Adventures in transparency

In Shropshire, England, there's a ceramicist–a potter if you prefer–who moonlights as a teacher of transparency. Not transparency in government or business. Not institutional or organizational transparency. No, nothing so trivial. Just as he now concentrates in "studio pottery" rather than functional pottery, his teaching focus is nothing less than the transparency of everything.

The ceramicist's name is Rupert Spira. In 2008 he published a book–apparently his first–entitled The Transparency of Things: Contemplations on the Nature of Experience. The conclusion is best summarized, in the paperback edition, on the back cover: "We see that our experience is and has only ever been one seamless totality with no separate entities, objects, or parts anywhere to be found."

From the name of this blog and from other random hints you might have inferred (correctly) that I agree with Spira's conclusion. Unfortunately his exposition leaves something to be desired.

Transparency is published by Non-duality Press. They also publish Oneness: The Destination You Never Left, by John Greven. Both books left me with a peculiar dissatisfaction despite almost complete agreement.

In the world of Oneness, the common denominator is a belief that an infinite, eternal consciousness underlies all existence. More than that, all existence is regarded as really one thing, ultimately identical with that consciousness. From that point on, unity fractures into diversity just as that one Consciousness takes myriad forms. The nature and description of that Consciousness are open to much interpretation and debate.

These notions of metaphysical monism are reportedly native to Eastern minds, but non-native, indeed alien, to Western ones. In the West the Creator is generally viewed as at least distinct from Creation. The most outstanding apparent exception is the mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, where the ultimate Being, the Ein Sof ("without limit") is regarded as including within Itself all that exists.

Spira and Greven are both well acquainted with Eastern tradition and appear to adhere to the Advaita (non-duality) school in particular. Advaita is of Hindu origin, but Spira and Greven know they will never reach their readers with the exotic name of Brahman. Perhaps, being Westerners, they themselves don’t think of the Eternal and Infinite as Brahman. Instead they refer to It as "Consciousness," "Presence," or (in Greven's case) "Awareness." They try, by irresistable logic but without empirical evidence, to show that none of us are what we think we are: We are not ourselves, as we believe ourselves to be; we are all this eternal, infinite Consciousness/Presence/Awareness–and, in reality, nothing else.

The trouble with this presentation is that, to the Western mind, it is totally counterintuitive. Without empirical evidence, it ultimately fails. To the Western mind, consciousness, presence, and awareness are not entities or beings, they're states or conditions; an eternal, infinite Presence without objective qualities, without attributes or identity, is simply empty of meaning. We want to know about whose consciousness we are talking. Well, it's no one's consciousness in particular, because there is no one in particular; the whole idea of individual identity is, for Spira, "Consciousness in search of itself outside of itself." Everything that we experience, including the body, the mind, and the world, is really an appearance within Consciousness of Consciousness. Moreover, the closest analogy to the ultimate, "true" state of Consciousness is deep sleep, where no objects appear and nothing is objectively experienced.

The problem is not that Spira and Greven are wrong. They have simply put their case poorly for their intended audience. In trying to make sense of it for us, they have made something close to nonsense of it.

Others take different approaches to matters like these, and we may explore those later. Spira's Transparency and Greven's Oneness both contain good things for those who already believe. It is helpful to have a reminder, for use in everyday thought, that everything we experience, including our own "selves," is really the One manifest. But those who don’t already believe may need to look elsewhere for their introduction to the Infinite.