#8 Practical Approach

The Goal in Architecture PART.I Goal — 4.3/3

PART.I Goal — 4 is written in 3 parts. This third part points to a specific yogic practice as our approach to spirituality and its elements that will be clipped to architectural practice at important points. Five statements that define this practice form the outline of the 5 PARTs that organize this series of articles.

A practical path for practice toward the goal in architecture.

This project proposes that the programming of architecture is driven by an aspirational goal for life. It is a path that we live. This path become spirituality when it is consciously willed. The goal is the basis of architecture. While most of us, along with Frey in the previous article, commonly mean building to be the basic architectural program. The experience of consciousness aspiring is the essential architectural program. To realize environments with a program that aspires evolutionary transformation of you and me as we dwell is architectural practice.

We are setting up the approach to look at architectural practice in light of spiritual practice. This is in terms of a goal of life that we practice spirituality for and that architecture serves. Spiritual practice properly formed leads to all of life made to support our goal in life. The goal discussed in this project is as much about spirituality as it is of architecture. Architecture does not determine a practice for spiritual attainment, yet its aspiration is the same.

Frey’s comment in the previous article¹ uses the concept of a ‘goal’ that is very similar to this project. Norberg–Schulz’s work is very helpful as a step. This project does not, however, take the naive position that buildings are architecture as meaningful symbol or gesture. This project discriminates building and technology from the program of architecture. Instead a correlation of the goal with issues faced by every one of us personally, individually and in unity, is physical and architecture by Nature.

Architecture does not evolve the way that the matter of which it is made does, it presences according to the individual and evolves according to an individual's capacity. It is in our own life that each of us evolves the value of our life. Architecture does not presence as this individual value, but at the value of the aspiration for it. The architecture that we provide ourselves to live within personally, and in our community, society and the cultural space we create, in short, the public sphere, supports meaningful life for each of us as the aspiration anyone will feel.

As one evolves and identification with ‘Reality’ is intensified, points of view nearer the goal change the path’s characteristics. Even for people who have gained greater spiritual conditions, environments that presence architecture enlighten life and reduce burdens as much as or even more than for others. A harmonized and Nature–wise environment are a great benefit to people with increased sensitivity and responsibility.

Material activity and arrangement thus has a different trajectory than architectural practice. Correspondingly, professional architects must have competency for the material means and methods of this activity. It is the major requirement to be qualified as an architect. But architecture's presencing within people exists independently of matter, science, technology and other technology. It necessarily includes all of that and Nature and human nature. Spiritual practices model an aspirational relationship between life and all of Nature and human nature with very different emphasis. This project endeavours to reveal grounds and outcomes for this in practice through the Verknüpfung of spiritual and architectural practices.

A Spiritual Practice

Spiritual practices and paths have a history that vanishes into the mists of the past. The earliest documentation found it already in full swing. Architecture was simultaneous with spirituality for almost all that time. Some lines of spirituality are broken over time. Some are less changed. Some methods or practices may over time become irrelevant or devolve to worship and dogma, and fade out of practical use.

This project is grounded in what can be done in practice now, rather than discussing this long history. We address that history through current practice. What can be done now engages what might seem to be also the past, but if it can be practiced now, it becomes of the ‘now'. A practice with a clear description of the goal of life that is based in spiritual practice bearing its antecedent stages inclusively is best suited.

A practice that is set up within the time of the Machine Age, intended to function toward humanity’s future from this time is Sahaj Marg Yoga within the Heartfulness movement. This is a form of rajayoga. This system belongs to rajayoga, including its precedents as expressed above, its antecedents reaching back before Buddhism, before the Hindu religion, Christianity and even the ancient Greeks, cohering with more than two millennia of transformative evolution — which means that elements expressed can be verified with the experience of them and how they fit in their time. It is a very long constancy. It serves to define this project’s supposition of a goal in terms salient points in terms with number, idea of form and concept that are attributable to spiritual practice. It is as old as architecture.

It is not the nature of Vedic practice to negate or destroy its earlier forms. Yoga is part of this. Transformative evolution builds toward the future in the manner of living growth. It is a live approach that spans time and humanity as a unity. The form of its evolution can inform us about architecture's evolution. Programming our project and the existance of architecture are interwoven of the same essence to express what is available to the practicing architect.

The following description of the goal in spiritual practice given by Ram Chandra Maharaj (Shajahanpur) serves to present the concept of transcendent potential that is engaged with our aspirational capacity through a path or marg. These points are references for personal transformative evolution and point to what may be obscure or concealed within religious forms, their politics and social and cultural power. It is a leap to propose this goal and to hold it up against architecture. The whole of this will become clear as the flow of these articles continues.

The following is key descriptive statements of the goal in the first chapter of Reality at Dawn:²

Beginning our march from the outer most circle we proceed towards the center crossing each circle to acquire the next stage. ... In the diagram the state of liberation lies between the second and third circles. ... This may help ... form a rough idea of what still remains to be achieved ... [The fifth circle] is the stage of Avyakti Gati(undifferentiated state). At this stage a man is totally free of the bounds of maya. ... The region of Heart ... is now crossed and now we enter the Mind Region, after crossing the fifth circle. The eleven circles after this depict the various stages of egoism. ... By the time we reach the sixteenth circle we are almost free from egoism. The condition at this stage is almost inconceivable ... What remains when we have crossed this circle is a mere identity which is still in the gross form.

We now enter the Central Region. There too you will find seven rings of something. I may call it light for the sake of expression ... The form of dense identity, as I have called it, grows finer and subtler to the last possible limit. We have now secured position near-most to the Center and it is the highest possible approach of man. There we are in close harmony with the very Real condition. Complete merging with the Center is, however, not possible, so as to maintain a nominal difference between God and soul.

Such is the extent of human achievement which a man should fix his eyes upon from the very beginning, if he wants to make the greatest progress on the path of realization. ...

This describes the extents of the aspiration for a goal of life whereby the stages for this series of articles are organized.

Babuji's (Sri Ram Chandra of Shajahanpur) 'March to Freedom' diagram. Reality at Dawn. p. 19.

The words and the diagram are hints. The circles are rings or spheres and can be said to be realms for the purposes of one thing leading to another in evolving spiritual conditions in the individual. They are like areas ‘within’ us that are subtler than the body and they can be felt. They are the known unknown that becomes what we are as we gain access. The ‘Central Region’ at the centre of the diagram is ALL, everything. It is also utterly without attributes, hence the term 'nothingness' since it is not nothing. It is a point and a small circle in the diagram and it is all encompassing and infinite in character. The difficulties in thinking it are the limits of thought manifest. Difficult, yet, considering it is better than not.

Direct statements for defining the goal within the chapter of 'The Goal' in Reality at Dawn are derived or distilled as a few sentences. They are taken as markers like tips of icebergs, or like our easily perceived bodies that actually belong to vast beings. These statements are the five parts of G¡a:

(I)

The aims and objects of life conceived in terms of worldly ends are almost meaningless.

(II)

We forget that pains and miseries are only the symptoms of a disease but the disease lies elsewhere. ...

(III)

The goal of life means nothing but the point we have finally to arrive at. It is in other words, the reminiscence of our homeland or the primeval state of our present solid existence, which we have finally to return to.

(IV)

It is only the idea of destination which we keep alive in our minds and for that we practice devotion only as duty. Duty for duty’s sake is without doubt nishkam karma (selfless action) and to realize our goal of life is our bounden duty.

(V)

Now I come to the point what our real goal of life should be. It is generally admitted that the goal must be the highest possible limit of human approach. ... The final point of approach is where every kind of force, power activity or even stimulus disappears and a man enters a state of complete negation, Nothingness or Zero.

Each of these five statements appeals to part of understanding the goal of life. These are taken as layers tp fulfill the development of qualities that set up the relationship of the practicing architect to the world in Verknüpfung with spirituality. Each associates a facet of the expression of what is needed. The questioning of the Goal in architecture results in five titles:

PART.I. Goal

PART.II. thought.

PART.III. technology.

PART.IV. devotion.

PART.V. Profession.

Starting Point

We jumped on this round of reassessing architecture in light of spirituality at PART.I. Goal, which was begun before the structure of G¡a was in place. The action and intention define the course; neither came first. Both came first — and something else also came first. We are focused on the goal.

Sahaj Marg yogic practice represents for us here all approaches to spirituality. It is not all approaches, it simply serves by being complete and current.

The five statements are applied to architectural practice to see about their truth through this spiritual practice. An architectural project is about finding a truth. G¡a is akin to an architectural project, although it is written. It is about making true an instance for presencing aspiration as we dwell at a locus as its discovery and expression.

It informs a way to be active in the world for an architect, providing the grounds for the profession of architecture to develop, again, its own terms and to verify the approach.

PART.I is of architecture in relationship to spirituality. Before PART.II, I will publish one more article that discusses spiritual practice in terms of its aim purpose and key elements directly.

1. The first quote in #7 The Goal in Architecture PART.I Goal — 4.2.

2. The whole book is important to verify the qualities according to which the selected passages were chosen. Ram Chandra (Shajahanpur), Reality at Dawn. The chapter ‘The Goal’ is on pp. 12-19.