Releasing Our Thought Karma

You are not a helpless victim of your own thoughts, but rather a master of your mind. What do you need to let go of? Take a deep breath, relax, and say to yourself, "I am willing to let go. I release. I let go. I release all tension. I release all fear. I release all anger. I release all guilt. I release all sadness. I let go of all old limitations. I let go, and I am at peace. I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with the process of life. I am safe."  - Louise L. Hay

 

It seems many of us think of “karma” strictly in terms of outward physical actions.  If you hurt another; you will be hurt back.  This is actually just the surface of events that spring forth from the unseen realms of mind and consciousness.  Once we have entered into the domain of physical happening, it is already over.  The deed has been done and there is no turning back.  We might try to “take back” words spoken in anger.  We might wonder if certain negative thoughts contributed to our current situation.  Our experience of reality is the outcome of our inner processes vis-à-vis the processes of nature.

Karma is composed of a three dimensions of activity: thought, emotion and action.  If we don’t pay attention to thought and desire, we have little control over our actions.  If we are not aware of our thoughts then we are controlled by our emotions.  It is at the level of thought that we might possibly have some leverage in this cosmic deal.  The problem is that most of our thought processes happen on a subconscious level.  Unfortunately, whether we are aware or not, these thoughts affect our health, our careers, relationships and the shared world that we deem “reality.”  Underneath it all is a deeper level of reality referred to in Yogic terminology as Atman, “the Self.”  When we are aware at this level we are free from the compulsions of thought, emotion and habitual activities.  As Nisargadatta Maharaj explains, “When you are free of the world, you can do something about it. As long as you are a prisoner of it, you are helpless to change it. On the contrary, whatever you do will aggravate the situation.” 

Meditation helps us step into the Atman level of perception.  It helps us to step outside of our personal dramas and experience the presence of the timeless infinite being within.  Because we are temporarily experiencing ourselves as human beings, we are continually pulled back into thought, desire and action.  It’s alright that is what we are here to experience.  Meditation however gives us access to that deeper, more expansive way of knowing.  Instead of just living the drama, we are at least able to edit the script.

With a deep cleansing breath we are able to let go of inner storms of confused thoughts and emotions, rest briefly in all-pervading peace and then reengage with the “real world.”  The first step is to formulate positive, loving and compassionate thoughts.  Let these turn into positive, loving and compassionate feelings and deeds.  In this way your thoughts can change the world.

The Heart & Soul of Spiritual Relationship

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. 

– Ram Dass

 

Why do we enter into relationships?  What are we looking for?  Too often we are seeking someone else to convince us to love ourselves.  We wander around at a masquerade party of soul’s hoping to find someone who feels safe enough for us to let down our facade.  At the same time we are completely invested in that mask and are afraid to look behind it.  We feel separate and estranged and can only accept the “safety” of someone who can be a comfortable masquerade partner.  Thus ego-centric “love” can never be anything other than a counterfeit. 

We are all wounded and vulnerable.  We all suffer.  We feel unworthy of love and thus cut ourselves off from our essence.  Then we look for it in someone else: Mom, Dad, husband, wife, child, lover, whoever.  And do we get righteously pissed-off when they can’t or won’t give it to us!  This seems to be the nature of our human existence.  We feel our individuality so strongly that we live in fear, no absolute terror of crossing our imaginary ego-boundaries.  Then we blame it on someone else.  True love cannot be limited to a particular relationship, is not based in need and desire and is non-attached.  As Marianne Williamson writes,

The love in one of us is the love in all of us.

‘There’s actually no place where God stops and you start,’

and no place where you stop and I start.

Love is energy and infinite continuum.

Your mind extends into mine and everyone else’s.

It doesn’t stay enclosed within your body.

(A Return to Love)

This, of course, is not just “mysticism” it is verified by modern physics. 

As a relationship therapist I get to see over and over again how we project our shadows, our wounds and fears, onto another and then call it “love.”  And it is in this sense that our relationships can possibly lead to the healing of our souls; however it can do so only when we are able to look at ourselves in the mirror of self-reflection.  Open, honest and non-judgmental self-reflection is the awakening of true love within us.  It opens the pathway to conscious consciousness evolution, or enlightenment. 

Buddha referred to this kind of self-reflection as “maitri,” or “loving-awareness.”  It is a common cliché that we need to love ourselves first before we can love another.  The problem is that like with most clichés we pay no attention.  Your loving acceptance of yourself, paradoxically opens the door for growth and change.  When we are able accept and allow ourselves to be who we are, we discover that we are beings of evolving conscious, unfolding love.  There is no actual effort involved.  All effort is simply resistance.  “Resistance to the disturbance,” writes Vernon Howard, “is the disturbance.” 

Relationships are an interesting kind of mirroring process.  We see ourselves reflected in each other and the things that we seek to change in the other are aspects of ourselves.  When we seek to change the world, it is often like cleaning the mirror to get rid of a blemish on our own faces.  To truly love another one has to be at peace within oneself.  One has to be free and non-attached.  It is the recognition of both of us as sacred and autonomous beings, individual expressions of Divine Unity.  We are beings of love.  Any need to change ourselves or the other is really an impulse of violence.  “The ultimate state of Love is freedom,” writes Osho, “absolute freedom and any relationship that destroys freedom is not worthwhile. Love is a sacred art. To be in Love is to be in a holy relationship.” 

Often times we turn our relationships into functions.  We put out ads where we want someone who is such and such height, weight, etc.  Or maybe we want a sense of humor, intelligence; someone to share our interests.  In this sense relationships seem to be about fitting a job description rather than opening up unconditionally to another being who essentially, deep down, one’s Self.  We forget sometimes that the tradition of marriage is really based in ownership.  It is a barely disguised form of mutual slavery.  As we awaken however we might be able to create a new kind of relationship based in mutual respect as sacred spirit beings; relationship based in freedom rather than control, love rather than need.

Recycled Suffering: Considering Metempsychosis

Liberation, bondage, what are they to me? What do I care for freedom? For I have known God, the infinite Self, the witness of all things. - The Heart of Awareness

Reincarnation is a controversial subject to put it lightly.  Some people believe in it strongly and even point to evidence of its reality.  Others are highly skeptical of the idea that there is anything or anybody who survives the death of the physical body.  And still others hold religious views which are antithetical to the concept of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is central to Buddhism and Yoga-Vedanta.  It is simply an accepted fact.  As Lord Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad Gita, “There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.”

From this perspective we are all souls at various stages of spiritual evolution.  We recycle lifetime after lifetime in order to learn lessons and to pay off karmic debts as we make our way back to a state of primordial Unity.  Yoga is primarily a means of reuniting the individual soul with the Universal Consciousness.  It is understood within these systems that cycles of reincarnation are basically cycles of suffering.  True peace, happiness, joy, etc. can only be found when we are able to transcend these cycles and abide in Unity.  Otherwise we continue to experience dualities: pleasure and pain, birth and death, health and sickness, love and hate, success and failure, and so on.  We are bound by duality due to attachment.

Cultivating non-attachment is a central spiritual discipline in Yogic and Buddhist practice.  As Krishna explains attachment is at the root of psychological suffering:

When you keep thinking about sense objects,

attachment comes.  Attachment breeds desire,

the lust of possession that burns to anger.

Anger clouds judgment; you can no longer

learn from past mistakes.  Lost is the power to

choose between what is wise and what is unwise,

and your life is an utter waste.  But when

you move amidst the world of sense, free

from attachment and aversion alike, there

comes the peace in which all sorrows end,

and you live in the wisdom of the Self.

(Bhagavad Gita, 2:62-65)

To be honest, I have been resistant to the idea of reincarnation over the years.  Even after returning from India after having delved deeply into Yoga theory and practice, I was skeptical.  When I returned to study psychology in graduate school an acquaintance asked my opinion on reincarnation.  I replied that I didn’t take it literally but metaphorically.  She said, “You are the only Swami I ever met who didn’t believe in reincarnation!”  I’m still reluctant to think that there is somebody, or something, that “hops” from one body to another.  Instead I suspect that it is a transfer of information and energy.  Yoga teaches that reincarnation is based on latent memories (samskaras) and desires (vasanas.) 

While in graduate school I came across the writings of psychiatrist, Brain Weiss.  Weiss, in Many Lives, Many Masters, writes about his encounters with past-life memories in working with his patients.  http://www.brianweiss.com/   I also was introduced to Ian Stevenson’s book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.  Rather than looking at memories uncovered through hypnosis, Stevenson investigated cases of children who claimed to remember past lives.  In some cases they remembered verifiable details of where they lived, their previous relations, etc.  In some cases they even remembered how to speak a “foreign” language.  http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm.  Certainly these cases are intriguing if not conclusive for the rational skeptic.

Interestingly some physicists who are investigating the “physics of consciousness” have developed theories to explain reincarnation.  From a Yogic perspective, I think that they are really investigating the point of intersection between the physical domain and consciousness itself, which is truly metaphysical.  Stuart Hammeroff and Roger Penrose have developed a theory of “quantum consciousness” which basically states that consciousness exists and has existed throughout the universe since the beginning.  Hammeroff talks about this theory in a recent episode of Through the Wormhole: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/28/soul-after-death-hameroff-penrose_n_2034711.html. The theory proposed by Hammeroff and Penrose is very similar to the ancient philosophy of Vedanta as espoused in the “Gita.”  A similar theory can be found in Amit Goswami’s The Physics of the Soul.

Also interesting is that, if we investigate more deeply into the roots of Christianity and Judaism we find that reincarnation has been part of these religions as well.  Jesus referred to reincarnation in the New Testament when he equates the prophet Elijah with John the Baptist (Matt. 11:13-14 and 17:10-13.)  http://near-death.com/experiences/origen03.html.  It seems that any direct reference to reincarnation as part of Christian doctrine was edited out in 381 AD during the Council of Constantinople and the formulation of the Nicene Creed.  The council and the creed were basically a ploy to turn the Christian teachings into a political entity which was then used throughout the middle ages to control the populace.  Of course, some are still trying to do the same today.  http://youtu.be/QsogswrH6ck 

Ultimately, when we follow the Yoga path, which is not at all antithetical to the true path as taught by Christ, we enter into a blessed state of consciousness wherein we recognize that the cycles of samsara are cycles of illusion.  Our true being is timeless and infinite.  We are eternal Peace, Love and Bliss.  We don’t actually transmigrate at all.  It is a Cosmic Dream.

More Surefire Ways to Avoid Awakening

Ego is the resistance to what is.
~ Adyashanti

In my last post I focused mainly on substance abuse and codependent relationships.  These are excellent ways of avoiding any kind of psychological development or spiritual evolution.  Given that these recent posts respect one’s right to, if not devolve, at least maintain a low level stasis.  After all, growth can be painful and nobody likes pain.  As 2012 reaches its Cosmic Climax it might be a good idea to keep a good supply of oxycodone handy.  In this post, however, I want to assure everyone that it is perfectly possible to remain static while being completely socially acceptable.  No one wants to do jail time and we all want to maintain at least a pretense of having a happy, well-adjusted family.

In fact having a strong sense of superiority when it comes to addicts, homeless people, homosexuals, “nerds,” etc. is a good way of hanging onto your personal status quo.  Just keep reminding yourself that you are better than “those people”.  Duality, division and fragmentation are the heart and soul of non-awakening.  Be as self-righteous as possible.  Never admit that you might be wrong.  Never concede that others might be fellow human beings in suffering.  They just have a “victim mentality.”

Religion can actually be a great tool in this regard.  Now religion can be an evolutionary tool.  It is a vehicle for teaching morality, etc.  Don’t worry it is also a great way of avoiding any true spiritual issues.  I think it was Carl Jung who said that religion is a great way of protecting oneself from God.  Or something like that.  The important point is to maintain a sense of separateness and specialness regarding your personal religious affiliation.  Always remember that your religion is the best.  Or even better, remember that your religion is the only true one. 

I haven’t paid much attention to the Catholic belief system that I was raised in for some time.  But when I was attending Catechism classes in grade school I learned that we had stolen the copyright from the Jews and were now the “chosen people.”  Unfortunately, because I started discussing this with my peers in public school who were of different, but at least Christian orientations, I began to have my doubts.  After all they seemed nice and I liked many of them a lot.  This was the beginning of my downfall (or perhaps, “upfall” depending on one’s perspective.)  Now that I have talked with people of all kinds of different religious perspectives I feel like a spiritual slut.  Please don’t follow my example.

Adhering to a patriarchal, authoritarian and punitive belief system is essential.  Neuroscience, through the new field of “neurotheology” has shown that these kinds of belief have the ability to actually shut down the more evolved areas of the brain.  That’s what we want, right?  Always remind yourself that you are a sinner and basically unworthy.  It is not enough to separate yourself from others and feel superior.  It is also a good idea to regard yourself with disgust and loathing.  That way you are sure to get into heaven.

If you are more inclined towards the rational, scientific view, don’t worry.  Neurotheology indicates that you are just as unlikely to develop those higher cognitive and feeling functions.  Whatever your beliefs are just hold onto them tenaciously.  Your thought-construct of yourself and reality is “reality.”  ‘Nuff said.

How to Avoid Expanding Your Consciousness

Our human problems are emblematic of areas where we are being called to grow, to peck into a new paradigm.  So when we are in the midst of a challenge, if we stop long enough to meditate and remind ourselves of our inner gifts of intelligence, wisdom and peace, we contact that place within us that also knows there are no problems, only human neuroses which can be healed by spiritual discernment. 

-  Michael Bernard Beckwith

As much as I like teachers such as Michael Beckwith, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, etc. I have come to understand as both a psychological counselor and a spiritual teacher that many of you do not want to awaken.  After all, change can be hard and even painful and I fully respect anyone’s right to refuse to grow.  Sometimes it is just easier to stick with our comfortable misery rather than endure the growth pains of psycho-spiritual awakening. 

So relax, or not, as you prefer.  I’m not out to convince you that your reality is anything other than completely real, completely fucked up and that you are in no way responsible for any of it.  Feel better?  Take some zooloft, crack open a beer, or even better a fifth of Jack.  Don’t like to drink?  You might want to start.  Over the years I have found that heavy drinking can shrink my consciousness into numb and comfortable zones.  Heroin, crack, meth or pornography work very well too.  Dive in.  Don’t forget to be a totally self-centered son of bitch either.  Whatever you do don’t attend to your feelings or those of others.  That would be disastrous. 

On the other hand, you might want to find some other really f’ed up individual and devote yourself to trying to care for his or her needs.  There is nothing like taking care of an alcoholic or addict to distract you from your own inner processes. 

Whatever you do, don’t spend time with yourself.  Avoid introspection at all costs and avoid being around people who do so.  I don’t recommend reading – so once you’re done with this blog just say “no.”  Meditation is becoming popular these days but don’t worry it will pass and nobody will remember that you weren’t “with it.” 

Avoid people who are optimistic and positive.  They are anathema to those of us who are seeking stasis.  Preferably your should hang out in bars, or chat with unavailable sex partners online.  When the impulse to evolve gets really intense just watch TV.

Is our “Reality” a Time-Space Simulation?

In the current metaparadigm, consciousness is assumed to emerge from the world of space, time, and matter. In the new metaparadigm, everything we know manifests from consciousness. – Peter Russell, From Science to God

Current science is not so far from the mystical views of Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism.  With the advent of quantum mechanics and more recent developments in neuroscience we get an understanding of how our experience of reality is not so much “out there” as “in here.”  On the quantum level there is recognition that conscious observation determines the physical reality that we experience.  Neuroscience tells us that we take in raw information through our senses which our brains organize into an inner representation.  Either way we look at it, our Individual, and collective experiences of reality are mediated by this mysterious essence we refer to as consciousness.

Advaita, or nondual philosophy says that consciousness is the ground of being, the ultimate reality.  All that is, is Consciousness.  Because we are in the strong habit of thinking that reality is something “out there,” this might seem disconcerting.  One way or another we have to look within ourselves in order to understand our world.  We are our experience of the world and we are more deeply the “experiencer.”  This deeper locus of being is not really located anywhere.  It is outside of and prior to space and time.  “It” cannot be objectified because it is the purely subject.  Nothing in our upbringing, education, religious training, etc. has ever taught us to truly look this deeply inside.  “It” is pure presence; your own true self.

But what of this world?  Advaita suggests that it is all an illusion, Maya.  Yoga philosophy takes a different position; the world exists but is dependent on the consciousness principle, purusha or atman.  As Patanjali explains, “The existence of an object does not depend on a single mind, for if it did, what would become of the object if that mind did not perceive it?”  This might seem like simple common sense.  However we know that on a quantum level an “object” is dependent upon observation.  The objects of our macro-world are the products of multiple observations over time.  Yoga understands the cosmos to be the product of a greater, universal mind at work.  Each of our individual ego-minds is a subsystem of this greater entity.  What we choose to perceive, what we focus on is what we bring into existence.  When the yogi is able to withdraw his awareness from objects, as well as the memory of and desire for them they no longer exist – for the yogi.  Because of memory and desire the rest of us are still stuck with them. 

In deep meditation we are sometimes able to forget the stressful world and to rest in an inner center of peace.  As A Course In Miracles states, "There is a place in YOU where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard."  We all have access to this space but we are pulled back into the world of sin and illusion through our ego-based desire and fear.  These are powerful forces that have been conditioned within us.  Every time, however, that we enter into the eternal place of peace we lessen their hold over us. 

This is not escapism.  Sometimes we escape into a fantasy world, i.e. “primary process”, as a way of coping.  In meditation we bring all modifications of the mind into a state of quiet; no thoughts, no fantasies or dreams and no sleeping.  It is the experience of a deeper level of reality “behind the curtains,” as it were.  Because the ego-self is dormant in this state we awaken to Soul.  As we establish ourselves more and more deeply in our Soul-identity our desires change.  We no longer return to the world driven by self-centered, self-protective motives.  Instead we become more open and accepting, loving and compassionate.  We express more of our true spiritual nature.  We become agents of love-energy.  We become more the change which we wish to see in the world.

"An untroubled mind,
No longer seeking to consider
What is right and what is wrong,
A mind beyond judgements,
Watches and understands."

- Buddha

Now to switch gears a little, I want to go to an article which originally stimulated this post.  There is serious hypothetical conjecture within the scientific community which suggests that our universe may be a quantum simulation.  As Gary Scott reports in Serious Wonder:

Silas Beane, and the team at the University of Bonn in Germany, say that we may be able to see evidence that our cosmos is simulated. The technology review reports:

So if our cosmos is merely a simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles.

It turns out there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic ray particles, a limit known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin or GZK cut off.

(http://www.seriouswonder.com/the-simulated-universe-theory-may-be-real)

I am not going to pretend that I understand all of this.  I am not a “science guy.”  Instead I enjoy reading about how scientists grapple with this problem of “reality.”  It requires both sides of our brains to get somewhat of a handle on it.  Often science fiction precedes theory, discovery and accepted fact.  Scientists like to pretend that they are “just about the facts, ma’am.”  The truth is that there is always a hidden philosophy or underlying paradigm which guides their investigations.  From infancy we have been constructing a weltanshauung which we consider to be our reality.  Recently scientists have come to consider the possibility that the universe is not made up out of particles, or even “energy,” but simply information.  It is all “mind.”  Lord Buddha is surely laughing in his celestial home.  Sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick was ahead of this curve when he wrote VALIS in 1981; a novel based on his own puzzling mystical experiences. In it writes,

“We hypostatize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a language which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outward once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.”

Wow!  I remember first reading VALIS after my return from India.  It wasn’t like some of the sacrosanct versions of the Upanishads that I had been exposed to but it resonated in a similar key.  Dick had a “paranoia” which ran throughout his works; a sense that the reality we are presented with is a fabrication.  Of course, this theme reemerged in The Matrix, a film in which the main character, Neo is enmeshed in a computer generated reality.  Is it time for us all to awaken to this informational, or mind dimension of reality?  Or as Scott writes in his above mentioned article, “So, if this theory is true, who is running the simulation and what are they trying to learn from this complex simulation?  I have said many times “the point of this simulation could be to see how long it takes us to realize we are being simulated.”

The Yoga Darshan says that we can awaken to the central power of the conscious mind within us to either create or destroy our reality. 

Karma, Synchronicity and Those Damn Quantum Hooligans

AUM represents past, present and future,

It is also that which is beyond these.

- Mandukya Upanishad

The theoretical concept of karma which originated in antiquity represents recognition of causal events in time.  Or so it seems.  I have read numerous times of the equivalence of karma and Newton’s second law of thermodynamics which is generally understood as the law of cause (energy) and motion (effect.)  In actuality karma comes out of an early and much different concept of the cosmos.  Among other distinctions the yoga tradition is based, not on a linear, but a cyclical or circular understanding of time and causality.  It is the modern mind which took precedence in 18^th century Europe which has fixated on linear time and cause and effect.  It is so ingrained in us that it seems difficult to conceive of anything otherwise.

Just for a moment’s experiment allow us to conceive of a nonlinear universe.  As Albert Einstein stated, "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."  Quantum mechanics has brought into question the whole idea of the linear sequential separation of events in space and time.  As a recent article reports,

“. . . According to quantum mechanics, objects can lose their well-defined classical properties, such as e.g. a particle that can be at two different locations at the same time. In quantum physics this is called a "superposition."

      Now an international team of physicists led by Caslav Brukner from the University of Vienna have shown that even the causal order of events could be in such a superposition.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002145454.htm#.UHDKdtARdA8.facebook

  Superposition means that a particle can be considered to be in more than one place at once.  Superposition in time means that it can be considered to be in the past, present or future at once.  In other words, at least on the quantum level, space and time as we ordinarily think of them do not exist.  This is very fitting in terms of the Yogic understanding of the nature of space and time as well.  In the Yoga Sutras (4:12) Patanjali states, “The past and the future exist in their own form as inherent characteristics.”  In other words past and future are superposed in the present.

According to Yoga the past and the future can be understood in terms of the actualization (karma) of latent potentials (vasanas.)  Both past and future exist within a field of possibilities which are experienced inwardly as desires and actualized outwardly as objects.  The past simply represents actualized potentials while the future represents latent potentials.  Because of memory and the cyclical (or perhaps, as in Gregg Braden’s terms, fractal) nature of time, these potentials recycle themselves endlessly. 

Again, according to Yoga and Sankhya, the presence and the constant modification of objects is based on the constant fluctuation of three basic principles: tamas, darkness or inertia, rajas, activity or motion and sattwas, balance or equilibrium (homeostasis.)  It is due to the fluctuation and combination of these three states of nature that time and objects appear to exist.  Purusha, the Self, is purely the witness of this passing show.  The Yoga Sutras state, “Purusha is the witness and the master of the fluctuations of the mind.” (4:18)  When we are able to experience this deeper aspect of our being in meditation or contemplation then we are able to rest in a state of pervasive bliss and inner peace. 

Synchronicity is another clue to the nonlinear aspect of temporal experience.  The term was coined by Carl Jung to describe the experience of two or more seemingly causally unrelated events that come together in a meaningful way.  In other words a “meaningful coincidence.”  It is common for meditation practitioners to report an increase in synchronicity in their lives.  The concept of synchronicity has been linked to the phenomenon of nonlocality, or entanglement in quantum physics as well. (Limar, Igor V., Carl G. Jung's Synchronicity and Quantum Entanglement: Schrödinger's Cat 'Wanders' Between Chromosomes (December 22, 2010). NeuroQuantology, Volume 9, Issue 2, pp. 313-321, June 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2089541)

Synchronicity is an example of how quantum events might spill over into the macro-world.  I came up with the term “quantum hooligans” as a humorous way of referring to quantum events which seems to “violate the causal order” – for which they should be duly punished.  My sense is that linear world of space and time that we generally experience in our waking state is more or less a product of that state of consciousness.  In dreams, meditation or psychedelic experiences we get a glimpse of the open-ended, nonlinear field of potential that constitutes this mysterious universe.  Yoga tells us that it is crucial that we realize the underlying consciousness which actualizes this potential through the power of pure observation.