#12 PART.II.thought — Rajayoga and Introducing the 'Ending of Time'
The Goal in Architecture PART.II.0.1 Introduction on input on spirituality.
I am aware that a lot of what I am writing now might seem distant from actual building or other things that we traditionally or conventionally work with and influence as architects. These articles develop architecture as practice, and in doing that, they derive from changes that have already long ago happened and the ongoing change in people and the world. The profession in Canada and USA is responsive technological change, but it is dogmatic about the fundamentals. The people who are architects (which is everyone who presences architecture) and practicing architects, who usually become professionals, are so much of what really makes up practice. It is not the technology, styles, engineering or construction, which are all means, that we do this for. Understanding how architecture as people works is important since we have fallen behind in this part of the field. This begins to prepare for the complete sea change that architecture is about to face.
Rajayoga is introduced here in anticipation of diving into Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm's long discussion on conflict and 'psychological time' in thought1 to add to our discussion on thought in light of architectural practice. The points that they develop help us to develop G¡a’s approach to thought. Their discussion takes place around “psychological time”, sometimes they call it ‘inward’, linking conflict with ignorance and our spiritual evolution. They discuss how this implicates and generates the violence we commit against each other and to nature, colonialism and oppression.
Yoga as practice is proven to relate anywhere around the globe, as Buddhism’s spread throughout the west, and the practice of hatha yoga and the asanas and pranayama spreading around the globe evince.2 The Cloud of Unknowing is an easily available example of European Christian spiritual practice. It correlates with the Yogasūtra and others. The Zone book, The Movement of the Free Spirit describes western religious forces that have limited spirituality socially and politically, including examples of stamping out even Christian spiritual practices in Europe. The introductory discussion of Carl Jung’s Psychological Types is helpful in contextualizing spirituality in terms of European religious dogmatic and gnostic approaches. Rajayoga is a gnostic approach. The dogmatic Christian approach joined with the still existing (ancient) Roman government and eventually formed a culture of materialism driven by our evolutionary needs.3 The evolving human consciousness through materialism relates to our topic of the knowledge of mind through spirituality directly and evolving architecture in practice. These are some influences that I like. I will develop them more deeply in later contexts.
The Yogasūtra of Patañjali4 is the primary textual antecedent of rajayoga. It is based in the Vedic knowledge system. The Yogasūtra is instructions on dealing with thought and mind. The Yogasūtra is orientated to supporting and generating practice of yoga. It expresses control of ‘modifications’ of mind with thinking means that is then left behind in evolving consciousness.
Freedom-of-choice is granted us and can be a liability, but it is the core of our approach to that goal. Rajayoga as a practical approach to attaining a higher personal condition facilitates being able to make choices in life to support the goal of life. The Yogasūtra passes no judgment of any choice one may make and does not moralize. The implication is of something better coming. It describes our consciousness, its aspiration and what that implies as a set of ‘facts’ that may be verified by any of us in practice.
After describing many powers that can be attained for worldly ends whereby the modifications of mind are controlled for utilization rather than to transcend them, the Yogasūtra states that such power(s) are useless for meaningful attainments and ruinous to the seeker of the goal of life5 The potential and its release of technology and its material power are connected with the subtle powers that the Yogasūtra outlines. Increase of subtle ‘powers’ beyond sensible methods for manipulating matter endanger well being with all manner of disfigurement and diversions and do not aim to solve the problem of dwelling. Of course, we do not validate powers such as becoming invisible today. It is the concept of gaining power vs developing oneself and humane capacity that we still value directly.
G¡an assumes that the focus on material outcomes for power is at the root of industrial machine ages value. The gigantic release of power at the beginning has proceeded with many subtler layers. The tensions and conflicts within the thought grounds of current professional practice and architects’ services will limit the profession as long as it sets these values in the foreground and does not bring the value of the goal in architecture forward again. The discussion on ‘psychological time’ follows an approach to the issues of thought that we will be able to apply to architectural practice and the architectural profession.
Addressing the visibly concealed need through the discipline of mind.
Thought in the ‘modified mind’ or ‘content-formed awareness’ that we must all face and that we all have the capacity to transcend has held sway for a very long period of time. The vast multiplication in individual human intents and the production of its objects make the necessity for control of the modified mind’s application as unavoidable as thought's modifying effect is in the first place. This is quite easy to ignore within the vast creation of thought content within each of us and around us. Increasingly easy access to this creation around us intensifies the world's influence in each of us. We try to feel satisfaction of desires. This is an un-balancing force that influences how our character and the human sphere form. The need to handle the complexity of thought is the visible sign of the infinite potential of consciousness granted to us, and that it is not under good (enough) management.
Misery is actually hard quite hard to perceive. It is natural to generally perceive our life quality at the scale of comparing with neighbours or one’s community. It is difficult to see outside the sphere in which we live, across humanity and longer time spans of lifetimes, especially if one has successes and is able to support life's needs. If we are suffering poverty, injustice or sickness, investigating such issues is limited. We are unaware of how general human misery effects our own lives with downward pressure. It is difficult for the wealthy and secure to recognize how the way that they live may directly harm others. This includes all of the wealthiest 10% of humanity, i.e. a population the size of all of North America and Europe, just by living in that context.
As such, what is misery? We may feel it as conflict with our personal needs and as unfulfilled desire. In many cases we may be subtly desperate and confused so that the whole inverts and punishment and pain are desired.
There is so little readiness to address what ills there might be because it is so easy to divert oneself within our granted adaptability and the diversions we supply ourselves. People in positions of power and their organizations are serving misinformation and confusion to discourage people from facing injustice and potential.
It is often difficult to care about other's suffering from a place of wellbeing. To perceive that from within poverty is more difficult. Even more difficult is to suppose that this materially wealthiest 10% of humanity are often really in desperate straights mentally and spiritually. If this wealth supported wellbeing, why would there be the anger and the hate coming from these places? Despite there being a great deal of pining for the betterment of life, it is the resolve for change that questions all the misery that is lacking. It is hard to connect all the difficulties together and it is difficult to imagine a life free of the pressures we live with. But this is what the architect must do. Architects have to confront this conflict in the development of every project despite any appearance of success, and even with no perception of it, because architecture is always already engaged with aspiration and because technology is not created or programmed with human well being at it base. That comes only in its implementation, despite its cold heart.
To conceive of betterment is original to the creative impulses of consciousness that all of us possess from the beginning. We struggle for discipline within our ‘modified mind’, driven by the great power of thought that may develop desire and addiction, and can enter into dis—ease. We create the issues that modification of mind bring about seeking the betterment as far as we can envision. The following discourse between Krishnamurti and Dr. David Bohm approaches the deepest, most subtle grounds for disease. In describing the concept of 'psychological time', the 'ending of time' is a return to our original granted opportunity; of ending the forms of ‘modified mind’. 'Psychological time' is to say change takes time, 'ending time' is to be that aspired condition essentially instantly.
TheYogasūtraassumes a psychologically healthy mind with normative functioning. Rajayoga’s purpose is to give a role to aspiration wherein the tool — ‘thought waves’6— is taken as the lower condition that is eventually superseded for an evolved condition. It is applicable to the form of environments that allow us to presence our aspiration as architecture. Developing control of the ‘modified mind’ and thought is a necessary step. We can address the problem of desire and wishes. It presents out of a datum of health and functionality. However, a functional mind can intend an ultimate personal development, even if health is not 100%, otherwise that intention could not exist.
This approach through spirituality is for redeveloping our capacity for further evolution. The ending of time, psychologically, is a way to enter into that. Hence, ending psychological time, or time, psychologically, that values temporal increments and the time that change takes. The 'ending of time' is keys ending how we value time, or at least understanding how that influences.
The imbalance that we live brings us in conflict and is synonymous with ignorance. Conflict is not essential to dwelling, while it is an essential component of life in this period. As ignorance is infinite in scope, the goal is to remove the condition of being subject to ignorance. The ending of ignorance is then evolutionary transformation, which is why spirituality is essential to it and how we connect architectural practice with spirituality and practice of rajayoga. Architectural practice through its Verknüpfung with spirituality dissolves the conflict of means with architectural value in the same way.
There are two reference texts that record a series of 13 sessions in 1980. These sessions were published in The Ending of Time. 1985. A smaller publication, The Future of Humanity. 1986, contains a continuation of these sessions and perhaps their completion that took place about 3 years later.
Practice of rajayoga is based on dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation and meditation's purpose) and samadhi, leads into evolutionary stages beyond current common human conditions, These are the three of the ashtanga upon which rajayoga is focused. Hatha yoga focuses mainly on asana and pranayama, depending on the teacher. This will be discussed as a part of the whole of the ashtanga of yoga later. The two more of the ashtanga, yama and niyama, might be familiar as structuring Mahatma Gandhi's work.
Carl Jung brings together multiple resources over time and across cultures in his research and writing. The first part of this book is a history of the battle between gnostic and dogmatic visions of Christianity. Jung transl. Hull, The Psychology of Types, orig. 1921. See the first part of Chapter 1.
There are numerous translations of the Yogasūtra. I recommend the translation in Swami Vivekananda's Rajayoga, which can be found online, or the new re-publication of P. Y. Despande's, The Authentic Yoga.
Patañjali’s Yogasūtra devotes the third of its four parts to ‘powers’. It states definitively that such powers do not serve for advancement in the goals of the Yogasūtra and must be avoided or given up.
This is a term used by Swami Vivekananda for the consciousness that is not at peace, filled and formed by creations of an individual, and concealing reality.