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The Psychic Grid: How We Create the World We Know
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 2, 2014
This is an excellent explanation of what Buddhists call Emptiness (Sunnata or Shunyata). Written by a Western philosopher, who is also a Christian and has probably never heard of Emptiness, it avoids many of the pitfalls of Buddhist writers on Emptiness.
The Buddha was a radical empiricist and a pragmatist, which is why his teachings resonate so well with modern science. His message to us was not to assume that our perceptions are a valid representation of reality, and to stop analyzing the world in terms of substance and essence, as consisting of things with inherent natures. The Buddha consistently refused to engage in discussions of ontology, focusing instead on epistemology, what we can know and how we can know it. Nevertheless, all but the most sophisticated of Tibetan and other Mahayana thinkers have mistaken the notion of Emptiness for a doctrine about what exists. It is not. It is a statement that what we perceive is not, and cannot be, what actually is.
Dr. Bruteau’s discussion of how we create the world we know makes this perfectly clear. Once we understand that reality is Empty of being what it appears to us to be, and why, then questions about whether the things we perceive actually exist or not become irrelevant. “Things” exist – but only in our
minds. “Something” exists outside of our minds, there is an Ultimate Reality, but we can never perceive that reality directly. We can never have a direct experience of ultimate reality, but we can have a direct experience that reveals this fact to us – a direct experience of Emptiness. Liberating insight comes through this realization of Emptiness. Ignorance is destroyed, the illusion we have been trapped in for our entire lives is dispelled, and true wisdom follows.
I highly recommend this book for everyone, but especially for anyone who has struggled to understand the teachings on Emptiness.
The Buddha was a radical empiricist and a pragmatist, which is why his teachings resonate so well with modern science. His message to us was not to assume that our perceptions are a valid representation of reality, and to stop analyzing the world in terms of substance and essence, as consisting of things with inherent natures. The Buddha consistently refused to engage in discussions of ontology, focusing instead on epistemology, what we can know and how we can know it. Nevertheless, all but the most sophisticated of Tibetan and other Mahayana thinkers have mistaken the notion of Emptiness for a doctrine about what exists. It is not. It is a statement that what we perceive is not, and cannot be, what actually is.
Dr. Bruteau’s discussion of how we create the world we know makes this perfectly clear. Once we understand that reality is Empty of being what it appears to us to be, and why, then questions about whether the things we perceive actually exist or not become irrelevant. “Things” exist – but only in our
minds. “Something” exists outside of our minds, there is an Ultimate Reality, but we can never perceive that reality directly. We can never have a direct experience of ultimate reality, but we can have a direct experience that reveals this fact to us – a direct experience of Emptiness. Liberating insight comes through this realization of Emptiness. Ignorance is destroyed, the illusion we have been trapped in for our entire lives is dispelled, and true wisdom follows.
I highly recommend this book for everyone, but especially for anyone who has struggled to understand the teachings on Emptiness.
September 10, 2021
4.5.
I am sincerely surprised that this book does not have a wider readership. I assume that the theological/Christian background of the writer, combined with the obscure (and what may falsely appear as ‘mystically oriented’) title may have its repercussion. As a matter of fact, it was close enough to repulse me from giving it a chance. Nevertheless, and without over-estimation, it is a real treasure at the intersection of sociology and psychology. Beatrice Bruteau describes a model, which may as well be the closest representation of the complexity of human interactions, cultures, and the construction of reality. I would still deduct 0.5 a star for an overall preachy flavor of the work that becomes especially strong towards the end.
P.S. I highly recommend watching the second Interview with Joscha Bach on the Lex Fridman podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIpUf...), to read this book (the order may be reversed), and then to see where both of the views may overlap. An especially interesting point is: meditation/’whatever-alters-your-consciousness’ as data enhancement vs. tuning-in the grid. It definitely was not a waste of my time.
I am sincerely surprised that this book does not have a wider readership. I assume that the theological/Christian background of the writer, combined with the obscure (and what may falsely appear as ‘mystically oriented’) title may have its repercussion. As a matter of fact, it was close enough to repulse me from giving it a chance. Nevertheless, and without over-estimation, it is a real treasure at the intersection of sociology and psychology. Beatrice Bruteau describes a model, which may as well be the closest representation of the complexity of human interactions, cultures, and the construction of reality. I would still deduct 0.5 a star for an overall preachy flavor of the work that becomes especially strong towards the end.
P.S. I highly recommend watching the second Interview with Joscha Bach on the Lex Fridman podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIpUf...), to read this book (the order may be reversed), and then to see where both of the views may overlap. An especially interesting point is: meditation/’whatever-alters-your-consciousness’ as data enhancement vs. tuning-in the grid. It definitely was not a waste of my time.
October 6, 2026
Having studied Bruteau extensively these past years, and out of a commitment to read her entire opus, I'm surfacing the early, out-of-print books that show the development of her thought. THE PSYCHIC GRID was published in 1979; it strives with too-abundant support materials to lay the foundation for what later became key principles--how our essential identity rests not in separation but in interconnection; how we inhabit a self-creating universe which asks our participation; how with intention and awareness we can freely shape what Merton calls the false self and Bruteau calls the psychic grid, bringing it into alignment with what's most life-giving for all. Whereas later Bruteau reads like mysticism, THE PSYCHIC GRID reads like philosophy. Golly, though; I'd wade through this philosophy any day to offer myself up to Bruteau's influence!
"The transcendent self experiences itself in ambiguous union with the creative process of the infinite universe, as a kind of nodal point in a great flux of intercommunicating energies to which it adds its own personal pulse as it projects its deliberately considered vision of the world with all the commitment of an integrated consciousness."
"The transcendent self experiences itself in ambiguous union with the creative process of the infinite universe, as a kind of nodal point in a great flux of intercommunicating energies to which it adds its own personal pulse as it projects its deliberately considered vision of the world with all the commitment of an integrated consciousness."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews