From: "Jan Maslow" (jmaslow@jps.net)
Date: July 31, 2005 4:21:43 PM PDT
To: rjon@vzavenue.net
Cc: (virtreal@jps.net)
Subject: Research as the key to the integration of science and yoga

I really appreciate that you've asked about research. I think that the real meeting place between yoga and science is in the arena of practice, rather than theory. For me, the core question is - what part of our being are we using for our scientific exploration? Through what level/part/plane (whatever you want to call it) of consciousness do we "know" that which we are exploring (and perhaps even more important - what is our relationship to it - is it an object, separate from us we are dissecting? Is it something of which we have direct knowledge? Or perhaps, is it a form of Spirit? I was actually planning to write a letter describing my (limited) experience doing research (and trying to find a different way of engaging in research) when your letter appeared. I will try later this week to put a letter together on this.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll forgive me if I don't answer your question about animals directly quite yet. I'd like to first give thanks to Debashish, Michael and Rod for bringing up some points I think are essential to this Post-AUM conversation.

First, I think the most important thing that has been said in this group is Debashish's conversation about the importance of an "affective community" - one which (I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember his exact language) is, at the very least, open to the psychic, or the influence of the psychic.

Both Rod and Michael have in different ways written that we need to be clear about the meaning of the words we use, and the background assumptions underlying those words. Rod gave a list of words about which it is important we come to some kind of mutual understanding regarding their meaning. For this to happen, we need have an enormous amount of good will, not taking for granted that we automatically know what each other is talking about. And Michael wrote a beautiful description of his approach to writing and talking in which he said that even amongst people he addresses who might have a very different perspective, he finds a good reception if at the outset he makes clear his own assumptions and outlook.

I've moderated a few email groups and have been a member of many others. I've found that groups that are organized around the experience of sadhana or other kinds of more personal concerns usually communicate quite well. On the other hand, groups that are more intellectually focused often wind up as battlefields; even when there is good will, it seems to me at best there is a kind of swirling/throwing back and forth of ideas with no focus and no direction. I'd love to see the kind of deep sense of sadhana that Alok and Debashish have been describing become the foundation for our conversation. For this to happen, it seems to me there seems to be a need for a real effort toward an integration of an aspiration for intellectual understanding along with an openness to deeper and higher intuition as well as a sense of connection between all of us as brother and sister sadhaks.

In a book called "Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky: Physical Reality and Beyond, authors Lawrence Leshan and Henry Margenau (a psychologist and a physicist) tell a very sweet story which conveys the need for an approach to knowledge grounded in love. They write: ________________________________________

>"Much of academic philosophy follows the implications of the theory of one rationality governing the cosmos. The Logical positivists set themselves the task of building a language that would provide a foundation for all the sciences and reflect 'truth' and 'reality'. They believed that there was a single language and a 'unique model for all real science and that - when they had described it - they would verify all science. Ultimately it would verify all experience.' (quoted from Herbert Kohl, The Age of Complexity) After over half a century of effort it has now become clear that no one language can do this. Not only are different metaphysical systems necessary to describe different realms of experience, but often different kinds of language are needed to describe experiences in these realms. These necessary languages vary as much as computer language varies from Beethoven. Being in love demands a different kind of language to describe the experience than does the Kinsey approach to making love. They simply cannot be both adequately described in the same system of communication.

"At one time the philosopher Gabriel Marcel was lecturing to a group of American Logical Positivists on grace and transcendence They kept telling him to speak more clearly and to "say what he meant." Finally Marcel paused and then said, 'I guess I can't explain it to you. But if I had a piano here, I could play it'."
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Rich I'll try to send a more specific response soon regarding your question about research methodology.

don