On the Question of Cellular Wisdom (part one)

“We kissed.
I closed my eyes.
All I saw were images
of the video game we’d been playin’.”

“If I can’t formulate it on the page, it causes upset in my flesh.”

 

Sunday rolls around and all I desire is to philosophize. Actually, I desire philosophy all the time. But the day-to-day distractions are aplenty. So many distractions I love and adore. Love more than wisdom? Adore more than God? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t know for sure. Distractions, wisdom and love fill my days. Am I blessed or delusional?

* * * * *

Are we what our cells are? Information seekers, processors and professors. Do we exist to learn, to collect information – about the environment, the world, our own existence? About what feels good or bad or neutral? About what is desirable, what is not?

How is it possible not to judge under such circumstances? How to discern! say the wise.

Wisdom transcends information. But how?

* * * * *

Yogi Richard Freeman interestingly said, in a monthly online studio talk with Yogini Mary Taylor, where they share the wisdom of their refined philosophical minds, their experience of living with yoga, as well as its sacred ancient teachings. He said that “religion is a scary word because it’s one of the most dangerous things”.*

Why is religion dangerous? What does it mean to be religious? And, to what extent is Yoga religious?

A documentary** recently awakened me to the fact that Buddhism is not entirely pure in practice. Not unlike the scandalous Catholic Church institution. It was said that the Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist religious leader) is also a political figure in a historical context on the world stage of rule, responsibility, and duty to the well-being of humanity. And yet, this world spiritual leader was not allowed by his institution to publicly advocate in favor of abused women and children, nor to speak out against criminal participants in the religious establishment he is the head of. The reason that was given is because of his role as a political figure in the context of the China-Tibet conflict.

Is religion dangerous because it is political? Is religion institutionalized spirituality? What is the importance of spirituality in political affairs? What is it like to live a spiritual life on practical terms? What is spirituality?

The Lure of Books, 1911 by Coles Phillips.
Life Magazine, June 8, 1911.

So, religion can be bad. When is religion good?

Religion, perhaps, is good when it coexists with discernment. The study of scripture is key. Doubt is study’s wife. And, in wisdom, they bear discernment. 

“From the point of view of the Buddha and Patanjali alike, the suffering that is fundamental to the human condition is a defilement that can be removed through religious and meditative practice.” (Barbara Stoler Miller, 1998. p.9) *** Can religion help remove suffering despite being able to cause it as well?

And, is suffering a defilement that results from delusions, or is illusion an inherent part of experienced reality? Thus, underscoring the undeniable presence of delusional facts.

The Buddhist monk Geshe Kelsang Gyatso talked about delusions on the social platform “X” recently. Buddhist wisdom seems harsh to me sometimes. Perhaps because it is straightforward, and unafraid of “uncomfortable” truths. But is Buddhism inherently true?

“The reason we develop delusions naturally, whereas we have to apply effort to cultivate virtuous minds, is that we are very familiar with delusions. Our minds have been acquainted with delusions since beginningless time and so deluded mental habits are very deeply ingrained.” (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Aug 2, 2024 on X)

But I wonder, are not also virtuous habits very deeply ingrained? Otherwise, how would cells ever make it?

“Delusions can be removed from the mind by abandoning self-grasping, which is the root from which they all arise. (Aug 3)
Our delusions are so strong that they are constantly compelling us to commit negative karma, which causes us to take rebirth in samsara again and again. (Aug 5)”

I wonder whether only negative karma causes rebirth in the world. There appears to be a significant focus on the negative here. It makes sense, problems demand solutions. But what about all the positive phenomena?

What if we are deluded about the extent of suffering in the world?
Suffering is an inescapable fact of life, no doubt. To what extent must it be pushed on us though? Suffering can be mediated, even remedied. Siddhartha Gotama Buddha showed us how.

Consider the following social media post by Zuby I loved on X, @ZubyMusic on August 6th:

“Shout out to everyone who is doing honest work, treating people well, telling the truth, raising good kids, and doing good things to make the world better. Big and small.
The world is held together by a quiet army of decent people.
I appreciate you even if I don’t know you.”

I feel the same as Zuby. And it makes me wonder…

Do the dharma and karma wheels spin simultaneously?
Does the true nature of things lie beyond such wheels?
What does lie beyond cycles and change?
Constancy?
Of what?

Cellular wisdom and subtle consciousness? But these are also constantly changing. Or else evolution would cease to exist. Then, what does remain the same?

God?

* * * * *

Does it matter if I praise God, if He is one and the same with Her, the Great Goddess? Father and Mother, the same creative force? Equally regenerative and destructive as well?

Except, nuance matters. Why do certain distinctions matter, if it’s all the same creative force per se? Because forces have many manifestations. The same force can manifest in different ways. Innovation, spontaneity, and variation are important keys for evolution.

Evolution is the cosmic-planetary, psycho-physical phenomenon of living, doing, dying, being.

Prehistoric Eurasian civilizations appear to have had “a profound belief in a life-generating Goddess who represents One Source while pictured in many forms.” (Marija Gimbutas, 1991. P.222)****

“From as early as 25,000 B.C. [BCE], She is depicted with exaggerated breasts, vulva, and buttocks, indicating the centers of emanation of her procreative powers. A study of symbols in Paleolithic art demonstrates that the female, rather than the male, was the deity of creation. In fact, there are no traces in Paleolithic art of a father figure. The bearing and nourishing of offspring –plant, animal, and human– was the primary model for the development of the image of the Goddess as the all-generating deity. […]
The Goddess personifies the eternally renewing cycle of life in all its forms and manifestations.” (ibidem)

The multiple categories, functions, and symbols used by prehistoric peoples to express the Great Mystery are all aspects of the unbroken unity of one deity, a Goddess who is ultimately Nature herself.
… the Goddess who personifies the generative forces of nature. […] the various life propagating, birth-giving, life-maintaining, and life-stimulating aspects of the Goddess.
… the Goddess who personifies the destructive forces of nature – the Death Goddess […]
… the Goddess who of Regeneration; it is she who controls the life cycles of the entire natural world. […]

The Goddess of the Paleolithic and Neolithic is parthenogenetic, creating life out of herself. She is the primeval, self-fertilizing “Virgin Goddess” who has survived in numerous culture forms to the present day. The Christian Virgin Mary is a demoted version of this original deity. […] it seems clear that woman’s ability to give birth and nourish children from her body was deemed sacred, and revered as the ultimate metaphor for the divine Creator.” (ibid. p. 223) 

I shared this information with the philosophy club as we talked about panpsychism, pantheism, and transhumanism. I’m not sure why the ancient religion of the Great Goddess popped into my mind as I read the papers on these philosophical phenomena. I began wonder to what extent the religion of the Goddess might be panpsychic (ubiquitous mind), pantheistic (ubiquitous divinity) and transhuman (technology biology)? To what extent are philosophical categories renewed attempts at formulating existential phenomena? Subjects, perhaps, we humans understood far better in ancient civilizations.  Subjects that inherently exist, and are formulated, forgotten, remembered and reformulated.

“Archeologists and historians have assumed that civilization implies a hierarchical political and religious organization, warfare, a class stratification, and a complex division of labor. This pattern is indeed typical of androcratic (male-dominated) societies such as Indo-European but does not apply to the gynocentric (mother/woman-centered) cultures described in this book. The civilization that flourished in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 B.C. and in Crete until 1450 B.C. enjoyed a long period of uninterrupted peaceful living which produced artistic expression of graceful beauty and refinement, demonstrating a higher quality of life than many androcratic, classed societies.
[…]
The primordial deity for our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors was female, reflecting the sovereignty of motherhood. In fact, there are no images that have been found of a Father God throughout the prehistoric record. Paleolithic and Neolithic symbols and images cluster around a self-generating Goddess and her basic functions as a Giver-of-Life, Wielder-of-Death, and as Regeneratrix. This symbolic system represents cyclical, non-linear, mythical time.
 The religion of the Goddess reflected a matristic, matrilineal, and endogamic social order for most of early human history. This was not necessarily “matriarchy,” which wrongly implies “rule” by women as a mirror image of androcracy. A matrifocal tradition continued throughout the early agricultural societies of Europe, Anatolia, and the Near East, as well as Minoan Crete. The emphasis in these cultures was on technologies that nourished people’s lives, in contrast to the androcratic focus on domination.
 The Old European social structure was in direct contrast with the Indo-European system that replaced it. As archeological, historical, linguistic, and religious evidence shows, Old European society was organized around a theacratic [spiritual government], communal temple community, guided by a queen-priestess, her brother or uncle, and a council of women as the governing body. In spite of the revered status of women in religious life, the cemetery evidence […] does not suggest any imbalance between the sexes or a subservience of one sex to the other. It suggests, instead, a condition of mutual respect.” (ibidem, p.viii-xi)

According to Samkhya Philosophy, “that which has never existed can never be brought into existence.”*****

Peace is our past. Peace is human nature. Peace is our future.

“It is a gross misunderstanding to imagine warfare as endemic to the human condition. Widespread fighting and fortification building have indeed been the way of life for most of our direct ancestors from the Bronze Age up until now. However, this was not the case in the Paleolithic and Neolithic. There are no depictions of arms (weapons used against other humans) in Paleolithic cave paintings, nor are there remains of weapons used by man against man during the Neolithic of Old Europe. From some hundred and fifty paintings that survived at Catal Hüyük, there is not one depicting a scene of conflict or fighting, or of war or torture.” (Gimbutas, 1995. p.viii-x) 

Birth-giving, in Catal Hüyük temple wall painting, 7,000 BCE.

So, what is the role of spirituality in politics and government? What does it mean to be a spiritual society, a spiritual civilization? What is the nature of the illusions that craft human realities? Are deluded mental habits deeply ingrained more than virtuous ones? And, do an embryo’s cells stand in competition and conflict with its mother cells, or do they share in a divine dance of cooperative cosmic creation, destruction and regeneration?

To be continued …

 

*FreemanTaylor Yoga @ YouTube, June 2024, “Five Steps to Embodying Happiness”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDX9vL-SpJI

**Buddhism, the Law of Silence - Abuses in Tibetan Buddhism (youtube.com), Direction : Elodie Emery Wandrille Lanos, Producer Tv Presse Productions. 2023.

***YOGA – Discipline of Freedom. The Yoga Sutra attributed to Patanjali. 1998. Barbara Stoler Miller. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

****Marija Gimbutas, 1991. The Civilization of the Goddess – The World of Old Europe. Edited by Joan Marler. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY.

*****Samkhya Karika of Ishvara Krishna with the Tattva Kaumudi of Sri Vacaspari Misra. Translated by Swami Virupakshananda, 1995. Sri Ramakrishna Math Printing Press, India.