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Creating Consciousness
by Albert Low

Preface by Jonathan Harvey

It is heartening indeed to come across a writer who thinks at the center of things so unremittingly, so courageously, as Albert Low. All of Low's books have teased away at the same fundamental issues, biting at them from different angles like a dog with a bone. Here he brings his understanding to a new clarity and directness - Creating Consciousness seems to be a kind of culmination, and it is written with warmth, wit and in so far as it is possible in such a subject, simplicity.

The subject is consciousness itself. But not just consciousness as approached in professional journals and books but as approached by a Zen master who lives, suffers and teaches those suffering consciousness as a matter of life-and-death urgency.

This means confronting ambiguity and its relation to the promised land of unity. As a composer I am consciously or intuitively caught up in this dialectic, or struggle, every day of my creative life. Music, as Albert Low so profoundly points out, is riddled with ambiguity. The more there is, the more most musicians seem to like the piece; the higher they rate the greatness of the art. The more I can set things up and then challenge their identity, crumble their appearance, transform them into everything else,the more I feel a sense of excitement, a sense of recognising a truth, a reality. It is the supreme satisfaction of the creator and seems to herald the glimpse of 'unity' or perhaps even Paradise.

Although, of course using words, Mr. Low is at pains to put words in their place, hence his respect for the non-verbal art of music. But he has much to say also about the function of words as bulwarks which shore us up for the moment against the unbearable tensions of the ambiguous consciousness; therefore his redemption of the word through its own ability to be ambiguous (a simple example is poetry) is also one of the particularly enlightening delights of this book. It itself operates at the level of music.

Creating Consciousness (in its first draft) has been an invaluable influence on my own creative work for several years - clarifying and deepening the mystery of what art is doing, inspiring the emotions of depicting (or rather, being) an impermanent, transitory world in all its beauty and darkness.

My own book on spirituality in music drew heavily on the ideas presented in Creating Consciousness. May many others be so inspired by the importantstatement in these pages!

One often thinks of Zen Buddhism as anti-intellectual. Yet "Creating Consciousness" by Albert Low, longtime Director of the Montreal Zen Center, is a great intellectual achievement. It is a brilliant synthesis of the insights of many religions, philosophies, and psychologies and of quantum physics and music, creativity and violence. It is both a cosmology and an anthropology without subordinating one to the other, and it is a wonderful excursus on the paradox of the knowing and being that is one and at the same time two. Without any elision of categories that would sacrifice the integrity of the subjects he deals with, Low has brought the religious and magical, Sufism, Martin Buber's I-Thou relationship, and Zen transcendence into one masterful progression toward insight into the origin and evolution of consciousness. In particular, he does not fall into the easy assertions of oneness that mark the thought of so many trans-personalist thinkers. Clear, precise, and logically developed, Creating Consciousness should attract a wide-spectrum of readers ranging from Zen disciples, scholars of religion, philosophers, psychologists, and physicists to the intelligent lay person.

-- Maurice Friedman, author of "Religion and Psychology: A DialogicalApproach"

"Creating Consciousness" is an illuminating work on the problem and potential of human consciousness. As a masterful scholar and Zen teacher, Albert Low draws together, analyzes, and critiques the contributions of many scientific, philosophical, theological, and spiritual thinkers and practitioners. In doing so, Low effectively creates a dialogue between disparate specialists who don't always listen to each other, while adding his own impressive contribution to the dialogue. Creating Consciousness deserves a wide readership, especially among those interested in the complex questions and issues underlying the human quest for enlightenedbeing.

-- Polly Berrien Berends, author of "Coming to Life, Whole Child/WholeParent, and Gently Lead"

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