The Transcendental Tree of Knowledge
The Transcendental Tree of Knowledge
How TM Overlaps With UTOK and Transcendent Naturalism
“We are simultaneously finite and capable of Transcendence. If we only embrace our finitude, we fall prey to despair and servitude. If we just embrace our Transcendence, we fall prey to inflation and hubris. If we hold them together in tension (tonos), we will properly realize our humanity. The Middle Path is to live in tonos.” — John Vervaeke saying some really Orthodox shit
No-thing-ness. Don’t get hung up on the metaphysics. Instead, consider these ideas to be an imaginal conceptualization that might be useful, if not helpful.
Learn more about the Tree of Knowledge here.
I am not saying that everything Lynch says is problem-free. I am saying that practicing TM twice a day and visualizing things in this fashion assists with all of my other practices, and brings depth, meaning, and calm to my life — and offers me an experience of rest and relaxation I have never achieved anywhere else. (I used to sometimes get glimpses of it after sex.)
(My interpretation is that) Lynch speaks of how resting in the mantra allows one to descend below the surface level of the cultural, and come into a deep contact with a more core sense of being which is in touch with the transcendent.
Irrespective of whether the bit about the “Unified Field” is accurate, or whether there is confusion or conflation when we visualize what it means to fall into a deep meditative state (and how that relates to what someone like Bernardo Kastrup might call “Cosmic Consciousness”) there is a great potential in thinking in a TM style when it is clarified by the UTOK system.
Anecdotally, part of why UTOK resonated so strongly with me is that it overlays so nicely with this practice I already have and, as I have reinvigorated my devotion to abstaining from alcohol, have begun practicing again.
It helps me to have a model (UTOK) which can frame a Vedic practice (TM).