Angela Salomon

Angela Salomon is an Innovation Marketplace Project Assistant at Grand Challenges Canada and a Master of Public Health student at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Abdallah Daar

Dr. Abdallah Daar is Chair of Grand Challenges Canada's Scientific Advisory Board.

In recent years, humanitarian needs have been outstripping both the aid system and our abilities to meet them. By the end of 2015, there were more than 65.3 million displaced people globally, the highest number ever and more than double the number at the end of 2012. To keep pace with evolving and growing humanitarian needs, aid agencies, governments, non-governmental organizations and other humanitarian actors will not only need to increase resources dedicated to this critical issue, but to evolve and innovate to meet the challenges ahead.

Because of these considerations, Grand Challenges Canada and a number of partners including humanitarian organizations, governments and the private sector are launching a new initiative: Humanitarian Grand Challenges. The first step in launching the new initiative will be to identify the major Grand Challenges in humanitarianism, with a view to increasing efficiency and effectiveness for the long term.

In this blog, we explain what a Grand Challenge is, provide examples of Grand Challenges, and encourage you to be a part of this important initiative by asking you to help identify Humanitarian Grand Challenges.

What is a Humanitarian Grand Challenge?

The working definition for a Humanitarian Grand Challenge is as follows:

A Humanitarian Grand Challenge is a specific critical barrier that, if removed, would help solve an important humanitarian problem with a high likelihood of global impact through widespread implementation.

Grand Challenges are not ideas for solutions, innovations, or research projects, but are statements that identify compelling problems, focus on a critical bottleneck, and set the table for innovators to innovate.

The Humanitarian Grand Challenges initiative will work with its partners to catalyze a pipeline of promising solutions that address the challenges that we face today and that can be rapidly deployed against the unanticipated humanitarian challenges of tomorrow.

What might a “Humanitarian Grand Challenge” look like?

We have adopted the following definition of humanitarian assistance:

“Humanitarian assistance is generally accepted to mean the aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of man-made crises and natural disasters, as well as to prevent and strengthen preparedness for the occurrence of such situations.”[i]

A Humanitarian Grand Challenge will go beyond health to address the full range of challenges associated with humanitarian contexts, and will require ongoing partnership with a broad range of actors in the humanitarian sector.

A valuable Humanitarian Grand Challenge will be ambitious, but well-defined and solvable, will have the potential to involve partnerships that can mobilize public, private and not-for-profit resources, and will have a clear metric and strategy to measure results and ensure accountability. A Humanitarian Grand Challenge should engage a broad range of stakeholders and should include empowerment of local communities, especially women.

The following are examples of potential Humanitarian Grand Challenges, identified by participants at the kick-off meeting in November 2016:

  1. Pre-financing humanitarian action in high risk contexts. A social impact bond could use capital market financing properly match humanitarian risk and the need for advanced funding, so that humanitarian actors in high risk contexts can plan, invest and prepare.
  2. Creating digital safe deposit boxes, accessed via a digital identity, that enables the owner a way to safely and privately store, transport, validate authenticity, and disseminate personal documents, other assets, and information.
  3. Supporting bold ideas to strengthen women’s leadership in disaster risk reduction and humanitarian response at the community and national levels.

Utilizing the expertise of the global community

The Grand Challenges approach values the knowledge and expertise of not only scientists, academics, government agents, investors, and other aid actors, but also the unique experiences of members of affected communities. This is why we have assembled a Steering Committee who will use a consensus-building process to identify the most compelling challenges, which includes individuals affected by humanitarian disasters, as well as local humanitarian actors.

To engage and consult as wide an audience as possible, ideas for Humanitarian Grand Challenges will also be crowd-sourced through social media. This is where you come in, and how you can contribute to the success of this initiative by suggesting a Humanitarian Grand Challenge that you believe will improve humanitarian assistance.

So, from your own knowledge and experience, we encourage you to answer this one question:

What is the one Grand Challenge that you consider most important to make humanitarian work more effective and efficient, for the long term?

To submit an answer, tweet at us @gchallenges using the hashtag #HumanitarianGC. We also welcome submissions via email. Submissions will be accepted until Friday, February 10, 2017.

We look forward to hearing from you.

[i] Adapted from: Good Humanitarian Assistance. (2013). Defining humanitarian assistance

Sections of this blog were adapted from Grand Challenges Canada’s “Humanitarian Grand Challenges Working Paper” (October 2016).

Photo credit: Bakwinya Mazhani / Grand Challenges Canada (2016).


Processes involved in the cycle

The water cycle consists of various complicated processes of precipitation, evaporation, interception, transpiration, infiltration, percolation, retention, detention, overland flow, throughflow, and runoff. Figure 4 provides a schematic representation of the details of the water cycle, illustrating the processes involved. In the following sections, some of these processes are discussed in detail.

Water vapour and precipitation

As noted above, water exists in the atmosphere in gaseous form. Its liquid form, either as water droplets in clouds or as rain, and its solid form, as ice crystals in clouds, snowflakes, or hail, occur only momentarily and locally.

Water vapour performs two major functions: (1) it is important to the radiation balance of Earth, as its presence keeps the planetary surface warmer than would otherwise be the case, and (2) it is the principal phase of the ascending part of the water cycle.

The mass of water vapour in the atmosphere, which represents only 0.001 percent of the hydrosphere, is highest in the tropics and decreases toward the poles. At a mean temperature of Earth’s surface of 15 °C, the partial pressure of water vapour at equilibrium with pure water is 0.017 atmosphere. The addition of salts to pure water lowers its vapour pressure. The equilibrium, or saturation, water vapour pressure of a saturated solution of sodium chloride is 22 percent lower than that of pure water. Precipitable water vapour has, on the average, a vapour pressure of 0.0025 atmosphere, which amounts to 15 percent of the saturation vapour pressure. The ratio of observed water vapour pressure to the saturation vapour pressure at the same temperature is the relative humidity of the air. Thus, the mean relative humidity of the atmosphere is only 15 percent, a value that is low in human and biological terms. The relative humidity of the air, however, varies greatly from one geographic region to another and also vertically in the atmosphere. Atmospheric water vapour decreases rapidly with increasing altitude relative to its surface value. The amount of water required to saturate a volume of air depends on the temperature of the air. Air at high temperature can hold more water vapour at saturation than can air at low temperature. Because the temperature of the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) decreases rapidly with increasing altitude to about 15 kilometres, the upper levels of the troposphere contain little water vapour; most of the vapour is found within a few kilometres of Earth’s surface. The average relative humidity of tropospheric air is about 50 percent. Above 15 kilometres, water vapour is essentially frozen out of the atmosphere, amounting to less than 0.1 percent of its concentration at Earth’s surface.

Aside from temperature, other factors determine the water vapour content of the air and are particularly important in the lower troposphere. These factors include local evaporation and the horizontal atmospheric transportation of moisture, which varies with altitude, latitude, season, and topography. During a period of 10 days (i.e., the residence time of water in the atmosphere), horizontal eddy turbulence may disperse vapour over distances up to 1,000 kilometres.

When a mass of air at Earth’s surface is exposed to a body of water, it gains water by evaporation or loses water by precipitation, depending on its relative humidity. If the air is undersaturated, with a relative humidity of less than 100 percent, it gains water vapour because the rate of evaporation exceeds the rate of condensation. If the air is supersaturated, with a relative humidity greater than 100 percent, the air mass loses water vapour because the rate of precipitation exceeds that of evaporation. This interaction between air masses and surface water bodies drives the atmosphere toward a state of saturation, which is not achieved for the entire atmosphere because of the variability in weather and because not all air masses are in contact with water bodies. In general, the level of atmospheric water vapour is higher in the summer, since temperatures are higher at this time of year. Also, atmospheric water vapour content is higher near the source of moisture than in distant regions. Over the oceans, the air is almost always near saturation, whereas over the deserts, where the supply of moisture is limited, the air is far below water vapour saturation values. In most cases, atmospheric water vapour content decreases inland over continents, but this decrease is modified by rainfall conditions, by the presence or absence of high mountains, large lakes, extensive forests, and swamps, and by the prevailing wind directions. Horizontal winds and air mass movements transfer water vapour from the ocean to the land. Although the processes are not completely separable, the horizontal transfer of water vapour seldom causes the vapour to undergo condensation, whereas vertical movements are most important in the condensation process.

Condensation depends strongly on the average temperature of Earth’s surface because the water vapour content of the air is strongly dependent on temperature. In figures that show the states of water as a function of the variables of pressure and temperature, the slope of the phase boundary between liquid water and water vapour is positive, implying that with increasing temperature the air at equilibrium will hold increasing amounts of water vapour. Cooling or mixing of this air results in condensation of the vapour and precipitation as water droplets or as ice crystals if the air temperature is below 0 °C. When first formed, the water droplets or ice crystals are very small, on the order of 10−2 to 10−3 centimetre in diameter, and they float freely in the atmosphere. In large quantities, these water droplets and ice crystals produce a cloud. All clouds are formed as a result of cooling below the dew point, the temperature at which condensation begins when air is cooled at constant pressure and constant water vapour content. When the droplets or crystals coalesce to a size of about 10−2 centimetre in diameter, the drops become heavy enough to fall as raindrops or snowflakes. Hailstones measure about 10−1 centimetre in diameter or much larger. Water vapour condensing in the atmosphere contains strongly soluble salts (mostly of oceanic origin), weakly soluble or insoluble solids (dust), and dissolved gases. The dust and sea salt aerosol particles in the air may act as sites of condensation by serving as nuclei for bringing initially a few water molecules together and inducing condensation from supersaturated air.

Distribution of precipitation

Precipitation falling toward Earth’s surface may suffer several fates. It may be evaporated during its fall or after it reaches the ground surface. If the surface is covered with dense vegetation, much of the precipitation may be held on leaves and plant limbs and stems. This process is termed interception and may result in little water reaching the ground because the water may be directly evaporated from plant surfaces back into the atmosphere. If precipitation reaches the ground in the form of snow, it may remain there for some time. On the other hand, if precipitation falls as rain, it may evaporate, infiltrate the soil, be detained in small catchment areas, or become overland flow—a form of runoff. Overland flow (Ro) may be expressed in terms of intensity units, water depth per unit of time (e.g., centimetres per hour, or inches per hour), as

Chemical equation.

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where P is precipitation rate and I is infiltration rate (rate of entry and downward movement of water into the soil profile). Infiltration rate will equal precipitation rate until the limit of the infiltration rate, or infiltration capacity, is reached. Soil infiltration rates are usually high at the beginning of a rain preceded by a dry spell and decrease as the rainfall continues. This change in rate is due to the clogging of soil pores by particles brought from above by the infiltrating rain and to the swelling of colloidal soil particles as they absorb water. Thus, rapid decreases in infiltration rates during a rain are more likely to occur in clay-rich soils than in sandy soils.

Between rainfall periods, water held in the soil as soil moisture is gradually lost by direct evaporation or by withdrawal by plants. Evaporation into the open atmosphere occurs at the surface of the soil, and the soil dries progressively downward with time. Water vapour in the soil diffuses upward, replenishing the evaporated water, and in turn is evaporated. The pumping of air in and out of the soil by atmospheric pressure changes enhances the movement of soil moisture upward. It has been shown that evaporation of a water droplet in the free atmosphere, and to a first approximation in various soil atmospheres, is proportional to the droplet surface area 4πr2 (square centimetres), the diffusional flux of water at the droplet surface, and the transfer of heat as the droplet evaporates. The equation for the rate of shrinkage of a water droplet due to evaporation is

Chemical equation.

where dr/dt is the rate of change in the radius of the water droplet (centimetres per second), D is the diffusion coefficient of water vapour in air (cubic centimetres per second), ρvo is the equilibrium vapour concentration at the droplet surface, Sp is the degree of undersaturation of water vapour in the environment, r is the radius of the droplet (centimetres), ρL is the density of liquid water (grams per cubic centimetre), and X is a dimensionless parameter depending on D, ρvo, temperature, the heat of evaporation of water vapour, the coefficient of thermal conductivity of air, and the spherical coordinate system necessary to define processes occurring to a spherical water droplet. Water droplets shrink—dr/dt < 0, evaporate—when the water vapour concentration in the environment (atmosphere or soil atmosphere) is less than the saturation water vapour concentration at the droplet surface. They grow—dr/dt > 0, condense—when the converse is true in the free atmosphere. The term dr/dt has negative values for evaporation and positive ones for condensation. Use of this equation shows, as an example, that it would take 23 minutes for a water droplet to shrink (evaporate) in size from 50 to 5 micrometres in air at 10 °C and a water vapour undersaturation of 1 percent.

Besides simple evaporation of water from soils, water is also returned to the atmosphere by transpiration in plants. Plants draw water from soil moisture through their vast network of root hairs and rootlets. This water is carried upward through the plant trunk and branches into the leaves, where it is discharged as water vapour. The term evapotranspiration is used in climatic and hydrologic studies to include the combined water loss from Earth’s surface resulting from evaporation and transpiration. The maximum possible evapotranspiration is termed potential evapotranspiration and is governed by the available heat energy. It is taken as equal to evaporation from a large water surface and is generally much less than actual evapotranspiration. Actual evapotranspiration is never greater than precipitation except on irrigated land because of percolation of water into groundwater bodies and surface runoff.

The soil moisture zone gains water by precipitation and infiltration and loses water by evapotranspiration, overland flow, and percolation of water downward due to gravity into the groundwater zone. The contact between the groundwater zone (phreatic zone) and the overlying unsaturated zone (vadose zone) is called the groundwater table. The water balance equation for change of soil moisture storage in a soil is given as

Chemical equation.

where S is storage, P is precipitation, E is evaporation, and R is surface runoff plus percolation rate into the groundwater zone; all terms are in units of length per unit of time (e.g., millimetres per day, centimetres per month). In humid midlatitude climates where a strong contrast between winter and summer temperatures exists, there is an annual cycle of the water content of soils. The annual cycle of moisture in soil in Ohio, U.S., demonstrates the processes controlling soil moisture. Of special importance is the fact that the soils are saturated in this temperate climate in the spring, and the evaporation rate is low because of the low input of radiant energy from the Sun. By contrast, in the summer, evaporation increases because of increasing solar radiation, and with the growth of plants so does transpiration. Soil moisture is reduced to very low levels at this time of year.

Groundwaters and river runoff

This section focuses on term R in equation (9) representing groundwater and river runoff losses from the soil moisture zone. Water percolates from the soil moisture zone through the unsaturated (vadose) zone to the water table. Flow through the unsaturated zone is complicated. After a rainfall, water may form nearly a continuous phase in pores in this zone, but with drying the last amount of water is held in wedges at points of contact of solid grains and as thin films on solid surfaces. The flow paths of water become more tortuous, and the water-conducting properties decrease rapidly. Structured soils and fractured rock in the vadose zone may act as conduits for fluids to reach the water table. Because of the complex geometry of water contained in the unsaturated zone, the properties of water are expressed by means of empirical relationships. Darcy’s law, derived in 1856 from experimentation by the French engineer Henri Darcy, permits quantification of water flow through porous media. The law states that the rate of flow Q of a fluid through a porous layer of medium (e.g., a sand bed) is directly proportional to the area A of the layer and to the difference Δh between the fluid heads at the inlet and outlet faces of the layer and inversely proportional to the thickness L of the layer, or, expressed analytically,

Chemical equation.

where K is a constant characteristic of the medium. The term K for a porous rock medium is the volume of fluid of unit viscosity passing through a unit cross section of the rock in unit time under the action of a unit pressure gradient and is called permeability. The permeability of a rock is dependent on the geometric properties of the rock, such as porosity, shape and size distribution of constituent rock grains, and degree of cementation of the rock. Permeabilities of rocks vary greatly. Unconsolidated sands may have permeabilities measured in hundreds of darcys, whereas consolidated sands that will transmit reasonable amounts of fluid have permeabilities of 0.01 to 1 darcy. A rough idea of the meaning of one darcy of permeability (which equals 9.869 × 10−12 square metre) can be obtained by imagining a cube of sand one foot on a side. If the sand has a permeability of one darcy, approximately one barrel of water per day will pass through the one-foot cube with a one-pound pressure head. The general equation of Darcy can be modified to express flow in both the unsaturated zone and the saturated groundwater zone.

Groundwater is constantly in motion. When a lake or stream intersects the groundwater table, groundwater communicates directly with these bodies of water. If the groundwater table is higher than the stream or lake level, a pressure head will develop such that the groundwater flows into the water body; conversely, if the groundwater table is lower than the river or lake level, the pressure gradient induces flow into the groundwater. Most groundwater ultimately reaches the channels of surface streams and rivers and flows to the sea. On the average, groundwater contributes to total river runoff about 30 percent of its water on a global basis.

Water runoff from the land surface is that part of precipitation which eventually appears in perennial or intermittent surface streams. Streamflow-generation mechanisms have been studied for several decades, and there is now considerable knowledge regarding rainfall runoff processes and their controls. This understanding is the result of both careful observations from field experiments and the heuristic simulations of hypothetical realities with rigorous mathematical models. The discharge measured at the downstream end of a channel reach is supplied by channel inflow at the upstream end of the reach and by the lateral inflows that enter the channel from the hillslope along the reach. The lateral inflows may arrive at the stream in one of three forms: (1) groundwater flow, (2) subsurface storm flow, or (3) overland flow.

Groundwater flow provides the base flow component of streams that sustains their flow between storms. The “flashy” response of streamflow to individual precipitation events may be ascribed to either subsurface storm flow or overland flow. Subsurface storm flow can be a dominant streamflow-generation mechanism only when the impeding subsoil horizon laterally diverts infiltrating water downslope. Under intense rainfall events during which the surface soil layer becomes saturated to some depth, water is able to migrate through “preferred pathways” rapidly enough to deliver contributions to the stream during the peak runoff period. The conditions for subsurface storm flow are quite restrictive. The mechanism is most likely to be operative on steep, humid, forested hillslopes with very permeable surface soils.

Overland flow is generated at a point on a hillslope only after surface ponding takes place. Ponding cannot occur until the surface soil layers become saturated. It is now widely recognized that surface saturation can occur because of two quite distinct mechanisms—namely, Horton overland flow and Dunne overland flow.

The former classic mechanism is for a precipitation rate that exceeds the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the surface soil. A moisture content versus depth profile during such a rainfall event will show moisture contents that increase at the surface as a function of time. At some point in time the surface becomes saturated, and an inverted zone of saturation begins to propagate downward into the soil. It is at this time that the infiltration rate drops below the rainfall rate and overland flow is generated. The time is called the ponding time. The necessary conditions for the generation of overland flow by the Horton mechanism are (1) a rainfall rate greater than the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil and (2) a rainfall duration longer than the required ponding time for a given initial moisture profile. Horton overland flow is generated from partial areas of the hillslope where surface hydraulic conductivities are lowest.

In Dunne overland flow, the precipitation rate is less than the saturated hydraulic conductivity, and the initial water table is shallow or there is a shallow impeding layer. Surface saturation occurs because of a rising water table; ponding and overland flow occur at a time when no further soil moisture storage is available. The Dunne mechanism is more common to near-channel areas. Dunne overland flow is generated from partial areas of the hillslope where water tables are shallowest. Both Horton and Dunne mechanisms result in variable source areas that expand and contract through wet and dry periods.

Total river discharge and the chemistry of the discharge vary from continent to continent; some continents are wetter and some drier than the world average, but the deviations are not extreme. The runoff per unit area from Asia and Europe is almost exactly equal to the world average; it is a little lower in Africa and North America; and it is considerably higher in South America. Antarctica is frozen and Australia is arid, and so they contribute little runoff. Also, since their areas are relatively small, they do not affect the global runoff average significantly. The waters draining the continents have quite different chemistries; those from Europe are very rich in calcium and bicarbonates, whereas those from Africa and South America are not. North American and Asian rivers are somewhat intermediate in their concentrations of these dissolved constituents. Such differences in composition reflect a variety of factors, including runoff, temperature, and relief, but certainly the bulk composition of the continental rocks in contact with these waters and their underground sources play a major role. The surface rocks of Europe are rich in carbonates and those of South America are not; the latter are dominated by sediments rich in silicate minerals.

The chemistry of groundwater and river runoff is being modified by human activities on a global scale. The natural dissolved riverine input of major constituents to the oceans already has been increased by more than 10 percent because of human activities. In the case of sodium, chlorine, and sulfate, the increases are as high as 30 percent. In the United States alone, total water utilization is equivalent to one-third of total runoff, with about 2 percent of the water used coming from underground wells. In the southwestern region of the country, water supplies have been tapped heavily and in some areas have been exhausted with no hope of replacement. This extensive utilization of fresh waters in the United States and throughout the globe make them particularly susceptible to pollution. Leachates from fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are found in some freshwater bodies; toxic and inorganic or organic chemicals are present; radioactive elements have been detected; and some surface-water bodies have had their salinities increased dramatically, rendering them useless for human consumption. It is therefore imperative that nations closely monitor the utilization of freshwater systems and promote their conservation.

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Saturday, April 22, 2017

Frog as a Symbol of Metamorphosis

The few examples she had brought out were the following:
Love to you all

[2] Rigveda 7.103 verse 1
[3] Rig Veda Hymn to Parjanya

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Resurrected Christ as an Image

Love to you all.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

The Mystery of Christ

Love to you all.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Defining the Holy Grail

"The individual psyche is the Holy Grail, made holy by what it contains, produced by the experience of the opposites suffered, not blindly, but in living awareness. Every human experience, to the extent that it is lived in awareness, augments the sum total of consciousness in the universe. This provides "meaning" for every experience and gives each individual a role in the ongoing world drama of creation." ………………………..Edward Edinger, Page 32 of “Creation of Consciousness”
This passage invokes a deep cosmological principle.
When the basic question as to how matter was created in the early universe is asked, we have to go back to the very beginning and if symmetry was maintained, we should have seen equal amount of matter and antimatter being created but we do not see any antimatter but only matter in the universe. This is because of  Some unknown entity intervening in this process in the early universe which could have caused oscillating particles to decay as matter more often than they decayed as antimatter. This signature can be seen in the Microwave Background Radiation which has been mapped very accurately by the Planck Satellite launched in 2009.
Forget the scientific stuff - what general principle that is glaring at us is that the breaking of symmetry is what causes a matter based species consciousness to observe a matter based universe. Similarly an antimatter based species consciousness would observe through its own unique sensory apparatus an antimatter universe.
This analysis is equally applicable to composition of the individual psyche. As the great Theosophist Madame Blavatsky observed:
“THE mind is dual in its potentiality: it is physical and metaphysical. The higher part of the mind is connected with the spiritual soul or Buddhi, the lower with the animal soul, the Kama (desire) principle. There are persons who never think with the higher faculties of their mind at all; those who do so are the minority and are thus, in a way, beyond, if not above, the average human kind. …………………….. This difference depends simply on the innate power of the mind to think on the higher or on the lower plane, with the astral or with the physical brain. ………………….This is why it is so very difficult for a materialist – the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied – to raise himself, or for one who is naturally spiritually minded, to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact vulgar thought..”
The dual nature of the mind is akin to the matter-antimatter world. The inner apparatus of the mind has the potential to access both the higher and lower nature of the mind, the physical and the metaphysical.
When Christ says in Matthew chapter 13 verses 13-15:
Both Blavatsky and Isaiah use the same language in describing the lower mind and the heart of those rooted in the material world. In them “……the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied” and their hearts “has become calloused”.
The metaphysical or astral or what Edinger describes as the Holy Grail is the higher mind, attaining which the mission of the holy warrior in the mythological lore.
There are two types of creation that we witness in the universe. One is the material world from atoms to Galaxies and the other is the expansion of the universe or creation of perceived spacetime. While the first process is created by gravitational attraction the second is created by the anti-gravity effect of Dark Energy which is the more mysterious and yet to be experimentally observed. All our mental energy to comprehend both these processes puts out information into the universe. This is what Edinger calls “the sum total of consciousness in the universe”
Modern cosmology has come to the conclusion that it is not matter or energy which is the fundamental constituent of the universe but information. When we say information, which John Wheeler called “It from Bit”, we mean a unit of some fundamental constituent beyond energy. Only through this the physics of Black Holes can be even thought of.
This is the same information that we are putting out into the universe in terms of active involvement of our consciousness.
It is only in grasping the seamless interconnection between our individual consciousness and the consciousness pervading the entire universe the Holy Grail can be sought.
The Holy Grail is not a goal but an ever expanding flow of experience of the individual consciousness into the infinite vessel of Cosmic Mind.

Love to you all.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Longing Creates the World

“To be or not to be – that is the question” is the very famous line from the play Hamlet. Hamlet is contemplating suicide, and this phrase, according to philosopher Schopenhauer “is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it.”
Nagarjuna, the proponent of the concept of “Sunyata”  refuted all logical combination of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. His reasoning was that the two states are the result of concepts from a rational mind and true reality has to have a ground state beyond the mind.
In a recent talk the great Vietnam Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, clarified that the origin of the classification of the state of being and non- being as purely related to human existence. He said:
“If we are caught in the notion of being we will also be caught in the notion of non-being. From the perspective of life span, we think we start to exist at the point of time we call birth; and we think we continue to exist until the point of time we call death, after which we think we cease to exist. Thus the notions of birth and death form the basis of the notions of being and non-being.”
From a cosmological perspective, in his famous book “A Brief History of Time”, Stephen Hawking argues that quantum mechanics shows us that the classical picture of a “well-defined spacetime arises as a limiting case of the quantum perspective.” Time is less fundamental than space and, as a consequence, spacetime cannot have a singular, initial boundary. There is no singularity, no initial boundary at all; the universe has no beginning! Even though unbounded, the universe is finite. Here is how Hawking sets forth his view:
“The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behaviour at the boundary. One could say: ‘The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.’ The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.”
Hence the concept of being is intimately correlated with time and hence our post Big Bang dualistic concept of Being and Non-being.
But embedded within the fundamental substrate of all creation is the first principle or cause which is time independent and hence eternal from a temporal perspective and all manifested realm is spatial-temporal and hence have a very limited reality. This principle which is the cause is hence eternal but the effect is temporal. To the human mind the definition of this first principle is called ‘desire’ or ‘longing’.
In the macrostructure we can relate this cause and effect through an allegory to the great ocean which has great tranquillity and extended existence but the moment it meets a boundary, which we can equate to the Big Bang spatial boundary, waves, estuaries and shorelines are created, The essence of the ocean by its innate nature is to spread to find equilibrium but this desire is realized at the boundary condition as a different manifestation.
From a western mystical tradition, the German Cobbler mystic, Jacob Boehme said:
“the basis of the world is nonbeing... because the beginning [of the world] is desire, longing, and only an absolute vacuum can have longing. A vacuum, nonbeing, can by longing draw or attract into itself.. something exceedingly positive because it creates the world.” ……C.G. Jung, Visions, Vol.1, p.524-5
Vacuum Boehme refers to is perhaps akin to the Lurianic Kabbalist notion of ‘tzimtzum’: contraction that proceeds emanation. Again resorting to the ocean analogy, when there is a great pressure generated deep within the ocean floor due to an earthquake, the innate pressure tries to find expression as a propagating sub-surface pressure differential. When this pressure differential reaches near the shore, first there is a great contraction of the shoreline and then a very huge tsunami wave created. The creation of our universe is very similar. We are in the forefront of this travelling wave which due its rapid expansion (cosmological theory of inflation) will dissipate all its energy and return to the equilibrium. This in Vedic philosophy is called Pralaya.
Our understanding of Tzimtzum can be clarified through an analogy from the world of mathematics. An infinite perfect mind sees immediately that the arithmetical expressions (21/3), (126/18), (6.72 + .28), etc., etc., are all equivalents of the number 7: it is only from the point of view of a limited intellect that these expressions appear to represent different mathematical ideas. Indeed, as the mathematical philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead painstakingly demonstrated, all of mathematics is predicated on a very small number of logical axioms, and an infinite mind would in an instant intuit the entire world of higher mathematical construct as an amplification of the simplest of ideas. So it is with the world. It is a multifarious manifestation of unique singular principle which only the Divine intellect can comprehend.
We are a small effect of the Divine cause which pervades all creation and all universes. Let us enjoy this ride with the assurance that one day we will transcend this temporal manifestation and merge with the Divine reality.

Love to you all

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Alchemy as a Transcendent Function

"The secret of alchemy was in fact the transcendent function, the transformation of personality through the blending and fusion of the noble with the base components, of the differentiated with the inferior functions, of the conscious with the unconscious. No one who has undergone the process of assimilating the unconscious will deny that it gripped his very vitals and changed him.. [moving the centre of awareness to the Middle Plane between the inner and outer worlds] where the centre of the total personality no longer coincides with the ego, but with a point midway between the conscious & the unconscious. This would be the point of new equilibrium.. which ensures.. a new & more solid foundation." …………………………….C,G, Jung, Two Essays, para.365
Traditionally, alchemy was understood as a chemical process where a base material is converted into a noble metal such as Gold. The esoteric interpretation of alchemy as a process of inner transformation is being dealt with in the above quote from the writings of Carl Jung.
In the Bible, we find some events of radical changes in the consciousness of people: there is the "thief on the cross" at Golgotha who realizes the spiritual nature of Christ and was promised by Jesus that he would be with him in paradise the next day as a reward for his transformation; and the chief of a gang of robbers who was converted by Francis of Assisi and became a monk. Cases like these have always moved the hearts of the religious-minded and have raised the question how such changes could be possible. Angulimala's story might give an answer to these questions.
In the Buddhist story of Angulimala, though warned of the notorious bandit Angulimala, who wore a garland of the fingers of his victims – ( "necklace of fingers" in Pali is Angulimala) hence his name, Buddha, unflinchingly went into the forest infested by this bandit. The bandit gave chase but could never catch up with the holy one, though Buddha was walking at a normal pace. Then this conversation took place: The murderer said "Stop, monk! Stop, monk!". Buddha replied "I have stopped, Angulimala. Do you stop, too."
Then the bandit Angulimala thought: "These monks, followers of the Sakya scion, speak truth, assert truth; but though this monk is walking, yet he says 'I have stopped, Angulimala; do you stop, too.' Suppose I question the monk?" Then he addressed the Blessed One thus:
"While you are walking monk, you tell me you have stopped; But now, when I have stopped, you say I have not stopped. I ask you now, O monk what is the meaning of it; How is it you have stopped and I have not?" The Blessed One replied: "Angulimala, I have stopped for ever, Forswearing violence to every living being; But you have no restraint towards things that breathe; So that is why I have stopped and you have not."
The above events pointed out are to emphasise the spiritual alchemy that is at work when lower order consciousness is instantly transformed to higher level consciousness.
I would like to point out another event in the life of Christ where we witness a transitory alchemical process. In the Bible the symbol of a higher consciousness revelation is always the mountain top or the peak experience. It was on Mount Sinai that Moses is revealed the Divine presence, it was in Mount Horeb that Elijah found Divine presence and it was on Mount Tabor that Christ reveals his higher consciousness nature through a radiant transfiguration as witnessed by his chosen apostles. Finally it is on the mount Golgotha that he undertakes his journey to his final transcendent nature of a physical death and a spiritual resurrection
Let me conclude with a classical story of transformation:
A great warrior samurai once went to see a little holy monk.
“Monk!” He barked, in a voice accustomed to evoking instant obedience.
“Teach me about heaven and hell!”
“Teach you about heaven and hell? I couldn’t teach you about anything. You’re dumb. You’re dirty. You’re a disgrace, an embarrassment to the samurai class. Get out of my sight. I can’t stand you.”
Looking straight into the samurai’s eyes, the monk said softly, “That’s hell.”
The monk said softly, “And that’s heaven.”
This instantaneous transformation in the Samurai is an alchemical process where a base nature is instantly transformed into a nobler nature.
May we all realize our true higher nature and undertake this life journey to eradicate our ego dominated lower nature

Love to you all.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Process of Spiritual Awakening

"Christ is the western formulation of what the East calls the Self, Atman, the Purusha or Buddha. If one may interpret him as a symbol, he symbolizes the Self. The dogma claims that Christ was God who became man. In psychological language this means that the Self approached the consciousness of man.. And indeed in a very peculiar form, the Self approached from outside autonomously, not as a human realization." ………………..C.G. Jung,

In the first part of this article, I intend to bring out the bestowing nature of Divine consciousness and in the second part the needed preparation of the individual consciousness to accept this great gift.
There are two specific elements of the Self that we need to understand when reading Jung’s take on the autonomous nature of the Self.
The first element which distinguishes the Self is its purely independent nature and when we say independent it means that the Self cannot be defined through perceptual or physical spatiotemporal boundaries and qualities. It is beyond the grasp of the human mind. Hence all adjectives that we use such as omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient are inadequate. Language struggles with definition and hence calls it Self, Atman, Purusha or Buddha or Christ.
The second element which differentiates Self is its relation to all forms of manifested consciousness. Hence when we talk of Christ being God, it is the ingress of untainted consciousness into the human frame in the virgin birth of Yeshua or Jesus (Yeshua is the Hebrew name, and its English spelling is “Joshua.” Iesous is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name, and its English spelling is “Jesus.”). Hence it is in the virgin birth that Yeshua becomes Christos or Christ. Gautama becomes Buddha.
As Jung says it is not through human realization but through a Divine or cosmic gift that the Self bestows itself on the individual. While an individual, deeply desirous of knowing one’s true nature, seeks incessantly to realize the Divine within, the moment of realization and the state of a realized individual is a bestowed gift.
In Zen Buddhism, it is called Satori. Satori refers to a mystical experience of kenshō, "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence." This is commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is also used to define the state of Bodhi, Prajna and Buddhahood. It is an insight that is more or less deep and thorough, but an insight none-the-less. It could be temporary. Rare few are gifted the state where one ceases to be a human experiencing it's true nature, and instead one becomes a true nature experiencing being a human. At that point one no longer has an existence in duality but is fully conscious of one’s true nature.
What are the hurdles we face in this transformative process as well as the only tool that can leverage the state of the individual soul to reach this higher state of enlightenment, are again pointed out by Jung in the following quote.
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ……………….C.G. Jung
At all cost the conditioned consciousness fights tooth and nail to evade its own annihilation. The dross sticks to the inner being and it is only through a conscious and painful scrubbing the receptacle of the inner being can be brought to readiness to accept the Self.
What Jung means by saying “………making the darkness conscious” is that in our lives we are constantly engaged in using the ‘light of the world’ in constructing false perceptions through the inputs we receive from our senses. But these false perceptions can be eradicated only be utilizing the hidden potential of the darkness, here signifying non sensory potential, to become the conscious organizer of our perception of our true reality.
Matt Licata, a psychotherapist, spiritual counsellor, and teacher, from the Preface of his book, “It’s Okay to Be Broken: Embracing the Joy and Heartbreak of Spiritual Awakening.” Says:
“Much is being said these days about spiritual awakening, and the causeless joy, clarity, and peace that are inevitable milestones of the inner journey. Not all that much is mentioned, however, about the disappointment of awakening, or of the ways it can break our hearts, cracking us open to the reality of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the transfiguration we are likely to encounter along the way. In the full embrace of life—right inside the yucky, messy, shadowy nether regions of the heart—we are invited to meet the wholeness of what we are, which includes the dark and the light, the movement of separation and union, and the entirety of what it means to be an embodied human being.
As Carl Jung so poignantly reminds us, we do not become enlightened by “imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” He went on to say that the integral journey of the dark and the light is one that is often “disagreeable” and thus would never be popular. I believe Jung is offering very important guidance for us and the voyage of the heart in contemporary times.”
Let me close this article with a real experience of mine.
When I was in college there was a drama staged which had the main character, a man who wanted to know the mind of a woman and used a concoction like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to transform himself into a woman. In the pre digital age in 1960s, we had to use light and darkness with some amount of smoke to effect this transformation on stage with a live audience. The main actor was standing as he took the magic potion and there was smoke and then darkness. Quickly we introduce a second actor dressed as a woman and made him lie down on the stage while the main actor stood perpendicular to the second actor. A sheet glass was introduced at 45 degrees and two lights were use one on the main actor and the second on the lady. At first the light on the main actor was in full brightness and the light on figure lying down was switched off. There was smoke drifting and then the light on the main actor started dimming and at the same time the light on the female figure started to increase. The effect was magical as the male figure through the glass vanished the female reflection became prominent and ‘voila’ the transformation was complete.
Indeed the darkness brought into the conscious is great in achieving a radical transformation.

Love to you all

Monday, February 20, 2017

True Flight from the World

“There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish, and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men. When we give power to suffering and to the cause of suffering, we lose touch with the inner self that knows we are one with the Divine. The inner being knows that this sacred union can never be dissolved although it may be obscured. By trusting the illusion of suffering, we forget, and our spiritual wings are clipped. We are unable to lift off much less soar to the heights of ecstatic union with the Divine. To release ourselves from the bond of this illusion and the forgetfulness it causes, we must see suffering not as a destructive power but as a transcendent gift from the Divine. This shift in understanding releases us from disunity and separateness.” ………………..Thomas Merton
I thought I will write this short article on this subject because we tend to associate moving away from the world in a spiritual exercise as an escape from the living reality. Thomas Merton is very clear on this in his opening sentence in the quoted saying. Conflict, anguish and suffering are inherent to life and results from the ego self. The ego cannot be completely dispensed with as it is first level of personal identity. The role we allow ego to play is vital. A good example is salt in our food. Salt cannot be totally eliminated as it is vital not only for taste but also as an essential ingredient for good health as Sodium enables the transmission of nerve impulses around the body. It is an electrolyte, like Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium; it regulates the electrical charges moving in and out of the cells in the body.
All negative emotional reactions such as anger, conflict and hatred results when the ego stubbornly refuses to be expunged from the system as excess salt in the body has to be removed through the kidney for maintaining good health.
Human suffering, in this context, is not that which is caused by physical harm. This suffering which Thomas Merton is referring is the mental suffering due to our inability to detach ourselves from the promptings of the ego.
It is unfortunate that in Christianity the spiritual exercise of suffering is rooted in the physical modelled after the suffering of Christ on the cross. Mortification as a spiritual exercise is seen as causing discomfort or pain in the physical dimension of the individual. Early Christians took it to the extreme level of martyrdom or physical death.
The understanding of St. Paul regarding suffering is of great help to us. Paul says:
We must note that Paul talks of “suffering through loss of all things”. This is the deeper meaning and resonates with the Buddhist concept of “Dukkha” or suffering as a result of attachment. Every suffering is our stubborn adherence to the dictates of the ego and this must be eliminated, which is metaphorically identified with death, and must be followed by the resurrection of the spirit.
Another vital dimension of Paul’s take on the meaning of suffering is his deeper understanding of suffering as a means for sanctification, keeping the ego at a minimum and trust in God at a maximum. He says:
Thomas Merton provides the methodology through which we can undertake this difficult task of detachment. When our understanding of our true nature transcends from disunity and separation to one of non-duality, we eradicate the very foundation on which the ego has placed its throne. Our true inner nature is elevated to its higher potential giving flight to ascend to an ecstatic union with the Divine.

Love to you all

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Self is Beyond Reason

“The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge. It is not something that you find by searching, by looking everywhere. It is not to be found in space and time. Knowledge is but a memory, a pattern of thought, a mental habit. All these are motivated by pleasure and pain. It is because you are goaded by pleasure and pain that you are in search of knowledge. Being oneself is completely beyond all motivation. You cannot be yourself for some reason. You are yourself and no reason is needed.” ………………………….Nisargadatta Maharaj
“The Self is like a powerful magnet within us. It draws us gradually to Itself, though we imagine we are going to It of our own accord: when we are near enough, It puts an end to our activities, makes us still, and then swallows up our personal current, thus killing our wrong personality. It overwhelms the intellect and overfloods the whole being. We think we are meditating upon It and developing towards It, whereas the truth is that we are iron filings and It is the Atman-magnet that is pulling us towards Itself. Thus the process of finding the Self is a form of Divine magnetism.” ………..Ramana Maharishi
When I read the above two sayings, I was suddenly drawn to a thought and a picture emerged in my mind wherein I was observing the reflection of the full moon in the ocean. It was probably because the day I started writing this short article was a full moon day. In this mental image, I was standing on the shore of the ocean and the waves were coming one after the other in a specific rhythm. I could hardly see the reflection of the moon in the water. The moon was fragmented and dispersed over an immensely big area due to the reflection coming from many different surfaces generated by the waves.
A thought struck me at that very moment. If we compare the moon in the firmament as the Self and the ocean as the individual self or consciousness, which in its true nature should be the embodiment of the Self or Paramatma. But to the observing consciousness of the individual, the Self becomes disfigured while its true nature is constant and unchanging. The more the travails of life and life concerns, represented here by the waves of the ocean, the true Self lies beyond comprehension. Even if we travel in a small boat to the middle of the ocean where there are no waves, the mild breeze or even the passage of the boat disturbs the surface creating ripples which distorts the nature of true reality.
This goes to point out that using the mind and reason, which is represented by the surface of the ocean, the grasp of true nature of the self is beyond our reach. Even if we dive deep into very clear waters of the ocean the surface which here represents the conditioned mind or the self (with small letter s) always is subject to hindering our access to the true nature of the Self.
Just as the true reality of the moon, which is always whole and never waxes and wanes, can be accessed when we go beyond to its true space of being, the access to the Self needs a consciousness unconditioned by the limitations of mental conditioning. Hence the ultimate reality lies beyond the reasoning mind.
Ramana Maharishi uses a very apt comparison of the Self being a magnet. It is common knowledge that it is the magnet that attracts the iron filings and not the other way around. There are two main hindrances to this attraction; they are distance and a medium. If we have distanced ourselves from the Self through our conscious choice of being attached our physical and material nature, we are far from the never changing influence of the magnet or the Self. As long as the medium is empty space representing a state of mind tranquilized only through meditation and devotion through Karma or Bhakti, the irresistible pull of the Self will be overpowering and provide the needed potential to elevate ourselves to a merger with the Self. If we have any medium like a sheet of glass which gives the false perception of being the goal, the iron filing form the pattern of lines of force of magnetic attraction on the  sheet of glass but these iron filings are far from their true goal.
In our lives, the only supplication in our prayers should be to be filled with Divine grace which is the lines of force that attracts us towards the Self. When this prayer is empowered through spiritual practices such as; austerity, compassion, meditation, focused worship and performance of tasks without expectations (nishkamakarma), our true goal can be achieved.
Let me close this short reflection on the need for Divine Grace with a quote from a great Christian mystic:
“O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You. To depend on You should be enough for an eternity of joy. To depend on You by itself ought to be infinitely greater than any joy which my own intellectual appetite could desire.” …………….Thomas Merton

Love to you all

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Buddhiyoga –Anchoring in the Divine

“I am the source of all. From Me everything emanates. Thinking thus, the wise worship Me, absorbed in ecstatic contemplation.   With their consciousness centred upon Me, with their vital energies drawn into Me, enlightening each other, constantly conversing about Me, they feel contented and revel in delight.   To those who are constantly yoked; and worship Me with love, I confer that intuitive understanding (buddhiyoga) by which they approach Me. Out of pure compassion for them, dwelling in their inmost self, I destroy the darkness born of ignorance by the brilliant lamp of wisdom.”  ……..Bhagavad Gītā 10: 8-11
There are clearly two dimensions addressed in this saying. They are the attributes of the object of devotion and the categories of devotee.
First dimension is that all the content of what is manifest and what is hidden from our senses, as the sum total of the object of devotion and the content of all these emanates from the Divine plenum which is symbolized as an embodiment in the person of Lord Krishna. The recipient of this message must have the knowledge to comprehend both the manifest and the unmanifest. While the manifest could be comprehended through our senses and our conditioned consciousness, the unmanifest can only be grasped through a new tool of perception which can only be dispensed through Divine grace. To illustrate this mystery at the objective level, Arjuna asks the Lord to exhibit his universal form in chapter 11 Bhagavad Gita which immediately follows the chapter in which the above verse appears and the Lord obliges by bestowing his a special sight.
“But you cannot see my cosmic form with these physical eyes of yours. Therefore, I grant you divine vision. Behold my majestic opulence!” …………..……..Bhagavad Gītā 11: 8
Second dimension is the category of devotee. Here again there are two clear categories of devotees and these categories result from the individual’s karmic status of the individual atma. The first is the wise and the second are those who are yoked to earthly toil. These are very clearly spiritual categories.
The wise are those who have attained a status of elevated consciousness through realization of one’s true self through repeated karmic cleansing. They are able to integrate their consciousness with the Divine through deep ecstatic contemplation or meditative practice. When their vital energies are fully focused on the Self, which is the pramatma, the individual atma loses its ego coverings and transcends to the deeper plenum. It is the well of infinite energy from which the individual wisdom gains strength in its journey, or human destiny, which is the ultimate merger with the Divine.
The second category of devotees are those who are still in the infancy of their karmic journey. This category is defined in chapter 9 of Bhagavad Gita and in no less pronouncement, the Lord declares:
“Even if one commits the most abominable action, if he is engaged in devotional service he is to be considered saintly because he is properly situated in his determination. He quickly becomes righteous and attains lasting peace. O son of Kuntī, declare it boldly that My devotee never perishes. O son of Pthā, those who take shelter in Me, though they be of lower birth—women, vaiśyas (merchants) as well as śūdras (workers)—can attain the supreme destination. How much more this is so of the righteous brāhmaas, the devotees and the saintly kings. Therefore, having come to this temporary, miserable world, engage in loving service unto Me. Engage your mind always in thinking of Me, become My devotee, offer obeisance to Me and worship Me. Being completely absorbed in Me, surely you will come to Me.” ………………Bhagavad Gītā 9: 30-34
A clear example is provided in the Puranas.
The biography of Valmiki, the author of the great epic Ramayana, is a vivid case of spiritual transformation. Valmiki was not always a saint. He was born Ratnakara, and became an infamous bandit who killed many people by the time he reached his adulthood. One day, he was touched by an act of love between two cranes in a clear river where he was about to bathe. One of the cranes was killed by a hunter’s arrow and the mate cried out in anguish. This event transformed his personality drastically. One day, he met the great sage Narada who questioned him of his duty. Moved by Narada's words, he began to perform penance and chanted the word "Mara" which meant "kill". As he performed his penance for several years, the word became "Rama", the name of Lord Vishnu.  Narada declared Ratnakara to be a great Sage and Brahmin, a member of the high caste. This whole episode signifies the transformation of a sinner into a sage in one life time through constant attachment to the Divine.
It is worth noting how the chant used in meditation “Mara” meaning kill is transformed into “Rama”. This is a symbolic significance of how even the worst of criminals can become spiritually elevated.
Before the eye of the Divine there are no categories. It is only our willingness to elevate our priorities above the mundane and a constant seeking of the higher potential which resides within us. This is what is mandated by the verse quoted at the beginning of this article.

Love to you all

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Apocalypse Versus Apokatastasis

"You may remember that passage in St. Paul about the apokatastasis (Apokatastasis is reconstitution, restitution, or restoration to the original or primordial condition), which is the same idea that the whole of nature, all creatures, are expecting the revelation.
As we are expecting the manifestation as the children of God, a revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so all creation, even the animals and the plants, are waiting for it too; that spiritual miracle of redemption or completion which happens in man means the crowning of all nature at the same time. So everything that has been fettered will be released with the liberation of the children of God.
The idea is that man is the representative of the whole of creation, and whatever happens to him happens in a magic way to the whole world. It is an exceedingly mystical idea. And as Paul thought, so the unconscious still thinks." …………….. C.G. Jung, Visions Seminars, Vol. 1
Jung reflects the thoughts of theologians like Origen in the third century AD and St. Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century AD.
It was Origen who gave meaning to Universality of the Redemption and the Final Restoration. His interpretation of St. Paul’s letter1 Corinthians 15:25-28, seem to extend to all rational beings the benefit of the Redemption, and Origen allows himself to be led a philosophical positioning that the end is always like the beginning: "We think that the goodness of God, through the mediation of Christ, will bring all creatures to one and the same end" (De Principiis I.6.1-3). The universal restoration (apokatastasis) follows necessarily from these principles.
St. Gregory of Nyssa who explicitly taught this doctrine.
The language used by Gregory of Nyssa can be mapped to the theory of reincarnation and karmic purification in Vedic and Buddhist philosophies. The process of reincarnation or Sasāra is the continuous cleansing process of the individual soul till it reaches a stage of absolute purity or the original state from which it descended into the material realm.
This doctrinal theology of Apokatastasis has been recast in the twentieth century by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving). As seen with Gregory of Nyssa, Teilhard’s cosmic theology is largely predicated on his interpretation of Pauline scripture, particularly Colossians 1:15-17 (especially verse 1:17b) and 1 Corinthians 15:28. He drew on the ‘Christ consciousness centrism’ of these two Pauline passages to construct a cosmic theology which recognizes the absolute primacy of Divine consciousness. He understood creation to be "a teleological process where individual consciousness evolves towards union with the Godhead or Divine consciousness, effected through the symbolism of incarnation and redemption of Christ. He further posited that creation would not be complete until each "participated being is totally united with God through Christ in the Pleroma, when God will be 'all in all' (1Cor. 15:28)
As the consciousness of humanity evolved over the two million years towards Homo Sapiens, our perception of reality has also evolved to grasp the interconnectedness of all manifestations. Jung’s words that the idea of man as a representative of the whole of creation stems from this heightened awareness. It is through individual and collective human consciousness that we give birth and meaning to the existence of this universe and the concept of the multiverse.
The chronological thought process from St. Paul to Origen to Gregory of Nyssa and then to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the exponential ramping up of our current understanding of the world around us as nothing but our own personal observation in which all possibilities are collapsed to a single identity, we are in a position to have a greater vision of the process of our human journey.

Enjoy the ride and love to you all.


Tunisians and supporters hold banners as they demonstrate on January 15, 2011 in Nancy, Eastern France, after ousted leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country with his family the day before. As Tunisia's former colonial power, France has a large population of Tunisian origin and Tunisian immigrants. Placard at right asks for democracy.

People march during a demonstration in solidarity with Tunisia, in Nancy. Unrest engulfed Tunisia on Saturday after a popular rebellion forced the president to flee. Dozens of inmates were killed in two prison fires, looters emptied shops and torched the main train station and gunfire echoed through the capital.NANCY, FRANCE –


A selection of my curatorial projects

  • Concerning Human Understanding

    This exhibition investigated artistic production through language, and engaged a discourse on communication, understanding and society. Featuring Sandra Erbacher, who questions and disrupts the authoritative monolith of institutions through playful critique of objects and language; Marianna Olinger, who investigates madness as a language through the process of deconstructing her own documentary film about a defunct mental institution; and Tim Roseborough, who challenges the viewing of artworks by using his own self-designed Englyph system to provoke a debate between written language and visual art. The show was accompanied by a panel discussion with the artists and art writer Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. (SVA Visual and Critical Studies Gallery, 2015)
  • Intimacy

    Photographers reveal their interpretations of the emotional, intellectual, physical, and sexual space in which humans inhabit. (Featureshoot, 2014; image by Sebastian Collett)
  • Run, Rabbit, Run

    The exhibition used the idea of psychedelia - an ancient Greek term for 'mind-manifesting' - to explore the manifestations of the mind: the weird, the crazy, the beautiful, the deeply private and the inconceivable. The works brought fantasies to life and memories to present time, delving into the deep crevices of the unconscious and included a curated performance. (SVA Flatiron Gallery, 2013)
  • Global Positioning System (So You Say You Want a Revolution)

    These artists explored themes of translation, cross-global movement, displacement, multiculturalism and hybrid identities and investigate the idea that the world is dissolving and re-congealing around the ability of people to communicate across borders, be in multiple places at once and create a non-linear movement space. (SVA Westside Gallery, 2012)
  • Condition X

    This exhibition focused on human frailty as expressed through love, death, sex, vulnerability and connection. The show ranged from artists who utilize traditional media to creating a tension between “soft” studio practice and the quick, contemporary communications that happen in a global society, to those who explore personal identity in video and interactive media. (SVA Westside Gallery, 2011)
  • Abstract Intentions

    Abstraction is a verb, an activity, an action. This exhibition featured artists who use their materials in new and unexpected ways, and create tools out of substance. (Co-curated with David Gibson; SVA Westside Gallery, 2010)


Writing Fun

I’ve been focusing on writing this past semester, which has largely involved a lot of reading and my typical avoidance techniques for the actual writing. That said, I’ve started three separate stories, all of which have the potential for a worthwhile story (in my humble opinion). The first is a dystopian future world with nanotechnology that I’m now thinking about rewriting (I’m only a few thousand words in, so now would definitely be the time). The second is a silly little story about a Reality Assessor investigating the strange occurences occuring in a small town somewhere in the midwest. The third is an idea that’s been percolating in my brain for ages, and I’ve actually started to write it down. I’m really happy with that one. It basically hinges on the concept that a few thousand years ago, the existing pantheons of gods got together and decided to come up with a long term solution for survival, since their existence hinges upon belief, and what with all the plagues and wars and the fickle nature of humanity, no one really had what could be called “job security”. So they formed a union, or something similar to it at least, pooling the resources and beliefs of various different pantheons into one superstructure… which is how “GOD”, and the sudden predominance of monotheistic religion was formed.

The GOD story has been quite fun to write so far, and reminds me somewhat of a hybrid between American Gods and Lord of Light (both excellent books in their own right). I may post excerpts later. Maybe.

Speaking of Lord of Light (at least in passing), I just finished reading it for the first time. It is written by Roger Zelazny, and is considered by many to be his best work (justifiably). Given the nature of this semester, I took the opportunity to put it on my bibliography, and am very glad I did. Much like the excerpts previously mentioned, I may post my annotation about it later.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve switched to WordPress. There are still template tweaks to be made (making sure navigation is everywhere I want it, etc), but overall I’m really happy with the new design and system. I’ve placed a personal moratorium on even thinking about new systems again for at least a month, to give this one a chance to shake down. Besides, WordPress 1.5 has all the features I want, as far as I can tell. So why switch again? Also, I upgraded Gallery to 1.5RC1, from 1.4.1. The template changed a little in the process, but otherwise the changes should be largely invisible to the viewer (possibly a bit faster). This gives me a chance to add the “random image” block they have to this page, which’d be cool. That said, I may hold off on that until Gallery 2 hits final, and then upgrade to that first.

TypeKey is Now Required

Because I moderate comments, you haven’t been seeing the half dozen a day bits of comment spam I’ve been receiving and having to clear out. I’m tired of it, so I’ve turned off unregistered comments. If you want to comment, get a TypeKey account. It takes two minutes and doesn’t require any hoop jumping to get it to work.

You just click the “Sign In” link in the comments section, log in, and it’ll automatically redirect you back to that page so you can comment. Furthermore, you’ll remain logged in as long as that window is open, so if you go to other sites that use Typekey, you won’t even have to log in again. Considering Typekey is developed by Six Apart (makers of Movable Type), who also just bought LiveJournal, chances are good that LJ will start supporting Typekey (and possibly vice versa), so just do it now and get it over with.

Content Managers

I’m still not happy with my website. I feel half-assed with my Nucleus/MT setup, and continue to feel that there’s got to be a better (for me) solution, one that actually makes me happy.

Apple is adding a slightly tweaked version of Blojsom to Mac OS X 10.4 Server, so I took a look at that. It’s very pretty, and feature rich. It also requires programs my current web hosting provider doesn’t carry (namely, Tomcat). Additionally, some of the syntax is counter-intuitive, and I’m unhappy with the documentation.

Then, while looking into ecto, I noticed their current poll listed a slew of blogging solutions and communities that I’d never heard of. At last, hope for a system I like! I clicked through several, and came across Drupal, a content manager that I REALLY like the look of. The built in featureset is robust, it is under active development, it has an extensive and feature rich plugin library, and (important), it will run handily on my current web host. Worth noting in particular is the plugin that allows LiveJournal users to participate/comment without having to re-register. There is also basic migration support for importing MT entries into their system.
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Annotation: The White Dragon

In my continuing desire to figure out what motivated me to previously write fan fiction based on Anne McCaffreyâs Dragonriders of Pern series (in the hopes of getting back into the swing of fiction writing again), I re-read The White Dragon for the first time in nearly a decade. While it didnât quite re-ignite my desire to write about Pern again, I do begin to see what drew me to do so in the past.

Of the original trilogy, The White Dragon is my favorite. It follows Jaxom, the young Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold, who also managed to Impress a small, unique white dragon named Ruth (all other dragons are either gold, bronze, brown, blue, or green, with Ruth being the sole exception). Because it follows Jaxom so much more directly than the previous two books followed their characters, I find myself connecting a lot more with this novel than the others in the trilogy. I think it also helps that at the start of the novel Jaxom is very close to the age I was when I first read it.

The book opens around two years after the end of Dragonquest, with Ruth finally mature enough to fly with a rider. The rest of the book follows Jaxomâs adventures as he comes of age and learns to accept his dual nature as both a Lord Holder and a dragonrider. The overall arc of the trilogy also concludes with the last of the âOldtimerâ leaders, banished in the previous book, making a last ditch attempt to regain power and get revenge on Fâlar. With the final removal of the Oldtimers, the Southern Continent (where the Oldtimers had been banished) becomes open to exploration, with the help of Jaxom. Due to the unique nature of Ruth, fire-lizards are fascinated by him, and share images from their racial collective memory with him, which leads Jaxom to discover the original settlement of when Man first came to Pern several thousand years before. The book ends with excavations beginning on the ancient settlement (buried by ash from a nearby volcano, which proved to be the cause of the initial evacuation).

I think this story of personal growth, in addition to having a truly complete and robust world after three books is what caused me to decide to write about Pern. The writing is good, but I wouldnât call it phenomenal, and I have a suspicion that is a large part of why I decided to write about it: writing that well seemed attainable. The world was rich enough, and there was plenty of room for the adventures of another dragonrider. Having just finished The White Dragon again, I must admit I do have a small craving to write a dragonrider story.

So why did I stop? And what can I do to start again? I started by finding that same writing club that had kicked me out years ago, and rejoined. I wanted to see people writing dynamically for Pern again, see the piles of stories to read. Instead, I got a trickle. Perhaps a single two page story a day, and lackluster stories at that Meanwhile, I couldnât post, needing to submit anything through a mentor. I found it all almost laughable, and sad. I left without posting.

My quantity of writing hasnât increased since then, and yet I still feel better off than that ghost of a club. I donât think Iâll be returning to Pern again, in my own writing. But at least I feel some closure about it. Iâm ready to move on, finally.

As far as The White Dragon goes, I definitely enjoyed it, and would recommend it as a solid coming of age novel. It still works best as part of the trilogy, but it is sufficiently âdifferentâ from Dragonflight and Dragonquest, that I could say it almost stands on its own. It also feels good to finally get some closure on a topic that has rankled me for 8 years. That chain is finally unbound; now I just need to move forward.

McCaffrey, Anne. The White Dragon. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.

Annotation: Dragonquest

As I stated with my annotation of Dragonflight, my decision to re-read these books stems from a desire to figure out what caused me to start writing fan fiction in the world of Dragonriders nearly a decade ago, in the hopes of also figuring out why I stopped writing fiction despite my desire to continue.

Dragonquest takes place seven years, or Turns, after Lessa brought the Weyrs of Pern forward in time in order to battle Thread once more. There are a number of plots occuring within this book, which is a bit more ambitious than Dragonflight. The chapters are divided primarily between Fâlar, Weyrleader for Benden Weyr (mate to Lessa), and Fânor, his half-brother and second-in-command. The âOldtimerâ dragonriders who had come forward in time were becoming belligerent and divisive, uncomfortable with the changes in society that had occured during the Long Interval, and tired of fighting Thread after having spent 50 Turns in their own time fighting it, only to come forward to fight it for 50 more. Fânor is injured and sent elsewhere to recover, where he meets a young queenrider named Brekke. During his convalescence, he discovers and manages to bond with, or Impress, a just hatched fire-lizard, a signficantly smaller cousin of the dragons. These fire-lizards become used as messengers and pets throughout the rest of the series. Brekkeâs queen ends up rising to mate at the same time as another dragon, and in the subsequent battle (which otherwise never happens between dragons), both queens are killed. Fânor, having developed a relationship with Brekke, nurses her back to health.

In the other story thread, Fâlar works to keep the alliance of Weyrs and Holds together under the tensions caused by the Oldtimers. This tension comes to a head when one of the Oldtimer Weyrleaders attacks him, leading to a duel that Fâlar ultimately wins. This signals a âchanging of the guardâ, and Fâlar is made de facto leader of all of Pern. Following discoveries made in abandoned portions of the Weyrs, a telescope is discovered that allows them to see the surface of the Red Star. Following increased pressure from the Lords to go to the source itself to destroy the thread, Fânor manages to get vivid enough coordinates to teleport to the planet, and is nearly killed by the violent conditions of that other planet.

Towards the end of the book, there is a Hatching (a period when the dragon eggs hatch and Impress their riders). One egg is smaller than the others, and no one expects it to hatch. Jaxom, a young Lord Holder, overcome with emotion, frees the small dragon from the egg, and Impresses it. Due to the clear demarcation between Hold and Weyr, this causes quite a bit of contention (you canât be a Lord Holder AND a Dragonrider). Due to the unique nature of the small dragon, (he is extremely small and white, which is entirely unheard of), the dragonâs life expectancy is very low, so Jaxom is allowed to remain as a Lord Holder.

Itâs clear when McCaffrey wrote Dragonquest, she was already planning to write the third book in the series, The White Dragon, which follows Jaxom and his dragon Ruth. Overall, Iâd say Dragonquest is better written than Dragonflight. The characters are more developed and engaging, the descriptions and names are more consistent (though there are still discrepancies), and the overall story is significantly more complex and robust. That said, it does not stand alone, and really requires reading Dragonflight to be appreciated.

Like Dragonflight, I still donât see what drew me to write about Pern. There is nothing remarkable about the novel, though I do feel it was well written and entertaining. What about it made myself and literally hundreds of others decide to write about the draognriders? Itâs a violent world, with only a privileged elite having a truly good life, the rest spending it in servitude or hardship. Why would we choose THAT, of all worlds, to write in?

I would recommend Dragonquest to those willing to read the rest of the original trilogy (if not more). It is an enjoyable read, and does in fact have a complete primary story arc, but I would by no means say that the book is a stand alone novel. It needs its prequel, and it needs its sequel to truly be a strong novel.

McCaffrey, Anne. Dragonquest. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971.

The New Arrangement

My G5 has arrived and is set up. So far, I’ve upgraded to iLife ’05 (came in the box, just not installed), and installed iWork ’05, MySQL 4.1.9, CocoaMySQL (GUI frontend for MySQL), MenuMeters 1.2, and iChatStatus 1.2.1. I also did all the software updates, and installed and updated the developer tools.

It feels really good to have a “clean” machine, and before I do TOO much more than, say, my schoolwork, I’m going to sit down and figure out a really good file organization system, to make sure it STAYS organized and clean.
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Annotation: Dragonflight

I first read Dragonflight my freshman year in high school, along with the rest of the Dragonriders series. I enjoyed it well enough, and after reading the entire series (there are around twenty books total), I decided I wanted to write some Dragonriders stories. I joined a âfanficâ (fan fiction, stories written in a pre-existing universe) mailing list during my sophomore year, and wrote short stories based on âPernâ (the world the series takes place on) for about six months. I managed to rouse the enmity of the people in charge, and got kicked out. I havenât written consistently since. This semesterâs focus on writing caused me to decide to re-examine my time with the mailing list, and the books that caused me to join in the first place, books I havenât re-read since being kicked out of the writing club eight years ago.

Dragonflight is the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. It establishes the world and main characters for the rest of the series. The world in particular needs some explanation, since it is decidedly alien to the reader. The social structure is broken into three hierarchies, Craft, Hold, and Weyr. Crafts are specialists in a given field (smithing, mining, and farming, for instance), and are autonomous within themselves (a Mining Craftmaster would not have jurisdiction over a Smith, for instance). Holds are the general populace of the planet, operating on a semi-feudal system of Lords. Weyrs make up the dragonriders, who live in extinct volcanoes and are sworn to the protection of Pern against an alien threat known as Thread. Since the Weyrs do not have arable land, the Holds and Crafts tithe to the Weyr that protects them against Thread (there are six Weyrs total, spread across the continent).

Thread is an alien organism that eats through any organic material with ease. It is drawn to Pern by the erratic elliptical orbit of another planet that has become known as the âRed Starâ. Because the orbit is erratic, it generally only passes near enough to Pern to drop Thread every two hundred years, or âTurnsâ, and then does so for roughly 50 Turns. Every once in a while, however, the Red Starâs orbit is sufficiently erratic that an extended period without Thread occurs, known as a âLong Intervalâ.

Dragonflight opens at the end of one of these Long Intervals. During the extended absence of Thread, the Weyrs have fallen into disrepute with the rest of the population, and their numbers have dwindled to a fraction of their previous numbers. The sole remaining âQueenâ dragon laid a new Queen egg before passing on, and the dragonriders are in search of candidates to become linked (to âImpressâ) to the new queen once it hatches. They discover a young, driven girl named Lessa, who subsequently Impresses Ramoth, the new queen dragon. This makes her the âWeyrwomanâ of the Weyr (the Weyr is lead by the Weyrwoman and the Weyrleader, who is the rider of the dragon that manages to mate with the Queen).

As the story progresses, the remaining dragons attempt to prepare the planet against the imminent return of Thread (which most of the planet now regards as a myth), and face the desperate need to increase their ranks quickly. At great risk of life, Lessa and Ramoth travel back in time (an ability dragons have is teleportation; Lessa discovers they can teleport through time as well as space), to the end of the last Pass of the Red Star. She leads the vast majority of the dragons from that time forward to her own time, explaining the reduction in dragon numbers over the Long Interval, and by doing so repopulates the Weyrs in time to save the planet against Thread.

Thatâs the book in a nutshell. By and large, itâs reasonably well written, and won several awards when it came out in the late 1960s. That said, Iâm not entirely sure what I saw in it the first time I read it. There are some major plot holes, and naming discrepancies within the book (let alone compared to future books). That said, the world itself is well developed, with a clear social structure and culture, and the dialogue in general is well written. Itâs an enjoyable read, and worth reading if only as an interesting blending of science fiction and fantasy aspects. Iâd recommend it as a good example of that hybrid genre.

McCaffrey, Anne. Dragonflight. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.


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Function-Based Indexes And CURSOR_SHARING = FORCE

Video Tutorial: XPLAN_ASH Active Session History - Introduction

I finally got around preparing another part of the XPLAN_ASH video tutorial.

This part is about the main funcationality of XPLAN_ASH: SQL statement execution analysis using Active Session History and Real-Time SQL Monitoring.

In this video tutorial I'll explain what the output of XPLAN_ASH is supposed to mean when using the Active Session History functionality of the script. Before diving into the details of the script output using sample reports I provide some overview and introduction in this part that hopefully makes it simpler to understand how the output is organized and what it is supposed to mean.

This is the initial, general introduction part. More parts to follow.

Unnecessary BUFFER SORT Operations - Parallel Concatenation Transformation

When using Parallel Execution, depending on the plan shape and the operations used, Oracle sometimes needs to turn non-blocking operations into blocking operations, which means in this case that the row source no longer passes its output data directly to the parent operation but buffers some data temporarily in PGA memory / TEMP. This is either accomplished via the special HASH JOIN BUFFERED operation, or simply by adding BUFFER SORT operations to the plan.The reason for such a behaviour in parallel plans is the limitation of Oracle Parallel Execution that allows only a single data redistribution to be active concurrently.

View Data Volume Estimates

When the optimizer has to estimate the data volume (the BYTES column in the plan output), it usually bases this information on the column statistics, if applicable and available (think of complex expressions).However, whenever there is a VIEW operator in an execution plan, that represents an unmerged view, the optimizer obviously "loses" this information and starts applying defaults that are based on the column definition.Depending on the actual content of the columns this can lead to dramatic differences in data volume estimates.Both, under- and overestimates are possible, because for character based columns these defaults seem to be based on an assumed 50% fill grade, so a VARCHAR2(100 BYTE) column counts as 50 bytes data volume.For multi-byte character sets the same rule applies based on the maximum width of a column using the "char" semantics, so a VARCHAR2(1000 CHAR) column counts as 2000 byte

OIC(A) again – 2

drop table t1 cascade constraints purge;
create table t1 (id, x, pad, constraint t1_pk primary key(id, x))
select trunc(rownum/10)
     , mod(rownum, 10)
     , s1.text
  from all_source s1, all_source s2
 where rownum <= 1e6;

exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(user, 't1', method_opt=>'for all columns size 1', cascade=>true, no_invalidate=>false)

alter session set optimizer_index_cost_adj = 100;
alter session set optimizer_index_caching  = 0;

explain plan for select * from t1 where x = :1;

Here’s the plan:

The TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type that got introduced a long time ago is known for some oddities, for example Tony Hasler has a nice summary of some of them here.Here is another oddity that shows up when trying to aggregate on such a data type. Have a look at the following simple example:

create table t
rownum as id
, date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as some_date
, cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp) as some_timestamp
, cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp with local time zone) as some_timestamp_with_local_tz
, cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp with time zone) as some_timestamp_with_timezone
connect by

New Version Of XPLAN_ASH Tool - Video Tutorial

A new major release (version 3.0) of my XPLAN_ASH tool is available for download.

You can download the latest version here.

In addition to many changes to the way the information is presented and many other smaller changes to functionality there is one major new feature: XPLAN_ASH now also supports S-ASH, the free ASH implementation.

If you run XPLAN_ASH in a S-ASH repository owner schema, it will automatically detect that and adjust accordingly.

XPLAN_ASH was tested against the latest stable version of S-ASH (2.3). There are some minor changes required to that S-ASH release in order to function properly with XPLAN_ASH. Most of them will be included in the next S-ASH release as they really are only minor and don't influence the general S-ASH functionality at all.

New Version Of XPLAN_ASH Utility

Exchange Partition, Virtual Columns And Column Statistics

Here is an odd bug that can lead to some nasty side effects when using the EXCHANGE PARTITION technique. It is probably there for a very long time, simply because it depends on the usage of virtual columns, and the basic technique of virtual columns was introduced way back in the Oracle 8i times with the introduction of Function Based Indexes.

The problem isn't the exchange partition operation itself, but the accompanying swap of object statistics information, in particular the column statistics.

Look the following sequence of DDL and DML commands and pay then special attention to the output for the column statistics before and after the EXCHANGE PARTITION operation:

Parallel Execution Analysis Using ASH - The XPLAN_ASH Tool

Note: This blog post actually serves three purposes:

  • Table Of Contents

    Real-Time SQL Monitoring Overview

    Real-Time SQL Monitoring Shortcomings


Saturday, December 19, 2015

Busy December!

Between the music performance, the Winter party, writing holiday cards with our buddies, playing games with our kindergarten friends and our Random Acts of Kindness, the kindergartners were very,very busy in the month of December! Here are some pictures to give you a little idea of what fun we had!

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Wonderful Worms

Our friends the worms came to visit this past week! We learned a lot about worms, make sure you ask your children! How did the worms feel? How did they move? Do worms have eyes? What do they like to eat?

This week's target skill was about realism and fantasy and the worms fit right in!

We read a book called Wonderful Worms and then listened to Dairy of a Worm. We compared and contrasted the two books. Which one was real and which one was fantasy?