We can see that culture can go beyond national heritage and the collective memory, beyond all sense of continuity and tradition.
The revolutions that have taken place in the social, scientific and artistic fields of endeavour have challenged and in many ways transformed the way we perceive ourselves and the world about us. Yet they have done little to transform the widespread material, psychological and religious fragmentation that has so far confounded the creative resources on which civilization is based.
The languages of inquiry developed in science and the arts reflect multi-layered processes of the brain and organism. Each individual field of inquiry has extended our cognitive ability to connect diverse elements into coherent wholes which have enriched our understanding of the world. More and more people now realize that for all the brilliance and ingenuity in science, technology and the arts, it has little meaning if a society cannot hold itself together. Society may continue in one form or another but when culture becomes a mere commodity, a plaything of politicians and source of conflict in the world then surely we are lost.
Disentangling genuine inquiry from merely repeating what others have said is something we can all do with a few vital questions. This does not depend on the stimulus of time and place or indeed on any particular skill set, but comes with the careful observation of the common factors at work in our psychological conditioning. This can have significant impact on the perceptual boundaries implicit in observer/observed mode of understanding ourselves and the world. But clearly, the predominance of thought is something we need to approach with great care in order to get a clear view of what is involved. So I hope you will not simply accept or reject out of hand what is said here.
Psychological conditioning, inquiry and the emergent perception of a quiet mind.
Those with a mind to look into this can see how the common narrative of self, time and causality, conditions our day to day perception of change. While modification is always taking place both psychologically and in the world around us, careful observation reveals how the inherent, if largely subliminal unease, that haunts our ability to objectify experience and reshape the world can also serve to enlighten. By simply observing the movement of thought, rather than to trying to control or change it, attention itself can move beyond the habitual limits of reactive stimulus and response in our behaviour. The sense of self, time and causality which enable us to go about our lives and function within a fairly coherent consensual reality is usually taken for granted, that is until something comes along to shake that reality. Given that we are all defined by the common factors of language and social conditioning which makes up our consensual reality, those of us who wish to explore a deeper order of perception do so in the spirit of inquiry rather than through any ideological or speculative concerns. When we are caught up in temporal and social conditioning, the inner co-ordinates that shape our lives are constantly shifting yet always remain the same. All that we think, feel, say or do in terms of subject-verb-object matrix compels us consciously or otherwise to assimilate, control and initiate change in terms of self, time and causality. Sooner or later the perceptual boundaries this incurs brings about a dissatisfaction that nothing put together by thought can assuage. Suffice it to say, on a practical level we would be lost without the ability to order our experience and understanding in terms of time and causality, this is the natural function of the cognitive mind. But is suffering the insecurities and dissatisfaction that come with the obfuscation of self-centred thought a necessary part of that?
When culture is rooted in the meditative mind it has a vitality which transcends all that is put together by thought. Seeing the truth of this reveals an emergent process in consciousness, which transforms the whole field of perception.