Spiritual Life and Asperger's

I recently began reading a book about Asperger's and Spirituality and I have given a lot of thought to the nature of spiritual life, Self-realization and my own personal experience as lensed through the mind of someone on the spectrum.

I have learned that the Self-realization process is a macro-view into the nature of the autistic mind, sometime accompanied by an exclusively internal view (at times) ala Ramakrishna or as expressed through an extremely social teacher like Swami Sivananda.

Authentic Indian spiritual traditions hold the key to understanding autism because it is suitably three-dimensional in nature. Consider even "the language of God", Sanskrit and it's precursor, Prakrit. These are IMMENSELY spiritual languages, used in an oral tradition, and as such have the ability to transmit staggering amounts of information in tiny chunks. English is a poor language for communication spiritual topics, and so my work is actually much more frustrating than if I was able to chant my commentary to you, as have done many Indian authors before me, like Adi Shankara, etc.

Since traditional Indian spiritual traditions, especially Yoga and Vedanta, have much more tools for explaining the nature of the integrated self, as well as autism-spectrum minds, I will assume the permanent stance of assuming this to be true.

This is not debatable either, and if you research it enough, you will surely come to the same conclusions I have in this regard. Yoga and Vedanta are based on the Vedas. There is a concept I will use here regarding this called pramana. Pramana is a means of knowledge. The Vedas are considered a pramana in the same way as you would assume truth from a good friend who said they saw, let's say, a cow crossing the road. Similarly, when I speak of my personal spiritual experience, it should be considered pramana, since a reliable source is not to be had anywhere beyond myself for such things.

I am a spiritual being, trapped for a time in this cage of flesh, which was created by karma for me to experience the world in a certain way. Since I am on the spectrum of autism, I would suggest that assuming that it is a disorder is a mistake. Quite the opposite. It is a gigantic GIFT.

The world I occupy is in keeping with the spiritual assertion that I will adhere to in this blog: the mind is the lens of seeing Reality. How I choose to use that lens is up to me. So-called "Western Culture" teaches us that there is NO CHOICE WHATSOEVER TO CHOOSE. Western culture is a culture of control behaviors, and not much more beyond that. A little art must be there to prevent riots among the populace, but in general, we are locked into a left-brained method, and with no options to choose a different path. Autism means that what I was told by culture is WRONG.

It is not a valid logical argument to make that one must assume a social stance when speaking about how I react to you or indeed to Reality. Western culture seems EXTREMELY FOND of making EXACTLY THIS IGNORANT ASSUMPTION time and again. There are too many examples of this to speak of here, but the English foray into India is a simple example as have been the Western (but especially English) ignorant ways of understanding the nature of the integrated left/right brain which is so pervasive in Indian culture as a whole.

The English assumed that Indian spirituality, for example, was a group of people ignorantly "worshipping" idols in various forms. The reality of this is that the VAST, multi-facted and even contradictory nature of Indian spirituality cannot be reduced to such simple terms. I will seek to avoid such assumptions here.

When one sees ONLY the left-brain, one cannot apprehend a world in which total integration (or just right-brained ONLY) or even artfulness is a part. Nevermind Self-realization, in which the left brain is completely immersed in the ocean that is the right brain. We have been made terribly, irrationally afraid of the world the right brain sees, and our culture and all of it's people suffer horribly as a result of this. Those with differing means of seeing the world are utterly forgotten, except as they can express themselves and be understood by a small minority of understanding, compassionate people.

Indian spiritual life and Eastern dharmic culture in general is a more complete, more inclusive and therefore more correct means of knowledge than a "historical" religion, culture or "science' would have us believe.

Not all means of knowledge are inherently a part of the "shared" reality we all have to socially agree upon to have healthy egoic relationships. Some means of knowledge are utterly unspeakable, untranslatable and mysterious.

I must explain one further thing about the nature of Reality. There is a term "satchitananda" which consists of three parts:
1) Sat- that which doesn't change in the three periods of time: past, present and future- Existence
2) Chit- knowledge; specifically, that knowledge which, being known, nothing else remains to know. Knowledge.
3) Ananda- this word is typically translated as "bliss" or "love" but really it is the emotional response to one's infinite nature. Bliss.

The existence/knowledge/bliss complex is really no separate, and once one sees FULLY one aspect, the others come for free. This is revealing of the input that the timeless/infinite/unchanging nature of the Universe. Indeed, each of these three aspects are the unmanifest becoming manifest.

This manifestation process is nothing new. We imagine something, and we set about creating it out of "matter" in our shared social reality. All of these are agreed upon between people and are social in nature. Yet, their creation was itself shown in the nature of the unmanifest becoming manifest- like a car being built, or a table being made.

Culturally, we have largely misunderstood the nature of "God". God is merely the unmanifest becoming manifest, according to this threefold nature. It's very simple, and requires no anthropomorphic name or form to be attached to it. It is ONLY our minds that have this requirement, and it is easily logically undone. It is the work of Vedanta to do this. It is worth investigation, and I will talk more about it in future blog posts.

My point here is that the relationship of the autistic person is much more akin to the sat-chit-ananda (as I have explained above) than the average NT person. Taking in more information about the nature of the universe make this connection easier for us; and indeed, like Ramakrishna, whose ENTIRE MIND was often wholly taken up with the complete immersion in Reality, even forgetting his own body- an autistic person can easily de-prioritize external reality in favor of the internal Reality we are experiencing.

Since our culture understand nothing or next to nothing (even best case), it can be terribly difficult to find a way to validate one's internal experience as anything other than overwhelm. Sensory input is massive and continuous, but this is the actual nature of the universe- it's HUGE and multi-factored immersive, transparent, and permeating.

Even our fondness for structure, repetition, sameness, consistency, order, etc. is because our internal reality shows us the nature of the universe as timeless, infinite and unchanging.

1) Timeless- shows up as an affinity for Principles- rules that do not change. Attitudes, fads, social conventions, norms, etc. all change. Principles do NOT. They are therefore beyond time.
2) Infinite- shows up for us as the overwhelming data streaming in from our senses, but also in the nature of the way that information is processed, as well as our own emotional responses to those. Is it any wonder more time is required to answer your question? We must dive deep down to consider the vast implications of what you are asking about. Sadly, much of our insight into a given question is not likely to be accepted, so we might gain a habit of dispensing with what we know in favor of something easily explainable, socially-acceptable, etc. rather than Actual Knowledge.
3) Unchanging- Existence is inarguable. We exist. Thoughts, contrary to the famous phrase, change too often to believed with any real logical sense. Logically, however, it is indeed more difficult to explain how limited we are vs. how we have ALWAYS EXISTED. This means time is quite something different than we have been led to believe. Typical of flatlander or two-dimensional thinking, time has been reduced to a linear flow (along with everything else). We exist, and have always existed outside time. Our manifestation means very little, as you begin to understand the proper context of yourself. Even simple breathing exercises like pranayama easily show how permeable the world begins to become just through attention to one of the vital forces of the body-mind complex. Unchanging existence shines through.

Additionally, religions that focus the mind upon "creation" miss the underlying fact upon which all creation is itself projected, like a movie upon a screen. Regardless of the movie which is projected upon it, it itself remains forever unchanged. Yet, without the screen the projection itself will never be able to be seen. Thus, we see the threefold nature of the mind, explained clearly in Vedanta as tamas-rajas-sattwa: Hiding, Projecting and Seeing powers of the mind.

It is the shared nature of the mind that leads us to all agree that social narrowness is appropriate, that science's reductionist bent is valid and that "being social" (and shallow) is all that matters. It is EASIER, but not more correct. This is the difficulty with "positive thinking". Positive thinking as an ideal (and like all ideals) is actually negative because it is simply incorrect and inaccurate.

The mind is a changing entity whose underlying consciousness is itself FOREVER UNCHANGING. It is akin to waves in the ocean, each claiming to be somehow separate from the ocean itself. Even my current body, typing these words, has a cause, but that cause cannot be separated from its underlying and fundamental, unchanging/timeless/infinite nature. There are no boundaries WHATSOEVER to this Self, and the RIGHT BRAIN'S ENTIRE ROLE IS TO SHOW US THIS ASPECT OF OUR SELF. The left brain has an entirely different role, which is valid but not capable of being whole unto itself. Misunderstanding this is natural if one's mind it focused wholly on the left brain.

The autistic mind is, however, MUCH more naturally right-brained it its apprehension of Reality. No matter how much the left brain should argue its point, the right brain the window into Infinity itself- our true nature- and so is a solvent of all left-brained methods. The left brain is a huge warship confined within a vast sea of the right brain. Indeed, the left brain is often largely informed or inspired by the mechanism of the right brain. Creativity, insight, expressions and manifestations come about through the gleeful manifestation in the interplay between these two elements of ourselves. Still, one must observe the underlying Reality underneath manifestation. Indian philosophy often describes this as the nature of Shiva/Shakti.

Shiva/Shakti is a wonderful archetypal method for relating information. It is inherently third- and fourth-dimensional in its method, however, and is not interpreted or translated properly where one has not done the work to conceive of the world as though it is two-dimensional, due to the nature of the mind itself serving as a filtering mechanism.

'Shiva' is the unchanging nature of undifferentiated consciousness itself, which in Vedanta terms is known as Brahman. Shakti is the energy of manifestation, brought about in almost sexual terms as the result of the interplay between the unmanifest and the manifest that I spoke about earlier. They are often related as male/female, but this is a limited way of describing what their actual depth and dimensionality is.

All of this is true according to modern neurobiology/anatomy/physiology as well, feel free to check if you need to.

So, autistic people are truly the heralds of the spiritual life which is available to everyone. It is not possible to view these unique and paradoxical manifestations in human form as anything less than capable and indeed gifted spiritual creatures. Because they are often not as articulate in saying so is no determining factor. Indeed, it is more of an indication of the nature of spiritual life itself.

Social life has been twisted to be a manifestation of ego (my definition of ego is 'believing the thoughts') and so it is no wonder that our religions have been corrupted and become synonymous with "belief". Ego has so permeated the social idea of spiritual life that the fundamental corrupting influence on the authentically spiritual is taken to be a principle of religion. This is a misunderstanding, and one of the worst of all time.

The primary mechanism of ego is, beyond the simple mistake of believing any thought in the mind at all, spite. Spite is the overcompensation of ego where one surrenders any idea of resolution or dissolving of opposites into antagonizing ONLY opposites. As a result, the mind develops the habit of not ONLY believing thoughts, but also in their opposites, as a sort of magnetic pair, whose pull is so strong that one cannot escape it.

Autistic people, being representatives of the validity of internal states, rather than egoic external conventions, are able to "see through" (sattva) in a more effective spiritual way than many neuro-typical people are capable of. It is for this reason why they are often thought to be "brilliant but anti-social".

This is not to say that autism spectrum people are less susceptible to social norms- they aren't in every case. Indeed, because they are so confusing, it may mean they are paid special attention as a way to reduce overwhelm. Having said that, no external influence will ever be as inherently valid as one's internal experience to one on the spectrum- even when they choose "being social" as their primary strategy to get their needs met.

Yoga, Asperger's and the Autism Spectrum

This blog will serve as a place I can brain-dump about my Asperger's condition,  the autism spectrum, the nature of the mind as observed by me; and the nature of Yoga and Vedanta, and my own internal observations about all this. Kindly let me know if there are any suggestions to make this blog better, or if it has helped you in some way.

PERSONAL HISTORY
I will start off explaining how I came to understand myself on the spectrum. Like most things, I sort of blundered my way into it. I've always understood that my mind worked differently than others, but it can be difficult, in the absence of a sense of myself across lifetimes (which I now possess), it can be a challenge to articulate exactly how different you are.

My first loose observation will be to point out that I've ALWAYS understood how clearly "internal" I was. That is, to be more precise, the internal world contains a specific "validity" that doesn't exist in so-called "social" life.

The second symptom I noticed was anxiety in relationship. My early life was not particularly suited for an Aspie, which I am now grateful for, as being forced to adapt constantly to new social situations has left me with a facility for more effectively impersonating a neuro-typical person for periods of time. I moved every 1-2 years during my childhood, and for me this has set a pattern which has failed to serve me in later adulthood and into middle life.

Also, I didn't know as a child that I was coming from a family full of abuse, sexual assault and drug addiction (on my mom's side) and autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder (grandfather and grandmother, respectively) on my father's side. This understanding, that I will explain at another time, has been of great solace to me, since I can now understand and come to compassion about why my parents treated me as they did, and how similarly we react to things in a general sense. I no longer experience the sort of pain I did then regarding my relationship with them, and am now engaged in removing the long-standing pain that is stored in the body-mind from those years. This is my current challenge.

My saving grace on the family side was my great-grandmother on my mom's side, who truly was my first Guru. It has only been five years or so that I have been able to understand myself enough to not cry when thinking of her. Without her involvement in my life, I am not sure I would have been able to find my way out of the trap that Western culture (which is almost totally left-brained and therefore egoic) and my own "rule-following" nature had laid for me. Granny, as I will refer to her from now, showed me what I didn't know then was my right brain. I will talk about Granny at some length in a future post.

Part of the problem in every aspect of my life, which begins to manifest between 1.5-2 years into ANY work, intimate or other personal relationship is that I begin to get what I can only describe as an "itch".  It consists of a measure of boredom and a measure of needing to move on. I will be in crisis mode generally by 3 years, and I will begin to feel increasing overwhelm as time proceeds forward without change. Indeed, it is my need for consistency, which I understand is a typical part of the autism spectrum, which raises this in my mind.

Generally, I will begin to sabotage any relationship that doesn't allow me to evolve beyond the learning I have undergone during my time with that situation.

I have come to understand this as part of the autism experience as well, because, frankly, I learn faster than almost anyone.

EXTERNAL VALIDITY
While a source of great pain and anxiety, I have now understood that social life has always held less general "validity" for me than my internal life and the understanding that I gain from "tuning in" to the nature of the world itself, of which I am not separate. This is the real irony of this condition:
WE EXPERIENCE THE UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN IMAGINE AS OUR DAILY EXPERIENCE. Yet, we are thought to be anti-social, not wanting to connect, and separate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

HEAD INJURIES
I have some other issues with my mind also, due to the scrambled nature of my brain/mind interface as a result of having several head injuries and the fact of a syndrome I shall call "head-injury maturation". It is a observed fact that many athletes or people with multiple head injuries (of almost any magnitude) have more symptoms that manifest between age 40 and 45, with the key year appearing to be age 43. My friend Sean Pamphilon did a movie on many of these people, and I've seen the footage enough to realize what has happened to me on this as well.

I have only broken one bone in my body during this lifetime, and that is my skull; which I have broken 4 times, and twice quite severely.

ASSUMPTIONS
This is the part where I will write out (and possible add to later) the assumptions you will need to keep in mind when I am writing.
1) SPIRITUAL BEING: I will be referring to myself as a temporarily-embodied entity whose actual life spans across centuries. I have experienced this DIRECTLY is is not up for debate.
2) "INTENSE WORLD": Autism spectrum people experience the world more thoroughly than it is possible to articulate. Metaphorically, consider that an NT world is a two-dimensional landscape, whereas I experience the world in three dimensions or four, at times. This has many implications for what I will be writing, so I will refer back to it.
3) DEPTH: This is written by someone whose life experience pales in comparison to the one you have likely lived. Reading this is an exercise that should be not taken lightly, and will likely need to be studied to be properly understood. There is more of this universe than you have experienced. Don't assume you know everything. Even my own given autistic mind pales in comparison to the way some more deeply autistic people experience the world, so I will not make assumptions that my perspective is the ONLY ONE. This is a typically NT and "social-world" problem that I will NEVER fall into.
4) TRANSLATION VS. TRANSFORMATION: There are two functions of religion, according to Ken Wilber, and I believe that this is a great way to explain almost any communication we have with each other. I am explicitly recognizing that in reading these words that they can serve these two functions, and am willing to accept at the outset that my words my seem at first to be translational in nature. Translation is needed at the beginning, but transformation is always awaiting the willingness of the participant to be changed by what they are reading or experiencing. Learning is transformational. Additionally, it should be understood when I am speaking as a translator vs. saying "how it is", which is both not debatable and transformational both for myself and for the reader, should you accept the truth of it. It is the nature of autism spectrum people to speak of "how it is", and I will continue this here. What is more, I understand that to some degree I am speaking as a translator of autism as experienced from inside, and not as a casual observer. What is more, I hope to specifically transform the understanding of someone who reads this.