Category: Issue 93

Archives 93 – Summer Issue

EDITORS’ NOTE

Truth Matters. That’s a complete sentence. It would take millennia to unpack it. Nimatullahi Sufi Order Master Alireza Nurbakhsh explains why and how truth matters, and the difference truth makes for science and the soul. READ MORE

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DISCOURSE

TRUTH MATTERS
by Alireza Nurbakhsh

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

BRIDGING THE TWO WORLDS
CONFESSIONS OF A BUDDHIST THEORETICAL PHYSICIAN by Fred Cooper

FROM THE SCIENTIFIC TO THE MYSTICAL
IN THE WORK OF CARL ROGERS by Michael Sivori

SUFISM WITHIN A WORLDVIEW TRANSFORMED BY SCIENCE
by Mary C. Coelho

UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
by Dani Kopoulus

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INTERVIEWS

IS REALITY REAL?
A CONVERSATION WITH EVOLUTIONARY GAME -THEORIST DONALD HOFFMAN
Interviewed by David Wright

NEUROTHEOLOGY
HOW DOES THE BRAIN EXPERIENCE GOD? – Interview with Andrew B. Newberg
interviewed by Emily Esfahani Smith

CULTUREWATCH
OBSERVING FROM THE INSIDE OUT
by Ansuman Biswas

CULTUREWATCH
BOOK REVIEWS

Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind
by Majorie Hines Woollacott reviewed by Tim Smith

Now: The Physics of Time
by Richard A. Muller reviewed by Tim Smith

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POETRY

THE LIGHT OF PRESENCE
by Alireza Nurbakhsh

A PEARL THAT CAN ONLY TASTE THE SEA
by William Wolak

AROUND YOU I TURN
by Jeni Couzyn

STRING THEORY
by Eve Powers

FEATURED POET
EVE POWERS

FEATURED ARTIST
BARRY UNDERWOOD

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Mary Coelho Article Notes

NOTES

1 David Ray Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern World (Albany State University of New York Press, 1989) p. 51.

2 Peter B. Todd, The Individuation of God, (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 2012) p. 5.

3 Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 2006) p. 154.

4 F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York, Bantam Books, 1987) p. 192.

5 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: The Sufi Path of Love . (The Shift Network) transcript of Module 2, p. 10.

6 Brian Swimme, Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,1996), p. 100.

7 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: Radiant Bewilderment as the Gate to Oneness,(The Shift Networkk Transcript of Module 5, p. 20.

8 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: The Glory of the Glory. (The Shift Network) transcript of Module 4, p.11.

9 Martin Lings, What Is Sufism? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975) p. 65.

10 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: Radiant Bewilderment as the Gate of Oneness,(The Shift Network) transcript of Module 5, p, 25,)

11 Peat, Synchronicity, p. 88.

12 Peter B. Todd, The Individuation of God p. 8.

13 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: The Way of Passion.(The Shift Network) transcript of Module 6, p. 4.

14 NY Review of Books, Vol, LXIII, No. 17, Nov. 10, 2016, review of George Musser, Spooky Action at a Distance, p. 52.

15 Brian Swimme, The Powers of the Universe (Center for the Study of the Universe, www.storyoftheuniverse.org. 2004), Episode 1, Seamlessness.

16 Lothar Schäfer, In Search of Divine Reality (Fayetteville, Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997), p. 5.

17 NY Review of Books, Vol, LXIII, No. 17, Nov. 10, 2016 review of George Musser, Spooky Action at a Distance, p. 52.

18 Andrew Harvey, The Sufi Way of the Beloved: The Glory of the Glory: Ibn Arabi, (The Shift Network) transcript of Module 4, p. 1,9.

19 Quoted in Maria Jaoudi, Christian and Islamic Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1993) p.84. Upton, Doorkeeper, p. 48

20 Jaoudi, Christian and Islamic Spirituality, p. 34.

93 Editors’ Note

This issue of SUFI engages connections between experience and experiment. Evolutionary game-theorist Donald Hoff man makes a good argument that “evolution has not shaped us to see reality as it is.” He also speaks from a strong conviction that the scientific method is the way to get closer to the truth—the whole point of science is to create a proof, and then to be willing to be proven wrong. Using the language of mathematics and experiment, Hoffman assures us that, in the search for truth, “if we don’t have the arguments, we don’t have a prayer” of arriving anywhere near the truth. Practice, if not prayer, might lead the way.

Good training, for a long time, says Fred Cooper, can open the scientist to grace, and the mystic to precision—practice makes clear-seeing possible, and thus meaning arises. The scientists in this issue say that we have to practice, practice, practice: but the Carnegie Hall of spiritual experience is somewhere the taxi of grace drops us, not somewhere we get ourselves to.

Andrew B. Newberg’s neurological experiments on mystics show that surrender does what no exertion can—and also that exertion is necessary. What we decide to do matters. Truth matters—matter, material, mother—the words are leaves of the same plant, and Dani Kopoulos’s story unfurls them. Grandmothers and spiritual masters know things. They know how to turn on the light so that yellowing life can thrive again. It turns out that Grandmother and Master can see in the dark.

After performance artist Ansuman Biswas enters a black box and becomes Schrodinger’s cat for ten days, his eyes need to adjust to the light when he comes out; his ears hear stories from others about his experience that have nothing to do with what he knew in there, by himself, where he wasn’t, after all, alone. Truth shows itself in relationship. Love might come in there, but that’s another matter.

—The Editors of SUFI

ARTWORK © ANDREY BOBIR

93 Is Reality Real?

A Conversation with Evolutionary Game-Theorist Donald Hoffman

interviewed by David Wright

DW: Is what we perceive with our senses “real” in the deepest sense? Is there a reality “beyond” our perception? If so, what is it like, and what is our responsibility towards it? Too often, in seeking answers to these questions, scientists and spiritual aspirants find themselves living in worlds apart, unable to exchange and share common experiences or perspectives.

DH: My attitude about science and spirituality is… I’ll put it this way. There’s a famous quote from Rumi that says, “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.” I think of spirituality as relating to questions about human significance and meaning. Why are we here? What’s this all about? And often scientists will say that we can’t address those questions, but I take a different point of view. I think that we can. I do meditate, and I understand the importance of silence; I think that it is transformative. I think it restructures human consciousness to spend time in silence. It’s a very healthy thing.

93 Bridging the Two Worlds

93 Confessions of a Buddhist Theoretical Physicist

by Fred Cooper

Until recently, I was not willing to discuss the relation between Science and Spirituality, not because of any distrust of my understanding of physics, but because my meditation practice had not reached the necessary maturation to feel confident about discussing spiritual matters to non-meditators. It was only about 10 years ago, after practicing for 27 years, that I was able to integrate my experience of being introduced to the nature of mind (by two of my root teachers, H.E. Tai Situ Rinpoche and V.V. Mingyur Rinpoche) to achieve a stable “glimpse of recognition.” After this event I felt I had the credentials in both domains to make some statements about the connection between physics and spirituality.

In the present article, I am happy to share my thoughts on how physics and meditation are related based on my career as a theoretical physicist and on my training in the Mahamudra approach to meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

93 Neurotheology

How Does the Brain Experience God?

Interview with Andrew B Newberg

Interviewed by Emily Esfahani Smith

EES: What are some of the questions you’re trying to answer in your research?

ABN: We are trying to understand the relationship between our religious and spiritual selves and the human brain. What are the ways that the brain allows us to experience religious feelings and thoughts, and what are the ways that it hinders us? I’m particularly interested in what’s going on inside the brain during intense religious experiences, like moments of transcendence, awe, and mysticism. When somebody says, “I had a mystical experience and I felt God” and someone says “I had a mystical experience and felt universal consciousness,” we can ask if those are the same experiences interpreted differently, or are they two completely different experiences?

93 From the Scientific to the Mystical

In the Works of Carl Rogers

by Michael Sivori

In the years before he died Rogers was excited to see that his findings in the science of psychotherapy were reflected in other fields such as chemistry and mathematics and with the emergence of Chaos theory. In other words, the fully functioning person is an open system—a principle in Chaos theory—interacting with their environment and integrating these new experiences to adapt, as they proceed. It could well have been that Rogers would have gone on to use open systems theory to begin to synthesize the scientific with the spiritual.

PHOTOGRAPHER ALBIN DAHSTROM, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM

93 Sufism Within A Worldview Transformed by Science

by Mary Coelho

The Sufi mystics have left us many remarkable statements that seem impossible to believe in the contemporary mechanistic Western context. Ibn Arabi wrote in the voice of the beloved “I am nearer to you than yourself.” From the writings of Al-Hallaj we find “Between me and You, there is only me. Take away the me, so only You remain.”

These words are easily discredited and disregarded in our Western world in which mechanistic sciences have too often claimed full explanatory power of the nature of our world, thus discounting the possibility of dimensions of the world not accessible to that mode of knowing. As a consequence, these words just quoted are foreign to many people, as a sense of the sacred has been lost in much of the West. We have constructed a disenchanted, technological culture for ourselves that is a costly prison.

Sufism With a Worldview Transformed by Science Notes

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