Sri Aurobindo, Masanobu Fukuoka, Arne Naess, Robert Hart

Hi all. Another transition has occured; my final semester is under way and a solid 7 months of travelling radical experiential education is come to a close.Now is the time of production, of cultivation, of crafting and polishing to a smooth shine this DharmaFarmer.

But what is the path of the DharmaFarmer? The influential progenitors of the waning generation have played their part in the Great Movement, and now the waxing generation will do its own part. What will fill the space left by Aurobindo, Masanobu Fukuoka, Arne Naess, Robert Hart, etc?

For my part, I would like to focus my iteration of this Great Movement on the raising or refining of consciousness, and further articulating the use of spiritual practice or 'self-realization' as an agent or facilitator of the Great Movement. The Movement is called 'Great' because it is 'wide and deep', to borrow a Naess phrase. It is wide in that it has myriad descriptions and myriad functions; it is deep in that it addresses and satisfies many levels of the experiential being.

Part of the human experience, or at least my human experience, comes from discovering meaning and value in the world around us. For me, a deepening or refining of meaning comes easily or immediately when i am in an undisturbed, natural environment, such as a mature bamboo grove, or a silent pine stand in the snow, or a black-sand lagoon. Equally in certain human cultivated environments do I feel easily inspired, such as in temples and dojos, around community fires, and especially in permaculture gardens or forest gardens.

For me these experiences hold the values of humility, community, and interconnection (Buddha: Dependent Co-arising, Bhagavad Gita: Yoga, Ramana Maharshi: Brahma, etc).Humility seems to be subjective; that is, dependent on individual value judgements. A sense of community to me has a bit of personal valuation in it, but also is described by the sciences of biology and ecology. Interconnection as a state or idea is becoming more finely described by biology and ecology, as well as the newly emerged focus of convervation biology.

The OED has this definition for conservation biology: "the branch of biological science concerned with the conservation, management, and protection of vulnerable species, populations, and ecosystems." I wish to draw attention to the phrase 'concerned with'. This implies that this science is not a 'hard' science, but one that draws also from a philosophy or ethic. Hard science or categorizations of facts informs action in the case of conservation biology.

The path of the DharmaFarmer is the process of becoming wise individuals and wise communities, acting from a place of solid scientific information married with meaningful philosophical and ethical systems that we each hold on some level of our total being. The sciences of ecology, biology, physics, psychology, etc. are now merging with the timeless teachings of countless saints, charting out the cosmic truths of intimate and immediate connection between all beings and indeed all objects that exist in space-time.

This is my deepest theme for the DharmaFarmer: Unity. Going by many names and explained through many images and analogies, unity can be understood as a basic oneness, singleness, or wholeness of truth or experience.Not that A, B, and C are all 'the same' or 'equal'. Instead it is that A, B, and C are all qualities or expressions of '!', where '!' is incapturable with words or concepts. As the first line of Tao Te Ching reads, 'Tao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Tao.' In fact (relative in space-time), A, B, and C are not 'the same' or 'equal'. The diversity on the relative level cannot be overlooked, nor should it be. Abundant, ever-evolving diversity, i feel, is a virtue of this Unity or Oneness.

This is equatable to the 'chit' in sat-chit-ananda. It is sometimes translated as 'active consciousness' or 'creative consciousness'. Sat-chit-ananda is said to be the trifold expression of Godhead, advanced by the ancient Vedas as well as contemporary yogis and yoginis. 'Truth-consciousness-bliss' it reads. Truth is that which truly exists; consciousness is the active or creative expression of truth; and bliss is the experience of truth. 'Tat tvam asi' read the Upanishads. 'That thou art'. Brahman is Atman.

The trifold quality of Godhead is also the trifold quality of each diversified piece of Godhead. Each of us and the totality of us is the pure expression of Sat-chit-ananda, or so say certain saints.Now is a time where we begin to see scientists turning toward saints, and saints turning toward scientists. In truth, Siddhartha Guatama, Patanjali, and others were very strict scientists, taking nothing for granted in their experiments of yoga. It is also true that many of the renowned scientists of our time held a special space for super-mundane in their own personal lives.

Unity, if it is to be purely understood, must be illuminated as objectively as possible, as a theory, AND it must also be experienced consciously as a quality of existence. If unity is not brought to the level of personal experience, how can we expect this movement to be anything but intellectual masturbation?

The Great Movement must come from inside each of us, originating in our own personal experience of truth. It must catalyse individual as well as communal growth. The experience of unity must occur on the level of conscious experience. Now, given the working hypothesis of Unity, what are some scientific/human systems that acknowledge this and set out principles in line with this hypothesis?---posted by dharmafarmer 3:23 PM Sunday, September 10, 2006 Name: Justin Sarno Location:New England I am a student of agriculture and religion/philosophy at Hampshire College. My thesis focus is the philosophy and practice of self-realization as a means to ethical and ecologically sound livelihood. The DharmaFarmer: Self-Inquiry and Nature-Realization