Tag Archives: consciousness

The Call of the Unknown

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By Doug Marman

Here is the talk that I gave in Toronto at the end of September. It is titled: The Call of the Unknown. You can see a video of this talk below.

In this talk I approach one of the most important elements that distinguishes a spiritual search from a typical search for knowledge. This is hardly ever talked about.

When we search for knowledge, we usually set out with a plan of some kind to learn about something that we already have some idea about. For example, we look for a book that can give us a better understanding of some era in history, or added insights into some field of science, or some pointers on how to find a job, how to paint, or how to raise children.

A spiritual search, however, is a search to gain something that is beyond our understanding. We don’t even know what it is that moves us or calls us to this search. We might think that we have an idea of the information that we would like to find, but the farther we follow the call of the unknown, the more it changes us. And we soon realize that we knew nothing about the real meaning of the spiritual path when we started.

This “not knowing” turns out to be more important than we realize because the things that we think we know are generally obstacles on the spiritual path.

The true spiritual search requires a completely different approach because it is a quest for something beyond us. It is a search to find out the real meaning of the spiritual path. There is no one who can give us the answer to what this meaning is. It can only be understood through experience. It is the search itself that changes us. It is the search itself that is the path.

This talk was set up by Farzad Khalvati and Mitra Shafaei of Toronto, as part of an ongoing series called The Hidden Teachings of Rumi.

Just before the talk, Farzad came up with the idea of projecting spiritual art and photos of nature on the screen behind me when I was talking. The images change as I give my talk.

I wanted to mention this because one of the surprising outcomes, that a number of people asked about afterwards, was how well the changes of these images seem to be synchronized to my talk. Surprisingly, there is no direct connection. I could not see the images on the screen behind me or when they were changing, and the images switched by a simple timing mechanism.

Why did so many people experience a connection? I don’t know. Perhaps the images on the screen, when they changed, changed the audience, and I unconsciously sensed this and changed what I was saying. Or perhaps when we see a change in the background, it changes our perspective on what is being said at that time, and since I was talking about changes in perspective, it seemed to be connected.

Rather than trying to guess at the explanation, I just point it out so that you might enjoy the mystery of it, if you find yourself experiencing this same feeling that there is a connection.

One thing that I’ve learned is that the spiritual path seems to bring about more of these events of synchronicity as we become more deeply entangled with life at a deeper level. Explaining it in order to understand it with our mind is not nearly as important as experiencing it and how the experience of synchronicity seems to wake us up to an awe of life itself.

 

Science Paper Published: The Lenses of Perception Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

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By Doug Marman

A paper I wrote for the peer reviewed Integral Review Journal was just published. You can read the paper here: http://integral-review.org/current_issue/vol-14-no-1-aug-2018/

This paper is a formal scientific paper that I have been working on for two years, so parts of it get a bit technical. However, I have tried to write it to be understandable to anyone who enjoys science and knows something about quantum physics. If you have read my book, Lenses of Perception, you will see that this paper presents the same ideas in a more formal and more thorough scientific manner.

The editor of Integral Review Journal, Jonathan Reams, introduces my paper with these comments:

40 years ago I began my university education studying physics, but dropped out and later turned to studying consciousness (and leadership). Along the way I have encountered numerous perspectives on the relationship between the two subjects, with a polarity in perspectives, from materialist interpretations to idealist ones. This conversation continues today, being taken more and more seriously as it becomes apparent that we cannot ignore an integral view of the intimately intertwined nature of consciousness and matter. The science magazine Nature recently highlighted this as an ongoing conundrum (see article here). An example of an integrative perspective comes in the notion of panpsychism, that consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical matter, which is being taken seriously by a wider range of mainstream physicists and others (see article here). All of this leads into the territory IR has always been intended to serve as a platform for new thinking from an integral view.

Thus we fittingly begin this issue with Doug Marman’s The Lenses of Perception Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. At IR, we are always on the lookout for new thought and Marman delivers on this. His article is a substantive piece of investigation into some of the most fundamental questions science has ever tried to answer. In true transdisciplinary fashion, Marman covers a wide range of disciplinary knowledge. He begins by showing similarities between quanta and living organisms, leading to an inescapable predication that quantum behaviour is driven by sentience. This leads naturally into a detailed examination of consciousness itself and how participation is a creative process of perception…. Marman then lays out a set of nine postulates that lay a more formal foundation to show how his Lenses of Perception interpretation can address a wide ranging and essential set of issues generally held as necessary for any theory to be able to bring coherence to our understanding of all physical processes. Having done this, an examination of quantum formalism and how the LoP interpretation (using first, second and third person lenses) not only meets the tests of quantum formalism, but even shows why the second person lens of relationship is necessary for understanding it. Finally, Marman lays out how his LoP interpretation meets a variety of challenges, including the five unsolved problems of physics, and points to ways to test out this interpretation. The overall scope, depth, breadth and rigor of Marman’s work makes this article a seminal contribution to discourse around these fundamental questions, and IR is pleased to publish it here.

I will be offering a place for technical questions, comments, and dialogue about this paper on my Lenses of Perception website (here) if you are interested.

If you have non-technical questions, comments, and dialogue, please feel free to add them below.

Seeing the Invisible

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—From Rumi’s Poetry to the Fullness of Atoms

By Doug Marman

“Whirling Dervish” by Mitra Shafaei

Last summer I was invited to speak at a talk for “Spiritual Dialogues on Rumi’s Legacy and Teachings,” in Toronto, Canada. It is part of an on-going series of public talks on Rumi and Consciousness. The group has been using my book, “It Is What It Is — The Personal Discourses of Rumi,” along with Rumi’s poetry, to explore the hidden teachings behind Rumi’s teachings. I gave the talk based on a simple lesson I’ve learned:

Something extraordinary takes place when discovering new insights into life through deep discussions with friends. Time seems to stand still as new perspectives suddenly open up before us. In such moments we sense the scope of truth so fully, as a whole, that it alters our experience, giving us the feeling we are touching life itself. This is the magic of spiritual dialogue.

A thirty minute video captures a portion of this talk. It is called, “Seeing the Invisible — From Rumi’s Poetry to the Fullness of Atoms. You can see the video below: