Parasocial relationships are the kind of one sided pseudo-relationships we develop over time with people or characters we might see on TV or in the movies.

Kerouac

Indeed, Kerouac was quite the figure. He played football. He joined the navy. He abetted a murder. He constantly wrote. He got high off Benzedrine. He inspired a literary movement.

And with that, I’ll leave you with Jack Kerouac’s Belief and Technique for Modern Prose

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

The best sentence known to mankind.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

- Jack Kerouac

What is Science?

Presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, 1966 in New York City, and reprinted from The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6, 1968, pp. 313-320 by permission of the editor and the author. [Words and symbols in brackets added by Ralph Leighton.]

I thank Mr. DeRose for the opportunity to join you science teachers. I also am a science teacher. I have much experience only in teaching graduate students in physics, and as a result of the experience I know that I don't know how to teach.

I am sure that you who are real teachers working at the bottom level of this hierarchy of teachers, instructors of teachers, experts on curricula, also are sure that you, too, don't know how to do it; otherwise you wouldn't bother to come to the convention.

The subject "What Is Science" is not my choice. It was Mr. DeRose's subject. But I would like to say that I think that "what is science" is not at all equivalent to "how to teach science," and I must call that to your attention for two reasons. In the first place, from the way that I am preparing to give this lecture, it may seem that I am trying to tell you how to teach science--I am not at all in any way, because I don't know anything about small children. I have one, so I know that I don't know. The other is I think that most of you (because there is so much talk and so many papers and so many experts in the field) have some kind of a feeling of lack of self-confidence. In some way you are always being lectured on how things are not going too well and how you should learn to teach better. I am not going to berate you for the bad work you are doing and indicate how it can definitely be improved; that is not my intention.

As a matter of fact, we have very good students coming into Caltech, and during the years we found them getting better and better. Now how it is done, I don't know. I wonder if you know. I don't want to interfere with the system; it is very good.

Only two days ago we had a conference in which we decided that we don't have to teach a course in elementary quantum mechanics in the graduate school any more. When I was a student, they didn't even have a course in quantum mechanics in the graduate school; it was considered too difficult a subject. When I first started to teach, we had one. Now we teach it to undergraduates. We discover now that we don't have to have elementary quantum mechanics for graduates from other schools. Why is it getting pushed down? Because we are able to teach better in the university, and that is because the students coming up are better trained.

What is science? Of course you all must know, if you teach it. That's common sense. What can I say? If you don't know, every teacher's edition of every textbook gives a complete discussion of the subject. There is some kind of distorted distillation and watered-down and mixed-up words of Francis Bacon from some centuries ago, words which then were supposed to be the deep philosophy of science. But one of the greatest experimental scientists of the time who was really doing something, William Harvey, said that what Bacon said science was, was the science that a lord-chancellor would do. He [Bacon] spoke of making observations, but omitted the vital factor of judgment about what to observe and what to pay attention to.

And so what science is, is not what the philosophers have said it is, and certainly not what the teacher editions say it is. What it is, is a problem which I set for myself after I said I would give this talk.

After some time, I was reminded of a little poem:

A centipede was happy quite, until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised his doubts to such a pitch
He fell distracted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.

All my life, I have been doing science and known what it was, but what I have come to tell you--which foot comes after which--I am unable to do, and furthermore, I am worried by the analogy in the poem that when I go home I will no longer be able to do any research.

There have been a lot of attempts by the various press reporters to get some kind of a capsule of this talk; I prepared it only a little time ago, so it was impossible; but I can see them all rushing out now to write some sort of headline which says: "The Professor called the President of NSTA a toad."

Under these circumstances of the difficulty of the subject, and my dislike of philosophical exposition, I will present it in a very unusual way. I am just going to tell you how I learned what science is.

That's a little bit childish. I learned it as a child. I have had it in my blood from the beginning. And I would like to tell you how it got in. This sounds as though I am trying to tell you how to teach, but that is not my intention. I'm going to tell you what science is like by how I learned what science is like.

My father did it to me. When my mother was carrying me, it is reported--I am not directly aware of the conversation--my father said that "if it's a boy, he'll be a scientist." How did he do it? He never told me I should be a scientist. He was not a scientist; he was a businessman, a sales manager of a uniform company, but he read about science and loved it.

When I was very young--the earliest story I know--when I still ate in a high chair, my father would play a game with me after dinner.

He had brought a whole lot of old rectangular bathroom floor tiles from some place in Long Island City. We sat them up on end, one next to the other, and I was allowed to push the end one and watch the whole thing go down. So far, so good.

Next, the game improved. The tiles were different colors. I must put one white, two blues, one white, two blues, and another white and then two blues--I may want to put another blue, but it must be a white. You recognize already the usual insidious cleverness; first delight him in play, and then slowly inject material of educational value.

Well, my mother, who is a much more feeling woman, began to realize the insidiousness of his efforts and said, "Mel, please let the poor child put a blue tile if he wants to." My father said, "No, I want him to pay attention to patterns. It is the only thing I can do that is mathematics at this earliest level." If I were giving a talk on "what is mathematics," I would already have answered you. Mathematics is looking for patterns. (The fact is that this education had some effect. We had a direct experimental test, at the time I got to kindergarten. We had weaving in those days. They've taken it out; it's too difficult for children. We used to weave colored paper through vertical strips and make patterns. The kindergarten teacher was so amazed that she sent a special letter home to report that this child was very unusual, because he seemed to be able to figure out ahead of time what pattern he was going to get, and made amazingly intricate patterns. So the tile game did do something to me.)

I would like to report other evidence that mathematics is only patterns. When I was at Cornell, I was rather fascinated by the student body, which seems to me was a dilute mixture of some sensible people in a big mass of dumb people studying home economics, etc. including lots of girls. I used to sit in the cafeteria with the students and eat and try to overhear their conversations and see if there was one intelligent word coming out. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered a tremendous thing, it seemed to me.

I listened to a conversation between two girls, and one was explaining that if you want to make a straight line, you see, you go over a certain number to the right for each row you go up--that is, if you go over each time the same amount when you go up a row, you make a straight line--a deep principle of analytic geometry! It went on. I was rather amazed. I didn't realize the female mind was capable of understanding analytic geometry.

She went on and said, "Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect. Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start twenty steps apart," etc.--I was flabbergasted. She figured out where the intersection was. It turned out that one girl was explaining to the other how to knit argyle socks. I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it.

Now I will go on with my own experience as a youngster in mathematics. Another thing that my father told me--and I can't quite explain it, because it "was more an emotion than a telling--was that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of all circles was always the same, no matter what the size. That didn't seem to me too unobvious, but the ratio had some marvelous property. That was a wonderful number, a deep number, pi. There was a mystery about this number that I didn't quite understand as a youth, but this was a great thing, and the result was that I looked for pi everywhere.

When I was learning later in school how to make the decimals for fractions, and how to make 3 1/8, 1 wrote 3.125 and, thinking I recognized a friend, wrote that it equals pi, the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle. The teacher corrected it to 3.1416.

I illustrate these things to show an influence. The idea that there is a mystery, that there is a wonder about the number was important to me--not what the number was. Very much later, when I was doing experiments in the laboratory--I mean my own home laboratory, fiddling around--no, excuse me, I didn't do experiments, I never did; I just fiddled around. Gradually, through books and manuals, I began to discover there were formulas applicable to electricity in relating the current and resistance, and so on. One day, looking at the formulas in some book or other, I discovered a formula for the frequency of a resonant circuit. There was a mystery about this number that I didn't understand as a youth, but this was a great thing, and the result as that I looked for pi everywhere.

[?Something missing here] which was f = 1/2 pi LC, where L is the inductance and C the capacitance of the circle? You laugh, but I was very serious then. Pi was a thing with circles, and here is pi coming out of an electric circuit. Where was the circle? Do those of you who laughed know how that comes about?

I have to love the thing. I have to look for it. I have to think about it. And then I realized, of course, that the coils are made in circles. About a half year later, I found another book which gave the inductance of round coils and square coils, and there were other pi's in those formulas. I began to think about it again, and I realized that the pi did not come from the circular coils. I understand it better now; but in my heart I still don't know where that circle is, where that pi comes from.

When I was still pretty young--I don't know how old exactly--I had a ball in a wagon I was pulling, and I noticed something, so I ran up to my father to say that "When I pull the wagon, the ball runs to the back, and when I am running with the wagon and stop, the ball runs to the front. Why?"

How would you answer?

He said, "That, nobody knows." He said, "It's very general, though, it happens all the time to anything; anything that is moving tends to keep moving; anything standing still tries to maintain that condition. If you look close you will see the ball does not run to the back of the wagon where you start from standing still. It moves forward a bit too, but not as fast as the wagon. The back of the wagon catches up with the ball, which has trouble getting started moving. It's called inertia, that principle." I did run back to check, and sure enough, the ball didn't go backwards. He put the difference between what we know and what we call it very distinctly.

Regarding this business about names and words, I would tell you another story. 'We used to go up to the Catskill Mountains for vacations. In New York, you go the Catskill Mountains for vacations. The poor husbands had to go to work during the week, but they would come rushing out for weekends and stay with their families. On the weekends, my father would take me for walks in the woods. He often took me for walks, and we learned all about nature, and so an, in the process. But the other children, friends of mine also wanted to go, and tried to get my father to take them. He didn't want to, because he said I was more advanced. I'm not trying to tell you how to teach, because what my father was doing was with a class of just one student; if he had a class of more than one, he was incapable of doing it.

So we went alone for our walk in the woods. But mothers were very powerful in those day's as they are now, and they convinced the other fathers that they had to take their own sons out for walks in the woods. So all fathers took all sons out for walks in the woods one Sunday afternoon. The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, "See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?"

I said, "I haven't got the slightest idea."

He said, 'It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science."

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me "See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird--you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way," and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.

The result of this is that I cannot remember anybody's name, and when people discuss physics with me they often are exasperated when they say "the Fitz-Cronin effect," and I ask "What is the effect?" and I can't remember the name.

I would like to say a word or two--may I interrupt my little tale--about words and definitions, because it is necessary to learn the words.

It is not science. That doesn't mean, just because it is not science, that we don't have to teach the words. We are not talking about what to teach; we are talking about what science is. It is not science to know how to change Centigrade to Fahrenheit. It's necessary, but it is not exactly science. In the same sense, if you were discussing what art is, you wouldn't say art is the knowledge of the fact that a 3-B pencil is softer than a 2-H pencil. It's a distinct difference. That doesn't mean an art teacher shouldn't teach that, or that an artist gets along very well if he doesn't know that. (Actually, you can find out in a minute by trying it; but that's a scientific way that art teachers may not think of explaining.)

In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, and that's all right. It's a good idea to try to see the difference, and it's a good idea to know when we are teaching the tools of science, such as words, and when we are teaching science itself.

To make my point still clearer, I shall pick out a certain science book to criticize unfavorably, which is unfair, because I am sure that with little ingenuity, I can find equally unfavorable things to say about others. There is a first grade science book which, in the first lesson of the first grade, begins in an unfortunate manner to teach science, because it starts off an the wrong idea of what science is. There is a picture of a dog--a windable toy dog--and a hand comes to the winder, and then the dog is able to move. Under the last picture, it says "What makes it move?" Later on, there is a picture of a real dog and the question, "What makes it move?" Then there is a picture of a motorbike and the question, "What makes it move?" and so on.

I thought at first they were getting ready to tell what science was going to be about--physics, biology, chemistry--but that wasn't it. The answer was in the teacher's edition of the book: the answer I was trying to learn is that "energy makes it move."

Now, energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right. What I meant is that it is not easy to understand energy well enough to use it right, so that you can deduce something correctly using the energy idea--it is beyond the first grade. It would be equally well to say that "God makes it move," or "spirit makes it move," or "movability makes it move." (In fact, one could equally well say "energy makes it stop.")

Look at it this way: that’s only the definition of energy; it should be reversed. We might say when something can move that it has energy in it, but not what makes it move is energy. This is a very subtle difference. It's the same with this inertia proposition.

Perhaps I can make the difference a little clearer this way: If you ask a child what makes the toy dog move, you should think about what an ordinary human being would answer. The answer is that you wound up the spring; it tries to unwind and pushes the gear around.

What a good way to begin a science course! Take apart the toy; see how it works. See the cleverness of the gears; see the ratchets. Learn something about the toy, the way the toy is put together, the ingenuity of people devising the ratchets and other things. That's good. The question is fine. The answer is a little unfortunate, because what they were trying to do is teach a definition of what is energy. But nothing whatever is learned.

Suppose a student would say, "I don't think energy makes it move." Where does the discussion go from there?

I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition.

Test it this way: you say, "Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language." Without using the word "energy," tell me what you know now about the dog's motion." You cannot. So you learned nothing about science. That may be all right. You may not want to learn something about science right away. You have to learn definitions. But for the very first lesson, is that not possibly destructive?

I think for lesson number one, to learn a mystic formula for answering questions is very bad. The book has some others: "gravity makes it fall;" "the soles of your shoes wear out because of friction." Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off. To simply say it is because of friction, is sad, because it's not science.

My father dealt a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same lesson.

I would say, "No. What has that to do with the sun shining? It moved because I wound up the springs."

"And why, my friend, are you able to move to wind up the spring?"

"I eat."

"What, my friend, do you eat?"

"I eat plants."

"And how do they grow?"

"They grow because the sun is shining."

And it is the same with the [real] dog.

What about gasoline? Accumulated energy of the sun, which is captured by plants and preserved in the ground. Other examples all end with the sun. And so the same idea about the world that our textbook is driving at is phrased in a very exciting way.

All the things that we see that are moving, are moving because the sun is shining. It does explain the relationship of one source of energy to another, and it can be denied by the child. He could say, "I don't think it is on account of the sun shining," and you can start a discussion. So there is a difference. (Later I could challenge him with the tides, and what makes the earth turn, and have my hand on mystery again.)

That is just an example of the difference between definitions (which are necessary) and science. The only objection in this particular case was that it was the first lesson. It must certainly come in later, telling you what energy is, but not to such a simple question as "What makes a [toy] dog move?" A child should be given a child's answer. "Open it up; let's look at it."

During those walks in the woods, I learned a great deal. In the case of birds, for example, I already mentioned migration, but I will give you another example of birds in the woods. Instead of naming them, my father would say, "Look, notice that the bird is always pecking in its feathers. It pecks a lot in its feathers. Why do you think it pecks the feathers?"

I guessed it's because the feathers are ruffled, and he's trying to straighten them out. He said, "Okay, when would the feathers get ruffled, or how would they get ruffled?"

"When he flies. When he walks around, it's okay; but when he flies it ruffles the feathers."

Then he would say, "You would guess then when the bird just landed he would have to peck more at his feathers than after he has straightened them out and has just been walking around the ground for a while. Okay, let's look."

So we would look, and we would watch, and it turned out, as far as I could make out, that the bird pecked about as much and as often no matter how long he was walking an the ground and not just directly after flight.

So my guess was wrong, and I couldn't guess the right reason. My father revealed the reason.

It is that the birds have lice. There is a little flake that comes off the feather, my father taught me, stuff that can be eaten, and the louse eats it. And then an the loose, there is a little bit of wax in the joints between the sections of the leg that oases out, and there is a mite that lives in there that can eat that wax. Now the mite has such a good source of food that it doesn't digest it too well, so from the rear end there comes a liquid that has too much sugar, and in that sugar lives a tiny creature, etc.

The facts are not correct; the spirit is correct. First, I learned about parasitism, one on the other, on the other, on the other. Second, he went on to say that in the world whenever there is any source of something that could be eaten to make life go, some form of life finds a way to make use of that source; and that each little bit of left over stuff is eaten by something.

Now the point of this is that the result of observation, even if I were unable to come to the ultimate conclusion, was a wonderful piece of gold, with marvelous results. It was something marvelous.

Suppose I were told to observe, to make a list, to write down, to do this, to look, and when I wrote my list down, it was filed with 130 other lists in the back of a notebook. I would learn that the result of observation is relatively dull, that nothing much comes of it.

I think it is very important--at least it was to me--that if you are going to teach people to make observations, you should show that something wonderful can come from them. I learned then what science was about: it was patience. If you looked, and you watched, and you paid attention, you got a great reward from it--although possibly not every time. As a result, when I became a more mature man, I would painstakingly, hour after hour, for years, work on problems--sometimes many years, sometimes shorter times; many of them failing, lots of stuff going into the wastebasket--but every once in a while there was the gold of a new understanding that I had learned to expect when I was a kid, the result of observation. For I did not learn that observation was not worthwhile.

Incidentally, in the forest we learned other things. We would go for walks and see all the regular things, and talk about many things: about the growing plants, the struggle of the trees for light, how they try to get as high as they can, and to solve the problem of getting water higher than 35 or 40 feet, the little plants on the ground that look for the little bits of light that come through all that growth, and so forth.

One day, after we had seen all this, my father took me to the forest again and said, "In all this time we have been looking at the forest we have only seen half of what is going on, exactly half."

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "We have been looking at how all these things grow; but for each bit of growth, there must be the same amount of decay--otherwise, the materials would be consumed forever: dead trees would lie there, having used up all the stuff from the air and the ground, and it wouldn't get back into the ground or the air, so nothing else could grow because there is no material available. There must be for each bit of growth exactly the same amount of decay."

There then followed many walks in the woods during which we broke up old stumps, saw frizzy bags and funguses growing; he couldn’t show me bacteria, but we saw the softening effects, and so on. [Thus] I saw the forest as a process of the constant turning of materials.

There were many such things, descriptions of things, in odd ways. He often started to talk about things like this: "Suppose a man from Mars were to come down and look at the world." For example, when I was playing with my electric trains, he told me that there is a great wheel being turned by water which is connected by filaments of copper, which spread out and spread out and spread out in all directions; and then there are little wheels, and all those little wheels turn when the big wheel turns. The relation between them is only that there is copper and iron, nothing else--no moving parts. You turn one wheel here, and all the little wheels all over the place turn, and your train is one of them. It was a wonderful world my father told me about.

You might wonder what he got out of it all. I went to MIT. I went to Princeton. I came home, and he said, "Now you've got a science education. I have always wanted to know something that I have never understood, and so, my son, I want you to explain it to me."

I said yes.

He said, "I understand that they say that light is emitted from an atom when it goes from one state to another, from an excited state to a state of lower energy.

I said, "That's right."

"And light is a kind of particle, a photon, I think they call it."

"Yes."

"So if the photon comes out of the atom when it goes from the excited to the lower state, the photon must have been in the atom in the excited state."

I said, "Well, no."

He said, "Well, how do you look at it so you can think of a particle photon coming out without it having been in there in the excited state?"

I thought a few minutes, and I said, "I'm sorry; I don't know. I can't explain it to you."

He was very disappointed after all these years and years of trying to teach me something, that it came out with such poor results.

What science is, I think, may be something like this: There was on this planet an evolution of life to a stage that there were evolved animals, which are intelligent. I don't mean just human beings, but animals which play and which can learn something from experience--like cats. But at this stage each animal would have to learn from its own experience. They gradually develop, until some animal [primates?] could learn from experience more rapidly and could even learn from another’s experience by watching, or one could show the other, or he saw what the other one did. So there came a possibility that all might learn it, but the transmission was inefficient and they would die, and maybe the one who learned it died, too, before he could pass it on to others.

The question is: is it possible to learn more rapidly what somebody learned from some accident than the rate at which the thing is being forgotten, either because of bad memory or because of the death of the learner or inventors?

So there came a time, perhaps, when for some species [humans?] the rate at which learning was increased, reached such a pitch that suddenly a completely new thing happened: things could be learned by one individual animal, passed on to another, and another fast enough that it was not lost to the race. Thus became possible an accumulation of knowledge of the race.

This has been called time-binding. I don't know who first called it this. At any rate, we have here [in this hall] some samples of those animals, sitting here trying to bind one experience to another, each one trying to learn from the other.

This phenomenon of having a memory for the race, of having an accumulated knowledge passable from one generation to another, was new in the world--but it had a disease in it: it was possible to pass on ideas which were not profitable for the race. The race has ideas, but they are not necessarily profitable.

So there came a time in which the ideas, although accumulated very slowly, were all accumulations not only of practical and useful things, but great accumulations of all types of prejudices, and strange and odd beliefs.

Then a way of avoiding the disease was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio again from experience what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past in the form in which it is passed down. And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the [human] race['s] experience from the past. I see it that way. That is my best definition.

I would like to remind you all of things that you know very well in order to give you a little enthusiasm. In religion, the moral lessons are taught, but they are not just taught once, you are inspired again and again, and I think it is necessary to inspire again and again, and to remember the value of science for children, for grown-ups, and everybody else, in several ways; not only [so] that we will become better citizens, more able to control nature and so on.

There are other things.

There is the value of the worldview created by science. There is the beauty and the wonder of the world that is discovered through the results of these new experiences. That is to say, the wonders of the content which I just reminded you of; that things move because the sun is shining. (Yet, not everything moves because the sun is shining. The earth rotates independent of the sun shining, and the nuclear reaction recently produced energy on the earth, a new source. Probably volcanoes are generally moved from a source different from the shining sun.)

The world looks so different after learning science. For example, trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree, and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air that came from the solid earth, instead. These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them. They are very inspiring, and they can be used to inspire others.

Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that the lessons are all true. You must here distinguish--especially in teaching--the science from the forms or procedures that are sometimes used in developing science. It is easy to say, "We write, experiment, and observe, and do this or that." You can copy that form exactly. But great religions are dissipated by following form without remembering the direct content of the teaching of the great leaders. In the same way, it is possible to follow form and call it science, but that is pseudo-science. In this way, we all suffer from the kind of tyranny we have today in the many institutions that have come under the influence of pseudoscientific advisers.

We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations, make lists, do statistics, and so on, but these do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science analogous to the South Sea Islanders' airfields--radio towers, etc., made out of wood. The islanders expect a great airplane to arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in the foreigners' airfields around them, but strangely enough, their wood planes do not fly. The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are. [But] you teachers, who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, can maybe doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says, "Science teaches such and such," he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, "Science has shown such and such," you might ask, "How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?"

It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.

In a field which is so complicated [as education] that true science is not yet able to get anywhere, we have to rely on a kind of old-fashioned wisdom, a kind of definite straightforwardness. I am trying to inspire the teacher at the bottom to have some hope and some self-confidence in common sense and natural intelligence. The experts who are leading you may be wrong.

I have probably ruined the system, and the students that are coming into Caltech no longer will be any good. I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television--words, books, and so on--are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.

Finally, with regard to this time-binding, a man cannot live beyond the grave. Each generation that discovers something from its experience must pass that on, but it must pass that on with a delicate balance of respect and disrespect, so that the [human] race--now that it is aware of the disease to which it is liable--does not inflict its errors too rigidly on its youth, but it does pass on the accumulated wisdom, plus the wisdom that it may not be wisdom.

It is necessary to teach both to accept and to reject the past with a kind of balance that takes considerable skill. Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.

So carry on. Thank you.

Resilience theory

Resilience theory, and the nascent field of resilience science associated with it, begins with the basic premise that human and natural systems act as strongly coupled, integrated systems. These so-called “social-ecological” systems are understood to be in constant flux and highly unpredictable. And unlike standard ecological theory, which holds that nature responds to gradual changes in a correspondingly steady fashion, resilience thinking holds that systems often respond to stochastic events — things like storms or fires — with dramatic shifts into completely different states from which it is difficult, if not impossible, to recover. Numerous studies of rangelands, coral reefs, forests, lakes, and even human political systems show this to be true: A clear lake, for instance, seems hardly affected by fertilizer runoff until a critical threshold is passed, at which point the pond abruptly turns murky. A reef dominated by hard coral can, in the aftermath of a hurricane, flip into a state dominated by algae. A democratic nation stricken by drought, disease, or stock market crashes can descend into political chaos.

In the Company of Saints

Conversation with Haricharan Das

Meeting Haricharan Das was one of those happy improbabilities you could never have made up. My wife had been reminding me for months that the paint on our house was peeling off and that if I didn't get on the ball and deal with it, we'd regret it. So finally I got online and looked at the Berkeley Parents' Network, a great resource for recommendations. I called a painter with rave reviews and a few days later, my doorbell rang. A tall man with a shaved head and olive complexion stood there smiling. He was ready to take a look and give me a bid on the job. Almost immediately I felt an appealing lightness about him and invited him in. Looking around, he remarked, "Wow! You've got a lot of art! Did you know that art and religion are always connected?"

It's always interesting to me how strangers react when they enter my home. Far more often than not, no remarks at all are made about the art, which is everywhere. It always puzzles me, but I've learned not to take it askance. Still, there are few things I enjoy more than taking a close look together to talk about the various paintings and pieces with someone who shows an interest. And so we did. We spent a good half hour looking together and talking about the art. Eventually we got around to going outside so he could evaluate the painting situation.

He got the job. His work was impeccable and I was delighted. But that's not the story. Each day that Hari was at my house working, near the end of the afternoon, I'd go out and we'd talk, often for an hour or more. What I discovered made me marvel at my luck. What are the chances I'd end up with the former head of an ashram at work painting the wood trim on my home?

Hari seemed to welcome our conversations and I found that everything he said resonated in a way that felt entirely authentic. Our conversations and his presence were a surprising gift, which I gladly accepted. I recognized, also, that here was someone others should learn about. Fortunately, Hari was open to my request for an interview.

A couple of weeks after the job was completed we met at his home in North Berkeley. His living room was full of books and the evidence of his Hindu practice, and of his wife's Tibetan heritage and practice. On the mantle were many photos-some of his own spiritual teacher as well as photos of his wife's teachers. We hadn't really talked much about his wife and I was curious to learn more about her...

Haricharan Das: She grew up with monks and nuns. She was surrounded by monks and nuns. Even from childhood she had a propensity for the hermit monks and nuns.

Richard Whittaker: What would that look like? Would she visit them?

HD: Oh, absolutely! One time we were visiting her meditation master, a Tibetan lama who lives up in the mountains. It's wilderness, very rough, like Dorothy's Oz-lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! ...

RW: Is this in Tibet?

HD: Northern India. Her master lives in one of the hermitages up in the mountains around Dharamsala. Even as a seven, eight-year old girl, she would walk up into the mountains alone, a two or three hour hike. She'd go just to play with the rinpoche who later would become her meditation master. He became her meditation guru and then she has a root guru, Kirtitsenshap Rimpoche.

RW: They're different?

HD: They work together, but your root teacher oversees everything. Sometimes your root guru will send you to this teacher and that teacher to learn particular disciplines. The root teacher is actually a master of all the methodologies, but he doesn't necessarily have the time to teach each individual. So he oversees everything.
My wife, Nyima Tsam, now does oral dharma translation work for lamas in India and some lamas who are traveling through the U.S.

RW: I see. Well, I wanted to ask you about that event we talked about earlier that was a turning point. Would you talk about that?

HD: That was in New York on Long Island. I grew up there. There are so many back-stories. There were two individuals who I became attracted to. I was interested in what they were doing, and what their motivations were and how they maintained this constant good nature despite all the ups and downs of life. I would call them people of good cheer. And they became involved in mysticism. Prior to that, they were just a normal couple. One was a schoolteacher, Charlie. The other, Anita, was a former professional ballerina, who ran a ballet school. She came down with cancer, as severe as you can get. One hundred per cent terminal diagnosis from all the institutions. She went through all the therapies. You name it. This was over thirty-five years ago. One note: she's still alive today! They're both alive. I talk with them on the phone.
So having western medicine completely fail, they went deeper looking at prayer, meditation, dietetics. It's these funny karmas that happen in the crucible of a crisis. They ran into an individual who was an active, living mystic and whom they had a natural karmic bond with. They were friends in two seconds! Through their prayers, meditation , dietetics and the guidance of this mystic, Anita reacquired her health.
She had gone to the point where her skin was like an alligator damaged from the radiation. She used to have long, flowing dark hair. It all fell out. I remember that at one point, if she moved her wrist in a day, that was a big event.

RW: At this point you were about fifteen?

HD: Around that age.

RW: You described a healing scene where you had asked if you could tag along.

HD: Yes. After Anita went through her own healing and all the growth and knowledge they acquired in this self-healing process, they felt obliged to help others. If someone came to their attention, they would very humbly offer to see if they could help. And if the people took them upon it, they would help. If they didn't, fine.
So they became what we call healing yogis. Of course, it's rooted in prayer and meditation, but its manifestation was of bringing about healing forces. And I happened to be there through the whole adventure.
In the beginning I was just sort of curious. What are the roots of all this? The event I talked about with you, the one day that really helped me make a decision. Wow! This is really fantastic! And I have no idea of what's going on. A client was coming in who was very ill and they were going to do what's called "pranic healing." I can see that day, just as I can see you sitting here. I can see the room. I can see where I was sitting, where they were standing.

RW: Would you describe it?

HD: There was a massage table set up and candles lit around the periphery of the room. I was sitting against the wall. Anita and Charlie were saying their prefatory prayers before the people came. Then the person came and they all chatted a little. Then the person lay down on the table. Then the healing session started. So I was purely curious, but as time went on I perceived something was very odd. There were prayers. Then they would do this pranic healing, and then more prayers. Here's what caught my attention. You know, when you light a candle there's usually something like a half-inch flame. So all the flames around the room are normal right up to when they start to pray. But when they started to pray, all those candles in the room-I remember it to this day!-they all went up to an inch and a half! They all became like little roman candles burning. It was really extraordinary! Then when they'd stop praying, those candles-every one of them in the room-all went back down. Then maybe five or ten minutes later, when they started their prayers again, every candle in the room rose up again an inch and a half. Can you imagine, as a kid, seeing that?

RW: I'm not sure I can imagine seeing it at any time.

HD: Yeah! Because I was like a guy from Missouri. Prove it. Show me!

RW: That's a good principle.

HD: I was very scientifically minded. So that absolutely astounded me. And made me realize there is a whole lot more going on than I was aware of or I thought was possible. That made such an impression on me that I was determined to understand everything I could about what they were doing and how such things could be.

RW: So how did you begin to search?

HD: I started reading. I read everything Anita and Charlie had read, a lot of theosophical material and Edgar Cayce and Alice Bailey material and various authors like that. They became deeply involved in the Bailey line of knowledge and teachers of that line.

RW: So then what happened next?

HD: Well, it was during that time that I first actually came across a yogic text. It was the Patanjali Sutras, an ancient Hindu meditation text. It goes all the way back. Patajali was a teacher. He codified the knowledge of meditation and put it in a sutra form. Sutra means thread. It's a book of very terse lines of understanding. But the moment I read that text, that was it for me! There was an immediate recognition. There was no questioning of the text at all.

RW: That's fascinating when something like that happens, an immediate recognition.

HD: Yes. That was it. It was immediate. And that led me into, I guess you could say Hindu-Yogic studies. From that point on, Hinduism was it for me. It answered all the questions. It's not that I didn't love Christianity and the life of Jesus and the life of his disciples. I do. But that visceral resonance-for me, that came through the masters of India.

RW: So you were fifteen and you said, "Show me. I want to see the facts." And that's very much a Western, educated attitude. We want to know what's really real.

HD: Right. That's exactly how I was [laughs].

RW: So were you a good student in High School?

HD: Well, [sighs] I was good in English and social studies but not Mathematics. It just wasn't the language I could think in. It wasn't for me.

RW: How was it in general for you in school?

HD: Basically I couldn't wait to get out. The only thing that kept me there were a few extraordinary teachers. Other than them, I could care less about it. I am very practical. Give me something I can use. But if I saw something interesting, I threw myself into it. I'd absorb it like a sponge.

RW: So you got interested in the Patanjali material. Did you start to meet any people connected with that?

HD: Not in the beginning. Really the first years were sort of a relentless solitary quest. Most of my personal free time was spent either thinking about meditation and yogic philosophy or actively doing it. And with those things, you can talk very general philosophy with your friends, but if you haven't put both your feet on that road, it's still just an academic discussion. From a personal perspective, though, if you're doing (these activities), it's all consuming. I thought about it all the time. I still do. Night and day I was always thinking about these issues.
It really comes down to the idea of what is the nature of a saint's mind? What is the nature of a saint's heart? What is their insight, their vision? How do the saints experience the world? And what is the dynamic consciousness they possess and how did that happen? I consumed every biography of eastern saints that I could get my hands on. Relentless. And their lives are extraordinary!
There are many contemporary saints and many ancient saints. But their lives are a wonderful journey and a reality check. The lives of saints are very difficult. Literally every hardship a person could think of comes upon these souls. What's different about a saint is how they respond to a hardship. The example that's given is that a saint is like a rose. Even if you crush it, it will offer you its fragrance.

RW: Mother Teresa, I learned, got one powerful vision when she was young, but all the rest of her life, God never came to her again.

HD: Right. One experience is enough. Mother Teresa was a flower of God.

RW: It must have been a tremendous hardship for her to carry on the way she did.

HD: There are many stories like that. In spiritual literature, that's not uncommon. A vision, or some literal manifestation of God will occur in some form and it puts a person on a quest. It's a quest where they're thirsty for God all the time. It's actually a visceral thirst throughout the body. The only cessation is their complete immersion into that process, that reality. That's a blessing. It's a difficult blessing. It's a suffering quest. Mainly because you are leaving all preconceptions behind, seeking the heart and mind of God, as it is, without personal bias.
Through the blessing of one's Guru all yogis come to some type of experience like that, a direct, personal and intimate introduction to God. It's an immediate relationship. And it goes to the very core of your being. My Guru Sant Keshavadas led me into this divine relationship, this living experience. The Guru is literally your personal door to the kingdom. I see my Guruji as the kiss of God upon the earth.

RW: I have the sense that you're not speaking out of a book.

HD: No way.

RW: I mean, earlier you described your experience seeing the candle flames.

HD: I can say that was my earliest experience of seeing, wow, something is going on that I'm not aware of. But in the course of a yogi's life, that's sort of thing is the least of what's gone on. If I ever told people all of what's occurred they wouldn't believe it. So with that type of story you have to be very careful. My guruji Sant Keshavadas would talk about time and place. It has to be the right time, right place, and right circumstance. If a person is ready, if someone is deeply on the quest, doing their prayers, their meditation practice, they're doing service in the world, then it can be useful at times to tell someone a story an experience. It can help them to overcome something, or you can give them a heads up on the intensity of the journey and the intensity of the experiences that can come to you, once you do the sadhanas, the spiritual practices. Because if there's no guru or dharma teacher guiding you, 99% of the time you're going to turn back. The events are so large, so dramatic, so uncommon, it takes fierce courage, fierce faith in God and Guru to bear the experiences. It's like, let's say, climbing Mount Everest. There's a preparation that has to be done, physically, mentally, emotionally, you must receive a truly ethical compass. That's why a guru is necessary, absolutely necessary.

RW: Now you had been, at some point, the head of a dharma center here in Berkeley. Would you tell us a little about that?

HD: Yes I ran the Ashram for 16 years, Keshavadas Ashram. The name comes from my guruji's name: Sant Keshavadas. Its American name was Institute for Yogic Studies. I really started it out of a sense of gratitude to my guruji. When you're given so much you want to give back. You want to share it. Let me take this wealth and spread it around . And you want people to have the same internal prosperity as you've had, the joy and peace and happiness. I taught a wide range of courses in yogic sciences and philosophy,
I think many people benefited.

RW: That's a wonderful phrase "internal prosperity."

HD: It's like you have a cosmic birthday cake, and you want to share the cake! Who wants to sit there and eat it by yourself? You want everybody to have a slice. [big smile] I've pretty much always felt this way.
So you try to get people to go through a graduated course of understanding. I didn't want people to say, well, Haricharan said this, so it must be so. Nonsense! Prove it! I'm still like that kid. Prove it! Study the biographies of yogic saints and great scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita. I made sure to collect a large library so I could say, go check-so people could see that there's a history to these statements. Here is a course of understanding in yogic healing. That's dietetics, herbs, postures, pranayama-many things. That's the external training. For the internal training, here are prayers and contemplations. Here are mantras. Here is a course in meditation. These are all divine sciences.

RW: How did you attract people?

HD: It was word of mouth. Friends told friends. That's how it started, very organic. I never charged. I just wanted people to have an opportunity for a clear, deep and honest study. I just said, look, it's been given to me. I want it to be given to you. I want you to develop the same opportunities and relationships I've enjoyed.

RW: Was your guru alive when you started this?

HD: Yes. He would come here once or twice a year and give talks. One of the things I always told people, and this is going back maybe even thirty years, I'd say to friends of mine, "If you associate with me, I guarantee you, you'll meet saints. You will meet masters and you will meet mystics." Now that's a big, broad statement. But it absolutely happens to be true!
That's an unusual karma, but I've always had the opportunity to have some kind of special associations. I don't know exactly why, but maybe it's because I was relentlessly searching for truth. The question is, what is Truth? And I'm not that interested in what academics have to say. I'm interested in what a practitioner has to say. Someone who has thrown their life into it. That's the person I want to speak to.
Years ago I would visit swami Sivananda Radha. She was one of the great disciples of the master Sivananda of Rishikesh. I would go to all of her satsangs-dharma talks. That was in the East Bay in the early 1980s. Swami Amirtananda, she was another one. She came out of Bihar. Swami Satchidananda, Swami Chidananda. Sri Sunyata. There were several. Any dharma teacher who would come, I'd take a look. These were all wonderful Dharma teachers.

RW: Would you ever be interested in, say, Buddhist teachers?

HD: Oh, absolutely! I'm interested in any good practitioner whether they're Buddhist or Hindu or Christian. It really doesn't make much difference to me. What made a difference to me was, were they doing genuine experiments? And how would those genuine experiments affect their lives? And what was the effect in the world?

RW: Have you friends locally, like the Reverend Heng Sure? Have you ever met him?

HD: Yes. I've been to his monastery just to hear lectures. I don't know him personally, but I have a favorable impression. I hear very favorable things about him from many people.
There's a whole progression up the mountain. If you have the good fortune/karma, like my wife has to have true master, or as I have with my master-all the normal moorings people have are drasticly adjusted. There is a much deeper vision and responsibility to how you live your life and what your personal contribution is to bring healing, inner understanding and compassion more into the world.

RW: I'm guessing it's impossible to communicate that.

HD: Well the truth is, when I talk about my master I only think about him with maybe a fifth of my mind. Because if I start to concentrate on him and what he is and what I've seen, I'll start crying like a baby. What they are is beyond what can be said. And if you concentrate even more, the mind flies up, and what happens is that you're seized in what's called bhava Samadhi-fused in mystic love, communion. If I think about my guruji with even half of my mind: gone. Because once that connection is made, it's like grabbing onto a high voltage line. You're gone.

RW: On a completely different tack, let me ask how you met your wife. You said that was five or six years ago.

HD: Yes. I was at my guruji's ashram in Bangalore, India doing work in the ashram and general charity work and enjoying the wonders of India when some friends, Deepak, who graduated from UC Berkeley, visited me. He and his wife, Shobana, were going up to Dharamsala and asked if I wanted to go along. Hey! Home of the Dalai Lama! I'd never been there. It sounded great to me!
I remember the first day I arrived in Dharamsala. It's a bus ride all the way up this mountain. It was early in the morning, 5:30 or so. I remember getting off the bus and walking down the street. It was quiet. I'm standing in the middle of the road. I'm looking to the left, looking to the right, looking up, looking down and I said, "This is it! I'm not going anywhere."
See, we had about a week and my friends had other places in the region they wanted to visit. I stood in the middle of the street and said, I won't be going to the other villages,
I'll be staying here.
So Nyima was a friend of theirs. Nyima is always very active doing some kind of social work, always helping someone somewhere. That's her nature. So we were all going around together and eventually Deepak and Shobana, went off to see other villages. On these long walks through the mountains, Nyima and I were having conversations about what we thought was important in life, what we believed in, what was valuable and what was useless. And we found, we just had the same point of view. For us, you live for the welfare of others, full stop. There's no question about it. Neither of us can imagine living for any other purpose. The way regular people live-god bless them all-I'd rather jump off a bridge.

RW: You told me earlier that you and your wife spend part of each year going to India and doing service. Would you say a little about that? And what is the effect of doing service?

HD: Well, in a place like India or where there's such impoverishment, I think people who come there usually have one or two responses. Either they rush forward and say, what can I do? Or they close their minds and hearts and say "I never saw it." If they see the plight, then they're in an ethical dilemma. What to do? If you tell yourself that lie, " I never saw it" then you never have to do anything.
For me, when someone's hungry, they're hungry. My feeling is do something and do it now. And I mean now! In India there's every kind of impoverishment. So you try to do what you can. You can't do everything, but you do what you can. We also have a special project "The Hermits Fund."
My wife has been that way for a long time. She was running up into the mountains and down into the valleys well before I met her, serving the hermit monks and nuns, the reclusive ones. They live by themselves or in very tiny communities in extremely austere circumstances. She would bring them medicines or food or help them by making all the arrangements if they might have to travel. When I saw her doing that I was very impressed because these monks and nuns, regardless of their traditions, are what keeps this world stable. It's their prayers. They heal this world on a vibrational level through their constant prayer, their constant meditation, and their constant profound altruism. They are like a broadcast tower of divine energy in the world.
There are so many people who are polluting the vibrational environment of the world by negativity and greed, and it brings society down. But you have this counter force of souls who are absolutely dedicated to the welfare of each and every soul on this planet. Not only with human beings, but the animals, the trees, the plants. They want harmony and prosperity for all life. And their lives are dedicated to the task of helping to heal the world.

RW: I have the hope that what you describe is true. Do you have any inkling from a more direct experiential level to say yes, I do believe this?

HD: What I'm saying I know are the facts! Nothing I'm saying here is conjecture. Nothing I'm saying is philosophy. Nothing I'm saying here is what I read somewhere in a book! These are from souls I've known for the last thirty-five years.

RW: And you have retained that "show me" attitude?

HD: Absolutely. The thing is, you have to be there. But if you dedicate yourself to the process of true self-knowledge, self-purification, not just self-purification for oneself-but self-purification so that you can be used as an instrument by the saints, by the masters-if you dedicate yourself to that process, you will come at some time to a point where you start meeting extraordinary souls. They're not just extraordinary souls like Einstein or a Mozart. They are a quantum leap beyond that. They're working on a level of divine physics and harmony. They're working on the physics of pure insight, kindness altruist, consciousness-the highest possibilities in the evolution of human consciousness.

RW: A principle I've run across in some Buddhist writings, I think it was, is that if minds could be quieted enough, other more refined processes would come into view.

HD: Correct. They're just there, veiled by ego.

RW: Not being covered over, they could function, let's say.

HD: That's correct.

RW: One of these things I've read of is clairvoyance, the possibility of having some access to another's mind or thoughts. It seems far-fetched, but I tend to believe there's some truth in that.

HD: It's definitely possible. I've seen those events pretty much my entire life from boyhood on. I could tell you many stories about living with master and such gifts. But again, the people who have these facilities, what they're masters of is hiding their gifts. What are people going to do with that? Most of these souls live quiet lives of profound
positive influence. One note, my master had this ability and what was a great relief was, there was zero judgment. He was like a mother. From time to time he'd help wash you off after you'd been playing in the yard.

RW: There's a kind of greediness. Oh, I want these powers. So there are admonitions against that. This kind of attraction of having power is not a good thing, but it's a typical thing.

HD: It's human. Fortunately humanness is just one rung on the evolutionary ladder. It's a human thing. But that's why in deep yogic practices, when you're under a master or under a saint, they don't just show you, over time, the facilities of consciousness and what is possible, but there's no time when you're witnessing these things or experiencing these things that there's not active discussions about the problems that are inherent, and how you have to protect yourself against the more base instincts that are part of the human condition. So there's a lot of internal training, on being impartial, and then there's the guru who is over you like the mother eagle with her eye on you, guiding you and making sure that you behave properly. The guru is our template.
The potential for misuse is vast. That's why there's so much discussion on ethics and a training in altruism. You have to be very clear about what your life is. Your life is about service, and to serve the saints. You have to have a pure methodology to have a pure result.
The thing is when people are seeking powers, they are doing it for their own self-enlargement. And that's never the purpose of a power. You're to be an instrument, not the object. So it's very dangerous. In the course of training any advanced yogi acquires various abilities and the whole training is to become impartial to these gifts.
And these gifts, they come and they go. When a gift comes, you've got to be very careful. It's like something shiny. You only pick it up if there's a real (heaven guided) purpose for it and as soon as the purpose is over, you put it back down. So every gift you receive is not really a gift. It's a test. Can you be impartial? Can you maintain purity of heart and purity of intention, obedience? Gifts come and go, that's God's business. You have to look at it this way.
So you go through multiple births and multiple mistakes. And the key is to learn from your mistakes and not to repeat them. You just learn your purpose. Your purpose is to be an instrument of the saints, of God. The highest guru, like a sad guru, a liberated soul, they really are just a personalized version of God. Inside their psyche is pure God consciousness. See we don't want God to always be abstract. We want to have some intimacy. So that's what a real guru is. They're God masquerading and it brings you closer.
The concept of saguna and naguna: God with qualities and forms and God absolute beyond form and conception. In the beginning you need form. Then through that saguna experience the master introduces you to the naguna experience-the formless, the infinite, the boundless, the unqualified reality. But we're qualified. I think this way. I am this height, this dimension. I'm of this race, this community. Those are all things that bind us. So God comes in a form you can understand, in a qualified form. But very slowly he'll introduce you to the supreme beauty, the origin beyond the qualified, the hidden essence of form. He introduces you to the sacred, hidden in form, and then takes you beyond form.
If you have the fortune of living with a true master, at the end of the day, you only have two statements: Yes and Thank You. Yes to his instruction, guidance and mission and Thank You for the opportunity and his infinite blessings. Let's put it this way, any close disciple of a master will start to realize over time that this is no quote "human being." This is a God masquerading as a human being. A yogic master is a mystical paradox.

RW: That's sort of impossible to grasp, I guess, unless you've had the experiences.

HD: Right. This is like the twilight zone. But these things are real. The extraordinary is there all the time. I can say something about my early teachers. I was like the sorcerer's apprentice. But I was a kid with a big, open mind. And I knew the extraordinary when I saw it. I saw many people who should have been dead or handicaped get up and walk away healthy from all these healings and teachings.

RW: You mean the couple you talked about?

HD: Yes. And there was a third person involved. His name was Jim. Jim had an extraordinary ability. Have you ever heard of Edgar Cayce?

RW: Sure.

HD: Edgar Cayce, and Jim were absolutely the same level of ability. Jim just passed away some years ago. But when you have that type of a gift, there are a lot of stresses on your life. You sort of become outside of society in a way. Jim was a tall man and had a very distinguished, deep voice with a wonderful cadence. He spoke in a slow deliberate manner. I loved listening to him and he never said one extra word. I could talk to Jim and say, "Jim, I have Richard sitting here. Who was his first girlfriend? And by the way, what is Richard's social security number?"
Now how could anybody, not having met you and him sitting in another state...? Jim would say, "He met this girl in such and such circumstances and her name is... Oh, and here is his social security number." This is just a silly, made up example, but the gift was real and fantastic.

RW: He could do that?

HD: It made the hair on your arm stand up. And I'll tell you, in comparison to my guruji these dedicated mystics were like college freshmen! But that is what I used to see all the time. I'll tell you the truth, I wished I'd met you years ago. I could introduce you to these people -your vision of reality, anything you thought solid, gone. It would just fall apart and you'd see a whole other vision of what's possible. So they would talk with Jim and he would diagnose the illness and tell what therapy needed to be done. Sometimes it was very elaborate. And he'd never laid his eyes on you. And most of the time, he's not even in the same state you're in. And Charlie and Anita would implement Jim's directions.
People didn't understand all the dietetics and the different practices they had to do, so Charlie and Anita would teach the people what they had to do, with the various herbs and the dietetics and the prayers, attitude adjustments etc. And also they would do the vibrational healing.
So that was the team. Extraordinary. This was an ongoing thing. I only saw one person who didn't get well. It was an older gentleman and I had the conversation with his son who was also an adult. I said, "Gee, what's going on with your dad?" He said, "You know, I dragged my dad here, but he's tired and he wants to go. He says, 'enough is enough'." He was the only one I saw who didn't get well.
I'll tell you another story. Charlie and I were down in Virginia and it was in the middle of a heat wave. We were building a wall and we had our shirts off. He got a ruthless sunburn. I mean, his entire back was blistered. We walked into this little house that was in disrepair. We were going to rebuild it. And I remember, we walked into the first room and then into the bathroom. There was a little overhead light and I turned it on and looked his back. At that point, I said, where are the keys? Because we have to go to the hospital!
We walked back into the living room and I remember he started to chuckle. That got my attention. He started to laugh and then he stopped and closed his eyes. I was standing closer to him than I am to you. I'd say a maximum of twenty seconds passed. Every blister, every burn, gone. I watched them with my own eyes disappear. I mean this was radical. Extraordinary. I literally watched them disappear. There's so much more that's possible.
These people have attuned themselves to healing energies. The truth is anyone can do these things, but you have to pay the price. Divine guidance to acquire the proper inner attitudes and live the life. So when you live with these kinds of people, there are a million things that happen and, after awhile, you start getting used to it. You get used to a lot of crazy things that are not normal in average life.

RW: Many things have been shown to you. You had a dharma center and now that's closed. I know you and your wife are doing service part of the year. So what do you feel is ahead for you in terms of what you might be called upon to do?

HD: Well, so much of this is karma. My job is to maintain-like a boy scout, in a way. Be prepared. Keep your heart, your intentions pure and be ready to work when you're called. When you're called and how you're called is entirely God and guru's business. Would I like to be actively teaching right now? Yes. Because that's what I love and have been trained to do. But you know you're on God's clock.
Sometimes I ask myself why am I climbing these ladders doing manual craftmanship? Maybe there's more humility I have to learn. There's always a reason. Maybe there's karma from the past that can be worked out just by pure physical labor. Of course I know I will teach. I'm born for that. Otherwise I couldn't have all these associations. Not possible. The question of when is entirely God's and my guru's call. My job is to be prepared so that when it's time to teach again, then I'm there to do it. And when it's time to stop, stop. There's no sense of possession. You can't say, oh, my students, my teaching, my this, my that. That's all nonsense. We're tools and conduits. That's it.
That's the beauty of living with a master. If you'll learn anything, you'll see what real purity is, in the most absolute and the most concrete sense. You will see it with your own eyes. Our life is slowly growing into their reality. But they're like macro and we're micro. We are like seeds waiting to burst into the cosmos to join that saintly fellowship. We are happily micro, blessed are the meek, the humble, for they shall inherit the earth-Gods bounty.
This sounds very grandiose, but when you live with a real master, live with him in an intimate way, walk with him, talk with him and eat with him, where you're a daily attendant, that's how it is. Can you imagine the fellowship of those souls that lived with Jesus or Saint Francis? Wonderful! Fantastic!

RW: Which you were?

HD: Oh yes. And doing the work, doing the prayers and meditations. What the teacher reveals is not about himself, it's about the reality of God. His whole job is to turn your attention 100%, toward the Reality. You learn to serve him or her so that you shed or thin out the ego, then bit by bit shift 100% to the Reality. You actually get to see-for us the word "purity" is just a word and a concept-but with a guru there are mystical revelations that occur where you actually see the nature of purity. Like you can say "see the cosmic light"-that's actually a real experience. And these are indelible experiences. They're types of initiations or psychic brandings. Once that brand is on you, that's it. You can't forget it. There's a whole series of experiences you have with your root guru that explode you, and then explode you, and then explode you-to see deeper and deeper levels of what is pure love, or what is purity.
These are things that completely destroy-it's like having an atom bomb go off and looking into the light. That's really, really what happens. But who can you tell about that? For 99% of the world, that's science fiction, you know? If you read mystical literature, yogis talk about these events. And it's not just events in the past. These divine events are perennial.
One day I walked up to my guruji's room on the second floor. I was always angling to get into his room. I'd sweep the floor, anything to be in his room. So one day I walked up to his room and I tapped on the door and quietly went in. It's just guruji and myself present. He was standing across the room looking out the window. I had just come in, so I decided, hey, I'll ask a question. I said, "Guruji, where will you die?"
I'm thinking I want to be there when he passes away. So he turns a little and says, "I'll die in India, of course, Hari."
"Will I be present?"
"No."
"Oh, okay."
He's still looking out the window. I'd closed the door and I said, "Guruji, will you come back?"
Now that question was of a completely different order. At that point, he turned slowly and looked at me deeply. His voice very deep, solemn, ladened with compassion and gravitas. He paused and said, "Haricharan, as long as there's human suffering in the world, I will be reborn."
He said this with tremendous gravitas. I almost fainted. He doesn't have to be reborn. He's coming back out of compassion. Even today, it gives me shivers.
And then I had an amusing thought. I said to myself, oh my God! The disciple is his shadow. If he's coming back for such a long term, I'll be right behind him! Oh my God, this world is tough enough as it is. More of this! [laughs]
It was sort of a shock. But that's why you have to learn to see things from their perspective. Their commitment to humanity is absolute. Also, another thing you learn that's really worth learning, is being non-judgmental. That's also one of the things that's really nice about being around the guru. They are privy to every thought you have, not only now, but from your past. They have your whole portfolio, and they'll remark on it from time to time.
But the thing is when they talk to you, there is not one percent of judgment. Zero. It's like a loving mother who loves you whatever you've done, but is there to correct your vision, to correct your action, but not in a harsh way. So there's an emotional relaxation you get. They're going to be direct and truthful with you, but they're not going to say "bad child." They'll tell you the consequences of all these actions. And you'll ask, how can I untie this knot? And they'll tell you. So it's really interesting. Can you imagine someone who's completely non-judgmental?

RW: Maybe not. And further, someone who could tell you specifically what to do.

HD: And in detail! I'll tell you another micro-story. In the temple, which was in Oakland, there was satsang, spiritual teachings being given. And many people would show up for these talks. One night two fellows came in who were thoroughly thugs. I was very alarmed. This was trouble walking in the door. To me it was a safety issue and my first responsibility is to secure the welfare of my guru. That is the first thing. So I made him aware some people had walked in who were real trouble. He looked at me and thought for a second and then he said, "Hari, bring them up."
So I brought these two fellows up to guruji. There's no way I'm leaving the room. These guys are dangerous! So I'm there immediately ready to intervene if there's any trouble. So these two fellows come up, thugs, like just out of prison. You could viscerally feel it. My guruji looked at them with such sweetness and walked up to them. He introduced himself and he stroked one guy's cheek and held the other guy's hand. He talked to them sweetly. These thugs just melted. And he thanked them and said, please go down to the dharma hall and I'll see you when I'm down there.
I was shocked! I thought it was extraordinary, but I was still concerned, so I said, "Guruji, they're still down there. I think there's still a potential for trouble. What should I do? Then he turned to me and looked at me sharply. He said, "Haricharan, who are you to judge anyone?" And that was it. End of conversation. A Great teaching.

RW: That's a powerful story. I haven't had a guru in that sense, but I met a man who that story reminds me of. His name is Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne. He's sometimes called the Ghandi of Sri Lanka. He's helped millions of people in Sri Lanka, had his life threatened and all sorts of things. He was in the Bay Area and I got to hear him talk to a room full of people at the Kalliopeia Foundation. The way he talked, there wasn't an ounce of pretentiousness. I felt, this is really a good man. There were 50 or 60 people in the room and I had no ambition to take up any of his time. I was just happy to be there.
Okay. So the talk is over. Some people went up to talk with him and I wandered off into the kitchen. And after ten or fifteen minutes, he walks into the kitchen. There are two or three of us in there and he looks at me, walks over, reaches his hand out and asks, "What's your name? What do you do?" I answer him a little awkwardly. "I'm Richard and I publish a magazine." I say a couple of other things. And then-he's a short man-then he reaches both hands up to my head and just gently pulls my head down to his and touches my forehead with his forehead. It was just totally unexpected! But the thing is, it just pierced my heart. I can't tell you the effect it had.

HD: Exactly. Yes. That's the real deal.

RW: It still brings tears to my eyes.

HD: See, those are the genuine things! You understand! Because the moment you start to think about it, you're fighting back tears. It goes to the core of your heart, what happened. That's what it's like. Big and small. It touches you intimately. These souls are wonderful!

RW: It's hard to explain this to someone because, on the surface, it didn't look like much. [laughs]

HD: Exactly. It's so hard to tell people. Partly, they're not interested. And even if they are interested, they're interested in the most superficial, common way. They don't realize, it's all of the sudden the beauty of Mozart exploding in your heart. And you experience the whole thing in a moment! And how do you explain that to someone? It's completely visceral. And it changes who you are. You're not the same person the next moment.

RW: It's truly amazing.

HD: You're informed by that experience. That is the life of a close disciple, where over and over again, it's just brushing off the dust of the world, brushing off the dust of the world and the glimmer of the kingdom is there, the glimmer of the kingdom is there. And you are changed, that moment. Your being, your perception of what's possible, it's there in you now. Whatever the essence of that is, it's awakened in you. That's it! It becomes conscious.
It's an extraordinary life, but it's a hidden life because you can only share those things with a few souls. And telling it to a large population, it's just sort of fun science fiction for them. They don't understand what happened. Even if someone was standing next to you, "oh, nothing happened." But for you, the world just shook.
And even if you don't have the physical guru present, there is some association with some saint in the past lives, directly or indirectly. If a person-in a truly honest way and in a rigorous way-approaches meditation and prayer, all those experiences will come. They're going to come. And you will meet extraordinary souls. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when. The mind and heart must be dusted off, cleaned, then you'll
recognize the wonderful opportunities that were always present.
Once that strong desire to be really honest is there and to have a true effort, then it all happens. It all happens.

--by Richard Whittaker; Jul 27, 2010

Tenzin Palmo

Ani Tenzin Palmo, a 64-year-old Buddhist nun , is traveling the world to raise funds to build a religious community for women in India.

What is the sound of a Buddhist nun sitting alone for 12 years in a Himalayan cave?

"Quiet," Tenzin Palmo recalled last week.

"Never boring. And very beautiful."

The phone line from Vancouver fell silent for a moment.

"I wasn't planning to do 12 years," she continued. "But it was the ideal place to practice" meditation. "So, I just stayed there."

"There" was a space both tiny and vast . . .

Tenzin Palmo's cave near the Tibetan border was so small she slept sitting up, her legs folded beneath her as in meditation. Beyond lay snowcapped mountains and mist-filled valleys sweeping to infinity.

"It was the perfect environment for carrying on one's spiritual practices," said Palmo, 64, who has since become a leading transmitter of Tibetan Buddhism to the West and a star in some eastern Buddhist countries. . .

When she climbed down from her "perfect environment" in 1988, however, she returned not to a welcoming community of nuns, but of monks. It was no surprise.

Born Diane Perry in London in 1943, Palmo had become a Tibetan Buddhist at age 18 and moved two years later to study in northern India. She soon discovered how few nuns are in the 1,200-year-old Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

"Everything I read in those days was about monks, monks, monks," she recalled with a laugh.

Worse, women who did commit to Tibetan religious life typically found themselves kept uneducated and "waiting on the monks" as cooks and housekeepers.

Perry - who had wanted to be a nun since age 10 "even though I didn't believe in God" - was undeterred.

She shaved her head and took ordination in 1964 - one of the first Western women ever to do so - and later served as assistant to her teacher, before heading to her snow cave in 1976.

But after she returned, she discovered the winds of feminism reaching even the high Himalayas. Her lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche, asked her several years later to create a separate religious community nearby for women. . .

Since then, she has been traveling the world to raise funds for what has become the Dongyu Gatsal Ling nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India, which opened the first of its many doors in 2000.

The site, about 40 miles from Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama, houses 52 women, she said, but "we are building for 130."

"She's important because she's absorbed the great teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and communicates them through a Western mind," said Christopher Sohnly, a member of the Shambhala Center's visit committee, which invited Ani Tenzin Palmo to Philadelphia. Her efforts to promote women's religious communities have also made her "a pop star in places like Taiwan," Sohnly said. She was the subject of 1999 biography, Cave in the Snow, by Vickie MacKenzie, and published Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Lessons in Practical Buddhism, in 1999.