this primordial wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe) that is the very nature of Kosmos, RealityItself:

Self arising wisdom is rigpa that is empty, clear and free from allelaboration, like an immaculate sphere of crystal . . . It does not analyzeobjects. . . By simply identifying that non-conceptual, pristine, nakedrigpa, you realize there is nothing other than this nature. . . This is non-dual self-arising wisdom. . . Like a reflection in a mirror, when objectsand perceptions manifest to rigpa, that pristine and naked awarenesswhich does not proliferate into thought is called the inner power (tsal),the responsiveness that is the ground (gzhi) for all the arising of things .. . For a yogin who realizes the naked meaning of Dzogpachenpo, rigpais fresh, pure and naked, and objects may manifest and appear withinrigpa, but it does not lose itself externally to those objects.

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-Longchen Rabjam, The Treasury of the Dharmadhatu (Commentary), Adzom Chögar edition

According to recent Tibetan Dzogchen rime master Tulku Urgen Rinpoche, the twoinnermost principles of Dzogchen are Basic Space (bying/dhatu) and Awareness (rigpa/vidya).This Basic Space is pregnant luminous emptiness, the unity of emptiness (shunyata) and theclearlight luminosity (‘od gsal). In Dzogchen, the innermost secret realization of Basic Space isklong, the infinite “vast expanse” of Reality Itself, transcending all conceptual elaboration,judgement and bias, beyond even the subtlest subject-object duality, beyond objective andsubjective emptiness, beyond ground and path luminosity (Boaz, 2004).

As space pervades, so awareness pervades. . .like space, rigpa is all-encompassing. . . Just as beings are all pervaded by space, rigpapervades the minds of beings. . . . Basic space is the absence of mentalconstructs, while awareness is the knowing of this absence ofconstructs, recognizing the complete emptiness of mind essence. . .The ultimate dharma is the realization of the indivisibility of basicspace and awareness [that is] Samantabhadra. -Tulku Urgyen (As It is, Vol. I, 1999 and Rainbow Printing, 1995)

The Supreme Source. The primary Dzogchen tantra, The Kunjed Gyalpo (The SupremeSource), must surely be considered one of humankind’s great spiritual treasures. According toChögyal Namkhai Norbu, this supreme nondual teaching has been transmitted from master todisciple directly, heartmind to heartmind, for thousands of years. Historical Dzogchen wisdomdates from the teaching of Garab Dorje in the Second Century CE. The Kunjed Gyalpo tantraarises in the Eighth Century and is the fundamental tantra of the Dzogchen semde(mind)teaching series. This version of the great nondual primordial teaching is derived fromBuddhist sutra and tantra understanding of the Nature of Mind, yet its truth essence runs, likea golden thread through the grand tapestry of humankind’s primordial great WisdomTradition. Kunjed Gyalpo, The Wise and Glorious King is Samantabhadra (clarity) andSamantabhadri (emptiness) in inseparable yabyum embrace—androgynous skylike primordialAdi Buddha—the union of clarity and emptiness that is none other than our original Buddhanature, Supreme Source, Basis, primordial womb of everything. Sambantabhadra, thisDharmakaya Buddha speaks to the Logos, Vajrasattva, Sambhogakaya Buddha:

The essence of all the Buddhas exists prior to samsara and nirvana.. . it transcends the four conceptual limits and is intrinsically pure;this original condition is the uncreated nature of existence thatalways existed, the ultimate nature of all phenomena. . . It is utterlyfree of the defects of dualistic thought which is only capable ofreferring to an object other than itself. . .it is the base of primordialpurity. . . Similar to space it pervades all beings. . . Theinseparability of the two truths, absolute and relative is called the

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‘primordial Buddha’. . . If at the moment the energy of the basemanifests, one does not consider it something other than oneself. . .it self-liberates. . . Understanding the essence . . . one finds oneselfalways in this state . . .dwelling in the fourth time, beyond past,present and future. . .the infinite space of self-perfection. . . puredharmakaya, the essence of the vajra of clear light. - Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, The Supreme Source (Kunjed Gyalpo), 1999

Thus do the sutras and the tantras of Buddha’s teaching and the binary dualities of thepath—objective and subjective, self and other, observer and data, true and false, relative andultimate—abide in the prior unity of the dependently arisen perfect sphere of Dzogchen, theGreat Perfection, ultimate mind nature, luminous innate clearlight mind that is always alreadythe unity of awareness and emptiness. Who is it, that I am? All the masters of the three timeshave told it. This infinite vast expanse of the primordial awareness wisdom continuum is whowe actually are. Tat tvam ami. That, I Am! That is our supreme identity, great perfection of ouralways present Buddha Nature, deep heartseed presence of ultimate happiness that is bothorigin and aim of all our seeking.

H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche’s Comments on Garab Dorje’s Three Vajra Verses or TheThree Essential Statements of the Dzogchen View, Meditation and Conduct (translated byJohn Reynolds):

Verse I: Recognize your own true nature (The Base and View) “This fresh immediateawareness of the present moment, transcending all thoughts related to the three times (past,present, future), is itself that primordial awareness or knowledge (yeshe) that is self-originatedintrinsic awareness (rig pa).” From this View arises the Semde teaching series.

Verse II: Choose the state of presence, beyond doubt (The Path and Meditation) “Whateverphenomena of samsara or nirvana may manifest, all of them represent the play of the creativeenergy or potentiality of one’s own immediate intrinsic awareness (rig pa’i rtsal). One mustdecide upon this unique state for oneself and know that there exists nothing other than this.”From The Meditation arises the Longde teaching series.

Verse III: Continue in the state with confidence in liberation (The Fruit and Conduct)“Whatever gross or subtle thoughts may arise, by merely recognizing their nature, they ariseand self-liberate simultaneously in the vast expanse of Dharmakaya, where Emptiness andAwareness are inseparable (gsal stong gnyis med).” From the Fruit arises the Secret Upadesha(Mengagde), or heart essence (nyingthig) teaching series.

And from Jigme Lingpa, author of the Longchen Nyingthig Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse, onthe nondual Dzogchen view at play in the world:

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No Buddhas, no beings, beyond existence and non-existence Intrinsic Awareness Itself is absolute Guru, Ultimate Truth. By resting naturally, beyond fixaton in that inherently free perfect innate Bodhi-mind, I take refuge and actualize Bodhicitta. - Jigme Lingpa, Longchen Nyingthig

“The perfect explanation of Dzogchen,“ according to contemporary Dzogchen masterChögyal Namkhai Norbu is voiced in these profound words of Gautama Shakyamuni, thehistorical Nirmanakaya Buddha:

All that arises is essentially no more real than a reflection, transparently pure and clear, beyond all definition or logical explanation. Yet the seeds of past action, karma, continue to cause further arising. Even so, know that all that exists is ultimately void of self-nature, utterly non dual!

The End of the Great Search

You will not find Happiness until you stop seeking it. -Chuang Tzu

What you seek is already present. -Jesus of Nazareth

The nature of mind is Buddha from the beginning... Realizing thepurity essence of all things, to remain there without seeking is themeditation. - Garab Dorje (The Three Vajra Verses)

View, Path and Result. The wisdom teachings that have arisen within the primordialGreat Wisdom Tradition of human history have a View (darshana, theory) which explains theGround, the great Source of all appearing reality, and a Path (marga) which establishes theMeditation (bhavana) that seeks the continuity of recognition of the Ground leading to theResult or Fruition of the practice. This endpoint is “the Fruit” that is ultimate realization of our

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inherently nondual primordial wisdom sourceground that is, paradoxically “alreadyaccomplished” and “always already” present at the spiritual heart (hridyam) of each humanbeing. This final realization is seen as the essence, if not the cause of human happiness, and inthe highest nondual teaching of each tradition as ultimate Happiness Itself (paramananda,mahasuka). In Buddhism this blissful Result of the wisdom of emptiness is Buddhahood. ThePath is the confusion of the gradual seeking strategies to this “goal” of liberationenlightenment. Regarding the View, the teaching is generally presented exoterically. Thus, asknowledge deepens to wisdom in the “advanced” practitioner the teaching becomes more andmore esoteric (inward, secret, nondual). Regarding the View of the Fruition (result/realization)of the path, it may be either gradual (zengo, rim-gys-pa), or non-gradual (sudden, direct tongo,cig-car-ba). In actual practice these two are interdependent, and the “gradual/non-gradual”dualism becomes a false dichotomy. We make the goal the path (Boaz, 2006, “DoesBuddhahood Have a Cause?”).

The Paradox of Seeking. Our Great Wisdom Tradition teaches that this paradox of thepath—the paradox of seeking—is that the happiness we desire through all our seekingstrategies is already here, indwelling, timeless, perfectly awake, prior to the cyclic suffering ofthe endless painful dualities that this flesh is heir to. “The path is emptiness. Emptiness is thepath.” “What you seek is already present, but you do not know it.” “Wonder of wonders, allbeings are Buddha.” This recognition is after all, the very definition of religion—religare/religio,yoga/zygon, union with the whole—our inherent primordial urge and impulse toward spirit,the unbroken whole that is our “supreme identity” and “supreme source,” the ultimate“transcendental signified,” prior to all signification and idolotry. “We cannot become happy,we can only be happy.” We cannot become enlightened, we can only be enlightened. Why?Because seeking happiness to avoid suffering is a form of suffering, the ignorance (avidya) thatcauses suffering. Liberation from suffering—Happiness Itself—is not a separate reality, somestate or thing to be sought, caught and grasped by a knowing subject. “The seeker and thatsought are one and the same” (Padmasambhava). Actor and action are not separate. Meditatorand meditation are not separate. We need not cling to the existence or non-existence ofanything at all. Thus our seeking motive is destroyed and we enter in the immediate, nakedpristine awareness of the nondual presence (vidya/rigpa) “already present,” the perfect sphereof Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, our primordial buddhahood—by whatever name—that isfully awake, if unrecognized, from the very beginning. Thus our liberation from the endlesssuffering strategies of seeking happiness is right here now our ultimate happiness, the non-idealized happiness that cannot be lost. In the “pure view” (dag nang) of the Ati Yoga of Dzogchen there is nothing to betransformed or transcended; nothing to be fabricated, contrived or deconstructed by the mindbecause all that arises from the primordial purity (kadag) of the base (gzhi)—negative, positive,neutral—is always already spontaneously present (lhundrub) and self-perfected (rang grol), andnaturally self-liberated (rang bzhin gyis mya ngan las ‘das pa) from the very beginning. Simplyrelax into That (Tat/Sat). That is the continuity of the great (chen) completion (dzog) orperfection of the natural state, natural ordinary mind that is “the Bright” of the light of themind and everything appearing therein, always arising from primordial purity that is the veryground of being. Practice that, moment to moment, and be supremely happy (Appendix D).

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Thus it is. Now there is nothing to do, so that everything we do is selfless, authentic and kind.Thus do we choose our reality. Thus do we create our individual and thereby collectivedestiny. So, nondual, non-separate Spirit, Ultimate Reality Itself, already transcends yet includesand embraces both subject and object, self and other, right here now. Always now (turiya). Thisreality is who we actually are, our supreme identity. So there is no need to try to becomesomething else, try to change anything. “Leave it as it is, and rest your weary mind, all thingsare perfect, exactly as they are” (Shakyamuni Buddha). This is the perennial paradoxical truthof non-action, wu-wei (aporia), Surrender to the wisdom of emptiness, non-seeking, not seekingsomething outside, nor inside, not seeking anything at all. Let it be as it is, and all that arisesspontaneously self-liberates at the very instant of its arising. This is liberation fromunhappiness. This is the primordial wisdom teaching of Ati Dzogchen, and indeed, of ournondual Great Wisdom Tradition.

All the masters have told it. That happiness you seek is “always already” present. The heartseedof enlightenment, our Buddha Nature (tatagatagarbha), our Christ Nature (christos), by whatever name,is inherent right here within the continuum of our mental-emotional nature at the very heart (hridyam,kokoro, nyingpo) of the human bodymind. Can we really be that presence, this space of sky, in thechaos of our splendent earth? Yes, according to the nondual view of the wisdom traditions. Wecan be that because That is our actual original, primordial wisdom nature (gnosis, jnana, yeshe),the very nature of our mind—our original goodness, not our original sin. How do we do this?The masters of the three times—past, present, future—have told it: We take refuge in “TheThree Jewels” that are the spiritual master, the teaching, and the spiritual community, thentrain the mind in equanimity and compassion through the path (marga/lam) with its meditationpractice (bhavana) under the guidance of a qualified master, all the way to the end of it. Whymust we do all this? To realize—wonder of wonders—that “it is already accomplished” (GarabDorje). A most unusual paradox.

You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you canattain this oneness by various practices. If, in this very instant, youcould know that it can never be attained by effort. . .you would now bethe Buddha Mind. . . Do not seek Buddhahood, your seeking is doomedto failure. -Huang Po (Kraft, Zen Tradition, 1988)

In this very act of seeking, the truth is revealed, just for a moment...Buddha is within you, clear and bright and vast as space. This is themeditation. In this quiet, vast emptiness there is nothing to constructand nothing to do. In a carefree way, let it be as it is, and just relax intoit... there is nothing other than this... Now then, rest in That. -Lama Wangdor Rinpoche (Santa Fe Retreat, 2003)

Who is it? Who is it that desires to know, and to be happy? Who is it that is afraid andangry? Who is it that is born, suffers and dies? Who is it that shines through the mind andabides at the heart of all beings, forever liberated and fully awake?

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Space and Time From Pythagoras to Einstein

Space and time are not conditions in which we live, but modesin which we think. - Albert Einstein

Light Before Einstein

Let us now consider certain recent theoretical developments in Relativity Theory andthe Quantum Theory with its Unified Vacuum Quantum which offer a bridge ofunderstanding from the Materialist Realist paradigm or world view of Aristotle, the Stoics andDescartes, to the “spooky” nonlocal primordial emptiness of the Quantum Theory and therelated Buddhist view of the Great Perfection. As we have seen, the Realist Materialist/Physicalist worldview has been visited upon modern and postmodern religion, science andculture as the fundamentalist protoreligion that is Scientific Materialism (Scientism). It was thepostmodern reaction to this tyranny of objectivity of the old Modernist paradigm that begatthe emerging Noetic Revolution that is nothing less than an incipient reunion of physics andmetaphysics; of the prepersonal, the personal and the transpersonal; of realism and idealism;of science and spirituality. First then, a very brief history of spacetime. From Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, to Galileo, Newton and Einstein, both exotericand esoteric physics, philosophy and religion have been concerned with the four fundamentalaspects of appearing reality: space, time, matter, and energy. Subjectivist, esoteric (right brain)attempts to unify these realities have been offered by the contemplative yogic, metaphysicaland even mystical religious formulas of our primordial Great Wisdom Tradition. Objectivist,exoteric (left brain), attempts to understand and unify these apparently separate aspects ofreality have focused on mathematics and physics (Boaz, 1971). Energy is light and arises from the still luminous emptiness of its primordial source orbase as motion. Motion is change, the continuous change of position of an object (with itswaves and particles) relative to some frame of reference with respect to the consciousness ofan observer. Consciousness is the key. The classical mechanics of Galileo, Liebniz, and Newtonclarified this idea of relative motion. Galileo, who first proscribed value and the subjective, “qualitative” from science,permitting only the quantifiable objective, postulated a relativity theory—the Principle ofGalilean Relativity—adopted later by Newton and Einstein in which an absolute “inertial”reference frame the laws of mechanics (motion) are always valid; in which theory is perfectlyand always validated by experiment, a romantic perfect-world theory hungering after the grailof absolute objective certainty. And thereby the scientific study of the mind was marginalizedunder the ensuing procrustean “taboo of subjectivity.” Contemporary mechanistic, deterministscience and philosophy and the cultural worldview that follows therefrom continues to laborunder this logocentric false idol of the attainability of a perfect objective certainty, utterlyignoring the subjectivity of the human mind—consciousness—and its perfectly subjectiveprimordial base, all inclusive ultimate Reality Itself. So, according to the classical view of Galileo and Newton, if the laws of mechanics arevalid in reference frame “A,” they are valid in all other reference frames moving in uniform

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motion (constant velocity) relative to “A.” Newton’s laws of motion are identical for allreference frames moving in uniform, not accelerated motion. No reference frame, not even theearth is privileged. All reference frames are equally valid. The bad news for this classicalNewtonian mechanics is that the laws of mechanics are not valid for non-uniform inertialreference frames (co-ordinate systems) attached to the earth. According to recent relativitytheory, the earth cannot be an inertial reference system. The laws of classical mechanics werederived therefore, from a co-ordinate system which has never been observed. Classicalmechanics had no foundation! What was needed theoretically was something which wasabsolutely still to provide an inertial co-ordinate system or frame of reference in which thelaws of mechanics are valid, and through which light propagates. The ancient theory of theether provided such and ad hoc solution. The “luminiferous ether” is a absolutely still, unmoving, invisible, undetectable “sea”that permeates everything and though which all particles, fields and objects in the universemove. Then, more bad news. Unfortunately for classical mechanics, in 1887 the “null result” ofthe Michelson-Morley experiment “disproved” the ether theory (although Einstein thoughtthat it was salvageable). The ether concept has now reincarnated as cosmology’s QuantumVacuum. The death of the idea of an absolutely non-moving privileged reference frame gavebirth to Einstein’s Special Relativity. The incompleteness of Galilean-Newtonian relativity andMaxwell’s and then Einstein’s new relativistic principle of the absolute velocity of light left agaping theoretical hole in classical modernist physics which, along with Planck’s andEinstein’s discovery of the quantum nature of light, would doom the Newtonian view,6 andgive rise to the Postmodern worldview with its Special and General Relativity and later, thePrinciples of Quantum Uncertainty and Complementarity of the Quantum Theory. Moreover, recent advances in the cosmology of the ocillating metaverse, neurobiology,consciousness studies, Buddhist epistemology, and philosophy of mind, and the new physicsof the zero-point energy field (the quantum vacuum) have set the epistemological stage for aTwenty-first Century integral noetic revolution in religion, science and culture that is anincipient rapprochement of science and spirituality. Thus, the objectivist quest of classical mechanics for absolute non-motion as a basis forcoordinate reference systems has yet to emerge. Arising light-energy is continuous motion,constant change. Only the great depth of our ultimately subjective source (the emptiness ofTao) is changeless and still. And this perfectly subjective base or source (Brahman/shunyata/emptiness) is forever veiled to limited human conceptual objective understanding bythe inherent subjectivity of the quantum uncertainty relations, Complementarity, the Bohm-Bell-Aspect nonlocality, and the inherent limits of a two valued, truth functional logic todescribe a nondual ultimately subjective reality. Do the cognitive conceptual limits of thequantum theory and the bivalent logical syntax of language preclude the arising of anatavistic, semiotic (intersubjective), semantic and even contemplative understanding ofemptiness? We have seen that it does not. The ultimately subjective emptiness base of realitymay be penetrated by the contemplative yogic technologies of our Great Wisdom Tradition(p.14ff.).6 Newtonian mechanics works perfectly well in the mesoworld. It got us to the moon and back. It does not however, accu-rately describe interactions in the realm of the very small—the microworld of particle physics—in the macro realm of thevery large, intergalactic gravitational effects, and in the realm of the very dense—quasars and black holes.

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According to quantum physicist Henry Stapp, the discovery of quantum non-locality—quantum entanglement—is the ultimate unifying theory in the history of science. It is presentat both the microphysical and cosmological dimensions of the unbounded whole of RealityItself. The uncertainty relations of the Quantum Theory is the veil of maya to our merely discursiveconceptual knowing of the ultimate nature of Reality. Yet, there is a luminous emptiness, stillness, avast openness inherent in this movement of energy as it arises from its infinite “supremesource” as finite spacetime phenomena. This nondual non-conceptual, noetic cognition (noetos)is present to human contemplative understanding (Begley, 2007). And it is this nondualknowing—primordial wisdom/gnosis/jnana—that is the primary truth of our perennial GreatWisdom Tradition.

The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao. - Tao te Ching

The stillness in the Tao is not the true stillness. It is stillness inmotion that is the Tao that pervades heaven and earth. -Ts’ai-ken t’an

Special Relativity: Light Energy is the Wisdom of Emptiness

Something lives within you that lives longer than the suns.It abides at the place in the heart. -Chandogya Upanishad

Special Relativity, the dreams that stuff is made of. Einstein, Minkowski and Lorentzdeveloped what was published by Einstein in 1905 as “On the Electrodynamics of MovingBodies” and became known as the Special Theory of Relativity whose postulates unified thefour fundamental realities—space, time, matter, energy—in a left-brain, exoteric scientific-philosophical model. This radical Principle of Relativity—this “affront to common sense”(London Times)—established a new paradigm in science and philosophy that transcended, yetincluded the previous Newtonian scientific paradigm. Einstein accepted Minkowski’s four dimensional spacetime continuum, the threedimensions or co-ordinates of space, plus the temporal dimension of time. Einstein preferredthe name “Theory of Invariants” for the new principle because the second of the two basicpostulates of Special Relativity asserts that the spacetime separation of two “spacelike” events(events connected by a light signal) is the same, i.e. is invariant (absolute) in all inertialreference systems. The motion or speed of light (c) is constant, invariant, always the samewhen measured in relative motion. There is no reference frame or system in which light is atrest. Light-energy is motion. The speed of light cannot be relative; it is absolute in all sensory-perceptual frames of reference. And this postulate is derived from Einstein’s first postulate, thefundamental principle of relativity, that the laws of physics—the laws of mechanics and the laws ofelectromagnetism—must be the same for any observer in any reference frame anywhere in the physicalcosmos. The laws of physics—the laws of nature—are the same in all inertial reference systems.

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No observer’s reference frame is privileged or “special,” not even ours on the earth. We can dothe same mathematics and physics anywhere in the physical cosmos. This postulategeneralizes the Galilean/Newtonian relativity principle to include Maxwell’s laws ofelectromagnetism (but not gravity), not just Newton’s laws of mechanics. And this resulted inthe constancy of the velocity of light (c). Later, in 1915 Einstein’s General Theory of Relativitywould generalize his Special Relativity to include accelerated reference systems, and therebydefine a new gravity (p.38). According to our Great Wisdom Tradition, the fundamental nature of kosmos (ultimatereality) and cosmos (physical and mental reality arising therefrom) is empty, changeless andabsolute. But the mental and physical phenomenal particulars arising and filling the worldwith light arise in and are relative to that great unbroken whole. We have absolute mind (“BigMind”), our primordial sourceground by whatever name, and relative mind (“Small Mind”)arising therein. These two aspects of ultimately subjective Reality Itself are the “Two Truths”of our perennial Great Wisdom Tradition. Thus, Special Relativity has demonstrated (notproven) in a left-brain verbal-analytic modality (relative truth) the Primordial Wisdom truththat the inherent nature of all arising relative phenomena is light energy. Let us then furtherexplore this radical kosmic relationship. Human reference systems or frames of reference are perceptually and conceptuallyfabricated relative spacetime constructions of the consciousness—the cognition—of theperceiving subject, a thinking-conceptual mind, and do not exist a priori in nature, apart fromthe relative operations of the mind. Kant understood this a hundred years before Einstein.Therefore, it is through the operations of mind that we reify, designate and construct our local,relative spacetime reality. Of the great unbounded whole of appearing reality, there exist sentientbeings whose perception or consciousness of systems of reference regarding the energy-motion of objectsarising in the spacetime therein that reality, are relative to the motion or velocity of light ( c), which isabsolute or invariant, the same for all observers, the light source, and of direction, position, and time.Indeed, light disregards the (Lorentz) transformation laws of classical mechanics altogether.Paradoxically, the reference system of “the observer” (believer) is not privileged. That is, allreference frames are equally privileged. The privileged reference frame of Maxwell’s“luminiferous ether” is denied. Temporal relations are not absolute. Time is relative. Newton’sabsolute, one directional time is refuted. Linear causality is kaput.

The end of time. In Special Relativity, the forward flow of time—the thermodynamic“arrow of time”—is illusory. Thus Boltzmann’s temporal asymmetry: the laws of mechanicsdo not preclude the arrow of time from moving in either direction. The Second Law ofThermodynamics is not deterministic, but probabilistic. There is nothing that causes entropy toincrease. Nomically, entropy may increase or decrease. Time is dependent upon a particularreference frame, it has no independent existence. Time has no essential independent or absolute reality,but is merely a creative conventionally reified dependent array of causes and conditions, arising from aninfinitely vast “causal nexus.” Time exists only relatively, by intersubjective convention andconceptual designation. Past, present and future are absent any absolute reality. Events thatoccur simultaneously at separate locations in one frame of reference, will not be simultaneousin all frames of reference. Simultaneity is relative (cf. p.43). Two observers in relative motion toone another see the others’ clock “run slow” with no contradiction. And all of this is relative to

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the subjective Absolute in whom arises objective light-energy-motion whose velocity in theQuantum Vacuum is absolute, a universal constant. As we have seen, this ultimatelysubjective source of objective light-energy-mass of the E=mc2 equation, by whatever name is,ipso facto beyond physics—metaphysics—and is therefore not objectively knowable to theconceptual mind. Yet this matrix source may be recognized, then subjectively realized by atrained contemplative consciousness (p.59ff).

Therefore, some of the relations which deterministic Galilean-Newtonian mechanics had held tobe invariant or absolute—spatial distance, time, mass—have been relativized. But two criticalNewtonian relations, the velocity of light and the universality of the laws of physics have been“absolutized.” Therefore it is a mistake to assert that Special Relativity claims everything to be relative.What is relative is the spacetime arising appearances to a perceiving consciousness. What mayappear to an observer relative to the reference frame of the earth as twenty-five years, mayappear to an observer moving at near the speed of light as one year (the “twins paradox”).Appearing phenomena are dependent on the state of motion of the observer, and are relativeto that reference frame. No conscious observer, no phenomena. No consciousness, no arisingappearing reality. (More on this in the Quantum Theory below.) General Relativity, the zen of spacetime. Special Relativity (1905) is “special” because itapplies only for inertial systems in which gravitational forces (acceleration) are not present,that is, systems that move in uniform, not accelerated motion relative to one another. The forceof gravity was included by Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity (1915) and applies to allobservers whether in uniform interial motion or accelerated motion. The General Theory—arguably the greatest intellectual accomplishment in human history—is a speculative theory ofgravity, a geometric generalization of Special Relativity that includes Galileo’s and Newton'sclassical theory as a limiting case. Einstein’s Principle of Equivalence, the essence of GeneralRelativity, subsumed accelerated motion under gravitation making gravity not a force actingat a distance as Newton would have it, but a local result of gravity in curved spacetime.Spacetime is curved by local matter and energy; gravity is nothing more than the curvature ofspacetime. Both of Einstein’s relativity theories are classical theories in that they are incompatible withthe post-classical Uncertainty Principle of the Quantum Theory. Both relativity theories assert classicalrealist “locality,” that no signal can propagate faster than the velocity of light. Neither relativity theoryaddresses the problem of non-locality, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” the instantaneous,superluminal (faster than light) propagation of light, and of gravity. Indeed, no classical theory can,by definition, explain the mysterious nonlocal, superluminal connectedness (quantumentanglement) of quantum reality. (Classical Galilean, Newtonian and Einsteinian relativitylimit particle interactions to the speed of light). Definitive theorems and experiments by JohnBell, Alain Aspect and many others have confirmed this paradoxical non-local, non-causalnature of hitherto “objective” appearing reality (p.49).

A most amazing paradox. So, the velocity of an object in motion can be determinedonly relative to the consciousness of an observer. A person running down the aisle of a trainappears to be moving at the speed of the train, plus 10 mph. This is known as a classical(Lorentz) transformation. Again, Einstein assumed that the speed of light (c) moving betweenthe two reference frames was constant, i.e. the same for observers in both frames. Therefore, anobserver in each reference frame will perceive the motion differently. Both observers are

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correct! There can be no privileged reference frame which is really correct. A most amazingparadox. Again, time is not absolute, but relative. Again,simultaneity is relative. Time intervalbetween two events is relative to the motion of an observer. This notion leads to theparadoxical result of time dilation. We have seen in the “twins paradox” that a space travellermoving at near the velocity of light (c) would be away for many earth years, yet only a fewmonths will have passed in the reference frame of the space traveller. Synchronized clocks ofany two observers in different reference frames will read differently.”Moving clocks runslow.” Clocks moving at the speed of light stop. (A moving clock does not run slower or stopcompared to the clock of an observer at rest. A third clock must be used. Actually movingclocks do not really run slow. Remember, we cannot ask, “which reference frame is reallycorrect. No reference frame is privileged; not even yours). E=mc2. Another result of Special Relativity is that the mass of a body in motion increases withits velocity until, at the velocity of light, its mass becomes infinite, a fabulous result, to be sure. Einsteinlater developed this hypothesis into his famous E=mc2 , that the mass of a body is a measure of its energycontent. Just so, as space and time are not separate but constitute the continuum of spacetime,mass and energy are not separate but constitute mass-energy. This paradigm shift creates anentirely different conception of mass than that produced by the “web of belief” of Newton.Thus, this famous equation—E=mc2—was actually a footnote to Special Relativity, developedby Einstein between 1905 and 1907 when he published it. The first of what Einstein termed the two “balance principles” of classical,Galilean/Leibnizian/Newtonian relativity is the principle of the conservation of energy, whichstates that arising primordial energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form. Forexample, combustion converts stored chemical energy into thermal energy which may in turnbe converted to kinetic energy to run a generator which produces the electrical energy thatlights our homes. Throughout the conversions, energy is conserved, that is, neither created nordestroyed. The second balance principle is the principle of the conservation of mass. Classicalphysicists extended the first of these principles to include not only mechanical energy, but alsoto thermal, chemical and electromagnetic energy, that is, to all physical fields. Energy isconserved through all possible changes. Regarding the second principle, mass appeared toclassical theorists to be the essential, invariant or absolute quality of matter. (The classicalmind reifys absolute entities and does not discern quantum event moments arising from theprocess of reciprocal cognitive coupling of observer and that observed.) But this view did nothold up to Special Relativity and was therefore, transcended and included in the principle ofthe conservation of energy which had, as Einstein put it, “previously swallowed up” the otherenergy fields. Primordial light energy arising from its utterly ineffable source is alwaysconserved. So now mass (matter) and energy are equivalent as mass-energy. Mass is solidified energy;energy is liberated matter. The great mind of Isaac Newton anticipated this truth in his Optikswhen he asked, “Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another.” Hume referredto this greatest of all intellects as “the greatest and rarest that ever arose for the ornament andinstruction of the species.” The great contemplative minds of the Buddhas and Mahasiddhasnotwithstanding, only the astonishing syncretic genius of Aristotle would compare.

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So, E=mc2 is the mathematical formulation of the Theory of Special Relativity to expressthe fundamental equivalence of matter and energy, where “E” is energy, “m” is mass (quantityof matter), and “c2 “ is the velocity of light squared (multiplied by itself), a huge number.Therefore, there is enormous energy contained in the smallest bit of matter. This equationrepresents the mathematical formula for the conversion of mass (matter) to energy that occursin the nuclear reactions of stars, nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. Einstein explains simply(1952):

The mass of a body is the measure of its energy content; if theenergy changes by L, the mass changes in the same sense byL/9x1020, the energy being measured in ergs, and the mass in grams.

The E=mc2 equation applies not just to nuclear reactions, but to all energytransformations, thermal, chemical and electromagnetic. The most profound example of theequivalence of energy and mass is “pair production,” the pair creation of particles of matterand antimatter arising from the Quantum Vacuum that is the pure primordial energy base ofthe physical cosmos. This occurs in particle accelerators, black holes and the Big Bangs thatcreate the many universes of the oscillating “Metaverse” (Multiverse). The wisdom of emptiness. E=mc2 demonstrates that all matter, all of material reality isactually light-energy (prana, shakti, lung, pneuma, ch’i) arising from vast primordial emptiness/matrix/sourceground, just as the Vedas, Tantras and many other teachings of our Great Wisdom Tradition havetold from the very beginning. On the account of our Great Tradition then, the physical cosmos isnot simply a linear, material chain of cause and effect from the “Big Bang” (“First Cause”) tothe present, but an atemporal, continuous emanation, manifestation, objectification orsolidification of light-energy from its great timeless, ultimately or perfectly subjective, utterlyineffable base or source, the “supreme source” (kunjed gyalpo, cittadhatu), of all-inclusiveKosmos, (gross, subtle, causal, nondual aspects of the reality demensions of Body, Mind, Spirit),the Primordial Emptiness, Tao, Brahman of our Great Wisdom Tradition. According to TibetanDzogchen scholar and meditation master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu:

It is the inherent nature of the primordial state to manifest as light, whichin turn manifests as the five colors, the essences of the elements ...toproduce the elements themselves, which make up ...the whole materialdimension ...the spontaneously arising play of this energy ...may beenjoyed as such by an individual who remains integrated with his or heressential inherent condition, in the self-liberating, self-perfected state, thestate of Dzogchen.

-Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, 1999

E=mc2, with its light energy (motion matter), along with the inherent emptiness of suchmatter in the Quantum Theory, has bridged the gap, analogically, between space and time,physics and metaphysics, between the vexing modernist dualism of the Cartesian/Newtonianobjective worldview, and the inherent subjectivity of the quantum and Buddhist worldviews.From this urgent synthesis now arises the incipient integral world reformation of the Twenty-First Century that is the very foundation of the emerging Noetic Revolution. But first, theQuantum Revolution.

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The Quantum Revolution

The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stablefoundations of physics have broken up. . . Time, space, matter . . .allrequire reinterpretation.” -Albert North Whitehead (1967)

Prelude: It’s only physical. Prior to the 16th and 17th century discoveries ofCopernicus, Kepler and Galileo, humanity’s worldview was essentially subjective. The earlyGreek, Hebrew, Hindu and Chinese traditions as well as indigenous shamanism, were allbased upon speculative subjective metaphysical systems with no organized objectivemethodology; no science. The Taoists, the Buddhists, the Hindus, Roman Cynics and Stoics,and Plato all speculated. Aristotle, Ptolemy, Plotinus and Nagarjuna speculated, classified andqualified. But the Copernican Revolution quantified. The history of Western science andphilosophy since has been an objectivist/rationalist epistemological quest for the grail ofabsolute objective certainty, an Aristotelian strategy to “save the appearances” from thespectre of Platonic and Neoplatonist transcendence, unity and mystical and spiritualsubjectivism. The great contemplative subjectivist knowledge paradigm that included theGreek Hermetic, Hebrew Kabbalistic, and Eastern wisdom traditions was sacked in a zealousApollonian objectivist quest to measure and quantify everything. The primordial unity of theknowing subjective observer-perceiver and the apparently separate perceived object wasthereby formally split into the duality of observer and that “other” object observed. Fromabout 1600, Western science and philosophy have assumed—without empirical proof—themetaphysical presumption that all appearing reality is only physical (monistic Physicalism orMaterialism), and that it is somehow separate from the mental and spiritual dimensions of ournature. This represents an absolute epistemological dualism of subject and object, observer anddata, appearance and reality, matter and spirit, all the way into subatomic particles (pluscharges and minus charges), the presumed ultimate constituents of phenomenal reality. By1900 it was commonly assumed that the whole of appearing reality could be neatly reduced tolittle purely physical subatomic billiard balls whose behavior could be perfectly described anddeterministically predicted by the sovereign classical mechanics of Sir Isaac Newton.

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Only the whole is completely objective. -William Earle

Then, suddenly and without warning, the “ultraviolet catastrophe” struck the greattheoretical estate that was the Modernist objectivist worldview. In 1900, German theoreticalphysicist Max Planck made a world shattering discovery. Transcending his objectivistpredilections, Planck correctly formulated the mathematical description of ultraviolet radiationemitted from a perfect “black body” absorber proving that energy was absorbed and emitted,not in a continuous wave of electromagnetic energy as Thomas Young’s wave theory (1801)

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required, nor in a continuous stream of individual atoms as the classical, billiard ball theory ofAristotelian and modernist atomic continuity required, but in a discontinuous emission ofphotons as discrete particle-like energy “packets,” which he named “quanta.” All sub-microscopic phenomena—including not only photons, but electrons—exhibit suchquantization. Indeed, in 1924 Prince Louis de Broglie proved that such quantization obtainsnot only at the subatomic level, but at the atomic level as well. This fundamental “graininess”of all physical reality has profound implications for the development of microphysics,cosmology, epistemology, and metaphysical ontology.7

Yet particles in motion also need Young’s related wave motion to fully describe theirsubatomic behavior. Thus energy or light was proven to be both particle-like and wave-like, aparadox that collapsed the old classical physics of Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes and Newton.Planck’s great discovery became the foundation of the new, post-classical, postmodern, non-determinist and non-objectivist Quantum Field Theory, and won him the Nobel Prize in 1918. In the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Niels Bohr replaced the Rutherford atomicmodel with his own, which explained the other two nails in the coffin of Newtonianmechanics, namely the hitherto dubious physical existence of the atom, and the problem ofdiscreet atomic spectral emissions. But by 1925 it was clear that the strict determinism ofclassical Newtonian mechanics was inadequate to explain the apparent dual wave/particlenature of light. In 1905—the prolific year he developed and published the Special Theory ofRelativity— Einstein firmly established the particle-photon nature of light using it to explainthe photoelectric effect, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. Newton’s theory oflight was also a particle theory. As noted above, Thomas Young had previously established thewave-like nature of light with his ingenious, double-slit experiment in 1801. Thus, by 1925 thedual wave-particle nature of light was firmly established in modern and contemporaryphysics. However, recent particle physics is trending toward a wave theory of light (footnote12, p.69) Well, which is it, wave or particle? The western logical canon states as its Law ofExcluded Middle that “Either A or not-A” (contradictories cannot both be false). So which is it?Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity of the Quantum Theory replies that it is both. But howcan a point-like particle be a wave spread out in space? Before a measurement, light iswavelike and demonstrates wave interference. Upon measurement, light behaves like a point-like particle. Again, to fully understand the behavior of light we need both wave and particledescriptions and equations. Thus the behavior of light is not contradictory, it’scomplementary. Physics just gets weirder and weirder.

7 Planck demonstrated that both the “ultraviolet catastrophe,” and another nail in the coffin of Newtonian physics, the photo-electric effect, could both be explained by his new “quantum of action;” that the atomic vibrational energy of a photon isquantizied arising in multiples of discrete “wave packets.” This discovery is nothing less than a new constant of nature,namely Planck’s Constant (h). The theorem is E=hf where E is atomic vibrational energy, f is frequency, and h is the newconstant (10-33) a minuscule quantity of measure of the microphysical graininess of the physical cosmos. If this tiny constantwere zero the universe would be not granular, but smooth and continuous, the continuity of Aristotle, Galileo and Newton.

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Being and Time

Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once. -Anon.

Continuing our very brief history of time, in 1905 Einstein published his Special Theory ofRelativity, and in 1915 his General Theory of Relativity. In 1924 de Broglie discovered that matterhas a wavelike character. These great discoveries led in 1926 to Max Born and ErwinSchrödinger’s 1926 ingenious wave equation and the development of Wave Mechanics wherethe electron becomes a probability wave. Werner Heisenberg’s 1927 formulation of MatrixMechanics (a particle mechanics) with its catastrophic (to classical dualistic subject-objectdeterminist objectivism) Uncertainty Principle (the Principle of Indeterminacy) led to NielsBohr’s Principle of Complementarity. Together these two quantum mechanical principlescomprise the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of the Quantum Field Theory which demonstratesan inherent duality and atemporal subjectivity at the very heart of physical reality. Thisduality is the behavior of matter (the position and momentum of its ultimate particles), and itsphysical constitution (light wave or particle?) Thus ended 400 years of classical and modernist,material realist, objectivist physics with its objective linear—directional and durational—arrowof time, and 2500 years of deterministic epistemological and ontological materialist and realistdualistic separation of relative appearances from ultimate reality, of spacetime matter from theimmediate now of its timeless Spirit Source. All of this made Albert Einstein very unhappy, as we shall see. He expressed to hisfriend and colleague Max Born in 1948, “If one abandons the assumption that what exists indifferent parts of space has its own, independent, real existence, then I simply cannot see whatit is that physics is meant to describe.” The Quantum Revolution has now firmly established the urgency of the new globalnondual Noetic Revolution that began with the great Second Century sages Nagarjuna in theEast, and Plotinus in the West. The end of time. These two great principles of the Quantum Theory have effectively demolishedfoundationalist epistemological and scientific Realism: absolute time, absolute space, and the objectivistlinear Principle of Causality of the classical, Newtonian Modernist Enlightenment worldview, and withit the epistemological dualism of appearance and reality, of perceiving/ knowing subject and its separateperceived object, and the attendant ontological dualism of spirit and matter, mind and body. Particlesare no longer separate. Observer and observed are no longer separate. Spiritual practitionerand nondual godhead are no longer separate. Einstein’s classical Special and GeneralRelativity assume that Aristotle’s uncoupled absolutes of time and space are the spacetimecontinuum, the theoretical unity of time and space (cf. p.37). Heisenberg’s post-classical Quantum Theory expresses the left-brain exotericphilosophical truth that the observing subject and the object observed arise not separately intime, but as a timeless atemporal relationship of interdependence (Buddhist pratitya samutpadaor Interbeing) through acts or processes of consciousness, that is to say, acts of empiricalobservation and cognition. “Subject and object are only one” (Schrödinger). “It is the theorywhich decides what we can observe” (Einstein). This exoteric truth of the timeless (not eternal)subjectivity of consciousness is the analog (but not reducible to) the right brain esoteric truth ofour nondual primordial Great Wisdom Tradition: Tat tvam asi (That thou art). That is our

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“supreme identity.” That is who we actually are. We are not ultimately separate from thisgreat, vast expanse of the atemporal unbroken whole, the “supreme source” (cittadhatu) inwhom we all arise and participate. So it is told by the masters of our Great Tradition. Thus the Quantum Revolution effectively ended the Modernist, rationalistEnlightenment Project and began the postmodern age that is now yielding to post-critical,post-metaphysical integral holism, ontological relativity (p.9), and methodological pluralism,beyond the foundationalist false absolute—materialism—of the Western metaphysicaltradition. Thus emerges the Twenty-first Century new reformation in religion, science andculture—our new Noetic Revolution.

Now is the time. According to our Great Wisdom Tradition—including Quantum FieldTheory and its scientific and philosophical descendants—the subjective observer is not separatefrom the object observed, but lives in a relation of interdependence with it. We perceive suchobjects in what appears to be an external objective linear time. We’ve seen that this conventional“arrow of time” moves in a causal chain of quantum event moments (vasana) from past, topresent to future (as codified in the second law of thermodynamics—entropy increases). Yet, thepast and the future necessarily occur now, in the present moment of our internal memory andimagination. Time, as this “eternal present,” is then subjective. Thus our ontology ofinterdependence has an objective cause and effect relative-conventional level, and a subtler,direct atemporal subjective level (the Two Truths). So our objective experience of time is notdefinitive. Why? Events in time are perceptually and conceptually constituted or constructedonly in relation to the process of change—relative motion—experienced by a sentient bodymindlocated in an objective relative-conventional spacetime reference frame (t= vt = v x L = Lv). Change isthe moment-to-moment causal arising, dwelling and decay of phenomenal appearance to asentient nervous system. Time—our sense of time—is then, a sensory-conceptualsuperimposition upon this vast perfectly subjective timeless process of change, of changelessBeing Itself always in process of becoming. Parmenedes and Heraclitus together at last.Einstein’s Special Relativity and our Great Wisdom Tradition agree: contrary to Galileo’s andNewton’s classical mechanics, there can be no objective, universal or absolute timeindependent of, or unrelated to relative, conventionally arising phenomenal particulars. I havetermed this Ontological Interdependence. Thus, the non-relativized absolute objective time ofclassical mechanics—from Aristotle to Newton—is a logocentric “false absolute.” So time is nolonger “out there.” Time is “in here,” in the mind of the beholder. But where in here is it? According to Vedanta and Buddhist Middle Way wisdom, within the interval/bardo ofthis subjective now of the present moment lives the infinite/eternal Primordial AwarenessWisdom (gnosis, jñana/yeshe) of the “fourth time” (turiya), a potential, usually unrealized stateof being (turiyatita) that is the already present immediate, timeless nondual witness presence(christos, atman, vidya/rigpa) of the infinite expanse of Spirit that we always already actually are,here and now and nowhere else. This fourth time, the moment now, unconceived, is an emptiness ofperceiver and perceived. This is Tibetan Buddhism’s ozel ling, and esoteric Christianity’s “upperroom,” the secret place where the outshining luminosity (abhasa) of the primordial clear light(prabhasa) arises and enters in. Remembering the paradigmatic “Two Truths” of nondual ultimate Reality Itselfwe’ve seen that the present experience of spacetime reality in our mindstream, although

c c c c2

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objectively “real” by our conventional conceptual designations, is merely heuristic and“merely metaphorical” (Goethe)—it has no independent, separate, objective existence. Allrelative spacetime relationships among events and beings are fundamentally, mutuallyinterdependent, coemergent, coextensive and interconnected, situated together in Relationship(hetu, tendrel), a context or ultimate causal matrix of radical, timeless, perfectly subjectiveprimordial openness/emptiness (not nihilistic, atheistic nothingness). “We are such stuff asdreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep” (Shakespeare, The Tempest). Implications of this astonishing result for the realist-idealist duality, the freedom-determinism duality, the “hard problem” of the mind-body relation, and for an integral noeticepistemology and science are profound: appearance and reality, form and emptiness,becoming and being, + and - values, subject and object, self and other, woman and man, Godand humanity, all the apparent binary dualities of relative-conditional contingent existence in time arealready a timeless perfectly subjective prior unity! The two complementary streams of anybinary—of all conventional dualistic reality—meet and merge in radically open emptiness(shunyata), Tao, Nirguna Brahman, the Gnostic Depth (Bathos), the Pleroma (fullness) of thestill silence. This vast fullness/depth is also the womb-source of our Great Goddess Mother,infinite, ineffable feminine principle, clarity of the “sky-like” non-dual or transcendentPrimordial Awareness Wisdom. Let us now explore this noetic logic of reality.

Post-Quantum Logic: West Meets East

Open mouth, already a mistake. -Zen Pith

Neils Bohr’s Fundamental Principle of Complementarity that yields the wave-particleduality of the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Quantum Theory appears to violate two ofAristotle’s three “Laws of Thought,” the foundational laws of Western logic and mathematics,namely the Law of Contradiction, and the Law of the Excluded Middle. (Aristotle’s first law isthe “Law of Identity, “A is A,” and not something other.) The Law of Contradiction—”Notboth A and Not-A (A cannot be not-A) or contradictories cannot both be true—is violatedbecause light cannot be both a point-like particle, and a wave spread out in space. Waves andparticles are distinct objective entities. If an object is A, it cannot also be B. The Law ofExcluded Middle—”either A or not-A” (contradictories cannot both be false)—is also violatedbecause light must be either a particle or a wave, but not both. Moreover, in quantummechanics, a particle—an electron—may exist in an ineffable “super position,” that is, prior toa measurement that “collapses the wave function” the electron is in two places at once! Inother words the electron is both A and not-A. This proposition represents the essentialambiguity of quantum mechanical logic and ostensibly violates the law of Excluded Middle. Whether it is the Law of Excluded Middle or the Distributive Law that is violated, andwhether or not Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity saves the Excluded Middle, this untidy“quantum measurement problem” is only a problem if one insists on the primacy of theWestern Logical Canon. Is Aristotle’s syllogistic logic the last word? In this purely deductivelogic, the Law of Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle are not apriori trueassumptions, but are logically deduced from the definition of contradictories as stated in the

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Law of Contradiction itself. But in the Eastern logical canon the truth of a statement is notlogically equivalent to the falsity of its contradictory, as we shall see. Is the human mind then, entirely bound by the logical syntax of this binary purelydeductive, merely two valued truth-functional logic? Are we forever yoked to a bivalent,bipolar view of reality that logically excludes the holism of both A and not A? Thisdichotomous, black and white mode of thinking, this pernicious, and unconsciousintersubjective mythos of dualism has infected the history of ideas in the West—religion,science and culture—and we’re not even aware of it! Let us monitor—moment to moment inour mindstream— this logical pretense to knowledge. How do we move then, from this fearful habitual quest for the totemic, logocentric idolof absolute objective certainty—the limit of the logical syntax of language—to an atavistic,semiotic semantics, even a meditative contemplative integral understanding where the “modalmismatch“ of mathematical logical necessity and the radical contingency of the QuantumTheory and Buddhist Dzogchen are subsumed in their interdependent ontic prior unity? Both Hindu and Buddhist logicians in the East, and the European Intuitionists(Brouwer, von Pauler) deny Aristotle’s Western Law of Excluded Middle. This law is replacedwith the unifying Law of Connection, “Both A and not-A,” (“Everything is connected with allother things”), and its complementary, “Neither A nor not-A.” These two together permit theontological interdependence, the non-separateness of all arising phenomena—the “Interbeing”of Buddhist “dependent arising” (pratitya samutpada)—and do not assume or presuppose theexistence of A, that is, the existence of anything at all. This then, permits a unified, East/Westlogic that allows, without contradiction, our fundamental Principle of OntologicalInterdependence upon which turns the new post-material, post-metaphysical theories ofontological and universal relativity explored below. So, as Quine and Duhem have shown,even deductive logic is conventional and cannot be a path to objective certainty. This Law ofConnection defies the Western logical orthodoxy—the great legacy of Aristotle, Frege andRussell—thereby revealing the ontologically prior, always present unity of the perennial TwoTruths that is the one great truth that must be included in any theory of ontological oruniversal relativity, and in any “theory of everything.” The wave-particle duality of the Quantum Theory then, is in principle compatible withthe Law of Connection—both A and not-A. Thus, with this urgent logical enrichment,primordial light is, or may be, without contradiction, both a point-like particle (after ameasurement), and a wave spread out in space (before a measurement).

Wu-wei. Neils Bohr’s coat of arms was the tai chi—the yin-yang symbol that outpicturesthe primordial emptiness ground (Wu) of Ultimate Reality (Tao) in whom arises these twoprimordial energies, yin and yang that is the very light that creates the five elements (wu-hsing)from which evolve all of material spacetime reality. This dialectic of the Tao of emptinessincludes both ”is and is not,” “both/and,” “both A and not A,” both being and non-being.Tao/emptiness is the interdependent arising (pratitya samutpada) of all phenomena, all thingsspontaneously and effortlessly (te) as wu-wei (aporia), wayless non-seeking conceptualsurrender, flowing return (fu) again to the light, supreme source that is “the stillness in motionthat pervades heaven and earth.” “The wu-wei that does not aim at wu-wei, is truly wu-wei”(Lao Tzu).

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The Great Quantum Debate: Einstein, Bohr, and a New Ontology

It is difficult to locate a black cat in a dark room, especially if thereis no cat. -Confucius

Prelude: Physics in trouble. There have been two great revolutions in science, theCopernican Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, and the Twentieth Century QuantumRevolution. Now, on the cusp of the Twenty-first Century we enter the new NoeticRevolution, the establishment of a science of consciousness—the long neglected study of themind beyond or prior to the brain. Perhaps the greatest problem facing theoretical physics today is the incompleteness ofthe “Standard Model” and its Quantum Theory. The problem is intimately linked to the lackof a unifying Quantum Gravity that quantizes General Relativity unifying it with theQuantum Theory. Such a synthesis will relativize the logocentric idols of General Relativity,namely absolute spacetime and absolute locality. Unfortunately, the Standard Model and itstheoretical quantum gravity candidates, Superstring Theory and Super Gravity, indeed all ofthe G.U.T. candidates cling to epistemological Realism and thus to absolute spacetime andabsolute locality. What is needed is a cognitively courageous theoretical leap from this scientificfundamentalism toward a non-realist, non-materialist, non-local new physics paradigm. The emergingintegral science of matter, mind, and spirit is an auspicious beginning of this urgent inter-dimensional,inter-paradigm project. Here, the absolute dynamics of pre-quantum physics is yielding to theinteractive dynamics of the interdependent epistemology and ontology of the emerging NoeticRevolution. There is presently a glaring inadequacy of the Standard Model to explain 1) its freeconstants, the values of which define the properties of particles (their masses and the strengthsof the forces), 2) the non-zero mass of the nutrino (CPT symmetry violation), 3) the Higg’s fieldand 4) the Standard Model’s inability to explain, or explain away the mystical Dark Matter andDark Energy (the Cosmological Constant Problem) that together constitute about 96 percent ofthe known physical universe. Clearly, the Standard Model with its quantum mechanicaldescription of nature is in dire need of that next more inclusive theory, a theory that willtranscend its limits, yet include its many successes. By 1980 theoretical physics had established the quantitatively robust Standard Model, asupreme intellectual achievement. It is now the “old paradigm” scientific orthodoxy.Philosophers of physics generally agree that there have been no real breakthroughs since. Theincomplete Standard Model is now in the “scientific crisis” that precedes a “scientificrevolution” and a “paradigm shift”. It is unable to explain the Quantum Uncertainty Principleand quantum nonlocality (entanglement). String Theory mathematics is in yes, chaos, and thenonzero mass of the neutrino,8 along with Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and the “Problem ofConsciousness” (the problem of subjectivity) are the new clouds on the horizon that portend at8 Experimental results from Fermilab’s MINOS experiment, and others, indicate an asymmetry between neutrinos andantinutrinos. They appear to have different masses, which violates the Standard Model’s CPT symmetry of RelativisticQuantum Field Theory, which violates Einstein’s Special Relativity. This neutrino sector revelation, if true, demonstrates thelimits of the Standrd Model and the need of a fundamentally new paradigm in physics.

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least a radical revision of the Standard Model, the model that explains nearly nothing about 96percent of the physical cosmos, and absolutely nothing about consciousness, the non-physicalor metaphysical subjectivity that is Kosmos Itself! That “next more inclusive theory” willtranscend yet include the many truths of the Standard Model with its Quantum Theory, just asRelativity Theory included Newtonian Mechanics, which included Galilean Mechanics, whichcorrected yet included the celestial mechanics of Kepler, Copernicus and Aristotle.

“Why,” asks physicist Lee Smolin, “is physics in trouble?” I will here, again argue thattheoretical physics has at last “hit the wall” fabricated by its petrified, ideological attachment to afoundationalist Material Realist orthodoxy, grounded in the metaphysical assumption that the whole ofreality is pre-given to the senses as an objective purely physical reality. This is the logocentricmetaphysical false idol that is the sinister “myth of the given” with its denial of consciousness,intersubjectively fixed for the Western mind by Apollonian measure, the logic of Aristotle, andGalilean radical objectivity, that is to say, the dogmatic presumption of monistic Physicalism(Materialism) with its effective denial of subjective, even “vertical spiritually empirical”phenomena. Why must reality be only and ultimately physical? Modern and contemporaryphysics has resolutely ignored the clues given by the profound stochastic subjectivity of theQuantum Field Theory and Quantum Cosmology, the “Problem of Consciousness,” andBuddhist advaitic (nondual) epistemology. More on this below.

The great quantum debate. The epistemological Scientific Realism of the HiddenVariables interpretation of the Quantum Theory—Einstein, de Broglie, Schrödinger, Bohm—inperennial debate with the nominalist, instrumentalist, anti-realist Copenhagen Interpretationof the Quantum Theory—Bohr, Heisenberg, Born—deny that the Quantum Theory iscomplete, that is, the Standard Model of physics is incomplete. Einstein and the realists claimthat it fails to offer a non-statistical, non-instrumental, realist description of the real objectiveexistence of the furniture of spacetime physical reality. The Quantum Theory must therefore,be understood as an incomplete description of physical reality. Einstein insisted on anepistemologically realist interpretation; there’s an objective observer-independent “real worldout there” (RWOT) existing independently from we separate observing subjects with ourinstruments. On this essentialist, representational account the objects appearing to the sensesexist as objective, independently, essentially real entities just as they appear and are given tous by the medium of our sense perception (the “myth of the given”). The “completeness ofphysics” here assumes without proof—that is, it begs the question—of Physicalism. If physicalistphysics is a complete explanation of reality, reality must necessarily be only physical. On the otherhand, both Heisenberg and Bohr rejected the foundationalist defences of the realist,mechanistic determinism of both Einstein’s and Newton’s classical physicalist worldview. Thus, Einstein’s “Inner Realist” required that properties of material objects (1) have anindependently “real existence” and (2) all physical effects are local (electromagnetic signalscannot exceed the speed of light). The Copenhagen Interpretation allegedly violates thiscommon sense realism of locality in that an individual quantum system—say, a pair ofparticles—can separate into two “spacelike” (separated by a light signal) entities moving apartfrom each other while their quantities (position and momentum) remain a single “entangled”entity. When a measurement is made of one particle of the system, the value of the other maybe known instantaneously. That is to say, the particle pair seem to interact non-locally,

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superluminally, via a signal that travels at faster than the speed of light. Such “quantumentanglement” is a violation of the “locality” required by Einstein’s neorealist Special Theoryof Relativity. Indeed, without an experiment to determine a measurement of the particlequantities—position and momentum—the Copenhagen Interpretation holds that the particlesare non-existent—not real—a result that Einstein vigorously resisted. Thus, it would seem thatscientific Material Realism and the anti-realist Quantum Theory are utterly incompatible. Letus not foreclose debate just yet. In the infamous EPR thought experiment (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen), published in 1935,Einstein’s attempt to “save the appearances”—to salvage the realist “myth of the given”—takes the form of a “thought experiment” challenge to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Bohrand Heisenberg. The EPR argument assumes the “locality assumption”—no particleinteraction can be nonlocal—and argues that a measurement can be made that proves that aparticle in a correlated quantum system at one location in space cannot be influenced by ameasurement of a particle at another location. Rather, the first particle will have precisesimultaneous values as to the particle’s quantities—both position and momentum—a violationof the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. This conclusion, according to EPR, proves, not thatanti-realist quantum mechanics is false, but that it is incomplete, that is to say, its description ofthe particle behavior in the correlated quantum system is not a complete description of thebehaviour of the system. Thus the cause of determinist scientific Material Realism is furthered.Further proof argued by Einstein: “God does not play dice with the universe.” Bohr respondedto this objection of the determinist Einstein to the Copenhagen indeterminist probabilistic viewof reality thusly: “Oh Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” Einstein further argued that if the Quantum Theory is complete it must apply not onlyto micro-particles, but as well to macroscopic phenomena, cats, trees and stars. Is it not, afterall, absurd to conclude that the location of a cat—Schrödinger”s cat, any cat—cannot beprecisely determined, just because its electrons have no precise location? Bohr’s nominalist, instrumentalist anti-realist reply to EPR—that the two-particlequantum system does not exist in reality, but only in an ideal experimental context—was notat all satisfying to Einstein and the naive atomistic Realism of the hidden variables neorealists. For the next thirty years the EPR debate chilled. Then, in 1964 John Bell published aseminal paper introducing “Bell’s Theorem,” a mathematical proof that refutes any model ofreality (not just phenomena) that requires the locality assumption; that is, reality mustnecessarily be nonlocal. Bell’s Theorem established laboratory experiments—based on themathematical formalism of”Bell’s inequalities”—wherein the nonlocality of quantummechanics could be tested and Einstein’s realist interpretation with its locality assumptioncould be proved or disproved. Upon Bell’s untimely death, these experiments were conductedby Alain Aspect, and later by many others, that proved that Einstein’s hidden variables are,necessarily, nonlocal and therefore, the Material Realism of classical and relativistic physics isdisproved. Einstein and the Neorealist atomists are wrong and the holistic anti-realist,nominalist Copenhagen School is vindicated. That is the current academic and popular “highculture” view.

Thickening the plot. Well, that’s not quite the end of the story. Lee Smolin argues (NewYork Review of Books, June 14, 2008) that Bell’s experimental result—”Bell’s inequalities”—

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requires that only one of Einstein’s realist assumptions listed above is incorrect. Remember,these are (1) matter has a “real existence” prior to the “wave collapse” resulting from anobservation or measurement, and (2) matter’s particle interactions are local, that is , they obeythe classical Principle of Special Relativity, that all particle interactions are mediated by lightsignals, thus no particle can exceed the speed of light, and therefore Einstein’s “spooky actionat a distance,” the bizarre nonlocality of quantum connectedness (entanglement) is false.Smolin speculates that it is assumption #2, particle interactions are local—the “localityassumption”—that is incorrect, as per Bell’s inequalities (cf. The Quine-Duhem Thesis abovep.13). “This assumption can be denied while holding fully to Einstein’s notion of realism.”Thus Smolin’s Neorealistic “attempt to save the appearances” enlists the “special pleading” ofthe intrepid “hidden variables” argument whose ad hoc variations we may trace back inepistemic time through positivist, mechanist, empiricist, materialist/physicalist strategies allthe way back to Leucippus and Democritus and the Greek pre-Socratic atomists, and therealist Buddhist atomists of the Abidharma. Smolin argues, “There are theories that make the same predictions as quantummechanics and are fully consistent with Einstein’s notion of realism, but give up theassumption of locality.” These are of course, the “hidden variables,” theories of David Bohm,de Broglie, and recently, Ghiradi, Rimini and Weber. These theories give a Material Realistexplanation of quantum events, and criticize the stochastic, epistemologically anti-Realistresults of the Copenhagen School as incomplete. For Smolin, Alain Aspect’s experimentalresults on Bell’s Theorem ruled out only hidden variables theories that are local, but not thenonlocal theories above. Moreover, Smolin reminds us that recent experiments in the on-goingeffort to quantize General Relativity and unify it with the Quantum Field Theory through amore complete and inclusive theory of Quantum Gravity suggest that locality—physicalinteractions are local, not superluminal—is a primitive theory that describes quantumbehavior arising from a primordial “fundamental reality prior to the spacetime locality ofmerely physical phenomena.” (Sounds like Buddhist/Vedanta Idealist metaphysics.) Thisincompatibility of General Relativity with the present state of the Quantum Field Theory it isassumed, will produce that next more inclusive, unifying realist theory, i.e. A Super-DuperString Theory that will correct the “problem of infinities” inherent in both theories, withoutappealing to a quite problematic ad hoc “renormalization” theorem.

“Hope for a miracle.” Alas, it cannot. Material Realist theories operate in the epistemic,relative conventionally real spacetime world. Our conceptual understanding is limited by thisdimension or modality and cannot penetrate any ineffable ontic Reality that may lie prior tothe Planck limit (Planck time, Planck length) and the quantum uncertainty relations. ThusRealism necessarily refers us to that ontologically subtler strata of formation—ontologicallyprior to the purely physical—which lies beyond this essential limit of conceptualunderstanding. The epistemology of Foundational Material Realism—the conceptual realm ofRelative Truth—cannot function as an ontological theory of ultimate reality in the subtler, non-conceptual realm of Ultimate Truth pointed to by the anti-Realism of the Unified QuantumVacuum, and more completely described by the Transcendental Idealism of the Vedic/Buddhist tradition. We have waited twenty-four hundred years for a hidden variable to save MaterialRealism! The entire edifice of the current world view of Scientific Materialism begs this question of

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Physicalism, the metaphysical assumption that reality is purely material or physical (Appendix B: TheIdols of the Tribe: The Metaphysics of Science). Again, the “completeness of physics” and itsQuantum Theory begs this question of Physicalism. How much longer must we wait? Wouldit be unfair to assert that this materialist IOU has sold out the Western Tradition from the verybeginning? And we’ve all bought it! In any case, the metaphysical, special pleading of the“hope for a miracle” hidden variable strategy of Reductive Materialism, EliminativeMaterialism, and Scientific Materialism (Scientism) requires a watchful skepticism. Alas, the appalling academic suppression of new work on hidden variables—andconsciousness and contemplative studies of the Buddhist contemplative cognitive“supernormal”—that dissent from the eristic ethos of the Copenhagen “orthodox ontology”has, as Smolin points out in his excellent The Trouble With Physics (2006), greatly inhibitedfurther research. Perhaps such lettered hubris may best be understood as an unconsciousintersubjective, deep background ontological reticence to rocking the epistemological boat ofthe status quo, lest we be cast rudely from our verecundiam comfort zone of instrumentalistquantum orthodoxy into that naked, “spooky” void of ultimately subjective Reality Itself. Andthis, while the anti-realist, even nascent ontological Idealism of the Copenhagen view pointssteadily beyond its nominalist, instrumentalist calculations, into this great open expanse of“metaphysical” emptiness. Thomas Kuhn would think so.

A New Ontology? In any case, it is clear that with the epistemological failure ofMaterial Realism to provide ontological solace, these two great physical theories of thetwentieth century—General Relativity Theory and the Quantum Theory—require a “finaltheory,” or at least a more inclusive, post-realist, nonlocal new ontology to explain Smolin’s“unified nature” of arising, spacetime phenomenal reality. Smolin and other neorealists graspat this next more inclusive theory, apparently unaware that epistemological Material Realismalone is necessarily precluded as an ultimate ontological theory by the conceptual—logical andepistemological—ambiguity barrier of the Planck time (10-33) and the Planck length (10-43). Ourweighty Problem of Knowledge—how we know what there is—requires a new noetic ontologicalapproach that transcends algorithmic computational (biomorphic or silicon) decidability and conceptualelaboration, yet that includes the non-discursive consciousness of the contemplatively trained humansubject. Science and its functionalist material realists must become aware of this growing bodyof scientific literature. In any case, Roger Penrose and others have shown that humanconceptual cognition is not computational, much less noetic contemplative cognition. Thebrain does not operate like a computer. (H.H. Dalai Lama 2005; Begley 2007; Wallace 2007,2008, Penrose 1994.)

Nature is in an obvious sense “united.” The universe we findourselves in is interconnected, in that everything interacts witheverything else. There is no way we can have two theories of naturecovering different phenomena, as if one had nothing to do with theother. Any claim for a final theory must be a complete theory ofnature. It must encompass all we know. - Lee Smolin, 2006

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Yes indeed. It must encompass not only all we know up to Material Realism’s Plankambiguity limit of conceptual understanding, but beyond. To penetrate that Upanishadic“Forest of Wisdom” we must find “the light within.” Here we must, of logical necessity,forsake empirical representational Material Realism, a reasonable epistemology in thenominal realm of relative spacetime conventional reality, but untenable as the ontologicalground of a final theory. Human beings possess an unmistakable innate imprint, a primordialurge toward metaphysical knowledge, knowledge of unobservable phenomena and subjectiveexperience. We’ve seen that a purely objectivist, realist-physicalist epistemology is necessarilyprecluded as a method of reaching and explaining such subtle, non-objective or subjectivephenomena that ontologically transcends it. For this deeper wisdom we must—viacontemplative “vertical spiritually empirical” study and practice—leap into the fearfularcanum of the speculative, metaphysical, contemplative unknown. Let us be clear about this.The mind cannot think itself beyond itself any more than the eye can see itself. “The eye ofmind sees everything, but cannot see itself” (H.H. The 16th Karmapa). While it is true that weutilize the conventional knowledge of the realm of spacetime Relative Truth (samvriti)(objective and subjective reality), in order to gradually accomplish Ultimate Truth (paramartha),enlightenment, moksha, Buddhahood—just as Nagarjuna and Plotinus told—still, there must be,as it were, sudden, non-conceptual, non-discursive meditative contemplative leaps into the vast expanseof naked, nondual Reality Itself. Our fearful skepticism that there is anything here, beyond, instantiatesthe psychological truth that we limit our psycho-emotional-spiritual growth and happiness by ourpreconscious, conscious and even superconscious attachment to the uncomfortable comfort zones of ourconceptual and belief systems. Such an injunction to venture inside is truly a radical empiricismin the mode of William James. More epistemological and methodological logocentric “idols ofthe tribe” are sure to fall as we enter our new Noetic Revolution. Western foundationalMaterial Realism—the Realism that denies the nonlocal nature of quantum reality whileclinging to the logocentric absolutes of locality and spacetime—may be the first to go. So let us once again, at great risk of being cast, without tenure, into the metaphysicalouter darkness, consult the “intellectually lightweight,” “mysterion” primordial wisdom of theages, the great nondual wisdom tradition of the Vedic/Buddhist tradition that culminates inrelative-conventional spacetime transcendent, utterly nondual Advaita Vedanta, and AtiDzogchen, the Great Perfection.9 Here, once again, we enter in the primordial Two Truths, thetruth of the epistemological Realism of science and the spacetime reality of Relative Truth, andthe ontological Transcendental Idealism of the Ultimate Truth, nondual Spirit in whomeverything arises. Once again, we remember the paradigmatic incommensurabilty—theduality—of these two conceptual modalities are a prior unity in the utterly non-conceptual,unfabricated one truth that is luminous nondual Reality Itself. Mind and body, spirit andmatter are a non-conceptual, non-computational prior unity. So it is told by the masters of ourGreat Wisdom Tradition. Thus ends the Quantum Revolution, and the beginning of aninchoate noetic ontolgy, the new Noetic Revolution.

9 The nondual teaching of the great traditions are no more “mysterion” or metaphysical (beyond physical) than the quantumuncertainty relations, or the Quantum Vacuum, or Dark Energy, or String Theory. The ultimate nature of reality is an uttermystery to the limited, even brilliant conceptual mind, but not necessarily to the highly contemplatively trained mind of themeditation master (Begley, 2007, Wallace 2007).

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Toward A Post-Quantum Noetic Ontology

Emptiness of mind is not a state of mind, but the original essence ofmind. . .our original mind that includes everything within itself. -Suzuki Roshi

Being Here: The Perennial Mind-Body Problem and The Middle Way

The Quantum Revolution is complete. The Standard Model of physics is nowundergoing the “scientific crisis” that precedes a “paradigm shift.” So let us pause a momentto introduce the essential question of human being, the classical “mind-body problem” as itarises in both the East and the West, then to explore the pivotal idea of the unity of Buddhistemptiness (shunyata) and “Dependent Origination” (dependent arising, pratitya samutpada), asthis is fundamental to an integral understanding of the relationship of the nondual view ofDzogchen, the Great Perfection with the physics of the Quantum Vacuum of quantummechanics and quantum cosmology. This all toward a new integral noetic ontology—Toynbee’s “rising culture”— that furthers the integration of the two paradigms— science andspirit/spirituality that is our ultimate aim. Can these two hitherto incommensurableknowledge paradigms be integrated? But they were never separate. And now we can see it. Human knowledge is biological, individual, cultural, and historical. Knowledgedevelops through three stages: opinion/belief (doxa); reason/inference (dianoia); contemplative/mind-spirit understanding (noesis, epinoia). Wisdom (sophia, prajna) is knowing the prior unityof the exoteric (facticity, information), esoteric (theory), secret (knowledge) and innermostsecret (nondual primordial wisdom) elements of these four. Liberation/enlightenment is therealization of the prior unity of this primordial nondual wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe) withenlightened compassionate (karuna/nyingje, hesed/caris) lifeworld activity. The perennial TwoTruths, relative and ultimate, that are the eternal dialectic between the Material Realism ofscience (matter), and the Transcendental Idealism of spirituality are resolved in the prior unityof the post-conceptual, post-mystical nondual one truth.

To be or not to be, that is the essential question of human being (dasein). Being (Sein, Bhava) isthe alpha and omega of religion and philosophy, of human ultimate concern. This binary equation—isor is not, sat or asat, one or zero, eka or shunya, existence or non-existence—expresses thenecessary duality of our relative conventional being in spacetime. In the nondual Buddhistview of Dzogchen this perennial duality is transcended in the prior unity of being and notbeing that is the nondual one truth. In the uncertainty relations of the Quantum Field Theorythis nonduality is expressed as the superposition state—both “is” and “is not”—of thequantum information bits (qubits/vasana) that constitute the elementary particles arising fromthe Unified Quantum Vacuum that is the quasi-physical matrix of all inclusive kosmos. At thecollapse of the quantum wave function during a measurement or a perception thissuperposition of the nondual being state that is both being and non-being—both one andzero—becomes the apparent—but not actual—duality of either being or non-being. Pretensions to rationality. Our eternal quest for the certainty of being—the classicalProblem of Knowledge—quickly becomes the problem of skepticism and nihilism.

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Epistemological strategies against these two have, in both the East and the West, oftenassumed the form of the “mind-body problem,” the perennial debate between epistemologicalRealists and Idealists. With the failure of the mind-body Substance Dualism of Plato (early andmiddle Dialogues), Aristotle, Descartes, Leibnitz and Locke to pass epistemological muster (the“interaction problem”) Dualism has fallen on hard times. We are left then with Monism,reality is one substance, either physical or mental, matter or mind. Monistic epistemologicalObjective Idealism asserts that reality is mental or mind only. The creed of monisticMaterialism/Physicalism, with Realism, asserts that there is a “real world out there” (RWOT)and it is entirely physical. Most Materialists are Reductive Materialists wherein the subjectivemental and spiritual phenomena of human consciousness are reduced to objective, purelyphysical phenomena, or epiphenomena of merely physical brain states. In the modern andeven Postmodern Western Tradition the prevailing scientific and cultural ideology is afundamentalist, classical foundational Realism—twenty-four hundred foundational years ofAristotle’s physical substance monism—now packaged for world consumption as ScientificRealism and Scientific Materialism (Scientism). For the Eastern Mind, Idealism is the presidingontology. With the failure of dualism, why monism? The answer lies in unity and economy ofexplanation. “An ontology that requires two radically different forms of reality—one physical,the other mental—is quite unbelievable” (J.J.C. Smart).

Varieties of Buddhist experience. In Buddhism the Abhidharma of Sarvastivada andVaibhashika Schools argue—with Western functionalist Material Realism—the realist atomisticposition wherein reality consists of indivisible physical/material atomic particles that have anultimately physical, objectively real—even absolute and eternal— existence separate or apartfrom a perceiving mind. Such Realists are essentialists, believing that reality exists independelyand absolutely just as it appears from its own side, of its own power. This view is opposed bythe Buddhist Objective Idealists, the Chitamattra or “Mind Only” school—along with WesternObjective Idealists—Hegal, Bradley, Royce—who explain arising material objective reality asdiaphanous subjective apparitions (avidya maya) of a perceiving consciousness. Reality is onlymind. And Kant’s Transcendental Subjective Idealism—a duality of objective phenomena andthe perfectly subjective unknowable utterly transcendent noumenon—is a Western version ofour Primordial Wisdom’s Two Truths. Is there a middle way between this perennial bivalent,bipolar mind-body split? Yes. Between these two extremes—the realist/materialist reification of an absolute andindependent physical and mental phenomenal reality, and the idealist nihilistic negation ofit—abides the mean that is the Madhyamaka Prasangika, the Buddhist Middle Way ConsequenceSchool, the very basis, according to the Dalai Lama, of the nondual ontological view andpractice of Ati Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. Here we have not only a synthesis of Realismand Idealism, but a profound soteriology—a method of human liberation and ultimatehappiness—of the highest possible excellence. Physics has yet to bridge its Nominalism/Realism dichotomy (Bohr’s Quantum Theoryvs. Einstein’s Hidden Variables) with such a middle way. What is urgently needed is anepistemology and ontology that accounts for an ultimate or universal reality in which its particulars(mass, charge, spin, waves and particles) arise and participate. Moreover, physics, paralyzed by itsfear of subjectivity and metaphysics offers no soteriology. The Unified Quantum Vacuum is

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science’s inchoate quasi-physical, even metaphysical architecture for such a middle waymethodology.

The Prasangikas speak of the Two Truths, relative and ultimate. First, they acknowledgeRealism by granting an objective existence to appearing reality. Yes, arising phenomenalobjects do have an objective reality. They really are real. But this reality is merely the nominalcontingent relative-conventional reality of the spacetime dimension of Relative Truth. Thisprotean reality does not possess —is empty of (shunya)—any intrinsic or essential existence,essence or identity independent of related physical and mental causes and conditions, thenuminous consciousness basis—the vast causal nexus—in whom or in which this all arises. Isthere a non-dogmatic reason that a similar interdependent middle way view could not bedeveloped by physics in its transition from realistic materialist/physicalist fundamentalism toa new more inclusive trans-materialist paradigm? For the Buddhist Middle Way then, the contingent, dependently arising objects ofphenomenal reality to the mind are not independent but interdependent (Interbeing). Matter andmind are co-dependent. This of course, is the view of the Quantum Theory. The duality ofobjective and subjective reality—the realm of spacetime Relative Truth—and perfectlysubjective mind nature or Ultimate Truth are co-extensive, participating in the unbroken wholethat is the one truth, the nondual prior unity of this conceptual dualism. Thus is theMadhyamaka dualism of the Two Truths transcended in its nondual primordial Base (p.22ff).Does this mean that for the Madhyamaka Prasangika and Ati Dzogchen this Ultimate Reality isutterly transcendent and unknowable, like the separate “other” God of the theists, beyondrelative spacetime reality? No. Nagarjuna makes it abundantly clear, “There is not the slightestdifference between samsara and nirvana” (Garfield 1995). The Two Truths are one taste, one immediate,ultimate ground. We need not, indeed we must not try to transcend our ordinary mind of everydayspacetime reality for this natural luminous mind is the very nature of mind, perfect (if unrecognized)just as it is. That is the great nondual realization, the Great Completion or Perfection (p.27). Therefore, this ultimate, intrinsically non-separate, nonlocal, interconnected andinterdependent nature of appearing reality is conventionally constituted by all dependentlyarising phenomena (pratitya samutpada/tendrel/nyingpo) from the vast expense of its primordialemptiness base, ground or source and abides within itself in a relation of identity. And this allis emptiness. Dependent Arising is emptiness. Emptiness is Dependent Arising. So, this is the highest or subtlest view of the Buddhist Middle Way, the MadhyamakaPrasangika the foundation of Ati Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. The great Nyingma masterMipham Rinpoche teaches that it is the view of this Middle Way Consequence School that isthe requisite foundational view for Dzogchen Trekchö (cutting through ego-self) practice(p.27ff). In the Vajrayana the foundation of the View—intellectual and contemplativeunderstanding—through the Middle Way Foundational Practice (ngöndro) is absolutelyessential to receiving transmission of the Dzogchen Trekcho and the fruitional Togal (directcrossing) teachings of the innermost secret mengagde/upadesha by the Dzogchen master.However, the nondual view as to Trekcho/Togal is that there is nothing to “cut through” andnothing to “cross over.” Again, the Nature of Mind is this bright presence, this paradoxicalluminosity of ordinary natural mind, always already present from the very beginning (p.27ff).

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Thus, the spacetime reality of Relative Truth (samvriti satya) is relatively orconventionally real through our reified conventional consciousness imputations anddesignations, while the ultimate nature and source of all empirical spacetime reality is theMadhyamaka luminous emptiness, and the Vajrayana Nyingma perfect sphere of Dzogchen,Ultimate Truth (paramartha satya), the “ultimate mode of existing of everything.”10

Astonishingly, this perfetcly subjective non-entity that is luminous emptiness is intrinsicallyaware (rigpa/vidya)! And all beings abide here, whether or not they realize it. And this,according to our nondual Great Wisdom Tradition, is our bright indwelling actual nature,whether or not we realize it. Tat Tvam Ami. That I Am!

Cartesian Meditations: The “Hard Problem of Consciousness” and the Nature of Mind

Rene Descartes’ dictum, cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am”—the infamousCartesian Reduction—was intended to refute the nihilism of Skepticism’s doubt that God, oranything else ultimately exists—the one certain proposition that proves that something—namely the self-aware thinking “I”—most certainly objectively, independently, unequivocallyexists! We may doubt everything, yet there exists that one who doubts. I doubt, therefore I am.

Essence precedes existence. For the Eastern mind however, particularly the genius ofthe Indian mind that produced the great Vedic-Vedanta and Indo-Tibetan Buddhist teachings,“I am” also when I am not thinking. For the Eastern mind conceptual thought is not the sinequa non of consciousness, for clearly “That I am”—tat tvam ami—in preconscious, prepersonaland super-conscious, transpersonal awareness mindstates (deep sleep, samadhi, moksha/mukti,turiya), just as surely as “I am” in waking, thinking and in dreaming states. For the Easterncontemplative mind it is not “I think therefore I am,” but “I am therefore I think.” Essenceprecedes existence. The truth (gnosis/jnana/yeshe) of Primordial Ultimate Consciousness BeingItself (Nirguna Brahman, Tao, Mind Nature, cittadhatu, sems nyid) is ontologically prior to theindividuated spacetime being-in-form that is our physical and mental support for cognition—attention, perceiving, feeling, thinking—and its relative-conventional intentional objects andemotional beliefs that are the content of discursive concept-mind (manas, citta, sems). As we’veseen, the numinous “I Am” presence, the witness—the indwelling presence of this atavisticUltimate Reality—is ontologically prior to (transcends yet includes) finite relative-conventional beings that think and reflect. Indeed, nondual Being Itself (Interbeing), theprimordial, interdependent infinite awareness continuum—by whatever name—is the verysource of relative becoming in conditional spacetime reality. There is no difference orseparation. Samsara and nirvana are one and the same (samata). The realization of this truth isBuddha cognition (samatajnana) that is finally Buddhahood.

What “hard problem?” With no science of mind, the objectivist realist materialist tradition inthe West,—through its infernal taboo of subjectivity—denies, splits, reduces, pathologizes or demonizesthe subjective reality of the contemplative science, technology and philosophy of mind of the East. But inthe Middle Way view of the Madhyamaka Prasangika of Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti and10 Buddhist Madhyamaka epistemology has three classifications of the knowledge of relative conventional phenomenalreality—the realm of Relative Truth: evident (empirical, representational knowledge; hidden (indirect inferential knowledge;extremely hidden (subjective spiritual knowledge beyond direct experience and inference for the average consciousness, butnot for the trained contemplative mind.) For example, our knowledge of Ultimate Truth is hidden. The one truth that is nond-ual Buddha cognition (samatajnana) is extremely hidden.

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Tsongkhapa, and the nondual view of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta it is not logically possible todoubt or deny, without contradiction, the subjective spirituality—not religion—of the witnesspresence (vidya, rigpa, atman/saksin) of the very ground (cittadhatu) or basis (gzhi) of the primordialconsciousness that is Absolute Spirit—the atman that is Brahman, the Tao that cannot be told, theultimate happiness that cannot be lost. Why? Because the mental operation of doubting/denyingnecessarily participates in that which it denies, namely the very awareness or consciousness (chit,vijnana, shespa, cittata) that is identical with nondual Spirit Itself. The doubt or denial of consciousnessnecessarily requires the very consciousness that is doubted or denied. The objects or contents arising inmind and consciousness may be denied, but not consciousness itself, the very nondual base awarenesscontinuum in whom doubter, doubted and everything else arises, abides and passes away. Indeed, we maydoubt, deny or reduce all complex or compound entities and beings, but not this prior awarenessmatrix of experience in whom we all appear and participate, right now! How can That (Tat)possibly be doubted? This is the seed of truth in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. This is the great truthof the Buddhadharma, the Sanatanadharma, and Taoism. Therefore, it is contradictory, if notfoolish to deny consciousness.

There is then, no ultimate “hard problem of consciousness.” There is necessarily, obviously, andalways an essential wakefulness, an aware presence or witness to the reflection of the discursive thinkingmind that is not reducible to the mere cognitive contents of the mind. The thought “I think therefore Iam” arises as conscious relative-conventional experience within this essential consciousnessmatrix, Quine’s “web of belief” that is our Great Wisdom Tradition’s nondual Ultimate Spirit,Absolute Consciousness Being Itself (svabhava) beyond or ontologically prior to our conceptsand beliefs about existence, God or anything else. This nondual Spirit is the luminousawareness continuum that is Reality Itself, pure primordial awareness (kadag) that suffusesevery act of consciousness (lhundrub). This is the Supreme Source (cittadhatu) of all appearingmental, emotional and physical existence. In whom does this doubting, thinking “I” or selfappear? “In whom does this all arise”?

Do you not feel or intuit the presence of a Matrix within whicheverything is arising? . . . Remain awake in the feeling-remembrance of the eternally present Divine Being. . . Doubt issimply a reflection of ourselves, our reluctance to . . .becomelawfully oriented to infinity . . . Concepts about “God” may bedoubted, but that which is divine and eternal is always perfectlyobvious. . . We all share this same God. - Adi Da Samraj (1998)

The Nature of Mind, a space of one’s own. Therefore nondual ultimate Spirit, pureconsciousness of the sourceground primordial awareness of all phenomenal appearance—thatpresence present in all cognition—that alone cannot be denied. That is the Real. That is theDalai Lama’s “luminous continuity of awareness.” That is vidya, Kham Brahm “The Bright” ofthe Vedas, Upanishads and Vedanta. That is the “light of Tao that is beyond heaven and earth,”the very Gnosis of Light “that lighteth every one that cometh into the world” (Gospel of John).That (Tat/Sat) is the very consciousness of the awareness continuum through which academicphilosophers and neuroscientists ponder their “hard problem of consciousness” that is actually thisalways already present presence, the very nature and sourceground of embodied mind. The “problem”

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arises and is perceived conceptually, at the gross physical energy dimensional limit. Itsresolution, bridging (samadhi/satori) the “explanatory gap” requires subtler lifestage andconsciousness dimension (subtle, causal) experience and contemplative training, just as thegreat transcendental dialecticians—Nagarjuna, Plotinus and Shankara—have always told(Appendix C: The Structures of Consciousness). This reductio ad absurdum argument of Shankara—that the denial of consciousnessrequires consciousness—is based upon his understanding of Nagarjuna’s dialectic, and is asubjective take on Descartes’ objectivist cogito ergo sum. For Descartes and the rational Westernmind, without benefit of the yogic, contemplative technologies of the East, conscious, rationalconceptual thought—reason—is the apotheosis of mind and its objects of consciousness. Here,consciousness must be conscious. All acts of consciousness are “intentional,” that is,consciousness of a physical or mental object. Here, consciousness is always directed toward itsintentional object. However, the contemplative Eastern mind deracinates then expandsconsciousness to include much more than its objectively conscious contents (kalpana).Contemplative mind includes preconscious sensory attention and superconsciouscontemplative mindstates as well. Indeed, we have seen again and again how the vast expanseof the great consciousness or awareness continuum, the Base (gzhi) or unbounded wholeenfolds, embraces yet transcends the Unified Quantum Vacuum that gives rise to the particularconsciousness of a perceiving subject dualistically apprehending its intentional object. Further, all states (state processes and operations) of consciousness of our embodiedmind—waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the timeless turyia—are necessarily and essentiallyrooted in this atavistic ontologically interdependent deep background prior primordialawareness continuum that is their very sourceground (App. C). This is the Buddhist Nature ofMind, Mind Essence, the wish fulfilling jewel in whom all of these states and stages can be,and everything else appears, exists, abides, disaggregates and arises again and again.

Sense and nonsense: the wisdom of uncertainty. We’ve seen then, that nondualConsciousness Being Itself (svabhava), “wisdom goddess” (prajaparamita/nirvakalpa jnana) of pureradiant primordial awareness that is our Supreme Source—Plato’s First Principle and SuzukiRoshi’s Big Mind—is a perfect or ultimate subjectivity that is not reducible to any of its objectivequalities or contents, despite twenty-five hundred years of material realist epistemic effort. Buthere the irony thickens. Astonishingly, this ultimately subjective consciousness base is the very “theoryof everything,” the “ultimate organizing principle” that science seeks, yet has ideologically precludedthrough its pathologically rational grasping at absolute objective certainty. This, in the gloss ofcontemporary philosophy of mind, is the irreducibility of consciousness. To attempt to reduce theineffable, pure primordial perfectly subjective consciousness Base to its mere objective contents—the theoretically constituted products, superimpositions and projections of egoic relative-conventional perception and concept-mind (vikshepa-maya, adhyasa, avida-ignorance, dianoia-amnesis, Satan)—is to commit some species of the “reductionist fallacy” and thereby to obscure or“miss the mark” (hamartia-sin) that is our Supreme Source (cittadhatu, kunjed gyalpo), the luminousemptiness Base (gzhi/kadag) of our thinking, reflecting relative-conditional bodymind. With this our natural “original mind” missing, negative emotions (fear/anger/aggression/ hatred/greed) prevail and our merely rational ethical precepts cannot be kept. Theresult is terror, war, genocide and despair. The actual basis or source of morality then, is ourluminous primordial original mind, our inherent indwelling Buddha Nature/Buddha Mind

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(samatajnana) that is none other than our ordinary natural mind that is the compassionatewisdom of emptiness. To the extent that we keep this recognition—”keep the view” andsurrender (wu-wei) to this wisdom of uncertainty (vicikitsa)—to that extent our ethical preceptskeep themselves. (See p.73 “Toward a Secular Ethic of Compassion”.) Finally then, we see that it is the Supreme Source or Base of Reality that is, ironically,the key to a unified subjective-objective “Final Theory of Everything,” the very grail ofobjective scientific and philosophical inquiry, our heart’s desire and the aim of all our seeking. Alas, we have seen that the legacy of Modernist, fundamentalist, functionalist Scientismthat is the Cartesian-Newtonian objectivist worldview has become the infernal material realist“taboo of subjectivity,” the nihilistic reduction and denial of our perfectly subjectiveconsciousness base. This denial becomes thanatos/death, the root cause of human evil. Thistaboo is rooted in the fearful psychospiritual contraction from our primordial life current thatis the very ontological Spirit Base of all phenomenal reality arising and appearing through theconsciousness of living beings. How then, do we surrender to this one great truth?

One Truth: The Prior Unity of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Metaphysics

That everything is included in your mind, is the essence of mind. -Suzuki Roshi

The Integral Imperative. It is urgently incumbent upon scientists, psychologists,teachers,philosophers, and students of religion who presume to engage the great scientific,philosophical and moral questions of our species, to consider what I have called the IntegralImperative: bracket your own paradigm or “web of belief” and review the teaching andinjunctions of both Eastern and Western epistemology, ontology/metaphysics and spiritualwisdom, the exoteric, esoteric, and greater esoteric (secret and innermost secret) texts andcommentaries of our Great Wisdom Tradition. The outer/exoteric and inner/esotericunderstanding—reason/rationality—alone do not reveal the View, Path and Conduct thatrealizes the one truth that is the bright, unbounded whole. The recent lights of this GreatTradition, those scholars and meditation masters in both the East and the West, often considerthe pinnacle of our Great Wisdom Tradition as abiding in the nondual (maha ati) wisdom ofTibetan Buddhist Ati Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, as we have seen. Might this numinousnondual primordial wisdom yet inform post-quantum physics and cosmology in its quest for apost-realist, post-materialist, post-analytical ontology to situate and ground its great scientificcontributions to the knowledge of our species?

Intimations of immortality. I have argued above, remembering the “Two Truths” ofthe post-metaphysical one reality, that the Material Realism (Neorealism) of the HiddenVariables theorists, and the nominalist, anti-realist view of the Copenhagen School of theQuantum Theory—and indeed all of the material reality of the dualistic spacetime dimensionof conventional “Relative Truth,” including the subtle physicality of the Unified QuantumVacuum—is subsumed, transcended and embraced in an ontologically prior, quintessential,perfectly subjective non-eternal, nondual ultimate reality—”Ultimate Truth,” Absolute Spirit.This conceptual unity of the Two Truths then, is the metaconceptual or metacognitive nondualone truth, the very nature of the mind that is our actual “supreme identity” abiding beyond or

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prior to and as the sourceground, essence and nature of common discursive mind. We’ve seen thatthe traditions of our Great Wisdom Tradition agree: this empty and absent, yet “always already”present presence of the luminous sourceground abides at the heart of all human beings—that“flower absent from all bouquets” (Mallarme)—the all-embracing sphere of Dzogchen. Truth is One.Many are its names” (Rig Veda). This is the paradoxical truth that makes us happy. This radical/nondual noetic ontology is ancient. We have just seen that it arises as theperennial idea of the paradigmatic Two Truths—relative and ultimate—that is the post-conceptual liberating nondual one truth of our Great Wisdom Tradition. We see it in Pythagorasand Plato, and in nondual Greek Hermetic and Coptic Gnostic Christian texts and praxis(Valentinus, Thomas), and in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus and in Philo. It is presentin the “Upanishadic Monism” of the Hindu Sanatana Dharma of Advaita (nondual) Vedanta; andwe see it fully developed in the Buddhadharma of Buddhist Middle Way Schools, particularly theMadhyamaka Prasangika so profoundly elaborated by Nagarjuna (2nd Century), Chandrakirti (8thCentury) and Tsongkhapa (14th Century). We see this wisdom of emptiness as the essence of AtiDzogchen and Essence Mahamudra of the Nyingma and Kagyu schools. We find intimations of it inKant’s distinction between phenomena and noumenon, and in Locke’s “real” and”nominal”essences. We find it beautifully explicated in the wisdom commentaries of Alan Wallace and KenWilber. We find it in the reluctant panpsychism of leading edge consciousness studiesphilosopher David Chalmers (1996). This duality of the Two Truths that are the perfectly subjectivenondual one truth is the key to the urgent paradigmatic reconstruction in science that is the challenge ofunifying relative “scientific” and ultimate “spiritual” knowledge. Is this urgent nondual recognition ofthe prior unity of the Two Truths by religion, science and culture not the great challenge of anurgent new integral noetic ontology? Has this recognition not been the resolution of theperennial problem of the unity of the competing paradigms of objective and subjectiveknowledge from the very beginning?

The dialectic of physics and metaphysics. Thus for both Buddhism and physics theontological problem of knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality turns upon this one truth thatis at once, the physical emptiness unity of the Zero Point Energy Field—the Unified QuantumVacuum—as well as our Great Wisdom Tradition’s metaphysical emptiness of all relativespacetime phenomenal reality that is all-embracing sphere of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. Both physics and Buddhist Madhyamaka are epistemologically rational, empirical,objective, naturalistic, pragmatic and process oriented. Alan Wallace points out that both areopposed to dogma, contain rigorous systems of logic and education, and a literary andphilosophical wisdom tradition. However, while Buddhism teaches a promethean optimism asto liberation, physics, in spite of the indeterminism of the Quantum Theory, retains adeterministic pessimism. Growing through and beyond such nihilism “is possible only if weidentify a new higher order articulating for science and metaphysics a non-dogmaticsoteriology” (Bitbol 2003). The Buddhist Great Perfection is a likely candidate. Buddhist epistemology is empirical and objective in that it emphasizes immediateradically empirical experience through first person “spiritual empirical” introspective reports.Buddhist practice emphasizes, not pathology, but qualitative, subjective positive and compassionate mindstates toward the end of realizing the wisdom of emptiness thereby liberating human consciousness from theignorance (avidya) that results in terrible individual and collective suffering. Pathology cannot long exist in

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the continued presence of such beneficial mindstates. This compassionate “mind of enlightenment”(bodhichitta) then recognizes and realizes not the quantitative hedonic felicitas of Westernpsychology, but the qualitative eudaemonic beatitudo that is the ultimate happiness—mahasuka,paramananda the happiness that cannot be lost—that is always present from the very beginning,our indwelling Buddha Nature, awake at the spiritual heart (hridyam) of the human being. Indeedthis is the core liberation teaching of the nondual Great Wisdom Tradition of our kind. Themeditative/contemplative mind training of the practice of the Path removes the negative afflictiveemotions that cloak (vikshepa) this prior ultimate happiness, our bright original face.

In essence science and spirituality. . .share the same end,which is thebetterment of humanity. . . This too is the union of wisdom andcompassion. . . We are all connected in a journey toward thehappiness that is called enlightenment. -H.H. The Dai Lama (2005)

Metaphysics informs science; science informs metaphysics. Physics can learn fromBuddhist epistemology. Buddhist epistemology can learn from mathematical physics andcosmology. The two views are complementary. Indeed, physics and metaphysics are acontinuum. Both must utilize the Two Truths and find its own unifying middle way. In otherwords, Buddhism must continue to utilize the empirical methods of neuroscience to further itscontemplative technology. Without this it will never be taken seriously by science. Science mustutilize its “epistemic authority,” not in a materialist rejection of idealist subjectivity that denies ormarginalizes consciousness, but to find its own middle way that includes the “phenomenologicaldoublet” of both third person objectivity and the first person subjectivity that is humanconsciousness. Without this conceptual and methodological enrichment, science will remainmired in its epistemic and ontic presumptions of the dogmatic foundationalist metaphysics ofFunctionalism and Material Realism, contributing little to the emerging integral paradigm that isunifying physics and metaphysics, science and spirit. Science must transcend its objectivistevidential modesty in a new integral explanatory ambition that includes both objective and subjectivephenomena. The semantic reach of science must exceed its current epistimeic grasp. Therefore, sciencemust participate in the emerging integral Noetic Revolution by recognizing and utilizing—notmarginalizing—the introspective first person methodologies of contemplative science and consciousnessstudies. Science must commit to study consciousness. Science must study not just objectivephysicochemical brain, but the bright noble interior subjectivity that is mind. Richard Davidsonat the University of Wisconsin, with the help of the Dalai Lama and his meditating monks, isdoing this (Luisi 2009, Begley 2007). Further development will require an outshining epoche, a decisive bracketing(shoshin/beginner’s mind), or placing in abeyance science’s 400 year old obsession withfoundational monistic Materialism and Realism. In short, we need a radically empirical (James),non-essentialist physics, a physics that refuses to cling to the metaphysics of a Material Realism.In this largely unexplored noetic mindscape the aboriginal disjuncture of matter and mindcohere, and for a moment, essentially non-different science and spirit hang together. Such is thearising of the paradigm shift that is the new Noetic Revolution.

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We have seen that from the Material Realism of the view of spacetime Relative Truth(samvriti satya), limited by the Planck Scale and quantum uncertainty at which the laws ofphysics break down and the conceptual mind boggles, there can be no nondual ultimateknowledge. And we have seen that this scary limit of discursive conceptual mind does notmean the end of consciousness, as the ideology of the cult of Scientism would have us believe.Astonishingly, this confusing limit of concept-mind is the very aperture that opens into nondual Spirit,Ultimate Truth, thus we are necessarily referred to a more subtle strata of formation, an ultimatesubjectivity that is ontologically prior to, or beyond the mere physicalist reach of realist contemporaryphysics. Metaphysics must again become the inward reach of physics. (Metaphysics just meansbeyond the physics of observable phenomena and includes the non-objective phenomena ofthe Quantum micro-world and of Quantum Cosmology. Mysticism just means the meditativeexperience of the prior unity of objective physical and subjective spiritual.) The profoundintellectual and hermeneutic tension between objective science and subjective metaphysics,appearance and reality, Realism and anti-Realism must at last bear its integral fruit. Science isdeeply grounded in metaphysical assumptions (Physicalism Materialism, Realism,Objectivism, the Closure Principle, etc., Appendix B). Metaphysics utilizes scientific rationality,analysis and naturalism. Science need no longer fear metaphysics. Science and metaphysicsneed not be unknown to one another. They are, as I have said, a dialectical continuum (citta-santana) of experience. They complement one another. This dialectic extends the reach of science’sempirical observation beyond the narrow limit of immediate empirical sense experience into the realm ofunseeable and undecidable first person subjective phenomenal experience. The purely objective God’seye “view from nowhere” of the old paradigm science was never possible. Experience andknowledge is intersubjective. Science requires and utilizes metaphysics. Knowledge andwisdom ask metaphysical questions that transcend mere observation statements. Science hasnow grown beyond the mere physical appearances. The domain of wisdom requires both ofthese methodologies. How then may we continue to integrate them?

From the epistemology you choose, comes the metaphysics you deserve. Ah,metaphysics, the bane of the prevailing retrograde postmodern academic Scientific Materialistorthodoxy. And we have noted the timid reticence of neorealist materialist physics (usuallyembodied in conventionally real, but not ultimately real physicists) to leap into this vast post-materialist noetic crucible. Alas, herein again arises the perennial burden of skepticism as thespectre of paradigm shift becomes the metaphysical dread of a defensive scientific materialistorthodoxy now cast in academic political stone. Through the focusing power of attention andcontemplation, what you think is what you get. Not to worry. Ultimately, as the ostensibly metaphysical sourceground—the conceptualTwo Truths that are the nondual one truth—is gradually, then immediately, contemplativelyrealized by individuals, the contrived duality of physical/metaphysical is transcended in itsnondual source condition, a new scientific/noetic paradigm shift occurs, and “mountains andrivers” are no longer the body of Buddha, but again become just “mountains and rivers.” Bowland tea and bread again become simply bowl and tea and bread. Physics, metaphysics.Integrated methodology. One reality. “Truth is one.” No problem at all. Have a cup of tea. Echoing Aristotle, Eighth Century Middle Way Buddhist Scholar-Master Chandrakirtioffers, if not an antidote, an advisory to this perennial problem of skepticism and nihilism.

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Relatively speaking, it is a methodological error to expect more of a modality of explanationthan the inherent nature and limit of that modality permits. The perennial Two Truths are acase in point. Emptiness and form, Brahman and the world, Ultimate Truth and RelativeTruth, science and Spirit, are ontologically incommensurable—different orders, modalities, ordimensions of being—even though these dualities are rooted and unified in and pervaded byan ultimate nondual reality. We must not demand that our conceptual elaborations andexpectations, derived as they are, from the necessary epistemic limits of the domain ofdualistic, empirical Relative Truth (space, time, logic, causality), grasp and reveal that subtleultimate nondual domain that, from the relative view altogether transcends this reifieddiscursive cognitive dimension of concept and belief. Until the full bodhi of enlightenment,these two domains are ontologically distinct and incommensurate modal realities. Althoughthe Two Truths are one truth, and as Nagarjuna reminds us, we utilize the difficulties of thepath of Relative Truth to accomplish Ultimate Truth—nondual Spirit Itself—we must againremember, moment to moment, that the ground of all phenomenal arising, negative or positive, is theperfect sphere of the Great Perfection—by whatever name—and therefore an aperture into, and a pathtoward the recognition, then realization of that luminous ultimate ground that is, astonishingly “alwaysalready” present and awake right here—at the Heart—in the chaos of our everyday lifeworld. (SeeAppendix D, The Non-Meditation That is Happiness Itself.) Indeed, the nondual truth of the Great Perfection is that the still emptiness of theprimordial ground, the three Buddha Bodies that are the Trikaya of the Base (gzhi), the perfectsphere of Dzogchen, is Dependent Arising (pratitya samutpada), the very light energy prana ofspacetime phenomena continuously cascading from this original causal matrix ground that isour supreme source. Samsara and nirvana are the same (Samata). “Form is emptiness. Emptinessis form.” That is the realization. That’s it. Can we really do this? “Just open the door and followthe path, all the way to the end.” (H.H. the Dalai Lama). And yet, paradoxically, “It is alreadyaccomplished” (Garab Dorje)—that primordial seed of Buddhahood—always awake at thespiritual heart (hridyam/nyingpo) within each human form. Thus it is, the now commensurable paradigmatic Two Truths that are relative science andultimate spirit continue in a middle way methodology—grounded in an appropriate realist or evennominalist epistemology, and an ontology of interdependence—in support of the new post-metaphysical, post-quantum physics and cosmology. This toward our integral noeticunderstanding of the always already prior unity of matter, mind and spirit. Shakyamuni, theBuddha of our historical time expresses this wisdom of the ages thusly:

What you are is what you have been.What you will be is what you do now. . . .The nature of mind is the unityof awareness and emptiness,The nature of mind is clear light . . . .So leave it as it is, and rest your weary mind,All things are perfect, exactly as they are. . . .And all the Tatagatas will rejoice. -Shakyamuni Buddha (from the Prajnaparamita literature)

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The Secret of Human Happiness?

There is nothing absent from your happiness. -Adi Da Samraj

We are happy when we can bring others to happiness. -Guy Newland

The theories of physics, if not the laws of nature, change from time to time. In microphysics and in cosmology they are relative, contingent, theoretical-conventional maps tocomprehend the nature, perhaps the very ultimate nature of nondual Reality Itself. But the mapcannot be the reality. According to the masters of our Great Wisdom Tradition, exotericallyviewed there is an inherent modal or dimensional difference or hierarchical (holarchical)separation between the paradigms of the relative knowledge of science (vikalpa, drhsti, doxa,opinion, information, scientific theory) and spirit, the prior absolute or ultimate primordialwisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe) that is the fruition of nondual greater esoteric (“innermost secret”)contemplative “spiritual” realization. These two participate together in the unbounded wholeas different ontological strata of formation, as distinct modal realities. Some of the propositionsof science and some of those of religion may be “valid cognition” (pramana), veridical,falsifiable, non-contradictory and worthy of research. The prior, direct non-dual, conceptuallyunfabricated ultimate source (cittadhatu) of all experience holarchically transcends, pervadesand includes the less subtle physical, emotional and mental dimensions of the egoic body-mind, and cannot ultimately be grasped or comprehended by the conceptual self, the ego-I ofthe body-mind. This is ontological interdependence. Yet both are necessary aspects of the vastunbounded whole. Only the whole resolves the duality. The parts are uncertain. We mustremember and realize this noetic, primordial dialectic. Nagarjuna, the great Second Century Indian Buddhist sage told, “There is no way torealize Ultimate Truth (nondual liberation, ultimate happiness), except in reliance uponRelative Truth (dualistic, gradualist spiritual practice).” Through dualistic concept-mind weutilize the gradual, finite, relative “spiritual path” to stabilize “the View” and deconstruct thedestructive ego-self; then to recognize, realize and perfect the immediate, subjective nature ofmind (cittata/sems nyid), our indwelling seed, the wish-fulfilling jewel that is ourChrist/Buddha Nature—that presence always present—forever becoming ultimateConsciousness Being Itself. Yet, paradoxically, that is who we actually are from the verybeginning. That (Tat/Sat) is both the origin and aim of all our seeking. And so, esoterically,ultimately there is no essential difference or separation between the finite matter that we are,and infinite spirit that we are, between samsara and nirvana, between the Quantum Vacuumand primordial emptiness, between appearance and reality, mind and body, subject andobject, you and me; although from the dualistic exoteric view of Relative Truth this nondualview seems utterly panglossian. From the nondual view of perfectly subjective UltimateReality—the sublime ontological smile of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection— all suchdichotomies abide as an interdependent, ontic prior unity. The paradoxical, simultaneouscognition (samatajnana) or recognition of the continuous unity of these Two Truths—”brief moments,many times”—in the very midst of the relative-conventional chaos of our everyday lifeworld, is therealization of this one truth that is ultimate Happiness Itself. “Just follow the Path, all the way to theend of it.” But wait! “It is already accomplished.” Here, now, great joy.

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Postscript

Notes on Quantum Emptiness, Ontological Interdependence, and Free Will

Our original mind includes everything within itself. -Suzuki Roshi

Causality. With the advent of General Relativity, and the Quantum Theory with itsinherently subjective Quantum Vacuum, theoretical physics now resembles the contemplativeepistemologies of our Great Wisdom Tradition. As we have seen, the Uncertainty Principle(Heisenberg) and the Principle of complementarity (Bohr) of the Quantum Theory’s CopenhagenSchool have demolished absolute time and the linear Principle of Causality, the efficientcausality upon which the classical, old paradigm physics is based. Causal correlation andHume’s “constant conjunction” have failed as a theory of causal explanation. Causality nowlooks more like the Buddhist beginningless or infinite causal continuum. Here, things arise asa result of prior causes and conditions in a vast interdependent causal nexus, but there is noprimordial first cause, no Big Bang or theistic genesis. The Buddhist Madhymaka non-linearcontextual causal view of interdependent origination (dependent arising, pratitya-samutpada) is atroot, luminous emptiness (shunyata). From this follows the view of anatman or no-self, andanitya or impermanence. Both the apparent self, its karma, and all the arising phenomena ofmind are causally relatively or conventionally real, yet without essential intrinsic absoluteexistence or identity, and without a first cause. Arising reality is rather, luminous emptiness(Shunyata, Wu, Tao) which is, paradoxically, the divine fullness, the Plenum (Pleroma) that isthe primordial sourceground or Base or Depth (Bathos, I Am), Consciousness Being Itself inwhom mind and individual consciousness and all phenomena arise. The linear, local efficientcausality principle of the old paradigm functions as a special limiting case of a morecomprehensive, non-reductionist, contextual view.

The Principle of Non-Reductionist Causality. There is no one unique causalexplanation for anything. Causality may be non-linear, or linear. For our Great WisdomTradition causation is downward (from thought and pure non-physical nondual consciousnessto physical matter). For scientific materialism causation is upward (from elementary particles,to electro-physical brain states, to consciousness). The gradual, causal spiritual path is bottom-up. The sudden, immediate enlightenment of the non-causal, not-gradualist path is top-down. A complete account of causality must include Aristotle’s four causes—material, formal,efficient cause and effect, and final (teleological). The mere efficient causality of biology andphysics is not, alone, an adequate causality. Causation is complex, nonlocal, multifactorial andcontextual as is Buddhist Madhyamaka causation. For example, Newton's theory of gravity (thegravitational constant) functions causally in the realm of the "middle dimensions" (molecularto solar system distances) as a special limiting case of Einstein's relativistic mechanics. But, inthe realm of the very small, at or near the Planck distance (10-33 cm.), in the realm of the verylarge (intergalactic gravitational effects), and in the realm of the very brief (Plank time 10-43 sec.just after the “Big Bang”) the efficient causality of physics is precluded. Here the acausal

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stochastic predictions of quantum mechanics are more accurate than either Newton's orEinstein's classical theories.11

In any case, the Planck Scale represents the distance, energy or time at which all of ourconcepts of causality—matter-energy and space-time—the very laws of physics break down,the concept-mind boggles and new methodologies and geometries are required. At this scaleof reality General Relativity and the Quantum Theory are incompatible and contradictory. It ishoped that a quantum theory of gravity can somehow penetrate this essential limit of conceptual causalunderstanding by finally unifying General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. Superstring Theory,S-Matrix Topology, M Theory, Quantum Loop Gravity and Super-Symmetry are the unlikelycandidates. With the exception of the Quantum Field Theory, all of these refuse to surrender theirmetaphysical attachment to foundational Realism which must be a prerequisite for a unifying theory ofanything. Alas, we have just seen that such computational excess has hit the wall of the PlanckScale ambiguity barrier beyond which merely conceptual mathematical knowledge isnecessarily, logically precluded. The third person method of inquiry—the scientific method—does not obtain here. It is at this ontological strata of formation, beyond the physical/materialand the merely computational, that first person methodologies—noetic introspective intuitive,tacit, meditative/ contemplative modes of knowing arise (Luisi 2009, Wallace 2005, 2006). Thuswe are introduced to the non-classical, noetic Problem of Knowledge. The marvellousenterprise that is physics will indeed produce that “next more inclusive theory,” yet theultimate nature of mind necessarily remains non-algorithmic and non-computational,knowable only through first person contemplative technologies. Any unifying theory mustutilize the “phenomenological doublet” of both first person and third person methodologies aswe have seen above.

Ontological interdependence. As to this holy grail of grand unification, it is but thelatest idol in the modernist quest for absolute objective certainty, and precluded by DavidFinklestein’s “Universal Relatively Principle” which precludes all grand unified theories(GUTs) and final theories of everything (TOEs). Finklestein, paraphrasing Einstein, points outthat the purpose of a theory or model is to evolve a more subtle, elegant and inclusive theoryor model. A successful theory is a relative, temporary position which eventually becomes an“idol of the tribe,” (a species of Francis Bacon’s “Idols of the Mind”), a false, logocentricabsolute which cannot be corrected within the phenomenological or epistemological modalityor context of the theory, as the great dialecticians Gödel, Whitehead, Hegal, Kant, Shankaraand Nagarjuna have demonstrated. This noetic Principle of Universal Relativity—our Principleof Ontological Interdependence—agrees with the teaching of Mahayana Madhyamaka (MiddleWay) Buddhism regarding seeking, grasping and clinging at anything—a belief, a theory—noteven the highest, or most elegant, or most integral. Through such ideational grasping, we becomethe fearful, hopeful advocates of the developmental limits of our current lifestage conceptual and beliefsystems.

11 However, General Relativity has now been tested to be correct to one part in 1014, an improvement over the QuantumField Theory which is accurate to 1011 , based on 20 years measurement of the orbital decay of the Hulse-Taylor pulsar.

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The metaphysical assumption of Realist Scientific Materialism that all phenomena—physical, mental, spiritual (body, mind, spirit)—are reducible to, and explainable in terms ofelectro-physical brain, i.e. that everything is physical, is a case in point. This assumptionbecomes an unconscious, unquestioned, intersubjective, deep background idol, a logocentricfalse absolute, in need of relativizing by that next more subtle, inclusive, elegant theory i.e. apost-quantum dualistic objective, relative Material Realism embraced, yet transcended in asubjective, ultimate nondual Transcendental Idealism. This, of course, is the perennial TwoTruths that are one truth—”one taste”—of nondual Buddhism and Vedanta. The paradigmshifts—the revolutions—in the sciences have been just such relativizations in prevailing theoryand ideology, with the fall of the old tired idols and the rise of the next more inclusiveparadigm. As we have seen, we are now witnessing the demise of the twenty-five hundredyear old foundational metaphysics of Material Realism, and the phoenix-like rising of a noeticintegral ontology. Just so, the post-classical Quantum Theory—the “non-objective physics”—extendedrelativity and transcended yet included the objective classical absolutes of General Relativity,which did the same for Special Relativity, which did the same for Newton’s, Galileo’s,Kepler’s, Copernicus,’ and Aristotle’s logocentric idols of space, time and spacetime. TheQuantum Theory transcends yet includes the worn out epistemological idols, the monisticabsolutes of reductive physicalism, mechanism, material realism, and the destructive dualismof absolutely separate observer/subject from it’s perceived object, a dualism of appearance andreality, of mind and body, of spirit and matter, of plus and minus charges, all arising inabsolute space and absolute time. Indeed the next idol to be relativized by the wisdom of ontologicalrelativity—emptiness and dependent arising—will be the now unstable Standard Model with itsQuantum Theory of particle interactions, as it is subsumed, along with General Relativity, into thatnext more subtle, inclusive and elegant theory. And such a theory, as we have seen, requires anOntology of Interdependence that subsumes mere relative-conventional realisticepistemologies, and transcends, yet includes the protoreligious totemic idol that is ScientificMaterialism (Neorealism).

A Rose is a Rose: The Paradox of Perception. Consider the lovely rose arising inspacetime. From whence has it come? Where will it go? As it dwells with us for a time oursenses rejoice in its impermanent reality. Then it returns to its ineffable source. Where elsecould it go? According to our Great Wisdom Tradition, its essential nature therefore, is notother than the luminous emptiness (shunyata) of the vast expanse or depth (bathos) of thisSupreme Source (cittadhatu), the very essence or nature of what is—the very Nature of Mind(cittata/sems nyid) that is Basic Mind essence. Now generalize this consideration to include allarising phenomena, moment to moment, eon to eon in the life of the mind of all sentientbeings, throughout all worlds and all times, past, present and future. Eventually, through suchontological inquiry and noetic analysis (vipashyana), we recognize that this continuous processof the vast causal nexus, the infinite continuum of Consciousness Being Itself—PrimordialAwareness Wisdom (gnosis, jnana, yeshe)—is ultimately dependent upon everything else. (Theexoteric mathematical analogs of this deep esoteric truth are described by the mathematics ofcomplexity, e.g. the “butterfly effect” of Chaos Theory; the S-matrix topology of Jeffry Chew’sBootstrap Theory; the Large Number Hypothesis of the Anthropic Principle).

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Thus, our understanding situates the relative-conventional spacetime reality of exteriorand interior cause and effect into an acausal, perfectly subjective matrix or context offundamental openness or emptiness, the luminous sourceground or potential existence of ourrose, and of everything else that arises and appears to our perception. Again, in this way therelative duality of absolutism and nihilism, of existence and non-existence (samvriti) isresolved in the “protean encounter” with non-conceptual, post-theoretical contemplativeultimate truth (paramartha) that transcends yet embraces it. “True mind is not dualistic mind. TheNature of Mind is the unity of awareness and emptiness. The Nature of mind is clear light”(Shakyamuni, the Buddha, from the Prajnaparamita literature). Our finite bodymind, ourawareness here and now with its spacetime relative-conventional phenomenal content,participates in and is identical in essence to the non-dual infinite continuity of awareness ofthe essential Nature of Mind, non-dual Spirit Itself. It is this “primordially pure” (kadag)emptiness potential in whom the interdimensional co-emergent light energy (lhundrup) ofmatter, life, mind, soul and free ethical activity arise. Therefore, awareness or consciousness does not arise from phenomenal existence; rather,existence arises from primordial awareness. Again, Ultimate Spirit cannot be reduced toindependently “real” conceptual entities, the egoic false absolutes of spacetime locatedphenomena or beings, not even avatars or gods. This is the “error” of spiritual materialism andof religious provincialism. Rather, spacetime phenomena and all perceiving beings abide in aninfinite causal matrix that is non-local, non-dual Spirit Itself, ultimate Reality Itself. Yet,wonder of wonders, “Brahman is also the world,” and “Emptiness is also form.” This Spirit isthe great non-dual Ultimate Truth (paramartha) that is actualized through full bodhi—therealization of the presence (vidya/rigpa) of Primordial Awareness Wisdom (gnosis/jnana). This isthe liberation of highly realized, enlightened beings. This liberation is the ultimate potential ofevery sentient being, and the immediate potential—the happy recognition of indwelling spiritpresence—of each self-aware human being. This then, is the greater, more inclusive truth that provides a resolution to the perennialdualism of the epistemological “mind-body” problem arising from this paradox of perception:since the perceived object is dependent upon the cognition of a perceiving subject—which is the real—this perceived subjective mental idea, or its apparently material objective physical object? Theimmediate internal cognitive/mental experience of our rose, or its external apparently physicalattributes? Epistemological idealists believe the internal mental or cognitive idea is the primaryreality; Realists and Materialists (usually physicalists) believe it is the external physicalappearance that is real. Solipsists believe that only the subject, the perceiving ego-I of the self isreal. Nihilists deny that any of it is real. Do we have a choice?

Choosing reality: quantum emptiness and free will. Another result of quantummechanics (along with the transistor, the microprocessor and the laser) is a tentativetheoretical rescue of human freedom, "free will," from the determinist grip of Newtonianmechanics. If the universe is just a great mechanical clock (the Cartesian-Newtonian classicalview) then theoretically, given enough objective knowledge, future events can be predictedand everything is pre-determined, even our present choices. This precludes free will. Thisunhappy result has been called Laplace’s Demon after the 18th Century Newtonian physicistwho first described it. However, according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, it is not

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possible, even in principle, to ever know enough about the present state of the universe toaccurately or completely predict any future event, even the most basic. For example, ThomasYoung's ingenious double slit experiment of 1801 proved the wave-like nature of light. In 1920Einstein proved the particle-like nature of light. Quantum uncertainty and complementarityhave demonstrated that it is both12. According to the quantum theory, the ultimate nature of physical reality is, in principle,unknowable to the theoretical conceptual mind. As we have seen, there is an ambiguity barrier(Planck scale, divine ignorance, Mu, the barrier of the supreme nondual teaching of theChan/Zen Patriarchs) which the discursive concept-mind cannot penetrate. As Kant pointedout, human reason cannot transcend phenomena to the ultimate reality of that that is thenoumenon. Kant’s notion of the perennial “Two Truths” is that the phenomena of relativespacetime reality, are “empirically real” because they appear to our experience, yet theirultimate nature is not ultimately knowable. Material phenomena are mere relative-conventional cognitive relations between perception, concept and the ultimately ineffable“thing in itself” (ding an sich). For Kant and the neo-Kantians, Reality is but the totality ofphenomenal relationship and has no intrinsic independent existence. This of course isprecisely the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) Buddhist view. According to the quantum uncertainty relations the observer must choose that which isto be measured, either a particle's momentum (p) or its position (x). We cannot accuratelymeasure both. Due to wave diffraction, no quantum object may have a definite location and adefinite momentum before a measurement. So, it’s not that we don’t know the precise values,x or p for a particle; it’s that the particle does not even have these values before ameasurement. It is the consciousness of the observer that determines the nature of the realityobserved. What we observe of that which appears depends upon our consciousness, our choices,our physiological sensory-perceptual apparatus, and its extension by means of measuringinstruments, and then finally our conceptual-theoretical value laden interpretation choices aboutthese observations. For example, an electron has never been observed, much less a quark, or agraviton. Nor can they be observed, even in principle. Yet these subjective purely theoreticalentities are given arbitrary mathematical values and physical attribution, and therefore are notexcluded from scientific study as objective data representing objectively “real” entities arisingand appearing in or to the mind. We have seen that, there can be no purely objective observation by anindependent observer. Subjectivity enters the picture as the consciousness and cognition (perceptions,concepts, beliefs) of an observer who is always a participant in the process of the perception, observation ormeasurement. Moreover, as we pursue our exploration of matter to its ultimate depth we discover thatultimately, there isn't any! Just an infinity of particles within particles, non-linear networkswithin networks. And if the sub-quantum particles of the aboriginal stuff of reality are, in theiressential nature, empty of inherent existence (shunyata), without substance, without attributes(nirguna), how can macroscopic sentient observers be otherwise? This understanding of course,12 A recent experiment by physicist Shahriar Afshar has cast doubt on Bohr’s sacrosanct Principle of Complementarity.Afshar has shown by experiment that when the particle aspect is observed, the wave aspect is also present. But the particleaspect is not present when the experiment is set up to observe the wave. Thus the wave nature, even during particleinteractions, seems to be prior. Einstein and Schrödinger may have been right after all. The wave, not the particle, not both,may be the ultimate foundation of matter. The wave behavior of the Zero Point Energy Field of the Quantum Vacuum seemsto support this thesis.

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parallels the nondual view of our Great Wisdom Tradition. Such a philosophical generalizationfrom the microscopic world of quarks and leptons to the macroscopic world of cats, trees andstars seems justified, at least in the conventional realm of the “relative truth” of empirical,objective spacetime reality. Once again, the objective reality of phenomena is nominally real from the view ofrelative-conventional truth. The things of the spacetime dimension of Relative Truth are real.Yet, ultimately, from the view of ultimate truth, this all is maya, illusion, mere conceptualelaboration, imputation and reification by an impermanent self absent any inherent intrinsicexistence; illusory in the mode which the ancient Vedas, Upanishads and Tantras have told formillennia. "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method ofquestioning" (Heisenberg 1958). Observer, observation and theory are interdependent,interconnected designations and imputations—creations of the mind—ascending anddescending each moment each breath from the depth of the plenum, implicate order of thewhole, great primordial nondual sourceground or matrix of all that is. "Our experiencecontributes to causing particles to emerge from a reality extended in space-time" (Bernardd'Espagnat). Physical and mental phenomenal reality is "a construct of our sensations,perceptions, memories" (Erwin Schrödinger 1958); in a word, consciousness. "Mind and worldarise together" (Humberto Maturana 1987). Physicist Geoffrey Chew on the quantum emptiness at the micro level of reality:

There is no continuous space-time atomic reality as described in terms ofisolated events that are causally connected but are not embedded incontinuous space-time. Space-time is introduced macroscopically, inconnection with experimental apparatus, but there is no implication of amicroscopic space-time continuum. You should not try to express theprinciples of quantum mechanics in an apriori accepted space-time. Thatis the flaw of the present situation. (in Capra, Uncommon Wisdom, 1988)

The observer then, does not directly experience physical reality. What is experiencedthrough the appearances is the process of consciousness that is our deep intersubjectiveinterrelatedness, autopoiesis, our “structural coupling” with the physical Unified QuantumVacuum, and its prior metaphysical unbroken whole, Ultimate Truth, nondual Spirit,Consciousness Being Itself. Here observer and observed are not separate, but intrinsicallyconnected. Here is the complementarity of the Two Truths of Reality Itself, Tao, Suzuki Roshi’s“Big Mind” that is the primordial consciousness base in whom arises “Small Mind,” relative,empirical phenomenal spacetime reality.

We have seen that the contribution of Niels Bohr's quantum Principle of Complementarityis that the nature of light is both particle-like and wave-like. Both aspects are necessary toexplain its behavior. Coherent, experienced physical and mental reality (light) is constituted ofphysical and mental/conceptual complementary opposites: wave-particle, yin-yang, negative-positive, quark-lepton, eros-agape, deus-theos (transcendent-immanent), free will anddeterminism, appearance and reality, body and mind, matter and spirit, objective andsubjective, all binaries, all dualities, relative energy structures, the dance of geometry that isour relative spacetime mindstream. "An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can beascribed neither to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation" (the physical mechanisms of

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perception and the scientific instruments that extend that perception), (Niels Bohr 1934).Reality Itself (light/mind/spirit) arises in spacetime dualistically, as wave-particle, subject-object, plus-minus charges. Remembering the Principle of Non-Reductionist Causality, bothviews are complementary descriptions or explanations of the same coherent phenomena. Wemust see both poles without attaching to either (the phenomenal “bracketing” of thetranscendental epoche, the shoshin response) in order to transcend the dualism in the biggerpicture, the non-dual view of our absolute emptiness base or matrix source in whom the entireenfolded process unfolds and arises for us.

So quantum theory has demonstrated, in a left-brain exoteric modality, that the integral holismof our Great Wisdom Tradition is correct—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but “there is amutual dependence between parts and the whole” (H.H. The Dalai Lama). Yet, more importantly, it hasdemonstrated that there are no independently existing inherently separate parts at all! As ourPrinciple of Ontological Interdependence asserts, the parts, arising observable phenomenalthoughts and objects are a nonlocal, interconnected pattern or network of relationships withno separate, independent, intrinsic existence. Back to free will. Can human beings freely choose to act in the face of scientificdeterminism? Our sense or feeling of free will or volition seems to be supported byHeisenberg's discovery that an essential indeterminacy exists at the very heart of nature, thequantum level of reality. Moreover, both the subjective non-causal (free will) and the objective causal(determinism) are necessarily complementary modalities of adequate explanation. Both are necessary.In Bohr's words, “Volition and causality are equally indispensable elements in the relationbetween subject and object which forms the core of the problem of knowledge" (Bohr, 1934).Causal determinism and acausal volitional free will are a complementary process. Laplace’sDemon—a clockwork determinism— is slain. However, if the indeterminist interpretation ofmechanics at the quantum level, or even of the neuronal level of reality is correct, this does notnecessarily allow for free will at the macro-level of human action and behavior. Nor is free will precludedeven if some of our actions are shown to be determined, psychologically, at the macro-level of behavior.

Human happiness and free will. We create or designate our reality by our participationor observation or placement of attention (cognition). "You become (or duplicate the qualitiesof) whatever you meditate on or whatever you identify with via the surrender that is attentionitself" (Adi Da Samraj). "What you are, is what you have been. What you will be, is what you do now"(Shakyamuni Buddha). Is it selfless, authentic and kind? This Perennial Wisdom truth has beencalled the law of karma, reaping what is sown which, according to the Dalai Lama, is a subsetof the Causal Principle, the more general Law of Cause and Effect. “What you do now” resultsprecisely in your future. Psychospiritual growth lies in opening to the use of whatever is given here,now. “Make the path the goal.” The path is now. Thus, whether the self is empty of inherent existence ornot, each human being creates a destiny by his/her choices of the placement of attention, emotion,thought and action. Our behavior is objectively, causally and structurally determined (biomorphically),yet externally, subjectively causally undetermined, unpredictable and free. What you choose is whatyou get! Although the burden of past actions (karma) is profound, yet we are free to choose away to liberation. This “Way” is represented by our primordial Great Wisdom Tradition's“View, Path and Result,” psychospiritual practice under the guidance of a qualified master.The purpose of the choices of the practice of the spiritual path is to “know thyself,” and thus to

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realize the ultimate freedom that is Happiness Itself (mahasukka, mahananda). Yet, “We need ateacher because it is impossible to study ourselves by ourselves” (Suzuki Roshi). The subtledefences of the ego-self are prodigious. Our Great Wisdom Tradition is quite clear on thisurgent point. Although it takes “ego strength” to deconstruct the ego or self-sense, one whoacts as his/her own guru, has a fool for a student.

Strange interlude: reduction, paradox and realization. That the Quantum FieldTheory aids our metaphysical understanding does not however, mean that physics "proves"the assertions of religion, or the truths of our primordial wisdom tradition. It remains a fallacy(the "reductionist fallacy") to attempt to logically derive or "reduce" assertions from one dimension orphenomenological level to those of another. For example, we cannot logically or mathematicallyderive or deduce macrocosmic qualitative (value) principles (psychology, religion, ethics, freewill) from the principles of the quantitative behavior of subatomic microcosmic events, try aswe may. The dimension of ultimate reality—noumenon—holarchically transcends, pervades, includes,and is prior to the physical/mental dimension of phenomena, but cannot be proven to be so by the logicalor ontological rules of either dimension (Gödel, Kant, Hegel, Aristotle, Chandrakirti). Remember theprior unity of the “Two Truths,” finite relative-conventional phenomena and the infinitenondual absolute, the Supreme Source of all of this arising. Ultimately the conceptual TwoTruths are the nondual one truth. However, relatively they are empirically, logically andontologically distinct dimensional modalities. Therefore, confusion, paradox, mystification or metaphysics must not be identified orconflated with religious mysticism. Nor should mysticism be identified or confused withvertical “spiritual empirical” meditative contemplation. Meditative contemplation (thecontemplative accessing of the nondual wisdom state of presence, vidya, rigpa, christos-logos ofthe primordial source) is the result or fruition of gradual dualistic, then nondual spiritualpractice on a wisdom tradition path with a qualified master. And this result appearsconfusing, mystifying and paradoxical to relative, dualistic, materialistic mind states, indeed,even to the practitioner on the path. The mystery or mystical bliss is not itself however, thedesideratum of the moment to moment nondual contemplative state of presence. Nor are meditative,mystical transcendental experiences (nyams). Liberation is not transcendental. It is rather therealization of the prior perfection of our natural “ordinary mind.” Nagarjuna told, “There is not theslightest difference between samsara and nirvana.” While its results may be experienced, theprimordial nondual state of “immediate spontaneous pure presence” is not a concept and notan experience. What is it then? All that can be said conceptually is that it is non-conceptual,“nothing special,” generous and kind, often has positive affect, may be directly transmitted or“pointed out” by a master to a prepared student, and may arise through the gradual practiceof the path (“brief moments, many times”) as the negative afflictive emotions—anger, fear,greed, pride—are surrendered. Then, by grace this wisdom is stabilized and ultimatelyrealized, integrated and compassionately actualized in the lifeworld, to the great benefit ofbeings. And all the while it is always “already accomplished,” now present and awake at theheart of each human form. Indeed, a most amazing paradox.

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Toward a Secular Ethic of Compassion.

To be or not to be. “In the moment of love, the nature of emptiness dawns nakedly”(Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche). Concerning our human conduct and its relation to happiness, Platotold, “No small matter is at stake. The question concerns the very way in which human life isto be lived” (Republic, Book I). “We enter the future backwards” (Paul Valery). As we proceedinto our future on the thermodynamic “arrow of time,” the precise result of our thought andaction cannot be foreseen. Nevertheless, we’ve seen that from the interdependent arising of allspacetime phenomenal reality, with all the impermanent conscious beings who perceive it andact in it, emerges the inexorable karmic law of cause and effect. Interdependent Relationship.What we give, positive and negative, consciously and unconsciously, is what we receive. Ourpresent life situation—our view, our suffering and our happiness—is caused by our previousthought, intention and action. What we do now, our thought and conduct creates anddetermines our future destiny. What we are now is exactly the result of our past actions. Here,there can be no egoic “plea for excuses,” no fudge factor. Nothing is lost. Simply put, this “lawof karma,” of reaping what we sow, is the basis of human freedom. We are free to choose theunbiased and impartial love-wisdom unity path to enlightenment—our step-by-step supremehappiness and liberation from suffering—in direct relation to the process of our gradualrecognition, then realization and actualization in conduct of the imponderable, inexorabletimeless truth of interdependent relationship (hetu/tendrel), the Law of Karma. “What you are iswhat you have been; what you will be is what you do now” (Shakyamuni, the Buddha). This path,whether or not one is aware of it, is the lifestage developmental path or evolutionary pathtoward our liberation from alienation and suffering. Thus spake the masters of our nondualprimordial Great Wisdom Tradition. Because we are utterly interdependent and interconnected, and because we all desirehappiness and desire to avoid suffering, an altruistic secular Ethic of Compassion naturallyre-emerges from this Great Wisdom Tradition teaching. All of our major religious-culturaltraditions and most secular ethics within these streams have founded their ethic upon humankindness and compassion (karuna, maitri, nyingje, bodhicitta, ahimsa, hesed/charis, altruism).“Ultimately the purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion (H.H. The Dalai Lama,1999). Compassionate thought, intention and action (conduct) is the very basis of moral virtue.Non-virtue results “from causing harm to another’s experience or expectation of happiness . . .A positive result cannot come from a negative cause” (H.H. The Dalai Lama). A thought,intention or act is ethical or morally right, based on ”The Good” of happiness—themotivation—and wrong if it causes suffering—the consequences. Therefore, intention,motivation (deontology) and consequence (teleology) of an act determine the karmic result.The effect or consequence of an act is inextricably linked to its prior intention-motivation. Bothdetermine its ethical content. What then shall we do with this precious life we’ve been given,this time to attend to opening to the great source that links us all together?

The primary moral imperative is the wisdom of kindness. This emerging secular ethicof interdependence requires the practice of wise, unbiased, gentle and generous activity in theservice of all beings (including ourselves and our Mother Earth). This is “the courage to be”that is the wisdom of uncertainly, beyond fear and hope, continuous ego- self-surrender in the

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fearsome face of emotional-spiritual transformation. With self-surrender (wu wei, aporia) arisesthe nondual state of equanimity that is the compassionate Witness Presence—our originalmind that is our indwelling, always present presence, our christ/buddha nature that is who weactually are now. Here our ethical precepts are lived spontaneously, without effort. “If youkeep your original mind the precepts will keep themselves” (Suzuki Roshi). “Make of yourselfa light,” (the Buddha’s last words to his disciples). “Love one another as I have loved you”(Jesus of Nazareth). This is our Great Wisdom Tradition’s secret of liberation that is HappinessItself, the happiness that cannot be lost. The practical significance of this Moral Imperative forthe 21st Century? We learn to transcend ego-ethnocentric hatred—thanatos, the deadly denialof our primordial Wisdom Mother (Gnosis, Shaki, Prajnaparamita, Yeshe)—and help oneanother, or perish from the earth. This is our choiceless choice (cf. “A New Secular Ethic ofCompassion,” www.davidpaulboaz.org).

All the happiness there is in this world comes from compassionateservice to others, and all the suffering comes from serving oneself. -Shantideva

Clearly, these primordial truths of our shared Great Wisdom Tradition have greatconstitutive power in the unfolding of an incipient integral noetic resolution to the pressingproblems of knowledge (wisdom), morals (conduct), and governance (political economy).

Dzogchen, The Great Perfection“The nature of mind is the unity of awareness and emptiness.” - Shakyamuni Buddha

I. The View: The Buddha’s Two Truths are “one taste,” all views condensed in essence to a single point.A. From the view of Absolute or Ultimate Truth Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, is a primordially pure whole, a

single all-inclusive sphere, transcending, pervading, embracing samasara and nirvana, all phenomena, beings,views arising in mind (sems), prior to concept and belief. Dzogchen, the vast causal nexus, transcendsspacetime causality. It is the very Nature of Mind (sems nyid) nondual and perfect “from the very beginning.”

B. From the view of Relative-Conventional Truth Dzogchen is our prior nondual unity of:1. The Base or source with its corresponding View. “Recognize your own true nature.”2. The Path with its corresponding Meditation. “Choose the state of presence, beyond doubt.”3. The Fruit or Result with its corresponding Conduct. “Continue in the state with confidence.”

II. The Base (Ground): Gzhi, Buddha Nature, the Supreme Source, the Nature of Mind, Yeshe/jnana .A. View: the three aspects, or Primordial Wisdoms of this emanation Base/Source present in all arising form.

1. Its Essence is Emptiness (shunyata), the vast expanse of primordial purity (kadag).2. Its Nature is Luminosity/Clarity (gsal ba), clearlight mind of spontaneous presence (lhundrup).3. Its Energy rays emanate continuously as light/motion, (tsal/rolba), physical/mental phenomena, and in human conduct through spontaneous presence as wisdom-compassion (thugs re), the Four Boundless States/Four Immeasurables: love, compassion, joy, equanimity (relative bodhicitta).

B. The Trikaya of the Base (the Essence Body, Svabhavikakaya): Absolute Bodhicitta, The Supreme Source, theThree Vajras, Three Gates, or Three Bodies of the Trikaya of the Base. Primordial Energy of the Base arises inspacetime (dependent origination/pratitya samutpada) as the mandala of our own vajra.1. Body: Dharmakaya, Om, Adi Buddha Samantabhadra, crown, Energy.2. Voice (speech): Sambhogakaya, Ah, Buddha Vajrasattva, throat, Nature.3. Heart Mind (wisdom mind): Nirmanakaya, Hum, Buddha Shakyumuni, heart. Essence.

III. The Path: Development Stage, the way of practice. Letting be, as it is. Meditation on Body, Voice and Mind; opening heartmind, seeing ignorance/desire of the five skandhas of attachment to conditional existence and its three marks: impermanence (anitya), no-self (anatman) and suffering. Purification of misdeeds. Awakening bodhicitita of intention and action. The Two Accumulations: wisdom (prajna) and merit (means/upaya) as compassion (karuna). “Descend with the View, ascend with the Conduct.”.

A. The Three Dzogchen Meditation Series: Semde, Longde, Mengagde (upadesha). Introduction, recognition andstabilization of rig pa/vidya (“brief moments, many times”) or Mind Essence, the self-perfected, always presentstate of presence of our Supreme Source, the primordial state of each being. Development of deep heartminddevotion for the master and all enlightened beings (rigzin), and compassion for all unenlightened beings. Thefive poisons (ignorance, desire, anger, pride, envy) are the five wisdoms. Pure vision: abiding withoutconcepts “It is already accomplished” (Garab Dorje).

B. The Secret Upadesha (the master’s pith instruction): The Longchen Nyingthig is the Secret Heart-Essence ofthe Great Expanse, Yeshe Lama, Trekchö (wisdom/purity) and Togäl (means/presence) practices followngöndro, the foundation practices. Obstructions to living the teaching self-liberate into rig pa, the luminousprimordial awareness wisdom of their Supreme Source (cittadhatu), beyond concept, belief fear and hope.

IV. The Fruit (Result): Perfection Stage. Realization of our base/source; means (male), wisdom (female) unified; liberation from the suffering of ignorance that is desire-seeking-attachment and fear-anger-aggression.

A. Realization and integration of the View, our prior unity of awareness and emptiness, (spontaneous presence andprimordial purity), through shamatha/vipashyana practice. Continuity of rig pa, primordial presencedemonstrated through The Conduct. From “undistracted non-meditation” the search falls away as samadhi ofwisdom-compassion-love arises spontaneously. Realization of nondual refuge and bodhicitta. The ThreeTimes—past, present, future—are the on-going timeless instant of rig pa, the fourth time (turiya). The TwoTruths—relative and ultimate— Thee Bodies of the Base, a realized unity. Emaho! Mahasukaho! The GreatHappiness that cannot be lost.

B. Realization (full bodhi) of the Great Transfer of the Body of Light (ja lus), Rainbow body, the identity ofprimordially pure Essence Nature and Energy of the Supreme Source that is Yeshe, nondual primordial wisdom(jnana, gnosis) of emptiness, prajnaparamita, mother clear light of buddhahood.

Svaha.

©David Paul Boaz, 2000, Copper Mountain Institute, www.davidpaulboaz.org

Appendix A

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76

The Idols of The Tribe: The Metaphysics of Modern Science

Science and its scientists must make conscious their apriori preconscious metaphysicalpresuppositions, value assumptions and beliefs underlying modern scientific ideology andmethodology. These “idols of the tribe” become the “false absolutes” of science that belie theinterdependence of subject and object, experimenter and experiment. Scientific study andresearch into subjective aspects of mind and consciousness is thereby precluded. For example, theview that the whole of reality is objective and physical, or that it is subjective and spiritual, is ajudgement of value, not a scientific fact. These unproven and unprovable metaphysicalassumptions and beliefs are the totems or mana of scientism, the cult of modern and postmodernscientific materialism that permeates the view of the physical and social sciences, humanities andour global mass culture. This quite unscientific protoreligion is largely responsible for ourcatastrophic reduction of subjective spirit to mere objective consumable matter. We may nowsummarize these unexamined exclusionist biases, assumptions and beliefs.

1. The Principle of Physicalism (Material Realism): An essentially pre-given separate andindependently existing, exclusively physical spacetime reality exists as the basis of allappearing phenomena, a priori, independent of observation or experiment by any sentientobserver (the “myth of the given”).2. The Principle of Objectivism: This purely physical reality is ultimately knowable toseparate human observers via objective, quantitative scientific observation, experiment andmathematical analysis (although objective proof has remained unfindable for 400 years).Reality is ultimately objective. The mind’s subjective personal and transpersonal phenomenaare not proper study for objective science (the “taboo of subjectivity”)3. The Principle of Material Substance Monism: There is no reality other than, ortranscendent to this objective physical reality, and no truth or truths discoverable or existantbeyond the view of this objectivist material realist “scientific method.”4. The Principle of Reductionism: All subjective experience—private, first person, mental,emotional and spiritual events—can be reduced to their objective, purely physicalelectrochemical neural correlates. Mind, experience, behavior, God are nothing more or lessthan an “emergent property,” an epiphenomenon or “artifact” of physical brain and itsphysical-chemical processes. Causality is always “upward” from physical to mental.“Downward causality,” mental to physical is ideologically precluded.5. The Principle of Local Universal Causal Determinism: All events are determined by theirlocal, purely physical causes. If we knew all the initial causal conditions, then we could predictor determine with complete certainty all of the effects (objects/events) in the universe.6. The Closure Principle: This purely physical realm of all existence is “causally closed” toany non-physical causal explanation. The validity of any causal explanation beyond thepurely physical dimension is implicitly or explicitly denied.7. The Principle of Universalism: The preceding principles are the only correct explanationsas to the nature of reality, its discovery, prediction, explanation and interpretation. No otherviews or methodologies can lead to truth. All differing views are in error.

(Thanks to Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, Willis Harmon, Alan Wallace, Ken Wilber, David Finkelstein, Adi DaSamraj, Richard Tarnas, Owen Barfield, Amit Goswami and the many astute critics of Scientific Materialism.)__________________ ©2008 by David Paul Boaz (Dechen Wangdu). All rights reserved. Copper Mountain Institute, 505-898-9592.www.coppermount.org, e-mail info@coppermount.org.

Appendix B

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The Structures of Consciousness: A Review of The View

One Ground, Two Truths, Three Bodies, Four Views, Five States

Exoteric/Outer, Waking States, Gross Body: Dualistic, indirect, relative-conventional truth,concept-belief; empirical subject-object knowledge (doxa, namtok, opinion, information, third personobjective scientific data). Manovijnana, the gross waking state (physical, emotional, mental). Empiricalspacetime Gross Body energy dimension; exoteric/outer conceptual and experiential belief in a separatematerial reality and a separate God. The Bardo of living. Ground stage introduction to the View.Shamatha, mindfulness meditation practice. Nirmanakaya. Esoteric/Inner, Dream State, Subtle Body: Dualistic, “lesser esoteric” form; meditative-devotional first person subjective recognition of the “state of presence”; discriminating, quasi-conceptual knowledge-wisdom (dianoia, sophia, prajna). Deity realms. Subtle Body energydimension, klishta manovijnana, Saguna Brahman, Ishvara, esoteric/inner but separate God. Path stage. The Bardo of Becoming. Quiescence and introspection practice Nirmanakaya.Greater Esoteric/Innermost Secret, Deep Dreamless Sleep State, Causal Body: Alayavijnana, CausalBody energy dimension. Wisdom of Satchitananda, Fruition stage. The Bardo of Dharmata/UltimateReality. Deity meditation and Vapashyana or insight meditation. “Path Luminosity.” Sambhogakaya. Non-Dual State/Turiya, Essence Body: Dharmakaya realized through the transcendent witnesspresence, beyond dualistic, subject/object, two-valued concept, belief and even the subjective bliss ofdeep contemplative experience. Final fruition stage. Realization of the prior unity of the Two Truths(relative and ultimate), the three kayas and three vijnanas. The primordial Tao/emptiness of Absolute orUltimate Spirit lived with its cognitive, meditative and compassionate ethical conduct finally stabilizedand actualized in the lifeworld (transcendent primordial awareness wisdom mind, prajnaparamita,noesis, gnosis, christos, logos, vidya/ rigpa, yeshe); Plato’s noetic-logoic final development stage);mahasiddha Christ-Buddhahood. This is Svabhavikakaya, prior unity of the Trikaya of the Base (gzhi),body of pure alaya (amalavijnana), turiya “the fourth,” realized as turiyatita, the final non-dual fifthstate. “Ground Luminosity.” Atman that is Nirguna Brahman. Non-Dual “Real God,” beyond alltheistic concept and belief. Fruition of Mahamudra, Madhyamaka and Dzogchen. These four views ordimensions display as a prior unity in the unbounded whole. This perfectly subjective wholetranscends yet embraces all arising objective phenomena (the Two Truths). These five innate states of consciousness, supported by their four corresponding energy bodiesor dimensions are potentially, momentarily available directly to each self-conscious being. However,the ascending levels of meditative stability and realization (samadhi), are non-ordinary aspects of thesefive states that result only from the contemplative mind training of the spiritual Path (lam). The various levels of understanding of the interdependent relation of these four views of the“two minds” or Two Truths of this one great sourceground—the vast Reality that is non-dual SpiritItself—constitute both the exoteric-conventional and the more subtle, esoteric- contemplativeView of this supreme source of all appearing reality for the religious and philosophical wisdomtraditions of our primordial Great Wisdom Tradition. Just so, from the View emerges the Path to therealization of that unbounded whole, and its Fruition or result in the everyday lifeworld and ethicalconduct of the individual, and thereby the spiritual and moral worldview and its potential realization forthe sociocultural whole.

____________________________

*©2008, David Paul Boaz (Dechen Wangdu), Copper Mountain Institute (505) 898-9592, www.coppermount.org, e-mailinfo@coppermount.org.

Appendix C

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Life Stage/Mind State(evolutionary, developmental)

Consciousness Dimension/State (avastha)(non-developmental, inherent in all beings.)

Dimension/Vijnana(Body, Mind, Soul, Spirit)

Gross Body

The Structures of Consciousness

* The multidimensional pie of Spirit descending as phenomenal reality and the ascending realization of its non-dual Source is sliced in slightlydifferent ways by different Wisdom Traditions, and even within traditions. Moreover, although the koshas of Vedanta and the vijnanas and kayas ofBuddhism generally correlate, there is at present, no agreement on the definitions and correlation of consciousness dimensions, lifestages, bodies,levels, structures, and mindstates. ©2005, David Paul Boaz, www.davidpaulboaz.org

in Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism*

1, 2, 3Egocentric

Physical, Emotional, Mental Stage;Individuation of lower mind. Dualisticmaterial seeking strategies dominate theview and behavior. Sleepwaiting denial ofspirit-presence. Exoteric, relative-conventional response. Gross ignorance ofthe essencelessness and impermanence ofthe five skandhas of existence and the fivesense consciousnesses.

Om Gate. . .

4Ethnocentric

Spiritual development ground and pathstage; dualistic conventional religious andbeginning mystical seeking; finding themaster; conditional savikalpa samadhi;the lesser esoteric response. Shamathamindfulness practice. The Mahatman oressence-self recognition; diety practice.Spiritual materialism. Path of form.Kindness. Quiescence practice.

Para Gate. . .

5, 6Worldcentric

Spiritual completion fruition stage; deity,formless and kosmic mysticism; thegreater esoteric response, vipashyanapractice. Moksha-nirvikalpa samadhi.Karma ceases only when in turiya(vidya/ rigpa); compassionate transcendentWitness practice, Dzogchen, EssenceMahamudra. Frequent “clicking” fromasleep to awake states. Insight practice.

Parasamgate. . .

7Theocentric

Spiritual perfection stage; final furition,alpha pure non-dual realization; fullbodhi; Atman identity with Brahman; nomore learning; muni; transcendentintegration of conditional self in lifeworld(moksha-sahaj samadh), behond fearandhope. Karma ceases; Maha-rishi, Christ-Buddhahood. Realization of Kham

Waking State (Exoteric)(vaishvanara/ jagrat)

Intentional, ego-motivated, desire-mindawareness, estranged and ignorant (avidya) ofnon-dual Atman that is Brahman. Empiricalreality. Subject-object separation anddependence. The physical and lower mentalphenomenal worlds. Physical and emotionalbody of desire. Lifeworld ruled by fear andhope. Prepersonal to personal. The Bardo ofLiving.

Nirmanakaya.

Dream State (Esoteric)(svapna)

Prepersonal, preconscious, subtle body ofdesire. Non-empirical illusory (maya) subject-object independence. Objective, relative-conventional realism. Beginning compassion.Fear and hope. Personal to transpersonal.“State effects” not yet “trait effects.” The Bardoof Becoming.

Deep Sleep State (Greater Esoteric)(formless sushupti/ prajna)

Transpersonal, transrational; profound, wisecompassion. A lifeworld devoted tosurrender, renunciation and service.Subjective idealism. Transpersonal subtle tocausal cognition. Path of the siddhas, rishis,arhats, saints and bodhisattvas. TranscendentWitness Presence awareness. Transpersonal,transrational. The Bardo of Dharmata.

Sambhogakaya

Turiya (“The Fourth”)(The innermost secret, non-dual

transcendent Witness)Realization (liberation) of personal identity withAbsolute Reality, Brahman, Buddhahood,primordial, non-dual Spirit Itself in whom arisesall phenomena. Great compassion. Transcendsand includes the previous relative states. Thetimeless “fourth time,” prior unity ofSvabhavakakaya/ Trikaya of the Base;emptiness(shunyata) realized through yeshe/ jnana/gnosis,

Gross physical matter-energy body(annamaya-kosha). Life, Prana orEmotional Body (pranamaya-kosha).TheQuantum potential. Mental Body(manomaya-kosha), manas desire-mind/sense-mind (citta or sems).Brahman as Virat. Conditional self andits identities. The five skandhas/ senseconsciousnesses (panchdvara-vijnana)plus mind (manovijnana)

Om...

Subtle Body (sukshma-sarira)(vijnanamaya-kosha)

Transcends & embraces previous koshas.Buddhi, higher mental, citta, reflectingand discriminating mind. The will.Intellectual and subtle dharmaunderstanding. Beginning insight andbhakti/ devotional meditation (dhyana).Path of the yogis/saints (love wisdom).Brahman as Prajapati or Hiranyagarbha.Klishta-Manovijnana, subtle body, theroot of ego-I.

Mani...

Causal Body (karana-sarira)(anandamaya-kosha)

Soul, transcendent mental, wisdom-spirit-bliss; path of sages arhats,bodhisattvas 8th & 9th bhumi. Non-dualWitness practice. Causal dimension tonon-dual Absolute. Saguna Brahman asprana-vayu or sutratman. Alayavijnana

AtmanThe non-dual, untainted divine presence(vidya, rigpa, logos), Supreme Identity,the Witness (saksin) that is identical toNirguna Brahman, the Supreme Source.Transcends and embraces previoussamadhis, koshas and all conditionalexperience. Mouna, the great Peace inthe Silence. Om Shanti Om. Tao,shyunyata/emptiness, Dharmakaya. Theunobstructed Pure Alaya (amala-vijnana). Buddha NatureUltimate MindNature(sems nyid/ cittata, gnosis). Tao.

Appendix C: Part II

Corresponding Energy-Body/Kosha

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Appendix D

Being the Primordial Awareness Wisdom*The Non-Meditation That is Happiness Itself

Now is the moment we abide in primordial essenceLuminous nature of mindempty awake awareness itself

Whatever experience arisesPleasant neutral unpleasantno need to change it

Whatever arises let it be without judgement positive or negative without past or future without attachment or aversion without affirmation or denial without closeness or distance

Whatever arises is pure clear light of mindopening into the very ground of beingThus whatever arises is liberated

Now let it be exactly as it isPerfect opennessPerfect spaceAs it is already accomplishedSimply relax into it

_________________* Excerpted from Stromata, Fragments of the Whole: Selected Essays of David Paul Boaz (DechenWangdu) ©1009 David Paul Boaz. All rights reserved. www.davidpaulboaz.org, Coppermountain Institute,info@coppermount.org, www.coppermount.org, 505-898-9592

Toward an Integral Ecology of Mind

The barrier between subject and object doesnot exist. Subject and object are only one.”

- Werner Heisenberg

What’s in a Name? The normal obscuring sectarian bias regarding our own views, opinions and beliefsmay be somewhat mitigated by an awareness that the following key terms of our primordial Great WisdomTradition are mere conceptual relative-conventional truths, useful archetypes and metaphors for the ultimate truththat is the utterly ineffable great unbounded whole, intrinsic primordial awareness that is non-dual Reality Itself.These signs symbolize and support our direct, noetic non-conceptual, recognition, then stabilized realization andethical fruition of the great mystery of the Word-Logos, one breath of many voices, fugue of the presence of thesource that steadfastly links us to unseparate Ultimate Spirit. This great Reality is the prior, fundamentalunderlying unity, our primordial sourceground that is the very Nature of Mind, the “Big Mind” in whom we allappear and participate, and its primordial awareness wisdom through whom we understand, then realize this greatprocess.

The Bright. For example, Tao, Ta’i Ch’i, Wu/Mu, Zen, Purusha, Nirguna Brahman, Satchitananda,Samantabhadra, Shunyata (the Great Emptiness), Tathata (Suchness), kadag/gzhi/The Base, Longchen (the GreatExpanse), Dharmakaya, Dharmata, Mahamudra, Apeiron/Chronos, Anthropos, Urgrund, En Sof, Fitrah, haqiqa,Bathos/The Depth, and the I AM of Abba the primordial Father, all refer to the ineffable, perfectly subjectiveinterdependent non-dual prior unity of all that is. Although this great awareness continuum is known by these andmany other names, it is always the still womb of our Great Mother (Prajnaparamita, Shakti, Isis, Maria),indivisible, divine, Supreme Source or Base of all finite objective and subjective arising phenomenal reality.

Relative Motion. Just so, the light-energy-motion that appears as the lifeforce of our bodymind with itssentient experience is this continuously arising relative spacetime phenomenal reality descended from ourperfectly subjective primordial sourceground. This light/life energy of form is ch’i, prana/vayu, tsal/lung,pneuma, spiritus, ruach, an-Nur, Rupakaya, pleroma, light.

Being Here. The ever-present Witness of our primordial sourceground is this pure intrinsic awarenesspresence of that ultimate reality, always already spontaneously present and fully awake at the spiritual heart ofeach human being. This presence is known as vidya-rigpa, logos-christos, parousia, purusha, atman-saksin,ming, tawhid, shekhina, in the turiya of the moment Now, whether or not it is recognized by individualparticipants of this great whole. This is the presence of our compassionate wisdom mind that recognizes, thenrealizes the unbounded whole that is Reality Itself. This is the awareness that is the ultimate truth (paramartha) ofour innate, non-dual transcendent Primordial Awareness Wisdom—Gnosis, Jñana, Yeshe, Noesis, Fana, Shakti,Samantabhadri, Prajnaparamita, Tathagatagarbha. This is our primordial wisdom mind that continuouslyrecognizes and realizes itself as ultimate essential Mindnature, the “unbounded” Whole that is our SupremeSource. Who Is It? How shall we accomplish this great realization? Through dhyana (meditation, zen, gompa)under the guidance (satsang) of a qualified living master we stride the spiritual path. This is the great work(sadhana) to be done. We may then come to realize, then actualize in the world—for oneself and for others—thatprior unity of wisdom and compassion that is “Ultimate Happiness Itself” (ananda, mahasuka, eudaemonia), thefruition of the “innermost secret” View of this great process. Such a realization is, this moment now, sleepwaitingin the eternal womb of our Great Wisdom Mother, infinite potential of the compassionate, continuous samhadi ofcertainty, equanimity and joy that is the heartseed witness presence of our ever-present Christ-Buddha Nature(Christos, Tathagatagarba). It is That (Tat) according to the masters of humanity’s Great Wisdom Tradition, thatis the essential Nature of Mind (cittata, sem nyid, gnosis), our very Mind Essence (svabhava, cho nyid, asti,ousia, eidos ) that is the actual Supreme Identity and potential ultimate happiness of each one of us, and indeed,of every sentient being in every dimension of every world system. Who is it? Tat tvam ami! That I Am! Withouta single exception.__________________©2008 by David Paul Boaz (Dechen Wangdu). All rights reserved. Copper Mountain Institute, 505-898-9592. www.coppermount.org,e-mail: info@coppermount.org.

Appendix E

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Being HereReflections on the Nature of Mind*

What does it matter what poetry is?All that matters is the eternal movement behind it.

-Dylan Thomas

What is this eternal movement? What is the nature or essence of mind who is aware of it? Who isit that moves in this beauty, and shines awake? In whom does this all arise? The energy that we are arises and descends each moment from its great sourceground asmovement, relative motion in space and time. This ultimate source or matrix of the light energy that isorganized as matter is prior to time, an infinite non-dual subject/object unified field. It has many names.It is utterly ineffable. Humanity’s Wisdom Tradition, including recent quantum physics, views thisground of physical and mental forms unfolding as a primordial unbounded whole in whom is enfoldedthe perpetual mystery of all that is. This supreme source transcends yet embraces all phenomena arisingtherein. Perception ruled by conceptual mind sees only the parts. Wisdom mind understands, then acts inconscious relationship with the whole. Wisdom knows “Energy is Eternal Delight.” Sublime beauty. Greatjoy for us. How then shall we move from being apart to being this whole? It is told through our Great Wisdom Tradition—that stream of radical truth that flows through alltraditions—of the non-dual singularity of this whole there are “Two Fundamental Truths,” two ways ofbeing here. We live in two worlds at once! Ultimate Truth is the vast expanse of the whole itself, allembracing non-dual Spirit that is our “Big Mind.” This selfless, pure intrinsic awareness cannot be graspedby the concepts and beliefs of the realm of Relative Truth that is “Small Mind,” the dualistic, subject/objectseparated reality of our perceptual and conceptual knowledge and experience. However, the ultimateunbroken whole—our acausal perfectly subjective source embracing all arising physical and mentalobjects—informs, enlightens and delights our everyday relative cause and effect world. It is profound. Yet,wonder of wonders, it is always fully present and awake at the Heart. At our spiritual Heart we may touchit. Here, undreamt of in the thoughtful slumber of human reason and belief, beyond hope and fear this, ourall inclusive base of reality—reality itself—is experienced by all human beings, brief moments, perfectly,just as it is. Whether or not we recognize it. Wisdom recognizes it. Wisdom trusts this awakening. Howthen shall we awaken to this uncommon wisdom? Primordial Wisdom continually recognizes itself in the paradox of the natural perfection of all ourexperience, shines awake through the mind and abides at the Heart of all beings. Calm, clear, delighted.Great beauty of it. Here is the happiness that is always present. Here is the happiness that cannot be lost. Noneed to seek it. No need to improve it. Good to practice it. Practice consumes conceptual/emotional veilsthat seem to obscure its constant presence. Practice recognizes, not tomorrow, but here and now thisprimordial wisdom seed at the Heart, then realizes, then actualizes in the world—for oneself and forothers—the great happiness. Practice is the imperfect intention, then action of our perfect, innate, selflesswisdom mind. Such wisdom naturally intends kindness toward all beings. Wisdom delights in kindness.This wisdom of kindness arises spontaneously through occasional, then moment to moment recognition ofthe all-inclusive unbounded whole that is our origin and aim. This prior essential great perfection is the vastlove that binds the worlds. That force is essence of our being, the very nature of mind. This brightenlightened Heart essence, by whatever name, is who we are. Relax now into That and be supremely happy.So it is told by the masters of our Great Wisdom Tradition. Thus it is, from such a ground do we descend, breath of one voice, bright fugue these manycolors, forms falling, light steadfastly mirrors our never separate, ever present presence of this supremesource as we ascend again, each moment return to that in whom this all arises. Who is it? Tat tvam ami.That I am. Without a single exception. David Paul Boaz (Dechen Wangdu) ________________

* ©2008 by David Paul Boaz. All rights reserved. Copper Mountain Institute, www.coppermount.org, info@coppermount.org

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Appendix F

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