My enlightenment experience at age 22, 38 years ago seemed to strip away my personality. I was able to look at what it is to be human and at unlimited possibilities of inner development. It was May and I had just moved to Boston in preparation for summer school. I had some time to kill so I looked for an interesting book to read, maybe Science Fiction which was always entertaining for me. I picked up a paper back with the title: "Introduction to Zen Buddhism", and read for a few hours, when I encountered a one page Buddhist scripture called the Heart Sutra. Half way thru reading this where it said: "… There is no perfection and no imperfection …" the course of my entire life changed. I felt I had awakened from a "sleep" where I was dreaming myself! This is not some mysterious mystical state that I entered. In fact, my ordinary personality seemed like some kind of mystified confusion of being defined by others: culture, family and peers. It means a new beginning where I looked at "myself" as if for the first time: "I walk funny! I have a ducking posture as if avoiding criticism! When I enter a room of strangers, I feel just as I did in high school and that they will know what others from my high school a thousand miles away thought of me and how they treated me!" So I started to change. When I read other classics of Western and Eastern philosophy, I knew what they where talking about, and in fact could understand and explain their position from their context, and where it fit in our modern culture. I decided not to go to India or a Buddhist country since my grandfather was a Christian minister and I wanted to explore my traditions, so for 9 months I was an assistant minister while I attended a seminary. After that in 1960 for a short time I moved into an inner city apartment where under the umbrella of the Catholic Worker, we gave shelter and food to the homeless. This journey has been one of maturing of my mind, so I have not mentioned my 2 marriages and other relationships. My background in the Arts is covered in the page on music, dance and poetry.
The undertaking of developing a synergy between science and religion started soon after my personal enlightenment experience. I was equally gifted as a classical musician and in the hard sciences, so this sudden enlightenment came as a surprise and shock, because I had not sought it in any way. So it woke me up to the huge rift that exists between hard science and the global implications of personal "subjective" experiences that have led to the formation of religions or to claims of extrasensory abilities. I am not very interested in what are called miracles or meditative traditions, but in the structure of the universe that makes sense from both science and spiritual perspectives. I do not wish to reduplicate the path that others have so nobly and skillfully presented to us in the world's spiritual traditions, but to show how and where the developments of science can be used to understand and open up these human resources to everyone. I have studied extensively in Asian traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism from living masters in their traditions. I have also studied Western esoteric traditions such as Astrology and the Tarot. I have a certificate to practice acupuncture although due to the restrictions of the AMA., I have never practiced professionally. The model that has evolved from this search is still a work in progress and I find that to be a path of development that is open ended. It is a sign that I will continue to grow and develop. Yet there are many points of interest that I can share that I hope will become a new way of looking at human nature in our one world culture that can bring people together. If science and all the religions can be reconciled as I have done, then maybe the people who believe in any single faith exclusively will come to see that they do not need to reject everything else. This may be easiest for those who are of a particular religious faith to reevaluate their relationship with science, because they use technology in their everyday activities. But it may be more difficult for those who reject any and all religion since they don't need or use traditional religion. But in fact, science has become a religion in many of its uses. This religious context asserts that what is stated in the name of science is global truth. It is true everywhere and at all times. Thus scientists do not talk in a personal way as if this is their idea of the truth. I do not have that global luxury: these are my ideas that are very personal to me within a context of science that is not my personal creation. It is my personal associations and model or map of how these things fit together, and I do not intend to imply that because I am using the materials discovered by science that I am presenting global laws. Models and explanations are a first step on the path of development towards understanding "truth". So it is my hope that my readers may find new room and tools to explore and bring meaning to these subjects. For instance, my definition of the human species is based on the mathematics of neural networks. It incorporates many areas of science besides just neural networks and has a very good fit with all religions. That means that the statements and structures of religions for me point to this understanding and its implications. I also use science as metaphor to explain many things that are in the realm of religion. For instance, I see my model and insights as like a synchronous signal needed to give dimensional organization to the seemingly unreconcilable fragmentation of science and religion taken as a whole. A scrambled cable TV picture is broadcast without the signal that synchronizes the horizontal lines into a vertical frame. It is as if there is no dimensional organization. This signal is purposefully withheld, but culture never provides such a signal that allows a good fit for a clear stable picture. The brain has similar processes: subsystems of the brain recognize specialized information such as faces, posture, gesture, movement, and another system assembles this into our reality. Our present culture discovers many diverse specialties, but has not assembled them into a coherent whole.
I see the true nature of consciousness as each moment presenting a fully constructed inner representation of the world and myself complete with all the calculations needed for my interaction with that world. Thus what we call thought and mental processes takes place after and in addition to an already perfect presentation. In fact the act of perception is created from the procedures and actions which go to make up human behavior. We have been taught by culture to ignore this direct involvement and participation in our total situation. Then we begin to look upon our world as filled with objects of which we can have knowledge about in the descriptive sense of seeing attributes and traits. As this process continues we become one of those objects. Then our idea of our real self is as a collection of traits as likes, dislikes, and predictions which must be maintained, protected and added to just like a car or house. We assign ourselves certain values as to our abilities and our real nature and birthright as humans of knowingness in the here and now (real time planing and knowing) atrophies. Then everything must be `performed' by rote or learned from `masters'. Experience is knowing. Feelings are predictions of outcomes an a self monitoring approval or warning system. Sight is already the plan of action if one only `jumps' in to it with no-mind. Smell is the recognition of the state and quality of the environment. Hearing is the unseen movement as well as communication.