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"Maya originates in human conceptualizations, where we abstract 'distinct' and 'separate' objects or measures from our 'all-at-once' sensory experience or gestalt, relating them to previously-formed memory-classes: 'a chair,' 'a cloud,' 'inside,' 'outside,' etc. That is, 'duality' or maya refers only to the way in which the human 'naming' or conceptualizing of sensory experiences—this being inherently based in memory—'creates' seemingly-distinct objects from the 'unfragmented' sensory gestalt. Thus, all 'things' are 'created' by the words or concepts or names that we use to represent them, in speech and language. The transcendence of duality is thus attained to when we stop naming or conceptualizing our experiences—when we 'release our finite concepts into Infinity.' Conversely, scriptural paradoxes arise simply from the inherent inability of dualistic concepts to describe seamless reality."

So goes the accepted scholarly explanation as to the nature of duality, maya and transcendence, fed to the baby boomer generation by Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, and generously purveyed and expanded on by others before and since then. And indeed, no one could dispute the phenomenological fact that transpersonal and transcendent states of consciousness involve our rising above gross mental conceptualizations, ultimately into identification with the transcendent Self or Witness.

Interestingly, however, the core idea that paradox cannot be expressed conceptually—the basis of the aforementioned ideas regarding duality and maya—is quite demonstrably wrong. Further, we have good reason to believe that the basic structure of human consciousness is rooted in exactly such a precise mathematical expression of paradox. Conversely, as we shall see, the most interesting "paradoxical" descriptions of transcendence have their basis, not in the "dualistic nature of all concepts," but rather in accurate mystical reportings of the subtle cosmic structures underlying human consciousness.

There is, for example, a well-known mathematical function called an impulse, containing containing equal amounts/amplitudes of all possible frequencies from zero to infinity. That is, it's a "white" signal, akin to the white light utilized in projecting motion pictures. Such a signal expands to infinity, and collapses back to zero, all in zero time. (This behavior, when filtered or limited in its frequency range, actually forms the basis for all contemporary electronics and computer engineering: any transformation of time-varying signals into the frequency domain, as underlies all electronic circuit design, is based in exactly the same mathematics, discovered over a century ago.) That unfiltered function is thus both expanding and contracting simultaneously, and is thus a mathematical/conceptual representation of paradox.

Thus, we can either say (wrongly) that, "since it's only dualistic concepts which bind us to duality," in understanding that function we have meaningfully transcended duality...or investigate the possibility that, not only is it not simply the alleged "dualistic nature of all concepts" that constitutes maya, but that, as David Bohm believed, mathematics may be more than a simple human construct originating in abstractions from our sensory experience of relative reality. Either way, however—and even we continue to narrowly regard mathematics as merely a human conceptual construct—the ideas that concepts cannot express paradox, or that paradox conversely arises from the "dualistic nature of all concepts," are incorrect, and so cannot be the basis of any valid understanding as to what duality or transcendence are. Meaning that the core of the theory underlying the scholarly understanding of the "perennial philosophy," as it has long been presented by Ken Wilber and others, is significantly mistaken.

Back in the 1970s, Itzhak Bentov, in his Stalking The Wild Pendulum, proposed the rudiments of a model of consciousness. In that model, literal causal-level spheres of consciousness, centered in the midbrain of each one of us, were seen as filtering such mathematical impulses, according to the resonant frequency or level of reality to which the individual was "tuned in" to. If one follows the mathematics of that through, it turns out that higher levels of consciousness will initially expand, as literal spheres of consciousness, farther into space, then contracting intermittently to a point more frequently, in the interval following the impulse, than will lower states.

It is a widespread understanding of metaphysics that the ideal point is the gateway between manifest and unmanifest Spirit. Suppose that we take that mystically-expounded Point as referring microcosmically to an objective subtle structure—i.e., to the point at the center of a potentially-infinite sphere of consciousness, functioning as the gateway between manifestation and the unmanifested witnessing Spirit at the level of one's transcendent Self. It can then easily be seen that since higher states of consciousness contract to a point more frequently in the interval between such impulses, they are not merely literally "expanded" (into causal-level space) states of consciousness, but rather transcend duality, in their intermittent point-identifications, more than do lower states. That intermittent transcendence—creating "frames" in a subjective "motion picture show," of the chaotic Self witnessing one's internal milieu through that point—can then be regarded as granting the transcendence of time (and causality) which is necessary for the existence of free choice. (The existence of astral and causal bodies, or even of any implicate "web of interrelated causes" in the cosmos, is not itself sufficient to allow for freedom in our mental choices, for that freedom can exist only if there is a mechanism in human consciousness allowing it to transcend time, and thus to be free of the causes and effects which constitute the laws of the mayic universe.) It will also produce an increase in subjective time in higher states of consciousness, as has been widely reported; as in the astral body-identified dream state, where we may experience many subjective dream-events in a short period of external clock time.

From the fact that our level of consciousness not only affects the degree of expansion of our individualized sphere of consciousness, but also determines the particular subtle body which we may be working through at the time, we can see that high states of consciousness are "free from concepts" simply because they involve attunement to the (e.g., causal) bodies which are above the lower mental bodies which produce our concepts. Thus, conceptualization is merely a symptom of our bondage to duality, not the cause of that bondage. And this accounts nicely for the fact that both the mind of the infant and the mind of the sage are "without concepts," but only the latter is in a state of transcendence, for in no way is their level (i.e., their resonant frequency) of consciousness the same.

Even the attempt to interpose stages of psychological development in between those two states cannot circumvent the problem that, if conceptualization were the cause of bondage to duality, one mind without concepts should be the same as any other mind without concepts, regardless of the stage of psychological development (or chakric awakening, or identification with the Self) of the individual involved. Indeed, the need to graft those stages in should have long been seen as a red flag, pointing to basic inadequacies in the idea that conceptualization is a cause rather than a phenomenological symptom of the bondage to duality.

In the structural view of consciousness, further, the Self-level "chaos" or "virgin matter" which is often wrongly presented as being simply one's internal milieu in the absence of conceptualization, is likewise mathematically expressible at that transcendent level. Indeed, it completely matches Barbara Ann Brennan's description of the Self as being a star-like sphere of light, at a level which appears as a "Void" to all lower levels of reality, but which is actually chaotically/randomly vibratory, with the amplitude of that vibration averaging out to zero, and so being undetectable to any lower levels of reality.

Techniques of meditation involving visualization, audibilization or life-force control invariably make clear and explicit use of these and other subtle structures. Whether we are simply watching the breath (with or without a corresponding mantra), internally chanting "Om," or imagining ourselves as expanding spheres of light, these are all attempts to attune ourselves to aspects of subtle bodily/cosmic structure which already exist in each one of us, and which we merely need to resonate with in order to consciously experience.

Bentov actually regarded the expansion of our causal-level spheres into space as constituting the mechanism for intuition as well. In that view, a sphere of consciousness expanded to a greater radius "illuminates" a larger region of the "hologram of creation"—the interaction of spheres of consciousness with their "reference frequency" of the unrippled Absolute (or unfiltered impulse) is structurally identical to that of physical holograms—and thus has clearer access to the information contained in that expanded region.

You assumed that once you reached the Absolute, the thinking processes would stop automatically. But here you go, romping around in the Void and apparently thinking. This present thinking process is not the kind of linear, deductive thinking that people normally do, but rather an intuitive knowing, where very complex ideas are imprinted on the mind instantaneously.

—Itzhak Bentov
A Cosmic Book

The ability to take a structural perspective on the behavior of consciousness also discloses a unity of science and religion well beyond that which contemporary transpersonal and integral psychology are able or willing to encompass. On a superficial level, of course, one may easily observe that both physical science and meditation-based religion are "experimental"—with both involving sets of injunctions ("do this"), ensuing experimentation, and community verification of the experimental results obtained—and that meditative states have physically-measurable correlates, in brainwave function for example. But without properly understanding and considering what "As above, so below" actually means, the profound unity of religion and science will necessarily remain hidden. For that aphorism can never be intelligently reduced to merely the distorted idea that any similarly in patterns between the causal, astral and physical levels of reality supposedly arises only from the fact that "what we see depends on our concepts." Rather, what "As above, so below" means, and has always meant, is that the patterns expressed on the physical level of reality—measurable in physicists' laboratories, and expressed in the so-called laws of physics—are accurate reflections of higher laws of mind and consciousness, in the astral and causal realities.

Not surprisingly, Einstein's special theory of relativity discloses some of the most precise instances of this reflection of the structures of consciousness in the behavior of physical-level matter, with higher velocities of matter mirroring the behaviors of higher states of consciousness. Thus, in both relativity and in human consciousness we find a subjective time dilation, where a great many subjective events can be experienced during a single objective period of time. Further, the measured mass of any object increases at higher relative velocities (becoming infinite at the velocity of light), just as we encompass a greater region of space in higher states of consciousness—so that our conscious "mass" increases in those higher states, becoming infinite in omnipresence, with our consciousness expanded to infinity. We likewise find a relativistic "space contraction" where, according to special relativity, an observer identified with an expanding sphere of physical light would experience a point (containing the entire universe) at the center of a sphere of light expanding to fill the universe.

The primary impersonal manifestation of Spirit to the interested devotee is exactly in the form of such an expanding sphere of (non-physical) light, with the point at the center of that (i.e., at the center of one's own) causal-level sphere of consciousness being the gateway between manifestation and unmanifested Spirit. Thus, corroborative mystical experiences such as the following should in no way be surprising or taken as paradoxical, since they are simply clear enunciations of the structural principles underlying the highest levels of human consciousness. Indeed, such concise descriptions only lose their original and obviously-intended meanings by being "interpreted" according to principles of general semantics or phenomenology—which, in their limited perspectives, can see in the point/infinity pairing only irreconcilable conceptual opposites as the imagined basis of duality or maya, never literal causal structure.

[The] all-pervasive ocean of existence...seemed to be simultaneously unbounded, stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinitely small point. From this marvelous point the entire existence, of which my body and its surroundings were a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it.

—Gopi Krishna
Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda expressed similar ideas regarding the core nature of reality, on the basis of his own mystical perceptions:

A cinema audience may look up and see that all screen images are appearing through the instrumentality of one imageless beam of light. The colorful universal drama is similarly issuing from the single white light of a Cosmic Source.

If we pay close attention to the structure implied here, we will immediately recognize that movies are produced through the effect of a continuously-shining bulb of white light, whose light is made "rhythmic" by placing a shutter between it and the film each time the film is advanced to its next frame: white light is applied, at uniformly separated instants in time, to successive frames of a filtering film. Each small area of the frame in question then filters the white light applied to it, according to that area's color or resonant frequency, allowing only a limited range of the frequencies present in the underlying white light to become manifest through it.

An analogous filtering-of-white-light-impulses nature of human and atomic spheres of consciousness is, of course, exactly what Bentov proposed a quarter of a century ago. (Brennan, W. Thomas Wolfe, Bentov and Yogananda all independently confirmed the existence of such a causal-level literal sphere, this existence being unconsciously embedded in our daily language whenever we talk of a "sphere of consciousness.") David Bohm's "holomovement," too, views matter as having exactly such a discretely-recreated, motion picture-like nature:

[Imagine] a wave that comes to focus in a small region of space and then disperses. This is followed by another similar wave that focuses in a slightly different position, then by another and another and so on indefinitely until a "track" is formed that resembles the path of a particle. Indeed the particles of physics are more like these dynamic structures, which are always grounded in the whole from which they unfold and into which they enfold, than like little billiard balls that are grounded only in their own localized forms.

—David Bohm and F. David Peat
Science, Order, and Creativity

Bohm's deterministic formulation of quantum theory, from which his holomovement derives, actually meshes much more closely with mystical experiences of subtle cosmic structure than even he himself was aware of. Certainly, his ideas in general touch the eternal truths of the cosmos in much deeper ways than any of contemporary integral psychology. Such a short article as this, however, cannot properly unpack the full and precise meeting of those ideas, or show how far they stretch beyond either the fixation on the "dualistic nature of all concepts" and its relatives, or the common and unconvincing non-structural attempts to show a picking-and-choosing-based unity of science/physics and Eastern religion. Rather, to convincingly detail the subtleties of the causal-level structure underlying free choice, the corresponding absolute distinguishability of good/wholeness and evil/fragmentation, and the equal inclusion of the precise cartographies of subtle levels of reality in the world's diverse mythologies—all of these being relevant aspects of "the science of the soul"—would require an entire book.