G¡a N.3 Introduction — Five PARTS

The Goal in Architecture — The five PART structure of G¡a.

Structure

G¡a is ordered in PARTS. The PARTS are anchored in Babuji Maharaj’s chapter ‘The Goal’ in his book Reality at Dawn.¹ Five statements that inspire the content and liveliness of each part are quoted from that chapter below. These anchor our working definition of the goal of life.

Now, you might ask how I can assert a goal for human life AND then propose a definition of it. It may seem to be of maximum arrogance to claim that and a definition to claim both such a goal and its definition. For many of you, even the idea of a goal of life may seem preposterous or disturbing. If there is a such a goal, what responsibility might we be delinquent in?

This goal is a supposition. The work of this project can proceed with this holding the place of such a goal. It is a plausible goal, however. It can be taken as a fact, but it is not unless it is real in our own individual awareness as a truth. If we take a step back to consider what a goal of life might be, approaching that through spiritual practice, our inquisitive or aspirational nature might be brought to attention. Taken that way, the goal of life becomes a path of discovery. It is not a fact or a concealed truth or a dangerous source of power or control. We will take this goal as its discovery in life through dwelling. In the spirit of architecture and spirituality’s sibling relationship, supporting this forms architecture’s superordinate program.

The following five statements provide form for this project. The work of G¡a is brought together with these statements as ‘dimensional’ parameters that enliven each PART. The italicized text is a short statement that introduces the more descriptive outline. These are statements from the text that point us to essential components of architectural practice, with spiritual practice as the aligning principle that is juxtaposed to or aligned with parameters that form our definition of the goal of life beyond the materiality of the world.

PART.I. The Goal

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

The statement challenges the purpose of architecture as gaining it meaning as buildings and their 'worldly' purposes in light of a goal that supersedes material life.

The supposition of a goal that poses spirituality as practice does not need the as yet unknown before us to be known, we acknowledge that we are on a path to get to that knowledge. That is always personally available. The Goal in Architecture supposes that the divine, cosmic or ultimate energy, or love, is within each of us. Our individual ‘light’ is luminous within our being beyond physical eyesight. It can be ‘seen’ if we ‘look within'. That light has for millennia been evoked as the sign of an infinite realm beyond life. To practice experiencing this and to know and to dive into this is spiritual practice. Increasing understanding of this is to evolve. This goal of life asserts a path of growth and evolution. It remains that there could be an ultimate aim for this.

That architectural practice is Verknüpft with spirituality gives architecture and this project its impulse and its life. PART.I locates this goal of life in the Verknüpfung of architecture and spirituality as practices. The four parts that follow function to define and express that when the capacity and potential of humanity in the world through our environments, architecture is present.

PART.II. thought

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

The statement challenges the position of thinking in our wellbeing. We often do not discriminate our thoughts from what, or who, we are. This addresses the serious conflicts in the profession. Architecture as sibling to spirituality informs us of thought’s role as a component of wellbeing and evolution.

Questioning conflict is thematic in PART.II. Thought is directly implicated in our conflict and in removing or in ending that conflict. The mind is our powerful tool, and knowing how to use it is essential. J. Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm engage a discussion about the mind, everyone's mind and the Mind, and that it is now caught in a stage of use, in a modified form from its original form, in which conflict is inherent. Life’s expressed form is developed from within us through thought, which is associated with all else in humanity and humanity’s role in the environment.; we are also in conflict with nature. PART.II discusses our struggle with this conflict, in light of our original striving and aspiration of a goal of life, and how this conflict is now expressly part of architectural production and its practice.

PART.III technology

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.

Technology and its sciences are challenged as the actual highest value accomplishment of our current architecture. In light of architecture’s long presence in human life, can the turn to the means of building as highest purpose of the profession really stand up to scrutiny?

The approach to conflict within humanity, and to its ending within anyone, conflict among us, and around us, is made practical through a close reading of Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology. PART.II aligns our current concept of technology in architectural practice with Heidegger’s terms. The essence of technology is linked with the inner attributes of human being and its goal and evolution. This opens up this project’s functional application to the conflict inherent in technology. It also reviews and repositions phenomenology in the field of architecture.

This allows us to move the development forward with Indian Knowledge Systems of yogic practice and vāstu, linking aspirational value to architecture in practice and how it serves. The supposition of a goal in architecture is given more practical means by leveraging technology to correspond with spiritual practice in terms of the need for change to architecture’s current means by the parallel to un–modifying mind that Heidegger presents as the essence of technology.

PART.IV devotion

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. ...

When we aspire to reach the ultimate union of the goal, spirituality (spiritual practice) is dependent on our will power for results. We might feel devotion toward what we put our effort into, which extends to highest levels of love. Not every goal can bear a high level or an ultimate level of devotion. ‘To be of good character’ as a professional is to be challenged with duty. The duty of architects in practice, if architectural work is to support any aspiration, demands a sense of duty that allows the work to flow properly.

PART.IV.2, PART.II and PART.III weld the need into architectural practice through the linked conflict, technology and consciousness. In PART.II and PART.III the ‘ending of time’ and the ‘jäh’ that heralds ‘the turning’ respectively, are expressed as the same ‘self–eliminative’ property of mind as the Yogasūtra does within yogic practice.

PART.IV takes up the developments of PART.II and PART.III in terms of yoga, which is part of the same traditional knowledge that includesvāstu, and exemplifies practice.Vāstuis architectural practice. Spirituality as rajayoga (practice) is brought near architectural practice. The supposition of theVerknüpfungof architecture and spirituality is activated in PART.IV through the unitary structure of rajayoga andvāstu. The supposition of the Verknüpfung of architecture and spirituality is verified by correlating spirituality as spiritual practice (rajayoga). The goal of life challenges the role, form and values of current professional practice. PART.IV develops the integral relationship of every individual’s evolution to theirlocuswhere they are aware, presencing architecture. The practicing architect facilitates this as the program of architecture — its ‘superordinate’ program — that encompasses all others.

PART.V Profession

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.

The profession of architecture is challenged with current practice as a symptomatology. That symptomatology is made up of the dysfunctions that do not require mitigation or special skills and are not directly about the output of architecture. This is not about solutions. It is a form of need for change, where the conditions that create the myriad issues are transformed.

The symptomatology is zero. If architecture does indeed serve the goal of life in dwelling in the world, it is implied by this symptomatology. That service at zero allows us to build a profession in harmony with life, meaning Nature, including human capacity, and again initiate a transformation of techné. Beginning as human/e aspiration to know what that goal could be in practice, what will the profession of architecture become!

A symptomatology of architectural professional practice is created in three stages: PART.V.1.3. Symptomatology, PART.V.2. Discrimination and PART.V.3.Verknüpfung. The profession of architectural practice is projected as the profession as symptomatology through the medium of the current techno–profession, using its terms. Current architectural practice is used to build that symptomatological construct that expresses the necessity of unconcealing of the profession. Carl Jung identified a term in alchemy called the nigredo, which is the condition that implicates its own elimination or reversal. Our current technological means and modernist technicist values are identified as the modification that is discarded, we give this a form and terms for action. We are revealing architecture’s superordinate program that yearns to be unconcealed in order to evolve beyond. Architecture’s superordinate program carries this impulse in its flow. The symptomatology is the means to arrive at the unmodified profession.

1. Ram Chandra (Shajahanpur). Reality at Dawn. Spiritual Hierarchy Publication Trust, Kolkata, 2010. Originally published in 1954. Accessible here.