“The Science of Personal Transformation”

“Beyond Illusion Project”

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Part C: “The Science of Personal Transformation”

What the program is all about:

Based on the quantum model of reality and the newest neurosciences, “The Science of Personal Transformation” is about:

    1.   The Science of Enlightenment

    2.   The Science of Creation

    3.   The Science of Change

During the program you will:

-   Access the path to enlightenment reformulated in a modern, secular, and science-based vocabulary.

·         - Access a system completely free from the cultural trappings and doctrinal preconceptions of traditional Buddhism, yet capable of bringing people to classical enlightenment.

·         - See that the liberated state is in fact a natural experience, as real as the sensations you are having right now.

·       -   Come to understand that through the investigation of your own thoughts, feelings and perceptions you can awaken to clear insight and a happiness independent of conditions.

·         - Come to understand how mindfulness meditation works and how to use it to enhance your cognitive capacities, your kindness and connection with the world, and the richness of all your experiences.

·         - Explore universal insights spanning Buddhism, Christian and Jewish mysticism, shamanism, the yogas of India, and many other paths.

·        -  Explore how to begin and navigate your own meditation practice.

·       -   Explore concentration, clarity, and equanimity – the core catalysts of awakening.

·        -  Explore impermanence – its many aspects and how to work with them.

·       -    Experience the “wave” and “particle” nature of self.

·        -  Explore purification and clarification – how we digest mental blockages and habits through inner work.

·        -  Be taught about the workings of your subconscious mind and its significance for your everyday life.

·       -  Be presented with a disarmingly simple idea: the way we pay attention in daily life can play a critical role in our health and well-being.

·       -   Be taught mental techniques that help you to experience your body and even your heart in a new way.

“The Science of Personal Transformation” demystifies ancient understandings and bridges the gap between science and spirituality. It is a many-faceted gem sure to surprise, provoke, illuminate, and inspire you.

(The program cosists of 28 meetings)

Agenda

Meeting 1: Introduction

     The benefits of meditation are many and significant. People’s lives change. They get to live their lives on a scale of two or three times bigger than they otherwise would have been. The mechanism is quite simple: meditation elevates a person’s base level of focus. That is the ability to attend to what’s relevant in a given situation. Meditation changes your relationship to sensory experience, including your thoughts and body sensations. It allows you to experience them in a clear and unblocked way. When the sensory experience of the mind-body becomes sufficiently clear and uninhibited, it ceases to be a rigid thing that imprisons your identity. A significant part of Part C is about the “Science of enlightenment”. You can think of enlightenment as a kind of permanent shift in perspective that comes about through direct realization that there is no thing called self inside you. The experience of no self can also be described as the experience of true self or deepest soul.  Enlightenment is real, and it can be achieved by normal human beings through the systematic practice of meditation. In this program we approach enlightenment from a scientific perspective and present it as a feasible goal for ordinary people.

     We approach the science of personal transformation from the framework of mindfulness, as its general method shares some features with the general method of modern science.

Meeting 2: The Most Fundamental Skill

     Concentration power impacts every aspect of your day because there is no part of human experience that is not affected by our degree of presence and focus. Concentration power is trainable, and by developing it you can greatly improve your life. The systematic training in focus is called meditation practice; it is the basic tool in the science of enlightenment.

     Meditation elevates your base level of concentration power, and concentration power facilitates all human endeavors. So meditation is good for everything. Benefits of meditation. Meditation also affects the body. Physiological effects of meditation, which also include a positive impact on health. The meditative state. Happiness independent of conditions is the ultimate personal goal of meditation. Meditation is something we do for ourselves, for others, and in order to help the world.

Meeting 3: Mysticism in World Culture

     Techniques for attaining states of high concentration were central to all the religious traditions of the world. All the world’s religions have a meditative core, sometimes referred to as the mystical or contemplative side of that religion.

     There are three aspects to religions or spiritual experience around the world: a) the spirituality of thought, b) the spirituality of feeling, and c) mysticism. What sets mysticism apart from the spirituality of thought or feeling is that it involves the cultivation of high concentration.

     One way to trace the theme of meditation in world spirituality is through vocabulary. Most of the world’s contemplative traditions have a generic technical term. When we take the systems and put them side by side, we notice some broad parallels between the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu systems of contemplation.

     Enlightenment consciousness can be found inside the core of each spiritual tradition. Individuals living in different times in different places, having totally different views of the world, all describe their experiences in rather similar way.

Meeting 4: Calming and Clarifying (A)

     In meditation, concentrating and calming down is only half of the story. The other half of the process is clarifying, that is, observing, analyzing, and deconstructing sensory experience. Clarifying leads to insight. This clarifying aspect of meditation is known technically as vipassana. One way to think about meditation is as a dialectical interplay between a calming-concentrating aspect (samatha) and a clarifying-dissecting aspect (vipassana). We call these two sides of meditation the calming part and the clarifying part.

Meeting 5: Calming and Clarifying (B)

     Prince Siddhartha Gautama, a most remarkable human being, and essentially, a modern person in many ways, discovered an entirely new attentional skill. A sort of internal microscope to carefully observe the nature of your own sensory experience. This discovery brought a whole new dimension to meditation: the dimension of clarifying and untangling which fosters insight into fundamental issues – the nature of self, the nature of suffering, the nature of oneness, perhaps even the nature of nature. This microscopic investigation of sensory experience is called sensory clarity. It is the essence of mindfulness meditation, and an extremely powerful method of self-transformation.

Meeting 6: Insight and Purification (A)

     A common strategy in the sciences is to take a complex phenomenon and break it down into its natural components. Analysis of these components allows us to understand the complex phenomenon at a deeper level, to have some control over it, and to predict things about it.

     One very complex phenomenon is our sensory experience. Human experience is quite complex. All of human experience can be understood as sensory experience. When we apply concentration, clarity, and equanimity to sensory experience, moment by moment, we generate a process of insight and purification. Over time, this improves our lives, the lives of those around us, and the world in general. It can make dying bearable, even meaningful.

     Introduction to space and the spatial nature of experience and its significance to enlightenment. 

Meeting 7: Insight and Purification (B)

     Embodied experience is a very complex phenomenon. We can break it down into two basic qualitative categories of body sensations: physical and emotional, which can be broken down much further into sub- subdimensions. If you want to be happy independent of conditions, you’ll need to learn how to have a complete experience of each basic type of body sensation. On the spiritual path, we have to learn how to have a complete experience of anger, so that anger does not cause suffering which then distorts our behavior. A complete experience of fear, sadness, and so on. Even a complete experience of physical pain, and other unpleasant feelings in the body. “Have a complete experience with x” means “Experience x with so much concentration, clarity and equanimity”. Then you and x become an integrated flow of energy and spaciousness.

Meeting 8: Insight and Purification (C)

 

     The basic model for the mindfulness-based spiritual path is to take some type of experience and infuse it with concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity. We can take any type of experience and attempt to be focused, precise, and allowing with it. Greeting experiences this way catalyzes a process of insight and purification. Concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity interact with the experiences of life to speed up a natural process of psychospiritual evolution. Whether they know it or not, all human beings are involved in the path to enlightenment by virtue of living daily life. The very fabric of life is constantly pulling us toward the enlightened state.

Meeting 9: Impermanence

     A most enriching concept is that of impermanence. Buddha said that human suffering is caused by grasping. Most people depend solely on things that cannot and will not last for their happiness. The alternative is to allocate at least some time and energy for exploring the dimension of happiness that does last, which is a facet of impermanence itself. The flow of Creator Spiritus that is always present. Then we discover that the sense of self is not a particle that never changes, but rather a flow, a wave of thought and feeling that can increase and decrease. It’s not so much that we don’t have a self, rather it’s that the self we do have is not a thing. It is an impermanent, fluctuating activity, a process not a particle, a verb not a noun. And if we look carefully enough and patiently enough, any experience will show us its impermanence.  That is important and useful, because impermanence can turbocharge our spiritual growth. In order for that to happen, we have to be able to detect the impermanence.

Meeting 10: The Realm of Power (A)

     One way to view the path to enlightenment is as a journey – a journey from the surface of consciousness to the Source of consciousness. We can look upon consciousness as having layers to it. Our ordinary experience of self and the world arises on the topmost layer. Our spiritual Source is the deepest layer. In between surface and Source, there is a thick slab that must be traversed. While moving through the intermediate level between surface and Source, some people encounter unusual phenomena which may be either frightening, empowering, or both. In this module about the Realm of Power we will talk about those phenomena and how to work with them. In this meeting we look a little more closely at this tri-level model.

Meeting 11: The Realm of Power (B)

     The intermediate realm of consciousness is what in the West is referred to as the subconscious. It is the realm where the trauma of unresolved past experiences, fixations, and conflicts are stored. The impurities and blockages in the intermediate realm separate the everyday mind from the enlightened mind. There lies the secret of how we feel about ourselves, when we are not distracted by the external environment. It is our familiar emotions when we are not preoccupied by “life”. It’s what we hide about ourselves. From this perspective, the path is really not so much a journey from surface to Source, as a clearing away of what lies between surface and Source.

     The subconscious is also the realm of archetypal bodies – the world wherein angels, ancestors, entities, and spirit beings are real and relevant. When journeying from surface to Source, some people encounter celestial and empowering experiences. In this case, the really important question is how to harness these phenomena toward optimal growth.

Meeting 12: The Realm of Power (C)

     An important gauge of a person’s spiritual maturity lies in how they relate to the phenomena of the intermediate layer, the real power.  Indeed, we can classify an individual’s spiritual journey based on how they react to this realm. If you get preoccupied with the phenomena of the intermediate realm, there is no end to the new and interesting stuff you can experience. The realm of power runs parallel to ordinary surface experience, so it is easier for people to relate to. The phenomena themselves are not a problem. The problem comes when you start putting all of your spiritual energy into them. When that happens, you believe you are making spiritual progress, but in fact you are not, and worse still, you don’t realize it.

Meeting 13: The Realm of Power (D)

     The usual way that people view phenomena such as astral travel, past life experiences, reading other people’s minds and so on, is to see them as a conduit that carries messages from the deep mind to the surface. Contacting such unusual experiences can potentially be a good thing, because it’s a sign that you have gone deep into consciousness, and therefore, if you bring the qualities of concentration, clarity, and equanimity to that experience, you will be able to purify yourself at a very deep level. In other words, the reverse way of looking is more productive. Viewed this way, unusual phenomena or altered states become what in Buddhism is called upaya.

Meeting 14: Conscious and Subconscious Mind

     The most commonly recognized distinction in the way the brain operates is our experience of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Both play a role in making us who we are. They’re also largely responsible for making reality what it is. The conscious mind is the brain function that we feel most connected with, because it’s the one we are most aware of. We’re less aware of our subconscious mind. Using our computer analogy, we can think of the subconscious mind as the hard drive in the brain, doing what hard drives do: store a lot of information.  It has a record of everything you’ve ever experienced during your entire lifetime.  The events themselves, also how you felt and what you believed about each one. Every thought, every emotion, all the encouragement you’ve ever received. As well as all of the harsh words, criticism, and betrayals are stored on the hard drive of your subconscious mind. Those experiences unexpectedly surface in our lives, seemingly at the times when we would least like them to be there.

     Our beliefs dictate everything in our lives, even our reality and they are also in most of their part stored in the subconscious mind.

Meeting 15: Subconscious Beliefs

     We often don’t consciously remember the way the people around us responded to what was happening in our lives at the time. Because we were present, however, we do remember, as those subconscious experiences became the blueprint for the way we deal with relationships and life. They are unconscious memories, so we may not even be able to see them when we act them out, even when they are as plain as day to other people.  90% or more of our daily actions are responses that come from the reservoir of information we accumulated during the first seven years of life. Almost universally, the experiences that cause people to feel stuck have roots in what are considered negative beliefs that we acquire early in life. And it’s precisely because they’re subconscious that it’s often difficult for us to see them in ourselves. In this meeting you’ll do an exercise to identify subconscious impressions and beliefs you formed of your childhood caretakers’ characteristics. You will gain insight into subconscious beliefs that may be playing out in your life today.

Meeting 16: Origins of Subconscious Beliefs

     Most people have been enculturated to accept and believe certain things that may, and likely do, betray their real potential. We have been raised to believe that some invisible dome defines who we are, how high we can soar, our basic parameters of life expectancy and health, and so forth – self imposed limitations that we are totally unaware of, boundaries that we honor despite their unreality and the fact that our sages, geniuses, entrepreneurs, and heroes have all told us to ignore them.  But we believe we know better or we simply do not know how to pierce those limitations.

     What if you also learned that you could repattern that subconscious programming – actually changing the information in the subconscious so that it was more consistent with your genuine desires? Would you want to do so? The truth is that you can.

Meeting 17: Brainwaves and The Developing Mind

     Since knowledge is, as we have been pointing out in this program, the precursor to experience, having a basic understanding of what happens in the brain during meditation will serve you well when you experience the meditative process. In this meeting I am going to give you a general understanding of the electrical activity of your brain. The most common brainwave frequencies and their relation to the developing mind, as well as the adult mind. Thus you will be more adept at knowing when you are in the brain-wave state where the ego tries in vain to change the ego, and when you are in the brain-wave state that is the fertile ground to true change.

Meeting 18: Brainwaves BETA

     We spend most of our conscious waking day with our attention on the external environment and functioning in Beta. In this meeting we talk about the three levels of these brain-wave patterns: Low-range, mid-range, and high-range Beta. Of all these, high-range Beta brainwaves is the frequency overutilized by the majority of the population in the Western world.  High-beta is a short-term survival mechanism, and a long-term source of stress and imbalance. When sustained, sends the brain into disorder.  It also makes it hard for us to focus on our inner self.

Meeting 19: Accessing the Subconscious

     In personal transformation our goal is to access the subconscious. The reason to do this? All the precious and interesting content is there – beliefs, attitudes, self-image, stories of our lives, and so on. How can we access the subconscious? By achieving the same brainwave states while downloading programs and the subconscious content was formed in the first place during childhood. Meditation takes us from Beta into Alpha and Theta brainwave states, the frequencies our brains function in childhood. A coherent brainwave state sets the stage for body and mind to heal. Awareness, not analysis, permits entry into the subconscious.

Meeting 20: The Power of Attention

     In order to live long healthy lives with a focus on our personal development, we have to shift from living primarily in a Beta wave state to a way of living where coherent Alpha brain waves dominate. We can accomplish this task by changing the way we pay attention. There is a good reason for that: attention is the central mechanism through which we guide our awareness and experience the world. The changes that come from learning to pay attention in different ways have robust effects on the entire nervous system. Our mind, body, and spirit. Bringing attention under conscious control is a powerful way of mastering our internal and external realities. Learning to master our central nervous system and with it our personal reality, through the use of optional attention skills, is the ultimate control and freedom. 

Meeting 21: Sweet Surrender

     A fundamental principle of how the brain communicates with itself is something called synchrony -when the brain’s electrical activity, or brain waves, are synchronized in one or more areas of the brain. The greater the ability to enter into and exit synchrony in brainwave activity, the better the brain performs its tasks. This is true no matter what the frequency. Synchronous activity is most prominent when the brain is in a relaxed but alert state. Consequently, we have to enhance this activity. We can actually train ourselves to achieve greater control of synchrony. By surrendering we can slip into alpha – the alert, wakeful relaxation we are looking for. “Objectless imagery” – the multisensory experience and awareness of space, nothingness, or absence – almost always elicits large amplitude and prolonged periods of phase-synchronous alpha activity.

Meeting 22: Moving Out of Emergency Mode

     There is a fundamental lesson to be learned: The way we attend controls the intensity of our experiences and reactions. Narrow focus amplifies the intensity, while diffuse focus dilutes it. Flexible attention is the sine qua non of health. Many problems can be alleviated by changing attention style. There is an innate and robust normalizing mechanism in the human body accessed and operated by how we pay attention. With Open Focus training things caused or exacerbated by stress can be resolved. This resolution comes about because narrow-objective focus is an emergency mode of attention.

Meeting 23: Practicing Open Focus

     All pain, even the most physical (e.g. from tissue damage) can be eliminated or, at the very least, greatly mitigated – by managing the way we attend to it.  By practicing Open Focus we can dissolve physical pain, emotional pain and trauma. As with physical pain, when emotional pain becomes part of the larger awareness of Open Focus, it’s much easier to accept and diffuse. By simply learning to shift our attention, we can melt into our physical or emotional pain and dissolve it. Emotional stress may have a great impact on our eyes. Releasing tension in the eyes using Open Focus exercises can greatly improve our vision. Love also is a way of paying attention. Open Focus training is about releasing, expressing, giving, accepting, and engaging in union.  Attention biases and attentional rigidity are the principal causes of human misery and suffering.

     The meeting starts with an Open Focus exercise titled: “Head and Hands in Open Focus”. It has been designed to unlock a part of the stress we carry on our head, neck, shoulders, arms and fingers. Make sure you are sitting at a place where you remain undisturbed throughout the whole session.

Meeting 24: Can you Imagine?

     Love is our relationship to all of our experience and to the whole world. In our culture we regard the world as a place “out there”, a dangerous or sinister place to be feared or exploited. We objectify the world rather than merge with it. If we learn to change the way we attend, our relationship with everything, including our planet, changes.  We become part of the natural environment instead of apart from it. And develop a deeply rooted, heartfelt union with it.

     The meeting starts with an Open Focus exercise titled: “General Open Focus”. Make sure you are sitting on a place where you can remain undisturbed throughout the whole session.

Meeting 25: The Real No Self

     The Buddha taught there is no thing inside us called a self. This concept goes against our ordinary ways of thinking; it goes against our normal perception. Spend some time carefully observing how the perception “I am” arises. You will see that it arises from a mixture of thought and feeling. In order to analyze the experience of our finite I-am-ness we can work with the scale of mental image + mental talk + body emotion, because it represents a natural system – a system that can be reactive, proactive, interactive, and occasionally inactive.  We can call such a system “inner activity”. We can explore our I-am-ness with the method of “self-enquiry”. An alternative approach is the classical observing practice of vipassana. The sense of self as a separate, vulnerable particle is a kind of illusion that arises when we lose track of inner see-hear-feel activity. Once we can experience self in terms of its sensory components, our subjective experience of who we are becomes wave-like. The new self is not a noun, it is a verb.

Meeting 26: The Power of Gone

     Which technique would I pick as the quickest path to enlightenment? It’s a difficult choice, but I think it would be the technique I call Just Note Gone. We usually are aware of the moment when a sensory event starts, but are seldom aware of the moment when it vanishes. But to always be aware of sensory arisings and hardly ever be aware of sensory passings creates an unbalanced view of the nature of sensory experience.  It also causes us to miss one of the more interesting ways to contact the Source.  The Source of your own consciousness, consequently the Source of everyone’s consciousness – the shared formless womb of all beings. So, you are led to a spontaneous sense of oneness with – and commitment to – all beings.

Meeting 27: A Happy Thought

     Buddhist tradition has long held that Prince Siddhartha Gautama was not the only Buddha. Prior to him, there had been Buddhas, and in later ages, there will be other Buddhas. Buddhist mythology tells us that the next Buddha will be named Maitreya. It is said that he now abides in one of the heavenly realms known as the Tushita Heaven, from which he contemplates the world, trying to figure out the best way to enlighten all beings.

     Here’s a very happy thought: most likely, there are things that are true and important about enlightenment that neither the Buddha nor any of the great masters of the past knew, because to know them requires an understanding of modern science.

     If correct, this happy thought will fundamentally change humanity’s perspective on the nature of spiritual reality.

Meeting 28: Review – Q&A

Review and Q&A on the content of “The Science of Personal Transformation”.