FLORENCE, LATE 15TH CENTURY

Florentine’s famed sculptor Donatello and his assistant Agostino di Duccio tried the marble first, and later artist Antonio Rossellino was commissioned as well to complete what they had started. Yet all of them had abandoned it roughly cut. Nothing was visibly emerging from the stone yet and nothing promised to anyone. In 1501 the members of the Wool Guild and The Boards of Works of Cathedral (Duomo) of Florence have decided to do something with the marble block lying down in the backyard of the cathedral. The huge slab of weathered pure white marble was known then as “The Giant.” They say it was over 5m tall, but unusually narrow, wide, badly proportioned for a decent figure, weighing well over a ton, lying in the dirt exposed to rain, hail, tramontanas (northern winds of Tuscany) and snow, scorching Julys and many frosty Decembers.

Some have advised it should be cut in two because it was already seriously damaged (it looked like a big, deformed letter ‘K’ after Antonio Rossellino has finished with it), and then used for something else rather than a sculpture. A tombstone perchance? If it was not good for the living, it is better apt for the dead. Or perhaps it was good for two smaller, life-sized figures, some well draped apostles or saints tucked in the niche of some little church? The Boards were resolute — something should be done with it, and they have advertised the opportunity, calling artists for commitment and submissions of ideas.

Many, including famed Leonardo da Vinci who has returned from Milan, waived at the opportunity. Who cares about such a grotesque rock? Too much scuff on it! And stone chiselling was not up to Leonardo’s taste; too dirty, and “all educated people knew sculpture was a lower art” .. unlike, ah, painting. Nonetheless, the Boards have received a sketch from one sculptor that was promising something bold. The sculptor swore it will keep the marble in one piece and carve the sculpture worth of Florence. During this time, the city-state was occupied in numerous wars, and the people needed encouragement, a paragon to reinvigorate their spirits.

The sketch was submitted by a 26 year old Michelangelo Buonarotti, then almost unknown Florentine sculptor, a young artist who did not even have his own studio. Unquestionably too valiant attempt for someone with no fame, public endorsement or recognition. He had just arrived from Rome, where he had finished his marble piece ‘Pieta’, known only to a few Florentines.

Now, for the first time, he realised that the drawings that had satisfied the Boards were no longer of any use to him. He had outgrown these elementary stages of his thinking. All he knew for sure was that his was to be David he had rediscovered, that he would use the opportunity to create all the poetry, the beauty, the mystery and inherent drama of the human body, the archetype and essence of correlated forms.

The Greeks had carved bodies from their white marble of such perfect proportion and strength that they could never be surpassed; but the figures had been without mind or spirit. His David would be the incarnation of everything Lorenzo de’ Medici had been fighting for, that the Plato Academy had believed was the right heritage of man: not a sinful little creature living only for salvation in the next life, but a glorious creation capable of beauty, strength, courage, wisdom, faith is his own kind, with a brain and will and inner power to fashion a world filled with the fruit of man’s creative intellect.

His David would be Apollo, but considerably more; Hercules, but considerably more; Adam, but considerably more; the most fully realised man the world has yet seen, functioning in a rational and humane world.

– Irving Stone, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’

Almost no other story, or a context, relates to the power of vision and beauty better than this narrative of Michelangelo’s astounding effort, when despite all odds and all the others who have failed in their attempts he has discovered and chiselled out a masterpiece from the abandoned block of marble. That’s the statue of his David, today admired in the whole world as the epitome of the Renaissance endeavour and insight, and it’s a universal symbol of highest of art.

INDIA, 15TH CENTURY

Another narrative that flows almost parallel with Florentine’s own is from the 15th century India. Indian subcontinent is witnessing an uprise of the bhakti (love) movement inspired and led by Krishna Chaitanya, a God-crazed monk and scholar from west Bengal. A very unusual lad, of Michelangelo’s own age when he had accomplished David, and of abundant inspiration. Under Chaitanya’s influence bhakti movement spreads around the country, everyone talks about it. It changes people’s lives, shifts social tides to be more respective towards oppressed, poor, outcast and women, change people’s expectations from life, hopes and destinies. But what had led to it?

Before Chaitanya, India’s social and religious life — so closely weaved — were deeply influenced and modelled upon philosophies, teachings and resulting worldviews set by two foremost figures from the past: Buddha and Shankaracarya. Little we know about their whereabouts that can be considered factual, but their reach was visible all around and long after them. They have both tried to chisel the marble block of the reality and society with their vision and reach, but what have they accomplished?

Born in a royal family in northern India (or perhaps Nepal) in either 5th or 6th century BC according to sources, prince Siddharta (later to become Buddha, or wise) very much gives up on the world permeated with misery, despotisms, social injustice, unsatisfied emotions, cruelty, famine and death. And he hits the marble with a few strokes of hammer just to show us there’s no real substance in it: marble is faulty and we should withdraw inside instead, keeping ourselves away from sculpture. We can’t make it better or different — if we think we can, we will only fall in deeper into the webs of entanglement, and thus more misery. Chisel through no chiselling, says he. He drops the tools, puts on mendicant’s clothes and leaves the block in the mud of the paradox of life. We can compare Buddha and consequent teachings with Agostino di Duccio.

One thousand and a few hundred years after the Buddha, Shankaracarya comes under the limelight with his chisel and tries to make a few extra strokes to that same marble of reality Buddha had started to carve and then abandoned. Shankaracarya drives his thrust deeply into one side on the slab as he talks to the audience, smashing it severely and pointing to all to see that marble dust and chips scattered are simply a block transformed; they don’t actually exist. An unusual twist he does: There’s no reason to carve anything at all, says he. Everything is perfect already just as one giant, undefined slab. Any attempt to differentiate a form within it, to make anything out of it, is futile and is a second rate venture. It’s no less than an illusion. He never asks himself how come the reality has already created itself up to this stage. He waives at the opportunity to think deeper, then glues back all the chips, spits on the dust, forms it into a mud and glazes the stone with it. He leaves the gnarled, deformed block further weathering in the hot Indian sun and monsoon rains. Shankaracarya is our Antonio Rossellino.

Many centuries later, and after some others who have glanced upon the stone, Krishna Caitanya decides to take up the task of making something substantial out of the weathered block. Society crumbles apart in lack of meaning and cohesion, women are denigrated, outcast left in dirt and disease. So called wise rule, but just to help themselves live better at the expense of others. What idea is there to add, or to subtract? Isn’t it futile to do anything? Is it possible to carve anything out of it now? Chaitanya promises he won’t break the block — he’ll make one figure, but composed of two. They’ll be same and different, but beautiful and intertwined. He chisels out an amazingly handsome figure of God-dess Radha-Krishna: the ideal of both human and divine virtues and beauty in the Indian aesthetics. Both female and male divine, reflecting best of human values, embraced in ecstasy of love. And we’re together with them too, never separated, ready to carve out ever new joys and divine sports from the reality that never replenishes itself. Stone is suddenly transformed into a meaning, and stone chips and dust fall into the environment apt for that meaning to be observed and understood. Suddenly we have a reality that arches over everything accomplished and imaginable in the past.

We cannot but be stunned by two approaches of Indian Duccio and Rossellino; the whole of their lives they’ve spend suggesting chiselling is a futile act, and thus have restrained themselves from any creativity or action. One wonders what they and generations of their followers could accomplish if they have devoted just a fraction of lamentation and inertia to actual sculpting? But they had no vision and have persuaded millions this life is a fail to no better avail.

However, in the same manner as master Michelangelo, Krishna Chaitanya unveils us the ultimate alchemy of life through divine creativity, love that is visible as the creative force all around us. Reality and life is to be sculpted with love, passion and vision, not left abandoned in dust. If it’s not cared for, it will be carried away by despots, vile and all the uninspired minds who will make other people’s lives a living hell. Being inactive and uninspired in life leads to neglect, misery, social collapse, enabling tyrants to rise and rule. Divine calls innumerable hands and hearts — inseparable parts of itself — to dwell and dare to unveil their own form, the embodiment of love. Don’t be afraid to better yourself and to imagine a better reality, overwhelmingly beautiful, the message is of both Michelangelo and Chaitanya.

POST-MODERN WORLD

In the manner of Michelangelo and Chaitanya, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism sees its purpose, course, and inspiration in the post-modern world. To discover the true potential in reality around, inside the society and its culture’s often undeveloped capacity many others don’t care about, have lost their interest in, or are blind to see anything new beyond the old, or the most obvious: that the world is a weathered, neglected stone bereft of meaning, very close to breaking apart.

But as long there are free men that breathe and can imagine a better life for all, there’s still hope.

Some gems were falling down
and some pearls scattered from heavens …
at least, that’s what they say. I was sleeping
trying to reach your hand in my dreams

They also say rain brings sadness …

Maybe I’d say rain brings hope
some new winds, twists and unfolds

You never know, even if it rains forever
when a new day will come,
bringing a moment of joy, unaltered vision
Thinning those murky clouds, silencing wuthering winds,
changing their course

and leaving yourself richer for a few drops,
coming out of sheer

happiness …

While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
– Bible, Numbers 15:32–36

I’ve heard something like the following at least a hundred times in my life:

Just chant Hare Krishna maha mantra purely and be happy!

Or seen people believing in something like this:

The ideal all devotees strive for is exclusive dedication to sri guru. […] The purity of spiritual advancement depends on the grace of sri guru. Only when he or she is pleased with the disciple can the disciple attain purity, and no one can please their guru by abandoning or relativizing him or her — by not being chaste.
– Harmonist, July 2009

Why is God bound by purity to bestow happiness unto us, little flock on a tiny planet Earth, a mere speckle within the endless universe? Sounds silly and paradoxical.

It very much reminds me of the psychology that propels a market mechanism, especially stock market. People reach deep into their pockets, grab some money to buy investment shares, real estate, government bonds, valuables like jewelry, original art, rarities, and so forth. Utilising money to purchase happiness, comfortable living in this life and utilising purity to bargain for some happiness, God’s mercy or good prospects in future life — what’s the real difference between them? They both illustrate a market approach to get what we need to “feel secure” and to be “saved from the blazing agonies of material existence”.

Bizzare rules of purity

The true trick with every market is that is not ruled by the abundant offer — no matter what that can be — but only by means of acquisition, which in this case becomes purity. In traditional stock markets money rules. Similarly in spiritual markets of this world purity rules. When purity becomes currency, then nothing else matters for currency can “buy you anything”. You live not to spend it, buy things with it and then forget about it, but the market entails: you need to be constantly liquid. Liquidity means being able to easily convert all your assets into currency, or in our case in purity. Gordon Gekko, a ruthless multi-millionaire character played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s masterpiece movie ‘Wall Street’ would call that “You become a player.” A player in the stock market of purity.

Purity puts a pressure on you. You need purity. Desperately. Purity gets you everything. Therefore you work hard every day to earn purity. However, oftentimes that is not enough to play in demanding market games, so you need more income flowing in. What can help? Selling something, rather than pouring in penances and hard work alone? Or filling up pockets with other valuables appreciated in the stock market of purity? Both are absolutely necessary. As Gordon Gekko further said in the movie, one third of the wealth comes from hard work and two thirds from everything else: mainly from inheritance, interest accumulated, stock and real estate speculation.

Let’s see inheritance. In markets of purity inheritance is something you get by belonging closely to someone who was recognised as a great player and was considered a wizard of purity. Being in the line of some well known market guru, for example. Being born in a family of priests, imams or brahmins is considered to be very propitious. Or being their good friend, or a distant relative. You scratch your back on your ancestor’s life of achievements, the resulting social status and use it as a winning bid to get more currency and investment options. Your true achievements don’t really matter because inheritance puts you instantly forward. Suddenly your voice matters and you’re in the game.

Interest accumulated is everything you gain on assets properly invested into purity market options. Spiritual markets of purity claim God, as a supreme treasurer and a bean counter, carefully calculates all your deposits and adds on a proper interest that you can withdraw at a certain time, or use to reinvest. The choice is yours, but obviously market indeed wants players to accumulate as much currency as possible because that’s the true goal. Liquidity. So you’ll probably tighten up your waist belt and reinvest.

However, even all that is not enough, as market has tremendously high expectations from its players. Often you ask yourself does this frantic game makes any sense, but you have little time to reconsider and change your life, as you’re firmly bound to market rules by different sets of fears for your very existence. Can you find courage to challenge them? But you don’t have enough time even to earn enough to stay in the game. Now when you’ve reaffirmed yourself this is the only way to go, you’ll shout out one more loud banzai and continue.

What major promise keeps you in the game? An oracle that says you should never forget that one percent of all players possess half the spiritual wealth available in those markets, and only one percent of those one percent will even attain God’s mercy. You really want to be one of them. You indeed need to venture into stock and real estate speculation.

What is that? It is following: you need carefully observe the bids on the market and try to predict where’s best to invest. Is there someone or something really popular at the moment in spiritual markets of purity you should come close to? Invest in his or her shares? You need to monitor everything carefully, for you never know who’s gonna appear next, with a more comprehensive portfolio, inheritance capital and thus more promising future for investment. Be careful, for investing into stocks of ‘wrong saints’, ‘out-of-ordinary gurus’ or some suspicious religious thoughts may cause banishment from the circle of your friends and mentors. You surely don’t want that.

You should also re-evaluate your assets regularly. Do they yield enough purity? Should you get rid of something? Perhaps that which is not pure enough, that doesn’t earn a high interest rates in purity markets at the moment. That can be some real estate of your life, say, relationships with others which the culture of purity markets call ‘impure and non-winning bid’ relationships? Say, abandoning school, family, young children, wife or a husband, friends? Or it can be your own industry, talents, hobbies, ideas and fruits of your knowledge and thought that is considered impure and not worthy of God’s mercy?

Greed for purity is mighty. Those who give up just everything impure in people eyes are considered sheiks in the purity stock markets. They are “top players”. We also call them renunciates. But however you call them, everyone looks at them attentively, watching how they bid in order to learn few tricks ‘from the best’. That’s why they, like Gordon Gekko, have thousands of poor Bud Foxes who want desperately to become like them and will do anything.

“Save us master, we are fallen. We want to become as pure as you are,” they pray in exhaustion. A whole new paradigm of spirituality arises, which rules this world by mockery and fear, and drives it downhill.

Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin”?
– Bible, Proverbs 20:9

In his book ‘Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time; The Historical Jesus & The Hearth of Contemporary Faith’, postmodern Christian thinker and theologian Marcus Borg reflects on matters of purity which are old as eons. He writes:

“The famous words of Paul also negate the world of purity and cultural boundaries and express the same inclusiveness: In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. Paul is not here announcing an abstract ideal; rather this verse reflects the new social reality of the [Christian] movement itself. In short, there is something boundary shattering about the imitatio dei that stood as the center of Jesus’ message and activity: Be compassionate as God is compassionate. Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus, compassion had a radical sociopolicital meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship, and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed. The politics of purity was replaced by a politics of compassion”.

And it came about when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching Him closely. And there, in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they kept silent. And He took hold of him, and healed him, and sent him away. And He said to them, “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day ?“
– Bible, Luke 14:1–5

Compassion vs purity

Compare this act of Jesus with an act of Moses and Aaron, who sentenced a poor man to death for breaking purity laws on a Sabbath day, mentioned at the very beginning of this essay? They stand opposite, startlingly different. One is an act of compassion and causeless love despite laws, yet other a cold-hearted exercise of purity laws that seldom make any sense at all. Can a sane person today really believe that God indeed demanded a poor man collecting wood (and thus breaking some obscure social rule of purity) to be stoned to death? What a poor man should do to please God through Moses and Aaron? His purity market stock options were obviously low, and he was not a friend or a relative of anyone ‘important’. Then he was a good scape goat to show people, to scare them profoundly, what will happen if they don’t obey laws of purity. However, I wonder has God thundered his command for the execution of a man from the sky above, so everyone could hear it, or it was Moses who claimed he was the one who heard it?

Can a thoughtful person really believe we need purity to get few drops of happiness, or a step in ‘spiritual advancement’? We find infinitely more mercy in scouts organisations, or just one hospital by practicing doctors and nurses who save endless lives than in hundreds of asylums of Moses-like gurus and teaches who ‘hear God’s voice’ and whose mercy ‘thou hast to yet deserve’. What is so ‘advanced’ and ‘worthy’ in the climate of purity, which is always ruled by fear? What a horrifying God demands all that? Do we really want rules that create such a sadistic, hopeless, heartless world with its roots in bigotry?

With a following paragraph I want to conclude: everything we do is better to do with love, no matter how small, or how insignificant we think it is. We cannot measure love. Loving attitude is better than purity of any kind, no matter how big the latter one is. Love is a higher principle than purity. Purity is a serious impediment and becomes a goal in itself, which is a sad truth in all spiritual practices today and of antiquity. Purity is disgrace that denies our humanity, denies life, denies compassion. It always needs some ‘impurity’ to justify its sorrowful life, and thus it lives to find blemishes and spots in everything and everyone. It rules by fear, stops people to think and to feel outside its boundaries. It has nothing to do with spiritual, or life affirming. Quite the opposite — it’s life denying.

But if I said it just like that, without any elaboration, who’d believe me a word?

– Zvonimir Tosic

The recently announced iPad from Apple Inc. is an invention that causes tectonic shifts in the world of computing experience. “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it,” says The Wall Street Journal columnist. Although many may chuckle upon this, same as Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple did, we cannot deny that in people’s minds inventions like this one collide their own worldviews with a new knowledge, wraps them in the complacency of cognitive dissonance.

Humanising computers

At one level in their mind people know a new experience will change perception of ‘computers’ and what ‘computers’ are. Computers are inseparable part of our work and leisure today, our lives. They’re everywhere. Therefore a new concept will change our lives together with ‘the computing experience’.

First whinging reactions around the globe are mostly caused by denial. How come? Let’s put it in a scientific way: an entirely new idea has entered the universal hologram and people, as parts of the hologram, are aware of it on some level. But they are denying it. It’s a self-defending mechanism: humans will have to redefine the entire approach, and change the dictionary meaning of the words such as ‘computer’, ‘browsing’, ‘emailing’, ‘desktop’, etc. It’s too big a step for many, considering that we have spent decades getting accustomed to the computers already around us and that haven’t changed significantly during the last 30 years.

Unexpected new hologram program will severely hit the memory cores of so called IT specialists and IT columnists, who will need to redefine their expertise. Imagine this: if everything about 90% of the computing experience becomes so easy to do (and 90% of our computer time is dedicated to everyday stuff), painless and entirely humanised as showcased with an iPad (and even bettered by its successors), what will they have to do, and talk about? Their (self)importance ceases.

In his blog Fraser Speirs, technology writer, notes:

What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock. For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

This experience follows the story of Ford’s inventions. When they asked Henry Ford does he value people’s opinions on what is next, he answered that he doesn’t care about what many think about inventions. He added, “If I asked people what would they really need, they’d all answer they needed a faster horse.” It’s almost exactly what many commented about the iPad. With the newly introduced iPad, many columnists and field experts expected a better, flatter laptop, a better phone, a better .. computer they’re already familiar with. They grudge: “Where’s the USB 3 port?, and an SD card slot?, what about a super-fast processor?, where is the full-blown OS X operating system and the whole of its several decades of sacred UNIX core legacy? We need that!”

They just wanted a faster horse, and were ready for it, but they didn’t expect a radical shift in thinking and imagining computer experience. In fact, Apple has completely redesigned everything! Redesigned iPad’s software from inside out, its user interface (adding a giant multi-touch screen that flips as you want it), variety of software keyboards that pop up according to need instead of ‘one-size-fits-all’ hardware keyboard everyone must use. The result is that the whole experience becomes less cumbersome and more natural. Apple’s iPad chief designer Jonathan Ive says that although no one has used it before the announcement, millions of people will be instantly familiar with it — they will instinctively know what to do. It is an invention with its basis in the heart of the problem — computers can do more and can be more, but no one has done it yet.

Vox populi and polls say nothing about the power of a true invention, because by definition no one is ready for it. All statistics deny even the existence of an invention so do any of ‘expert opinions’ or customer survey results about “are you gonna switch to an iPad when it comes out?” matter?

Not at all. iPad is a story all about humanising the computer experience, by imagining and then producing a groundbreaking device that blends seamlessly into our everyday life. It is an extension of a human mind for a human mind. From the stiff keyboard and hard to remember commands through CLI (Command Line Interface) as a main user interface in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, to the mouse and graphical user interface in the late 1980’s and 20+ years later, to a human finger in the second decade of the 21st century and a multi-touch pad, the path is now clear: the idea for those brave ones is to make computers different, less intimidating and more humanised.

They suddenly become something else, not just compute things. Rather enjoy things. A computer decomputerised.

Humanising religion

Now a reader may ask: What all this has to do with us here? However, comparisons like this one have a tremendous eye-opening power. In the very much same sense, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism follows the example of the iPad, but in the field of religious, philosophical and spiritual thought.

Let me illustrate. What our every day with a computer consists of? What is the real work we need to do? The real work is not formatting the margins of a document, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finding lost fonts, figuring out how to insert a character from a foreign language using English-only limited keyboard, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update, reinstalling the operating system, fighting computer bugs and viruses.

The real work is teaching the child, healing the patient, minding the house, logging the road defects, fixing the vehicle at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house, reducing waste and greenhouse emissions, organising the party. Think of the millions of hours spent, the lengths that millions of people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done and just work on computers. How frustrating! But that was considered normal.

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism rewrites how religion and spirituality should be taught, practiced and understood, and brings forth a real world inspiring solution for all those who want the real job done: love for each other, the world, the God-dess, not some cumbersome practices, penances and regulations rooted in archaic world views that have nothing to do with today. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is an operating system of a spiritual experience completely rewritten — from the ground up — to be joyous and haunting journey to all who venture. Its elegance is not rooted in a philosophy that adds more to layers upon layers of old and fruitless ideas, but rather in getting rid of everything that obstructs the humanising experience of spirituality.

Yes, don’t worry: it is perfectly all right if we walk the spiritual path and not dragging a ton of rules, superstitions, obsolete beliefs and senseless rituals chained to our legs and burdened on our backs. It’s perfectly okay to walk freely and that’s the whole point of walking: to enjoy the scenery and always learn something new and exciting. Spirituality needs to be a human experience, not a frantic race under battle helmets where we lose our sense of humanity and purpose.

It is perfectly fine not to depend on shamans, priests and gurus whose whole purpose of life is “make sure” you get your “dosage” of mercy upon your “poor sinful soul”, exclusively deserved by their “hard work” and prayers they utter “in your name” before “the Almighty”. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism gives you a different reality, a reality in which all-present and beautiful God-dess Radha-Krishna is already here for you, extending you arms and refreshing thoughts that release, overjoy and fulfill. No hard labour required. No penances. No chains rattling behind you. No imposed guilt and fear. No useless chants no one understands. No outdated beliefs. No superstitions. No complicated rituals. No irrational babble no one can prove. No one else’s mercy required. Just be free, be human and love from the depth of your heart because you already know how to do it — it’s in your spiritual DNA. Simply fulfill your loving goal on this lovely planet Earth and spend no extra minute on irrelevant mumbo jumbo.

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is nothing you can imagine by comparing it to established religious thoughts of old. This is not yet another horse, or even a faster one — something predictable. It’s a whole new category of experience, a wholly unprecedented one.

If the iPad and its successor devices free everyday people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. We aim the same for the Universalist Radha-Krishnaism in the field of spirituality and modern thinking.

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism — a spirituality humanised.

– Zvonimir Tosic

Waves crushing between the cliffs of strong self-interest on one side, and strong social-interest on other side of the shore of human life, follow the tides of our society’s understanding of the matters of personality. A person, as explained by any contemporary dictionary, is not the same word as understood 2,000 years ago, say in old Greece, Rome or Persia. A person was considered then not a strong, distinctive individual with free will, but both a human being and his/her world. A man was inseparable part of the environment and his tribe or family, and was contributing to it with his wisdom, artistry, industry, both birth and death. For then very few ones could claim own sovereignty, and independence. Oikos, or the household — a place where family lives and thrives — was a core of the society and was much more important than it is today. Word ‘economy’ comes from it; the manage of a household.

However, today’s economy is altogether different than the economy of two millennia ago, or even 250 years ago, because the society is diffused with views and values very much different than in those times. There were more similarities between the Hellenistic world and the European 18th century, for example, when the father of modern economics Adam Smith lived. His ideas on modern economy and nation’s wealth echoed social tides of his time, all of which were more homogenous and more socially attuned than they’re now in this Western, über-individualised, post-industrial capitalist society. If he had a time machine to visit us today, Adam Smith would be profoundly shocked.

Über-individualism

A modern Western society explores individuality of a man in its extremes, for acquired economic independence finally allows it. It gives man a freedom to be separated from the oikos, logos, own society, grants man sovereignty and independence in all what matters. Man’s income allows for an extravagant lifestyle that pursues experiments, desires and ideas unthinkable in generations before, where such endeavours were only possible with the help of family and a wider circle of friends, individuals working together for a common good.

It is a sad truth today: man has created a world so fragmented and separated its constituent parts and their meaning that makes him disintegrated even inside, into quanta of incomprehensible, meaningless feelings and thoughts. Nothing holds him together. Compared to caste systems that have a deep segregation and fragmentation of social interests as their modus operandi, and then ideas of purity and “words of prophets” as their “divine” cause and justification, the alienation between individuals in modern society reaches even more extreme amplitudes because it is more widespread phenomenon in now bigger world.

That is one explanation why big governments and their influences are in demand today. They control economy, politics, jurisdiction, distribution of goods and services, organise health care, public transport and everything else. Governments must compensate wherever society and its individuals fail, cannot and won’t do a thing, or even think anything, because individuals are too busy exploring self-interests. As a consequence people’s expectations rise, for they are accustomed to believe someone else has to think for them and solve their problems, and government must meet all their needs. In their minds they substitute word “society” for “public government” that must satisfy their wants. “Politicians are being paid to address those problems so let them solve them”, an average socially unsighted individual thinks today. That everyday statement alone shows society composed of such disconnected individuals is inert, self-devouring, blind and paradoxical.

Some traditional societies, and (up to recently) socialist countries developed in isolation from post-industrial capitalism, have had a more homogenous society despite troubles. Their economy and lifestyle didn’t have capacity for widespread over-individualisation — people needed to find a way how to help each other under governments extremely inefficient. Money was not an absolute measure of things, but rather a rare commodity. Exchange of goods and services was quite common. Let us travel back in time for a moment, to observe one intriguing social movement of some 500 years ago.

A need for a better worldview

A change in social awareness in India in the 16th century (which remind to some extent ideas of Humanism and Renaissance in Europe) led to a new worldview, including a new philosophical and religious thinking which communicated those changes. Unlike shifts in centuries before him, Chaitanya’s movement had its crux in deep social reforms and in call for non-violent actions for a common good. That was a novel approach. Inside old patriarchal world of values, new movement embraced women as the most important and vital part of the society, householders as the foundation of a new religious and social thought, accepted individuals from all castes as equals, cared about education, tried to feed the poor, etc. It was highlighting personal existence, dignity and interests of otherwise forgotten and squashed individual, although that very individual still remained important part of the society. No wonder Chaitanya’s movement was so accessible and widespread.

As such acintya bhedabheda philosophy of Chaitanya and his friends — which translates as the ’inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference’ — seemed to be a natural outcome of a much wider social change it helped to spur. It was both its cause and the consequence. Hence I see it not as a mere novel “philosophical” trait that tried to defeat another mere philosophical trait from the past (and as such, as many think, removed from the “worldly” matters) but I see it as a living necessity, an act that justifies its own importance in the world around, and changes it altogether for better.

Inside one old society that had produced a clump of philosophies and worldviews (different forms of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, resulting in many other life-denying doctrines, etc.) in the past that disprove, dismantle and refute a man, his dignity, rights, choice to change life for better here and now, preserve his personality both in this life and the next, and as such created a social disaster, a radical change was needed that would help restore natural balance between a man and his society, and in parallel, between a man and God. A balance at all levels of existence was required and absolutely necessary.

Social inspiration of Chaitanya

500 years ago, belittled and ignored women (more than half of total population), beggars, lepers, outcast, so called impure and forgotten individuals needed a better recognition and distinction in Chaitanya’s India. Chaitanya’s bhakti (love) movement tried to do something about them, give some new hope and help change society from inside. A new philosophy was born, in which individual was not forgotten and lost in the oblivion of so-called existence ruled by centuries of tyrannies of simplistic thoughts, caste values, religious wars and monarchs, but rather fully recognised, educated and cherished, and individual’s existence approved and changed for better.

As a contrast to that, persons scattered around this globe in their extreme individual and selfish pursuits today need a stronger cohesion, a work for better common good and common vision, for we’re not separated. We’re all parts of the same whole. A centred, balanced life is needed now more than ever.

Therefore I see the principles of that sublime Chaitanya’s philosophy of simultaneous oneness and difference (of a man and society, of a man and God) to be a natural remedy for agonies of life now pronounced in modern world too. Scientists and thinkers seriously warn about problems caused by fragmentation of life and lack of holistic approach. World suffers, and even a blind person can see it. Celebrating individual freedom but forgetting about society and our environment causes ecological and moral disasters equal to those created by societies who neglect and try to extinguish individuals by means of both worldly despise, dictatorship and humiliation by religious doctrine. They’re both life denying.

We can all enjoy our individuality but still be parts of the world and contribute to it. In that venture we’ll discover some new depths and heights of existence, something we’ve never felt before. We’ll perhaps fulfill dreams of generations who lived before us and I see it as the only way possible to move forward, and find a new balance.

– Zvonimir Tosic

Imagine this: One morning you wake up, brush your teeth, have breakfast, go out, walk across the street and continue with your exciting new day plan. However, everyone around addresses you as you were a person 30 years ago — a person from another time. You begin to notice that in conversations, as people seem to disregard all the accomplishments, all life’s experiences, new knowledge, wonderful new thoughts and all new personal qualities you have achieved in three decades. Despite all good attributes you know you posses, people turn a deaf ear and approach you as you were a problem, spoiled child who sees everything black & white. After few months, how would you feel?

Now imagine this: How a sense of a divine creative principle, or Demiurge people call God since time immemorial, must feel when people approach him-her in the same manner as people 2,000 or 5,000 years ago, thinking and believing he-she is the same scary and petrifying one as people believed then, unreservedly neglecting his-her life since, his-her new ideas, newly discovered possibilities of existence, imaginative advanced ways of communication with him-her and remarkable experiences he-she had to share during the last several millennia? And imagine him-her living that ‘Groundhog Day’ movie with humanity on the planet of Punxsutawney (sometimes referred as the planet Earth) every day, every month, every year, for thousands of years …

This is just one of many answers to the question “Why Universalist Radha-Krishnaism?”

– Zvonimir Tosic

As many know, Tao is a concept found in ancient Chinese philosophy. While the Chinese calligraphic character itself translates as way or path, or more loosely as doctrine or principle, it is often used philosophically to symbolise the fundamental or true nature of the world. Whilst Taoism holds that Tao cannot be expressed, it holds that it can be known and its principles can be followed. Taoist writing also focuses on the value of following the Tao, which is called Te, or virtue.

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
– Tao Te Ching, Ch. 4

In religious Taoism, Tao is understood in terms of these constituents:
• Jing, corresponding to energy;
• Qi, or flow of energy and
• Shen, or the Spirit.

Jing Qi Shen — the triad Jing Qi Shen constitutes the Tao of all that is, and are represented as deities in the Three Pure Ones.

There are characteristics of Tao that are often used to describe its nature.

Tao is undifferentiated

All distinctions are relative comparisons bound together by their mutual reference. Hence there is no such thing as long except by comparison to short, and vice versa; there is no such thing as non-being except by comparison to being. Because Tao itself has no defined shape or defined size, all comparisons fall within it. There can never be ‘real’ differences.

Tao returns

This concept is often used to describe that Tao will flow back, circumvent, and eventually undo any and every attempt to force it into a particular path.

Tao is subtle and quiet

The most important aspects of Tao are its subtle, unnoticed, everyday workings. The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest. Many places in the Tao Te Ching underline that dramatic, alluring or extraordinary events may catch the eye and assume significance, but it is the slow, slight, unobserved and continuous movement of the manifestations of Tao that actually accomplish things.

Tao is simultaneously dispassionate and nurturing

Because all beings are manifestations of Tao, Tao gives itself completely to everything and everyone. However, by the same expression Tao is believed to be indifferent to the character of manifestations. Birth and death, happiness and sorrow, and life itself, from the perspective of Tao, are only movements and transformations.

Gems of Tao Te Ching

According to tradition, “Old Master” or Lao Tse (Lao Tzu), a record-keeper at the Zhou Dynasty court, composed Tao Te Ching. Text is essential to the philosophical Taoism and Chinese religion in general, and strongly influenced other schools, including Chinese Buddhism. Many artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, gardeners have used the Tao Te Ching as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, succored by hundreds of translations of Tao Te Ching into Western languages.

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.

Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond ‘is’ and ‘is not’.
How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists …

The Master (teacher) has no possessions.
The more he does for others, the happier he is.
The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.

The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master (teacher) leads.

A journey of a thousand miles started with a first step.

Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly.
Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it.
Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.

Tao of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism

Although sourcing from progressive Christianity its outlook on dynamics of personal revelation, and from Gaudiya Vaishnavism its enchantment with all-attractive God-dess, in its heart and mind Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is closest to ancient wisdom of Taoism than to either Gaudiya Vaishnavism or Christianity, for it refuses to share their predominantly outdated worldviews (or flow against the Tao).

It doesn’t seek followers yet it gives itself to all who would like to follow the Tao, or God-dess.
As a good traveler it has no fixed plans, and is not hurrying upon arriving.
As a good artist it let its intuition lead it wherever it wants.
Knowing the mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas, it tries to best express itself but also lets go of all those ideas. All ideas eventually fail to describe the indescribable, all-beautiful God-dess.
Knowing the more laws and regulations are made prominent, the more misconceptions, thieves and robbers of truth there will be. Thus it follows no rules, and asks for no rules.

We live our best moments when adaptable, aware of our surroundings and what we need to do to go forward — flowing with the Tao, or God-dess.

It flows effortlessly between different philosophical, existential and scientific ideas, for flow is what Tao is. Tao is ever new. It is able to be experienced in different cultures and different times.

Following the footsteps of Lao Tse, we call Tao also Tao. We call it God-dess. Also Radha-Krishna. We call it God-dess for the sake of mutual understanding with all others who are more familiar with the term God. History made people imagine God as a masculine absolute, dispassionate ruler detached from this world, and have personified that fear from God, ruthlessness and senselessness into wider society. As a consequence world suffers in male dominance, discrimination, wars, crisis and misery.

We desire to walk the path of Tao, the path of understanding and balance. World has had enough suffering and we want it to enjoy itself better. Find a new sensibility and meaning. Hence we emphasise love for the feminine aspect of Tao and its integral part in our lives. God-dess thus describes both masculine and feminine, both Yin and Yang. By observing history we can conclude it existed before God and God-dess, which means, it’s older even than man’s dreams of God, or God-dess, or any other name.

We dub it personally Radha-Krishna, a beautiful name for otherwise indeterminate Yin and Yang, because as persons we’re immensely in love with it. Our earnest desire is to see the embraces and kisses of Radha and Krishna in groves of our hearts; eternal God-dess, Tao, its happiness beyond limits.

– Zvonimir Tosic

In previous ages such a statement would be considered blasphemous, or at least most fantastic and highly improbable. The world then was ruled by firm laws of physics for some, and yet for others the world was ruled by a firm hand of God. Religions and science have determined the scopes, reaches and boundaries of the world and everything else within — including human existence and our right to live, breath, see, to hope, even to dream — was interpreted through the resulting worldviews. Fearful, we too have helped create such a limiting world around us.

But something strange has happened just over a century ago. Astounding insights by remarkable men in modern physics, confirmed by numerous experiments, have revealed us a wholly different stage of the reality theatre we’re all playing on. Humanity has made a gigantic leap: from the simplistic, deterministic reality of the pre-20th century world, through the relativistic world of the early– and mid-20th century, into the quantum world of today. We rightfully call it a quantum leap.

Quantum leap profoundly changes our perspectives, and anything we knew (or at least we thought we knew) must now be revalued, realigned, repositioned. Any modern metaphysics that tries to embrace the totality of human existence, its possibilities and the experience of it, must as well embrace the quantum view of reality. Anything falling short of that is not even worth considering as a candidate for a serious, comprehensive worldview.

How this considers you, or me? To paraphrase a modern physicist, our knowledge of a situation changes the situation instantly. By becoming aware, we alter the outcome of the situation. In following paragraphs I’ll continue my previous article (Stubbornly persistent illusion) and scatter some remarkable insights of modern physicists and philosophers of science. I’ll use them as reference points in my forthcoming essays as well, where I’ll reflect upon them in further exploration of different subjects.

To express the scope of quantum physic in one page is impossible, of course, hence I encourage you to explore books and online material to your best ability. Now you know it, you’ve been warned, and let’s see how it will change your reality.

The observer and observer’s universe

Atom?
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
– Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel prize laureate and one of the pioneers of quantum physics

Physicist?
A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.
– Niels Bohr

A tendency to exist
The probability wave meant a tendency for something. It was a quantitative version of the old concept of “potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduces something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality in the middle of possibility and reality.
– Werner Heisenberg, physicist, author of the uncertainty principle in quantum physics

Fold, unfold, fold again .. unfold again
Classical physics says that reality is actually little particles that separate the world into its independent elements. Now I’m proposing the reverse, that the fundamental reality is the enfoldment and unfoldment, and these particles are abstractions from that. We could picture the electron not as a particle that exists continuously but as something coming in and going out and then coming in again. If these various condensations are close together, they approximate a track. The electron itself can never be separated from the whole of space, which is its ground.
– David Bohm, physicist, venerable contributor to philosophy and neuropsychology too

State of flux
The quantum theory shows that the attempt to describe and follow an atomic particle in precise detail has little meaning. The notion of an atomic path has only a limited domain of applicability. In a more detailed description the atom is, in many ways, seen to behave as much like a wave as a particle. It can perhaps best be regarded as a poorly defined cloud, dependent for its particular form on the particular environment, including the observing instrument. Thus, one can no longer maintain the division between the observer and the observed (which is implicit in the atomistic view that regards each of these as separate aggregates of atoms). Rather, both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable.

In this totality, the atomistic form of insight is a simplification and an abstraction, valid only in some limited context. The new form of insight can perhaps best be called Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.
– David Bohm

When you look at it, and when you don’t look at it

In quantum physics there is something called a “wave”, an intangible, irreducible field of probability, from which all physical matter and energy arise. The “waves” of quantum physics are ways of thinking. They’re not what’s going on in the physical world. Particles — that’s real in the real world. Waves are convenience; they’re a way of thinking. Waves of possibility. Waves of probability. When you aren’t looking it’s like a wave. When you are looking, it’s like a particle.
– Fred Alan Wolf, physicist and author of many books on nature of consciousness and quantum theory

Reality
Reality is not just the physical world; it’s the relationship of the mind with the physical world that creates the perception of reality. There is no reality without a perception of reality. Would you be here, exist in a physical form, if no one observed you? In a real sense, the answer is no.
– Fred Alan Wolf

Observer
Mere observation is enough to alter the history of anything or anyone, even a whole country. By observing, each observer separates into a self and a thing. Often that thing is one’s own face, body, or personality/belief structure.
– Fred Alan Wolf

The observer effect
The observer effect says that there is no reality until that reality is perceived. This profound insight tells us that we alter every object in the world simply by paying attention to it. In this alteration, both the object of our attention and the mind of the observer change. Because we usually don’t pay attention to ourselves in the perception process, our immediate experience usually won’t seem to indicate that our actions of perception changed anything. However, if we construct a careful history of our perceptions, they often show us that our way of perceiving indeed changes the course of our personal histories.

Thus the world is really not as it seems. It certainly seems to be “out there” independent of us, independent of the choices we might make. Yet quantum physics destroys that idea. What is “out there” depends on what we choose to look for.
– Fred Alan Wolf

Observables and observation
Observables are the consequences of our actions. We “do” to observe. We must bring out or cause something to occur in order to observe anything at all. Observation or measurement implies an observer with intelligence, a mind capable of discerning and thereby getting an impression or a perception of things. And that is what makes something go from anything possible to something actual. In other words, observation must be the creator of reality. This popularised the idea “you create your own reality” and that quantum physics and consciousness are related. This gets spiritual when you consider who or what the ultimate observer can be.
– Fred Alan Wolf

Recorded seeing
We don’t see what we see; we see what we remember we see. And you can replace this phrase with “smell”, “taste”, “hear”, “sense”, and perhaps even think. When we see objects “out there”, we not only see them, we replay all the previous information connected to them through past information “recordings”.
– Fred Alan Wolf

Consciousness can alter reality
With all the new medicines coming out, and the new insights we’re gathering about what constitutes health, quantum physics may just be what we need to really grasp how ancient spiritual views of the body and modern scientific views prove that consciousness can alter the reality, and so all illness (both physical and social we can add) may become as outdated as smallpox is today.
– Fred Alan Wolf

The power of illusion
The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.
– David Bohm

Both past and future are not certain
Physicists Albert Einstein and Richard Tolman showed that if quantum mechanics describes events, then even the past is as uncertain as the future.
– Fred Alan Wolf

Afterthoughts

We create past, and change past, same as we create future and change future. Sounds impossible, because we ‘know’ that past is gone, and is, well, behind us. However, the logical proof of this notion above is quite simple: if the past is gone, and determined, how can such a deterministic set called ‘past’ be a cause for the indeterministic future? Or to put it in parable: if we had apples only in our kitchen yesterday, how we can make an apple, cherry and pear pie today? How we can have more possibilities now than we had them in the past? That past is gone and determined is thus an illusion, but we choose to believe it because our memory is selective and attention span usually short. We obviously didn’t see we have cherries and pears on the shelf somewhere and believed there were none.

To paraphrase Fred Alan Wolf, the past is within vast fields and windmills of our mind. Every day we discover something new about our past, and that in effect changes the course of our future. Thus past indeed is undetermined because it will appear differently as we observe it differently. And vice versa — we imagine some future possibilities that reflect in us some memories from the past, which then cast a new light on a thought, “Ah, I should have done it this way …”. And we do it. We do it now. In one go we change both past and change the course of future.

Nothing is determined.

– Zvonimir Tosic

Space and time are so elementary to the average human’s everyday experience that the concept of space and time not being ‘fixed’ and ‘mutually separate’ is simply beyond our perception of things. Indeed, why else we have clocks that measure fixed time units, people may ask, and again, we can clearly see space is space, and time is time — even kids know that. For this reason most of us continue to relate to the old, in science often called ‘Newtonian model’ of the universe based on a fixed, experienceable 3D universe. Such a universe is made up of solid particles existing under a linear space-time continuum of events. Linear continuum says event A is followed by an event B, then B followed by C, etc. and through their occurrence in space we experience the concept of time. All this happens before our eyes despite the fact this theory was found to be substantially inadequate even in the early 20th century.

Albert Einstein, perhaps the most celebrated and recognized scientist/philosopher, said once, “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Physicist Stephen Hawking used this quote in his books to further observe and underline this obdurate tendency in humans. It seems our mind is used to operate within this illusion (perhaps it even creates it) and it’s hard to break free. But what happens if we re-examine it? Let’s try.

Energy and matter are interchangeable

Firstly, our perception of matter change. Einstein’s theory of relativity postulated that energy and matter are interchangeable in accordance with his famous formula of E=mc². Matter could be considered as ‘slowed down’ or crystallised ‘energy’ and as such the human body, and the outside world as well, are nothing more than a complex ‘energy field’. To express this idea we rewrite the Einstein’s formula as m=E/c², suggesting that matter originates from energy and is ‘slowed down’ by the square of speed of light. According to science it’s the highest possible speed in the observable universe.

This insight provides a mindframe enabling us to begin to understand the older esoteric concepts which say that the observable universe (including the human body) is made up of multi-dimensional energy fields. It also provides a scientific setting to the notion of human energy field as well, in popular literature often called halos, or auras. It draws a better background to the widespread rediscovery and favourable acceptance of many new age concepts of a holistic worldview in which seemingly separate elements are interconnected, including our being, environment, minds and bodies of others and everything else.

Quantum physics

Quantum physics is at the cutting edge of Western science and in many regards goes far beyond Einstein’s theory of relativity. What’s gripping about quantum physics is that the original idea that ignited it — the pursuit of the elementary particles at a subatomic level — has become almost meaningless with the discovery that the universe appears to be an undivided whole in a constant state of dynamic flux.

Like Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum physics discovers the universe to be a single, enormous field of energy in which what we call matter is just a ‘slowed down’ form of energy. Quantum physics has also discovered that matter/energy does not exist with any certainty in definite places (even a notion of ‘place’ loses its meaning in quantum physics), but rather shows ‘tendencies’ to exist. That’s a concept known as ‘uncertainty principle’, which is often stated this way: the measurement of position necessarily disturbs (a particle’s) momentum, and vice versa.

The most fascinating truth that comes out of these conclusions, from a multitude of experiments and especially from the uncertainty principle is the notion that the existence of an observer is fundamental to the existence of the universe. It’s a groundbreaking concept known as ‘the observer effect’. The observer effect says that there is no reality until that reality is perceived. In the uncertainty principle it’s the observer who measures the (particle’s) position and thus influences, disturbs its momentum. Unquestionably, all this would mean the universe is a consequence of consciousness, for it seems only through consciousness we’re able to experience the very concept of ourselves, measure the observable universe and our interaction with(in) it.

Physicist Barbara Brennan writes in her book ‘The Hands of Light’, “Through experiments over the past few decades physicists have discovered matter to be completely mutable into other particles or energy and vice-versa and on a subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty in definite places, but rather shows ‘tendencies’ to exist. Quantum physics is beginning to realise that the universe appears to be a dynamic web of interconnected and inseparable energy patterns. If the universe is indeed composed of such a web, there is logically no such thing as a part. This implies we are not separated parts of a whole but rather we are the whole.”

Exchanging arguments with scientist who still believe in mechanistic order and dividing of the matter endlessly, (thus separating themselves from the results of their observation despite observer effect), quantum physicist Dr David Bohm states in his book ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ that “primary physical laws cannot be discovered by a science that attempts to break the world into its parts. … Whatever part, element, or aspect we may abstract in thought, it still enfolds the whole and is therefore intrinsically related to the totality from which it has been abstracted.” These insightful conclusions bring forth overwhelming consequences.

Considering the wholeness of experience at all levels of our perception of reality, in like manner we can postulate that when it comes to spirituality, primary spiritual laws cannot be discovered by religions and worldviews that attempt to break the existence in parts, namely: heavens and hells, below and above, God and man, spiritual and material, sin and virtue, reason and love, etc. We need a more comprehensive look on reality, enriched by all recent discoveries in science, or a complete re-interpretation from a novel standpoint.

Let’s explore what would all these marvelous ideas and insights mean if superimposed onto teachings and reality of our predecessors, who were not acquainted into knowledge we now posses. One thing is almost certain: we’ll enter into an exciting, strange at first sight, but immensely beautiful world of new possibilities … and an all new meaning.

– Zvonimir Tosic

The word “economy” can be traced back to the Greek word oikos, “house” or specifically, “managing of a household”. Today’s economy, as the most wildly optimistic eye can see, has become everything else but managing of a household. Household originally meant a place where family lives and thrives. In old times that place was supposed to be a foundation of mutual happiness and prosperity. A family concern, sustaining all its members equally and the whole of the household including fields and gardens, livestock, water, trees, birds and animals that live in and around it so all can prosper. Quite an idyllic, balanced life. Does today’s economy resemble that?

The economy that isn’t one

Quite the opposite. Today’s economy looks more like a constant struggle, governed from the high towers of political power and measured through numerous abstract indexes and buzzwords ordinary people don’t grasp. Major motivator in today’s economy, and in many centuries ago, is profit. From profit everything else is calculated, valued and derived. If unprofitable, factories are closed, fertile fields abandoned, workers laid off and sent home. Wars, poverty, crisis and economy go always hand in hand because they’re next of kin. Why it has to be like that?

The reason for it is the major flaw in the concept of wealth and prosperity. Namely, to achieve profit, something inside every economy needs to be sacrificed or devalued, and to something else value must be added, and that “law” must be universally accepted between different parties in order to work. What makes one thing devalued and another increase in value? An opportunity to exploit. However, opportunities to exploit change daily. And that’s becoming of a marketplace driven for (and by) profit.

Instead of idealised balance inside the household where economy really takes place, a marketplace (supposedly claiming a fair play) now advocates a balance of a different kind: it claims demand and supply between households create a balance. (Households we had in old times, but in modern times we have businesses). It says some goods or services will be in demand, and someone will meet that demand. However, the argument that market balances itself in such a way is an illusion, and majority of economists have fallen prey to an obvious lapse of logic in it: there’s no such balance between demand and supply, because true market motivator is profit, not balance.

Profit as an absolute measure of life

Profit is difference between total revenue and its opportunity costs. If everything is in balance, there’s no articulated difference between supply and demand and therefore no profit. In a manner of speaking, profit despises balance because if supply perfectly satisfies demand, profit cannot take place: if someone perfectly satisfies someone else’s demand, how can there be more “satisfaction” left in supplier’s pockets? Either demand was not fully satisfied, or someone was fooled and someone cheated, or someone missed out a major flaw in this equation?

Hence we’re not talking about supply meeting demand, but about unreal (or artificially created) demand creating unreal supply. The whole process is set in motion to produce profit — a factor that constantly creates imbalance and turns the scale of economy from one side to another. As a consequence we have crises. Crises create anxiety, a drive to catch the profit at all expense because that’s the only way to float solvent, and stay in the game. A game of economy becomes a struggle, a matter of life and death. How often we read in the newspapers that farmers, for example, or business owners commit a suicide because they cannot defeat debt, which is nothing else but accumulated lack of profit.

To achieve profit, natural balance of the economy needs to be disturbed and something must be sacrificed, or exploited. What’s best to sacrifice? Usually two things, and that’s human labour and natural resources. They’re the weakest links in the chain. World history shows there’s no low enough measure that can describe how invaluable and depreciated human life and labour can be in hands of those who want to maximise profit. Similarly, same history shows there’s no limit of human exploitation of natural resources, which are taken for granted and for free.

Thus the word economy — the managing of a household — in an oxymoron. Makes no sense because the idea of profit denies it. Plus economy today is run by businesses, not households, and society tries to separate business from family matters. But can they be separated despite overwhelming evidence that business affects not only family life but all life on Earth? Profitonomy, exploitation or over-consumption is a much better word for the economy as we know it.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a measure that describes how successfully one big household — say a nation — creates profit in the global marketplace, under a common denominator of the US dollar. Thus so far happiness of nations could’ve been estimated by measuring how much their happiness relates to happiness of the US economy and its people. (That’s another oxymoron, for today’s economy presupposes a US citizen an ideal Earth’s citizen and American way of life a desired one.)

Let’s examine figures from 2003/04; a citizen from Luxembourg is some 1.45 times happier than a US citizen, but one US citizen is as happy as a basketball team from Iran. Or, it takes a combined happiness of a whole soccer team from Syria to match the happiness of one goalkeeper from the US. Many people today would agree it’s true.

Some countries and institutions propose world economies to go after GNH (Gross National Happiness) index, which is indeed interesting. GNH attempts to sum up and define quality of life in a more holistic terms including economical, environmental, physical, mental, social wellness. Nevertheless, it’s nothing entirely new and is still infected with two diseases: firstly, economical wellness is a significant part of it and is not redefined yet, and secondly, what can be used to describe, to measure happiness? What’s the common denominator of happiness everyone can relate to?

For many happiness is still money, and money justifies profit and is derived from it. Even revered prof. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize laureate in economy, had stiff lips when trying to dismiss it altogether. But few will wholeheartedly admit that to fix world economies and broad negative social and environmental consequences would mean this: kill the very idea of profit, and start from square one: restore balance in our lives, in our families, between people and their environment.

– Zvonimir Tosic