This is a retrospective of week 6, 2024 (2024-02-05–2024-02-11).
I started reading Max De Pree this week:
He fostered the idea of an inclusive corporation, one in which all voices are heard. … He encouraged open communication in the organization. He was often heard to say “Err on the side of over-communication.”1
I also started reading The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali by Edwin Bryant. I found a reference to Bryant in Leanne Whitney’s Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali, which I finished reading last week.
I have listened to several podcasts and interviews with Edwin Bryant during the week. Below are some highlights from my listening:
Question: How did we go from an anthropomorphic God with form to the rejection of form?
Hint: It has to do with the ancient Greeks.
https://youtu.be/gKRpnpXZBl4?t=1020“Christian theology is really Greek, is really Aristotle and Plato filtered through the Bible.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=712“Remember, Christian theology is platonic.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=1360“He [Aristotle] established that there must be a God, because he said there must be a first mover. And he was purely using reason, but his God…is completely not connected with the world at all. … So here we have the God of rational Greek philosophy, but the corollary of that is no emotional relationship with the world.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=3228“When we think of seeing, we think of seeing “something”. We think of content consciousness, but the goal of yoga is to take us to…consciousness of consciousness. … The object is consciousness itself, if that makes any sense. It’s probably one of those things we shouldn’t be trying to define too much, because we’re trying to filter it through our rational minds.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=372“The goal of yoga is not love of God, or relationship with God. … You need to fix your mind on “something”… The Patanjali yoga is not mindfulness… That’s a meditative tradition coming out of the Buddhist tradition… The Indian traditions are fixing the mind completely…so it doesn’t move…”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=1040“You’re not the thinking in Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, I think therefore I am. … Patanjali would say, “oh, well, you’re not that mate”. … You’re gonna go back to the drawing boards.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=2228“Because of ignorance our consciousness is absorbed in body-mind…and then creates this story that I am this body… I am these feelings… It’s the mind that tells these stories… The ultimate Self is that which animates it, something lying behind and pervading it.”
https://youtu.be/cuYLMxi23I8?t=2097
I found and listened to one of Jeffrey Mishlove’s many interviews with Russel Targ:
Jeffrey Mishlove: “What is the role of training if people can get perfect hits the first time? Do they really need training?”
Russell Targ: “I don’t think the training was successful. … My opinion is once you show them the moves, once you give them the experience, they then go off an do it.”
https://youtu.be/SfVG4a5hMEg?t=2362Russell Targ: “…you can move into this timeless awareness… It’s a capability like vision or hearing… It allows you to quiet your mind and expand your awareness.”
https://youtu.be/SfVG4a5hMEg?feature=shared&t=3591
Finally, I found this presentation on The Primacy of Consciousness by Peter Russell:
“What if there weren’t any thing there?”
https://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE?t=2568
“Quanta actually means amount. … It’s actually a quantum of action, which is often missed.”
https://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE?t=3131“Every single photon of light is an identical unit of action. So whatever the underlying field is,…the first manifestatin is actually action. So manifestation is action, is activity.”
https://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE?t=3248“By the way, there’s another connection here between light and consciousness. Light has no space, no time, no mass. … Pure consciousness…is just like light.
https://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE?t=3303″“Causality is a construct of the mind. … We think in a causal way, but that doesn’t mean [that] the external world has to behave in a causal way.”
https://youtu.be/-d4ugppcRUE?t=3508
Notes:
1. Wikipedia, Max De Pree. Last modified 20220522. Accessed 20240211. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Max_De_Pree&oldid=1088535734