2006-11-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

Wisdom

Camille Paglia: "Rather than
invoking morality, which implies absolutes enforced by a transcendent creator, I
prefer to speak of ethics, a rational system of social conduct rooted in Greek
philosophy."

Using intuition, logic, and ecstasy, I am able to
choose, subjectively, what values I consider to be important to me, what my
purpose is, what my objectives are, what consequently are the projects I will
undertake, and how I will evaluate whether or not I am advancing towards my
purpose and, hopefully, becoming a little wiser. From these bases I build my
lifestyle and worldview. Since we are social creatures, and since our behaviour
is judged by ourselves and by other members of society as acceptable or not, it
is important that we have a clear idea of what behavioural standards we will
usually observe. Socially 'acceptable' standards of behaviour are based upon
what society considers to be moral or ethical or wise principles.

In this
entry I address questions such as these: What do I understand by the terms
'moral' and 'ethical', and 'wise'? Do these terms vary over time and in
different cultural settings, and does their acceptability depend upon the
circumstances within which they occur? What are my behavioural standards? How do
I determine whether or not my purpose, my principles, my standards, my
objectives, and my actions conform with those generally acceptable to society?
When mine don't conform, will I sometimes choose to deny or to modify mine, or
will I sometimes decide not to conform, acting instead in accord with the
dictates of my own convictions and preferences?

Distinctions
My dictionary makes very little distinction
beween the words moral, ethical, and wise. In all
these cases they are defined with terms pertaining to, or concerned with
right conduct or right and wrong. The term wise is
defined in terms of having the power of discerning and judging properly
as to what is true or right. For my convenience, I use these
terms neologistically (i.e., I introduce new meanings for them). I view them
non-judgementally, qualitatively, as descriptive of, and appropriate to, a
particular level in human social and individual development.

Moral. Descriptive of the values and consequent
lifestyles of those persons within relatively simple sociological, cultural,
psychological and geographical boundaries. As such, their values tend to be
narrowly defined; their ideas tend to be conservative, insular, and cultish;
their convictions about the unknown and the unknowable tend to the
superstitious; they have a tendency to seek magical solutions as they attempt to
impose a level of control over those generally awesome or uncontrollable
elements that exist in their lives; their rituals tend to be fundamentalist,
matriarchal, and cultish; their behaviour tends to be based upon rural
workstyles and lifestyles; their forms of relaxation tend to be unsophiticated
and 'fun', with emphasis on pursuits like hunting, fishing, picnics, and
rambles; their 'natural' habits tend towards the earthy; and they tend to regard
laws as intrusive and unnecessary, to be disregarded whenever and wherever
possible.

Ethical. Descriptive of the values and
consequent lifestyles of persons who live in relatively complex sociological,
cultural, psychological and geographical boundaries, such as those of large
cities. Their values tend to be sophisticated; their ideas tend to be liberal,
cosmopolitan, and idealistic; their convictions, if any, about the unknown and
the unknowable, tend to be religious rather than cultish; they have a tendency
to seek mystical solutions in an effort to impose a level of control over those
generally awesome or uncontrollable elements that exist in their lives; their
rituals tend to be congregational, institutional, and patriarchal; their
behaviour is usually based upon urban workstyles and lifestyles; their forms of
relaxation tend to be sophisticated and 'pleasure-seeking', with emphasis on
pursuits like entertainment, gambling, and other forms of escapism; their
'natural' habits tend to be sensual; they tend to regard laws as a necessary
evil to be manipulated, whenever possible, for the acquisition of personal
power, prestige, and possessions.

Wise. Descriptive of
the values and consequent lifestyles of those persons who do not feel
constrained within rural, urban, or national, sociological, cultural,
psychological or geographical boundaries, but who see themselves, instead, as
part of an extraordinarily complex world-wide ecological, energy-based system.
Their values tend to be defined along reasoned, scientific lines, although they
may also place much reliance on their intuition, emotions, and feelings; their
ideas tend to be altruistic and relatively flexible, depending upon the
circumstances and situations they experience; their convictions about the
awesome, unknown and unknowable tend to be individualistic, realistic, and yet
non-hubristic; they tend to be respectful of the opinions of others and of
ecological concern, and to be relatively non-judgemental; they tend to be
non-religious without being atheistic or agnostic; they usually seek synergic
solutions as they try to find a healthy balance between opposing interests and
different viewpoints, between principles of justice and of mercy; they recognize
that perfect, absolute solutions to problems are seldom possible and almost
never realistic; they recognize that institutions and associations tend to be
devices created and maintained by the powerful to exercise religious, political,
and/or economic control over the masses, so they are rarely 'joiners', seldom
associating themselves with groups or with formal articles of faith; they seldom
take part in rituals; their behaviour is usually based upon a preference for a
simple, unsophisticated, informed lifestyle, a co-operative attitude, and a
preference for solitude, isolation, and reflection; their lifestyles tend to
become their workstyles and their forms of relaxation; they find ecstasy in
life, in beauty, and in honesty; their relationships tend to be humanistic,
sensitive, passionate, caring, faithful, and committed, yet also non-exclusive;
by many persons and in many respects, they are regarded as abnormal, immoral,
unethical, non-conformist, and/or eccentric; they tend to regard laws as
primitive human devices that attempt to promote and to enforce various forms of
social cohesion and social control, and which they regard as necessary only
because humans consistently fail to live creatively, compassionately,
harmoniously, and altruistically.

Fitz-James Stephen, quoted in
William James, The Will to
Believe
What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the
world? ... These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to
them. ... In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the
dark. ... If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we
waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we
make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and
the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that
he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see
that anyone can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and
if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the
midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and
then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to
death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not
certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and
of good courage.' And act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.
... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.

*****
My worldview, my cosmology, my belief system, at any
time, has been conditioned by my answers to three fundamental questions: Where
did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? My answers have
undoubtedly been conditioned by several strong influences: hereditary,
experience, education, intuition, parents, society, psychology, religion,
philosophy, and so on.

Over the past twenty years or so I've attempted to
examine, as objectively as I can, and to meditate upon, many of the answers
given to these questions by those considered, internationally, to be wise. I've
found many of these answers acceptable, many unacceptable; some logical, some
illogical; some intrinsically sound, some patently false. As a result, I find it
necessary to be selective -- to choose, among many alternatives, those answers
that I consider most viable, most valuable.

Those choices have become my
working hypotheses, the foundations upon which, until more satisfying choices
appear, I have erected a set of values, a vision of the future, a purpose, some
objectives, and various projects, notably an overview. Upon this base I have
reflected, upon some supporting topics: intuition and logic, situation ethics,
wisdom, self, love, relationships, altruistic harmony, and mysticism. These
foundations and reflections govern my actions and my life-style and so define
what I think of myself and of the world.

What do I think about God?
It is clearly understood by all
people that life-forces exist in all animate and inanimate entities. By careful
observation and experience we are able to uncover what appear to be some of the
conditions under which entities do exist. By understanding and
co-operating with these conditions we are able to gain a measure of control over
what would otherwise appear to be arbitary, random, mystical life-forces. Most
people call these life-forces God or gods. I do not. Many people view God
anthropomorphically -- attributing human characteristics to what appears to me
to be non-human -- a force rather than a being. So, from my perspective, both
theology (the study of the nature of God and religious truth) and science (the
observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and
theoretical explanation of natural phenomena) are essentially no different,
except in approach and name. I find it unfortunate that religions tend to
exclude many physical findings from their field of interest, while scientists
tend to exclude almost all metaphysical findings from theirs.

What do I think about mortality?
There is a considerable
body of metaphysical evidence to suggest that there is a component part in
humans, and possibly also in all other entities, that survives the state we
usually call death. My view is that this question is irrelevant within my belief
system since I do not feel that my survival is dependent upon an acceptance or
rejection of that possibility. Naturally I hope for a continued existence;
however I feel it is more important to make the most of the existence I enjoy
here and now -- to be all that I can be -- to serve the principles of altruistic
harmony as I have defined them.

Purpose
I'd like to be all that I can be, living a full,
fruitful life, influencing others for good as I absorb their good influences
too.

Objectives
To have and enjoy a healthy mind in a healthy
body.
To find joy in life.
To love and be loved innocently, passionately,
lightheartedly.
To be creative.
To find humour in everyday situations and
in my idiosyncrasies.
To be informed about important issues.
To
communicate well.
To share in the Earth's bounty with others.
To be
courageous, truthful, and persevering.
To take time for rest and
recreation.
To accomplish my objectives without undue
procrastination.

In listing these objectives I am well aware of the
limitations usually imposed by my habits and by my culture. We each tend to
serve our own special interests, our skills, our preferences, and our
associates. Within reasonable boundaries, I wish my objectives to be feasible,
to be achievable within defined short- and long-term time-frames. They should
answer questions such as what? why? when? how? where? and who? For example: I
wish to reach these objectives openly and willingly. Each must meet the criteria
of being ethical, constructive, relevant, and harmonious. They should,
preferably, be measurable so that I may feel encouraged as I proceed.

Projects
I am now retired from paid employment and am
dedicating almost all my time to meeting my objectives and to completing this
blog so as to have an autobiography that I can offer to my friends and family. I
hope that my efforts will impact positively upon others at personal and
community levels. I set priorities as appropriately as I can.

Values

I've defined my highest good as
altruistic harmony. In this blog I try to put some flesh upon the bare
bones of that abstract ideal. For example, five questions are important to me
when I feel a need to decide whether an idea or an action is valid. These are:
is it wise? constructive? relevant? harmonious? and lighthearted? What values do
I think are important? Here, in alphabetical order, are some of
them:

Achievement: Becoming highly competent in several areas of
expertise.
Aesthetics: Having, sharing and enjoying beauty in many
forms.
Career: Working in fulfilling, socially useful vocations.
Courage:
Having fortitude to be true to myself in the face of difficult
situations.
Ecstasy: Living in accord with my progressingly higher
values.
Education: Growing continually in understanding, knowledge, and
wisdom.
Emotional: Developing self-esteem by solving problems
maturely.
Family: Receiving support from and providing support to kith and
kin.
Financial: Having sufficient wealth and income to supply my necessary
needs and the needs of those dependent upon me.
Independence: Being free to
think and act without undue constraints.
Integrity: Choosing to live by wise,
rather than by 'ethical' or 'moral' standards.
Intelligence: Choosing to
think and to act purposely, creatively.
Joy & pleasure: Finding these in
simple things by living simply and by simply living.
Law: Taking pleasure in
obeying laws that are worthwhile, prudent, impartial, objective, merciful, just,
and appropriate, in the service of altruistically harmonic social, political,
and economic systems and cultures.
Love: Sharing healthy physical, emotional,
intellectual, and ecstatic values.
Loyalty: Being faithful to my extended
family and friends.
Openness: Being transparent, honest, and
truthful.
Physical: Living by healthy practices, yet not making a fetish of
these.
Power & prestige: Recognizing and supporting the authority/status
justly earned by others; wielding, with gentle hands, whatever authority/status
is vested in me.
Recreation: Participating in and enjoying healthy
activities.
Relationships: Sharing respect, recreational and educational
values, and love.
Sensuality: Experiencing and sharing the pleasures of the
senses.
Sexuality: Receiving and giving ecstasy within a committed
relationship.
Spirituality: Honouring and treasuring feelings of awe and of
mystery.
Support: Taking pleasure in receiving support and in providing this
to those in need.
Uniqueness: Accepting and enjoying my own unique, creative
self.

Reflecting upon my values leads me naturally towards some of the
BIG questions:

what do I see to be my major purposes in life? my standards? my
objectives?

what world-view do I have? is it narrow or broad?

what kind of lifestyle do I wish to develop?

what projects do I wish to embark upon? how will I evaluate whether I'm
successful?

Ecstasy

For the purposes of this blogsite, I make a
distinction between the terms intuition and ecstasy. Whereas intuition usually
originates, or has the appearance of originating, as part of one's normal
thinking process within one's mind, ecstasy originates, or genenerally has the
appearance of originating, from a source beyond or outside one's mind. I
include, under the term ecstasy, terms that have related meanings, like
inspiration, insight, revelation, and altered state of
consciousness.

Ecstatic states often provide one with a conviction that
the thoughts engendered come from an absolutely reliable source and so reveal
absolute truths. Unfortunately these convictions, this "enlightenment", may
disguise forms of deception -- one may be "possessed". In such cases a great
deal of discernment becomes necessary, sometimes by way of assistance from some
"knowledgeable authority."

Much information on this subject is available,
for examples, at Wikipedia,
in the Catholic Encyclopedia, and
at href="http://www.accampbell.uklinux.net/bookreviews/r/laski.html">Ecstasy by
Marghanita Laski. [I've used the first and last of these sources for the
information in this blog.]

The Wikipedia
This distinguishes between psychological and
religious ecstatic states [I'll postpone a discussion of the latter for
treatment under an entry on religions].

Ecstasy, from the Greek
ekstasis, to be outside oneself, is a category of trance or trancelike
states in which an individual transcends ordinary consciousness and as a result
has a heightened capacity for exceptional thought or experience. These may
include profound emotional feeling, intense concentration on a specific task,
extraordinary physical abilities, and especially awareness of non-ordinary
mental spaces, which may be perceived as spiritual. This heightened capacity is
typically accompanied by diminished awareness of some other matters. For
instance, if one is concentrating on a physical task, then one might cease to be
aware of any intellectual thoughts. On the other hand, making a spirit journey
in an ecstatic trance involves the cessation of voluntary bodily
movement.
Achieving ecstatic trances is a major activity of shamans, who use
ecstasy for such purposes as travelling to heaven or the underworld, guiding or
otherwise interacting with spirits, clairvoyance, and healing. Some shamans use
drugs from such plants as peyote and cannabis in their attempts to reach
ecstasy, while others rely on such non-chemical means as ritual, music, dance,
ascetic practices, or visual designs as aids to mental discipline. The rituals
followed by some athletes in preparing for contests are dismissed as
superstition, but this is a device of sports psychologists to help them to
attain an ecstasy-like state.
It takes great effort, years of sustained
meditation, to reach even the first "absorption" when the meditator
characteristically notices the sustained lucidity of a non-material light
enveloping him/her.

Marghanita Laski
Marghanita Laski approached the subject
from two angles: she constructed a questionnaire and gave it to 63 friends and
acquaintances over three years, and collected a large number of literary texts
and analysed them for content. She examines ecstatic experiences in detail,
drawing mainly on the literary texts but also on other material. Here Laski
looks at such things as the duration of these experiences, the physical claims
made, the different varieties of experiences, the circumstances in which they
occur, the most useful ways of naming them, their probable availability, and so
on. Laski discusses the results of ecstatic experiences with particular
reference to what William James called over-beliefs that may arise from
them.
At the outset Laski distinguishes two kinds of ecstasy, which she
calls Intensity and Withdrawal. These correspond fairly closely with what other
writers have termed the extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences. She
is uncertain about how the two types of experience are related to each other and
in her introduction to the book she regrets that she was unable to learn more
about withdrawal, in part because this seems to be more characteristic of
Eastern mysticism, which she did not feel competent to discuss in detail. The
book is thus mainly concerned with intensity ecstasy.
From her survey Laski
reached a number of conclusions about ecstasy. It is typically rather brief,
usually lasting a few minutes, occasionally up to an hour. When it seems to last
longer than this the effect may be due to what Laski calls "afterglow". There is
a tendency for intensity ecstasy to be associated with feelings of light and
upward movement, and for withdrawal ecstasy to be associated with dark and
downward movement. Ecstasy may be accompanied by physical sensations of various
kinds, usually pleasurable but sometimes painful.
Ecstasies may be of
various kinds. In some, the person feels that life is joyful, purified, renewed;
Laski calls these Adamic. In others, there is a feeling of knowledge gained, and
this involve the idea of contact with a source of knowledge, often identified
with God. Taken to the extreme, this state results in the experiencer becoming
identified with what is experienced: he or she actually becomes God. This is
generally frowned on within Christianity, although writers on mysticism
generally grade these experiences in order of supposed value.
Some people
have what appears to be the obverse of ecstatic experience, which Laski calls
desolation experiences. Laski does not feel that she has been able to deal with
these adequately and they are not discussed in detail.
The circumstances in
which ecstatic experience occur are variable. Childhood is often thought to be a
time when ecstasy is common or even semi-permanent, but Laski presents evidence
which suggests that this may not really be the case. Women may experience
ecstasy in childbirth, although, perhaps surprisingly, this does not seem to be
related to whether the birth was easy or difficult, painful or relatively
pain-free. Sexual love may precipitate ecstasy, and people were clear about the
difference between "ordinary" orgasm and ecstasy.
Laski uses the term
"trigger" to describe the circumstances that can induce or precipitate ecstasy.
An interesting point here is that sudden or flashing lights are often involved,
both as triggers to ecstasy and also as images used to describe the feelings of
ecstasy. This suggests to me the possibility of a neurophysiological
explanation, since we know that the brain is affected by photic stimuli of this
kind, which can even cause epilepsy in susceptible individuals. Waves of the
sea, and water in general, are another common trigger. Works of art may also
have this property. However, Laski concludes that we know little about which
qualities are important in triggers and further research would be worth while.

Throughout history, and no doubt long before history was written, people
have tried to induce ecstasy, often by means of drugs. Laski was writing before
drug-taking became so intrinsic a part of modern Western culture but she does
say something about the subject, mainly in connection with mescalin, which was
in the news at the time. She points out a number of differences between
naturally occurring ecstasy and experiences reported by people using mescalin
and she seems rather unimpressed by their claims.
Her position is that
ecstasy (intensity ecstasy, anyway) is closely related to problem-solving and
creativity. In very general terms, the process has five stages: the asking of
the question, the collection of material, the fusing of the collected material
(when the ecstatic experience itself occurs), the translation of the fused
material into communicable form, and the testing of the answer. This process
typically results in the formation of an over-belief. These five stages are
discussed with the aid of abundant quotations, taken from accounts of religious
conversion, scientific discovery, and other sources.
As an avowed atheist,
Laski does not accept the validity of the totality beliefs that ecstasy
sometimes gives rise to, but she is very far from saying that ecstasy has no
importance at all. She writes: "I do not think it sensible to ignore, as most
rationalists have done, ecstatic experiences and the emotions and ideas to which
they give rise. To ignore or deny the importance of ecstatic experiences is to
leave to the irrational the interpretation of what many people believe to be of
supreme value ... I do not believe that to seek a rational explanation of these
experiences is in any way to denigrate them, but rather that a rational
explanation may prove at least as awe-inspiring as earlier
interpretations."

Concluding Comments
Many out-of-body experiences, like
near-death ones, appear to be similar, yet different, for each person. This
suggests that, as in dream states, hallucinations, and revelations, NDE's may be
partly or entirely subjective experiences, originating from perceptions within
the mind rather than by way of the recognition of some external reality. As in
the examples already offered, we all have dreams that may range from blissful to
nightmare; persons on LSD drugs may have experience that range from "good trips"
to a bad ones; a person who is dying may be noted, by attending nurses and
physicians, to be having a "good death" or a hard one. These cases suggest that
out-of-body experiences are dependent upon the states of mind of patients rather
than that patients are somehow gaining access to some independent
reality.

Questions remain: Does the ecstatic state originate from within
one's mind or from an external source? If the latter, what is that source? How
can one know whether the information one receives is beneficial or deceptive? If
one believes that one knows the truth, how can one be sure? If so, how can one
know that one knows!

Perhaps the answers lie with those who are
wise.

Be that as it may, I try to use all three ways of thinking --
logic, intuition, and ecstasy -- despite their limitations, while I search for
solutions to personal and social problems. Am I wise? I make no such claim.
However I feel sure that we each have some responsibility to offer whatever
insights we can.

[An aside: while preparing this entry, I received a
list of the 10
most harmful books. Many of these are in my library and are among those I
consider to be my most valuable ones, since I feel no stone should be left
unturned in the search to find improved ways of thinking and acting.]

Friday, June 03, 2005

Intuition 2

Intuitive Problem Solving (IPS)

The focus
of intuitive insight lies within an area of suggestibility. Rather like being
under hypnosis, as we allow ourself to be centered, as we become more receptive
to new ideas, and as we elicit images rather than words, we become more attuned
to the promptings of our internal hypnotist: our subconscious mind.

For
the purposes of this entry I make no significant distinctions between intuition,
instinct, imagination, fantasy, day-dreams, dreams and similar
concepts.

Here is the formula for intuitive problem-solving favoured by
Emery:

Define the Problem
Separate the problem from
its background.
Describe the background.
Then pose the question
separately.
Define, clearly and concisely, the problem or the situation that
needs to be resolved.

Center Yourself
Shift your
attention from "out there" to the silent place within so you can disengage the
logical mind, access the intuitive mind, and listen to hear the intuitive mind
speak. To do this you'll need to minimize tension, stress, noise, physical
distractions, bothersome emotions, interfering thoughts, and the chatter of the
"outer sensory world".
Using breathing and receptivity techniques, slow down
your brainwaves and enter a more receptive state:

In a fully alert state, in which you are conscious of logical and analytical
input coming through the five senses, brainwaves are at the beta level of 13-25
cycles per second (cps).

As brainwaves slow down, you enter the alpha level of 8-12 cps during which
your inner awareness exands, your mind becomes submerged in the subconscious,
intuitive receptivity is high, and you'll have that "drifty" feeling often
experienced just as you're falling asleep at night and/or the same feeling
sensed on awakening in the morning.

As brainwaves slow down further, you enter the theta level of 5-7 cps, which
occurs during sleep and at a very deep level of meditation or hypnosis.
Intuitive receptivity is strong here.

During deep or full sleep, brainwaves reach the delta level of 1-4
cps.

Centering tools

Affirmations (verbal focusing). We are all relatively subject to
suggestibility, each tending to create our own personal reality from those ideas
that we choose to accept as true. Because of this we have a capacity to
condition our minds through a continuous repetition of statements we wish to
believe or to deny. For example: if I affirm, repeatedly, that "I am clear and
relaxed", this will tend to make me feel clearer and more relaxed. To tell
myself "I trust that everything comes to me at the perfect time and in the
perfect way" will tend to convince me that everything I need and receive has and
will, at the most opportune moment, come to me. Those things I wish for, but
haven't yet received (I may tell myself) haven't yet arrived simply because the
moment isn't yet opportune or that the thing I wish for is not something I
really need, and so is not something that will be of real benefit to me. I
choose to call this type of thinking "rationalizing" rather than a reflection of
ultimate or absolute reality, but that may be an example of negative thinking.
However "positive thinking" does, indeed, generally appear to be "healthy", so
most of the time I choose to think more positively.

Visual focusing. Focusing on a geometrically shaped object, such as a
flower, or a picture, an image, or a symbol, may help to quiet the talkative
mind by shifting one's perception to an inner mode. I find it relaxing and
centering to focus on any of the beautiful pictures and objects that surround me
in and outside my home.

Audible focusing. I find certain, carefully selected, classical music
performances to be particularly relaxing and centering.

Become
More Receptive
In addition to inducing the alpha level of
consciousness for increased receptivity to your intuitive mind, using specific
breathing techniques will increase your stamina, help you become mentally alert,
reduce stress, and re-energize your body.
Breathing techniques have several
similarities:

Take up a position in which you can be undisturbed and can feel totally
relaxed, with arms and feet uncrossed.

Breathe in slowly, deeply, preferably through the nose and with your chest
and stomach rising on the inhale. Raising your arms also during this step will
allow you to increase the volume of air taken into your lungs.

Hold your breath for a few seconds, feeling the oxygenated life force that
has entered your lungs and is being distributed throughout your body. Close your
eyes and become aware of your thinking and of how you feel at this moment in
your body, head, and throat.

Exhale slowly, imagining that you are letting go of accumulated waste and
fatigue; or exhale explosively, imagining that you are throwing out all
stresses. You may wish to whisper the word "hah" as you exhale.

Repeat these steps three or four times.
This exercise may make you feel
somewhat lightheaded, since your brain may be unaccustomed to the increased
amount of oxygen it is receiving. You will probably also feel more alert, more
energized; objects around you may appear brighter, sharper, and clearer; and you
may feel a tingling sensation in some part of your
body.

Relaxation techniques also have several
similarities:

Take up a position in which you can be undisturbed and can feel totally
relaxed, with arms and feet uncrossed. Include the breathing exercises as you
proceed. By relaxing your body your logical mind also relaxes, allowing your
intuitive mind to gain greater access.

Allow yourself to become distracted from immediate concerns. Listening to
audio taped music is uually helpful here.

Tune in to your body, identifying any tense or aching areas.

Imagine, by "seeing" or "feeling" or "knowing", that these tensions are
being released.

When time permits, stretch and relax each part of your body briefly,
starting at your toes and feet, moving upwards, and ending at the top of your
head.

Use your imagination to tell yourself that you are gradually feeling
completely relaxed. Take yourself to a mountaintop, or to a beautiful beach; or
to hear ocean waves lapping the shore; or to walk through a rain forest; or to
listen to the chirping of birds, etc.

Elicit
Imagery
The intuitive, or subconscious, mind communicates by showing
us images of what we are thinking and feeling, rather than by explaining these
in words and by argument. Here, for example, are some of the ways in which we
might receive the images we solicited in the previous paragraph:

visual, by seeing the view from the mountaintop.

auditory, by hearing the sound of the birds.

olfactoy, by smelling the odours of the rain forest.

gustatory, by tasting the salt from the ocean spray.

tactile, by touching a shell picked up on the beach.

kinesthetic, by moving through the surf.

affective, by feeling the joy of being outdoors in any/all of these
scenarios.
These examples illustrate how intuition/imagination often makes
itself felt through our physical senses. We "get the picture", or "feel in the
pink", or "smell a rat". Each of us has a dominant sense: a physical sense
through which intuition usually reaches us. When we need to reach a decision it
is then sometimes enough to define the problem, and then weigh alternative
solutions against the reactions that, intuitively, reach us by way of our
dominant sense. One possibility will probably "feel good"; another may "taste
bad".

Another problem-solving technique is to visualize the problem
changing in progressively more positive directions. Surprisingly, perhaps, this
"creative visualization" quite often generates the eventual position.

Be careful what you pray for, since your prayers may be
answered!
Interpret the Imagery
Just as we
may, consciously, create images in our imagination, so images may reach us from
or through our subconscious mind (i.e., inter alia via intuition, instinct,
imagination, fantasy, day-dreams, dreams, or paranormal experiences). There are,
however, some huge differences: the symbols and images sent by our intuitive
mind are often, if not always, enigmatic and so need to be interpreted. What
compounds this problem is the fact that images are almost invariably "custom
designed": they are unique to each of us and to each situation in which they
occur.
Emery offers four techniques for image interpretation:

Amplification (Jung). Letting ideas flow freely, connecting thoughts to a
central image, and allowing the interpretation to emerge naturally.

Word association (Freud). A linear process in which one word triggers
another until the "real" meaning stands out.

Clustering (Rico). A combination of amplification and word association from
which a responses comes.

Mind mapping (Buzan). A schematic diagram, based upon a theme, to evoke many
options or possibilities, somewhat similar to
"brainstorming".

Deciphering colours. These are
symbolically very meaningful, for example:

Red: physical and sexual energy, action, recharging; anger, fear,
anxiety.

Orange: balance, emotional/intellectual symmetry, consideration,
harmony.

Yellow: logical/linear thinking, outgoing, investigative, communicative,
cheerful.

Green: emotion, love, growth, life force, healing, prosperity.

Light blue: conceptualizing, wisdom, deep knowledge, inner peace, serenity,
introspection.

Indigo: intuition, sixth sense, insight, clarity, future-oriented
thoughts.

Violet: transformation, imagination, fantasy, spiritual vision, higher-mind
orientation.

Emotional blocks to intuition

wishful thinking: hopes and dreams cloud issues.

self-fulfilling prophecy: attachments to preconceptions impair judgements.

pride of ownership or authorship: lead to unrealistic claims.

fear: distort input and cloak reality.

anxiety, fatigue, and depression: drain energy and blur signals.

projection: displacing needs and wants onto another person.

Validation
Confirmation, that we have received valid
intuitive responses, usually comes in the form of physical sensation. What is my
gut feeling? Do I feel I "know" the answer to my question? Do I seem to see the
solution clearly? Do I have a warm, reassuring feeling, about my decision? Is my
reaction heartfelt?
With practice we can separate the "real flash" of an
intuitive response from the "false alarm" of an emotional
block.

Rest, Interpret Further, Activate the
Solution
When actively searching for intuitive answers to questions,
it is often necessary for an incubation, or rest, period to occur after the
definition, centering, receptive, imaging, and interpretation stages. After
images do appear, further interpretations may be necessary before a final
decision presents itself.

An intuitive acronym
P
peace: create inner stillness
R relaxation: gain inner receptivity
A
affirmation: reinforce your desires
C creativity: innovate or make new
T
timetable: use discipline for positive results
I imagery: communicate from
the inner mind
C commitment: develop and use your intuition
E exercise:
get physical exercise for proper functioning
M meditation: become still and
know
A authenticity: to thine own self be true
K keep a journal: keep a
record to reinforce consistent practice
E enjoy dreaming: use the intuitive
messages from your dreams
S stress reduction: release and reduce stress
P
play games: make learning fun and lighten up for sharper receptivity
E
emotional release: liberate your feelings
R risk: confidently act on
hunches
F faith: know you have intuitive ability
E enjoyment: know that
practice time is pleasurable
C comradeship: have friends share the joy of
discovery
T trust: know your intuitive abilities are reliable

Intuition 1

Intuition and Logic
Master Keys to
Understanding

Alexander Graham Bell: The conquering force within you:
What this power is, I cannot say. AlI I know is that it exists ... and it
becomes available only when you are in a state of mind in which you know exactly
what you want ... and are fully determined not to quit until you get
it.

Marcia Emery, Intuition Workbook (1994)[many ideas for this blog come
from this source]: Your logical mind is analytical, rational, and verbal. This
mind will tell you how to do something by using words and sentences. The
operations of critical thinking and linear analysis are very important to this
mind.
Your intuitive mind goes beyond the rational analysis; it is inspiring
and nonverbal. This mind will show you how to do something by presenting
pictures, symbols, and metaphors. This mind functions through creative thinking
patterns, spatial arrangements, and visualization.

The subconscious mind
as the repository of intuition = inner (in)+ teaching (tuition), from Latin
intueri = looking or knowing from within.

Intuition is direct knowing or
learning without the conscious use of reasoning; immediate apprehension or
understanding.(Webster) It is a clear knowing without being able to explain how
one knows; knowledge gained without logical or rational thought. It is
nonrational, nonlinear, insightful, nondata based, an extension of the five
basic senses. It is not logical, rational, or commonsensical, but an emotional
state, based on experience.

The power of intuition can be used to solve a
problem, to resolve a personal issue, to make an important decision, to glean a
new perspective on a situation, to gain an understanding of the dynamics of a
person or situation, and/or to discover a creative or innovative idea or
approach to dealing with a matter. Paradigm shifts occur as realignments in our
thinking take place. The challenge is to hear the voice within that speaks ever
so gently in the silence.

Common expressions to imply that intuition has
been at work: gut feeling, hunch, premonition, business acumen, insight,
educated guess, flying by the seat of the pants, vision, sixth sense, playing it
by ear, sniffing out, shooting from the hip, getting the picture, the light went
on, ah'ha!, eureka, ...

Intuitive levels: environmental (place); physical
(body); mental (mind); emotional (heart); spiritual (soul).

Periods of
stillness, quiet, and meditation help us to develop intuition and the ability to
discover our authentic self, our special talents, and our true needs.

John Macmurray, Reason and Emotion (1938): What other significance can
our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely?

Keys for
developing intuition: honor insights; keep hunches short and simple; visualize
the picture, symbol, image; suspend assumptions; honor first impressions;
respect both weak and strong impressions; recognize that insights may come
actively (ask a question and wait for a reply) or passively (like a flash out of
the blue); relax for enhanced receptivity; use free association of ideas; enjoy,
have fun, lighten up!

Impairments to intuition: wishful thinking, fear,
possessiveness, projections, ...

Intuitive Problem-Solving (IPS)
Problems
can often be solved through the use of a combination of logic, intuition, and
emotion. However the emotions are the least reliable of these three and should
therefore be minimized or eliminated when searching for solutions to problems.

Richard S. and Bernice N. Lazarus, in their Passion & Reason
(Oxford, 1994), portray individual emotions as:
Nasty emotions -- anger,
envy, and jealousy.
Existential emotions -- anxiety-fright, guilt, and
shame.
Emotions unfavourably provoked -- relief, hope, sadness, and
depression.
Emotions favorably provoked -- happiness, pride, and
love.
Empathetic emotions -- gratitude, compassion, and those aroused by
aesthetic experiences.

Weston Agor, in The Logic of Intuitive Decision
Making, (Greenwod, 1986), identified several circumstances in which intuition is
most often used by top scorers on his intuition scale:
where there is a high
level of uncertainty
where there is little precedent
where variables are
less scientifically predictable
when facts are limited
where facts do not
clearly indicate the direction to take
where analytical data are of little
use
when there are several plausible solutions
when time is limited and
there is pressure to be right
when negotiations and personal decisions are
paramount

Traditional problem-solving appoaches suggests these
steps:
define the problem
identify alternative solutions
measure the
costs/benefits of each alternative
make a decision
implement that
decision

Emery (op. ct.), favouring a more intuitive approach, offers
this formula:
define the problem
center yourself
make yourself
receptive
elicit imagery
interpret the imagery
rest
interpret
further
activate the solution

Each of the steps in this formula is
addressed in part 2.

Paradigms

Our word "conversation" derives from the same Latin root as
"conversion" does, and the possibility of a conversion, of a "turning around",
is always inherent in any conversation, for when we converse we take part in a
game in which exchange, not victory, is the goal, an intellectual game in
which no one stars and everyone wins.

Erich Fromm, For the Love of Life

In
my home page I noted that I want to share some thoughts and suggestions "about
what to do for our troubled Ship of State", which "appears to be in grave danger
of floundering". Our current philosopical, religious, and political paradigms --
the assumptions and models which form our current systems -- seem to be
inadequate to address the enormously complex problems of the present time.

We seem desperately in need of new paradigms. In Fromm's words, it seems we
need to be converted from "our monumaniachal, goal-oriented way of life. We need
to cultivate attitudes that recognize the expression and full realization of
human potential as the only worthwhile goals in life".

In this entry
I'll introduce several questions using, with some minor editing for brevity and
clarity, information derived from the Leading Edge International Research Group.
[A link to this source is provided here.
Unfortunately the full article is no longer available; however the site is well
worth examining.]

What is a paradigm and paradigm shift?

What is a paradigm addiction?

What characterizes our present paradigms?

How might we go about creating better paradigms?

What are Paradigms and Paradigm
Shifts?
Paradigm
The word paradigm was originally one
of those obscure academic terms that has undergone many changes of meaning over
the centuries. The classical Greeks used it to refer to an original archetype or
ideal. Later it came to refer to a grammatical term. In the early 1960s Thomas
Kuhn (1922-1996) wrote a
ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which
he showed that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to
greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation -
a paradigm - which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm
established. Thus the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe)
overthrew the Ptolemaic (the earth at the center) one, and Newtonian physics was
replaced by Relativity and Quantum Physics. Science thus consists of periods of
conservativism ("Normal" Science) punctuated by periods of "Revolutionary"
Science.

Paradigm Shift
When anomalies or inconsistencies
arise within a given paradigm and present problems that we are unable to solve
within a given paradigm, our view of reality must change, as must the way we
perceive, think, and value the world. We must take on new assumptions and
expectations that will transform our theories, traditions, rules, and standards
of practice. We must create a new paradigm in which we are able to solve the
unsolvable problems of the old paradigm.

What is a Paradigm Addiction?
What occurs when a
paradigm and its most ardent supporters are addicted to the paradigm to the
point where they lose the realization that they are even in a paradigm at all?
Ardent paradigm supporters have equated paradigm survival with their own
personal survival, and will manipulate and control a society in order to prevent
any social or cultural advancement out of the existing paradigm, ignoring or
suppressing public knowledge of anomalies, equating perception of anomalies to
"personal abnormality" in order to intimidate populations to remain within the
status quo control paradigm. Addiction to a paradigm results in either paradigm
death or death of those who maintain the paradigm.

What characterizes our present paradigms?
The
Problem
We see a pervasive mindset of control and domination permeating
our cultural institutions, a mindset driven by the fear of anarchy. If someone
-- some authority or power over us -- doesn’t control us, society will fall into
chaos, or so we’re to believe.
But who controls the controllers? What kind
of order do those in positions of power have in mind? Is power-over an order
that works -- i.e., that creates social harmony and makes us happy? Or does it
create wars, blind obedience, inner deadness, random violence, injustices,
epidemic substance and process addictions, economic exploitation, cynicism,
chronic stress, and unhappiness? It doesn’t make sense, for example, that we
control children morning to night with rewards and punishments and then wonder
why they grow up selfish manipulators: "What’s in it for me?" or "Just don’t get
caught!" That’s how child-rearing and schooling methods trained all of us to
think. And if people grow up obsessed with gaining power over others -- the
chance to be in the one-up position and to control who’s rewarded and who’s
punished -- where’s the surprise? This is the logical extension of our cultural
paradigm.
In other words, is our culture built on a paradigm that’s working
for us as well as we need it to? Is our consensus philosophy shaping our
institutions to serve us, or are we becoming servants to systems that warp our
minds, consume our energies, and turn us into people we never wanted to be? When
more and more of us find ourselves asking such core questions, it’s time to
start rethinking things from the ground up. It’s time to reclaim our
powers.

Naming What’s Wrong Accurately
Philosophy’s first help
comes in accurately naming what’s wrong. If we’re just bad people, if the human
race is innately selfish, violent and power-obsessed, if reality mandates that
we be powder kegs about to explode, then we’re stuck -- we have no options --
and it’s amazing that we as a species have lasted this long.
Certainly we
have the potential to be selfish, destructive, and cruel, but philosophy says we
have other potentials too, and that which potentials get developed depends on
our philosophy -- the paradigm we use to create ourselves, families, schools,
churches, governments, businesses, and culture. If what’s causing all the
trouble is our paradigm, then that’s good news. We can’t change reality or human
nature, but we can change our paradigm. And it doesn’t take an army or a
parliament or money to do it.

How might we go about creating better
paradigms?
Making The Shift
The paradigm shift
required is big. It touches all disciplines and the very ways we think and
reason. It also involves how we experience ourselves, how we respond to our
inner processes and follow our souls’ leadings.
Because the shift is so big,
we by no means have all the answers. We do, however, need to start the
philosophical discussion. We need to expand ways for all of us to participate in
the planetary dialogue birthing this shift. All sorts of tools are emerging to
help. We need to explore an approach that is:

holistic, in that all our personal, cultural, and planetary systems are
involved;

system-focused, which sees "parts" as emerging from system dynamics;

interdisciplinary,

philosophical,

healing and recovery oriented, and

grounded in spiritual wisdom-values of soul, meaning, and inner guidance.

Paradigm Power
We need to be concerned about where the culture
is going, and what we can all do to change its course. As some of us see it, our
main power lies with philosophy and the force of paradigm shifts. Shifting our
mindset doesn’t cost money, it’s democratic (we can all do it), it goes to the
crux of problems, it’s nonviolent, it’s effective, it’s not stoppable from
without, and it may be our greatest power, though largely untapped.

A Concluding Comment
Examples of paradigm shifts may be seen
in this blogsite. Hawkins' levels of consciousness proceed along a continuum
from shame to enlightenment. Maslow's hierarchy of needs proceeds along a
continuum from physiological needs, to safety needs, to needs for belongingness
and love, to needs for esteem, to needs for self-actualization. Logic may be
followed by intuition, which may be followed by ecstasy. Morals may be
transcended by ethics, which may be transcended by wisdom. In all of these
examples, and in more to come, each step along a continuum is a progressive one,
building upon and transcending the previous step; each advancement indicates
that a paradigm shift has occurred or may occur.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Logic

There are three methods that I'll use, jointly,
to try to test whether I have a reasonable understanding of the topics I
discuss:
1. Science (logic),
2. Intuition,
3. Revelation.

The
scientific method, in the present context, has to do with epistemology -- "a
branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits
of human knowledge".

In this respect I've found these articles
helpful:

Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia - Science -
Scientific Method
"... agreement of a conclusion with experience does not of
itself prove the correctness of the hypothesis from which it is derived; it
simply renders the premise so much more the plausible. The ultimate test of the
validity of a scientific law or hypothesis is its consistency with the totality
of other aspects of the scientific framework through which man attempts to
'explain' nature. It is this inner consistency which constitutes the basis for
the concept of causality in science, according to which every aspect is assumed
to be linked with a cause."

Science and Technology
Ethics, by Raymond Spier (three pages available):
href="http://print.google.com/print?id=uAWd8fGKwzMC&lpg=2&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3DScientific%2BMethod%26ie%3DUTF-8%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20&pg=2&sig=Bl9H1qtWot7tlijkeizYQUUD83g">page
1
href="http://print.google.com/print?id=uAWd8fGKwzMC&lpg=2&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3DScientific%2BMethod%26ie%3DUTF-8%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20&pg=3&sig=95kLju6d21fPuLrtYUTiJTmUNYg">page
2
href="http://print.google.com/print?id=uAWd8fGKwzMC&lpg=2&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3DScientific%2BMethod%26ie%3DUTF-8%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20&pg=4&sig=aEjDmxDyRgiJsY8JQA63DbRfZeU">page
3

The Matter of Mind, Myth, and Metaphor, by Harold Williamson (in
three parts):
href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Williamson0512.htm">part 1
href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Williamson0519.htm">part 2
href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Williamson0531.htm">part
3

So what, essentially, is the scientific method (i.e., logic) all
about? It begins with axioms (self-evident truths) and premises (propositions
supporting or helping to support a conclusion) within a parameter (a particular
way of thinking). From there it focuses on a proposition (the act of offering or
suggesting something to be considered, accepted, adopted, or done). Using logic
(the science which investigates the principles governing correct or reliable
inference) the scientist presents arguments (reasoning processes) or theories
(coherent groups of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a
class of phenomena) which support his or her conclusions. During this process,
the scientist may use deductive reasoning (based on deduction from accepted
premises) and/or inductive reasoning (a form of reasoning in which the
conclusion, though supported by the premises, does not follow from them
necessarily).

These argument and conclusions are then examined by
scientific peers and tested to determine if they are consistent with related
scientific arguments and if they can be replicated by other scientists. If the
conclusions can meet these requirements they may be accepted as valid until such
time as they may be disproved or supplanted by a more acceptable
conclusion.

There are several weaknesses to the scientific method. Like
the weakest link in a chain, arguments break if any of their components --
axioms, premises, parameters, propositions, logic, theories, explanations,
conclusions, consistency, replication -- can be shown to be unsupportable. One
weakness that I find particularly reprehensible occurs when a scientist,
presenting an argument, fails to disclose arguments that he or she knows will
not support his or her conclusions. In such cases the
scientist has, I suggest, a clear duty to do so and then offer whatever
counter-arguments he or she can muster.

Another grave weakness of the
scientific method, I find, is that it can do little to solve problems related to
the human "sciences" (in my opinion more correctly defined as "arts"), like
philosophy, psychology, religions, politics, economics, and law -- disciplines
with which this blogsite is vitally concerned. Although the disciplines overlap
to some extent, the sciences have more to do with quantitative values,
whereas the arts have more to do with qualitative values.

In
searching for solutions to personal and social problems within hierarchical
systems, I'll be examining those systems for weaknesses to arguments that are
used to rationalize and justify them, and offering alternative ones that I feel
may be more harmonious. So the scientific method will have only a limited value
there.

Personalities

How we each respond to the rewards and
punishments of hierarchical systems will depend largely upon our individual
personality traits. These are developed in a number of ways. Some
characteristics are inate, some hereditary, some culturally determined, some
learned, some the result of living experiences, some resulting from a belief in
an afterlife, some depend upon whether our needs and wants are being met, and so
on. For my convenience in discussing the topics included in this blogsite, I'll
arbitarily use the personality types provided by href="http://www.9types.com/">enneagrams, to identify the predominant
characteristics of persons while recognizing that they may also share many of
the characteristics of the other types.

1. The Reformer
The principled, idealistic type. Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a
strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers, crusaders, and advocates for
change: always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake.
Well-organized, orderly, and fastidious, they try to maintain high standards,
but can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. They typically have
problems with resentment and impatience. At their Best: wise, discerning,
realistic, and noble. Can be morally heroic.

2. The
Helper The caring, interpersonal type. Twos are empathetic, sincere,
and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but can
also be sentimental, flattering, and people-pleasing. They are well-meaning and
driven to be close to others, but can slip into doing things for others in order
to be needed. They typically have problems with possessiveness and with
acknowledging their own needs. At their Best: unselfish and altruistic, they
have unconditional love for others.

3. The Achiever The
adaptable, success-oriented type. Threes are self-assured, attractive, and
charming. Ambitious, competent, and energetic, they can also be status-conscious
and highly driven for advancement. They are diplomatic and poised, but can also
be overly concerned with their image and what others think of them. They
typically have problems with workaholism and competitiveness. At their Best:
self-accepting, authentic, everything they seem to be -- role models who inspire
others.

4. The Individualist The introspective,
romantic type. Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are
emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and
self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and
defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of
living. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and
self-pity. At their Best: inspired and highly creative, they are able to renew
themselves and transform their experiences.
5. The
Investigator The perceptive, cerebral type. Fives are alert,
insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing
complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also
become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. They become
detached, yet high-strung and intense. They typically have problems with
eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation. At their Best: visionary pioneers, often
ahead of their time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.

6. The Loyalist The committed, security-oriented type.
Sixes are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy. Excellent
"troubleshooters," they foresee problems and foster cooperation, but can also
become defensive, evasive, and anxious-running on stress while complaining about
it. They can be cautious and indecisive, but also reactive, defiant and
rebellious. They typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion. At their
Best: internally stable and self-reliant, courageously championing themselves
and others.

7. The Enthusiast The busy, productive
type. Sevens are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. Playful,
high-spirited, and practical, they can also misapply their many talents,
becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new
and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on
the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness. At their
Best: they focus their talents on worthwhile goals, becoming appreciative,
joyous, and satisfied.

8. The Challenger The powerful,
aggressive type. Eights are self-confident, strong, and assertive. Protective,
resourceful, straight-talking, and decisive, but can also be ego-centric and
domineering. Eights feel they must control their environment, especially people,
sometimes becoming confrontational and intimidating. Eights typically have
problems with their tempers and with allowing themselves to be vulnerable. At
their Best: self-mastering, they use their strength to improve others' lives,
becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.

9. The
Peacemaker The easy-going, self-effacing type. Nines are accepting,
trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but
can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want
everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be
complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They
typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. At their Best:
indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal
conflicts.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Afterlife

"To be, or not to be, -- that is the question
... To sleep! perchance to dream: -- ay, there's the rub ... Thus conscience
does make cowards of us all ..."
William Skakespeare,
Hamlet

For most persons the desire for immortality is almost as
strong as the desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Is the wish for an
afterlife a realistic one? In this entry I'll look at some of the arguments,
beginning with links to several websites.

href="http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth28.html">Peter Kreeft, The Case for
Life After Death.
Michael Roll, The Scientific Proof of Survival After
Death [Please download http://www.cfpf.org.uk ]
href="http://www.near-death.com/index.html">Near Death Experiences
Archive
href="http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts01.html">Jean Ritchie,
Scientific Theories of the NDE.
href="http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/start.html">Bruce Moen, Afterlife
Knowledge.
Sir Oliver Lodge,
The Mode of Future Existence.

In the light of this mass of evidence and
opinion, questions about the validity of beliefs in an afterlife may seem paltry
indeed. However it also seems evident to me, from the many descriptions given in
the links above, that NDE's for each person are both similar to and different
from the NDE's of all other persons. This suggests that, as in dream states,
hallucinations, and revelations, NDE's may be partly or entirely subjective
experiences, originating from perceptions within the mind rather than by way of
the recognition of some different reality. For examples: we all have dreams that
may range from blissful to nightmare; persons on LSD drugs say that their
experience may range from a "good trip" to a bad one; persons who are dying are
noted, by attending nurses and physicians, to be having a "good death" or a hard
one. These cases suggest that out-of-body experiences are dependent upon the
state of mind of patients as they die.

For now I'll leave unanswered the
question about whether or nor there is an afterlife. What is of more concern to
me is the recognition that this belief, or lack of belief, may have a profound
effect upon how people live and die, and how, by catering to people's hopes and
fears in this connection, those in authority may control and manipulate
believers. I'll address that possibility in the context of reward and punishment
structures within more specific hierarchical systems.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Income Levels

Please note that, in distinguishing four Canadian
income levels, I intend nothing pejorative since persons in all walks of life
may live at any of the seventeen energy levels previously listed. So, for the
conveience of discussing personal and social problems, I'll arbitarily denote
the lower income levels of Canadians as those 32.5% with income of under
$15,000, the middle income levels as those 41.8% with incomes from $15,000 to
$45,000, the upper income levels as those 18.7% with incomes from $45,000 to
$75,000, and the elites as those 7% with incomes over $75,000 per
year.

I've suggested that people are generally manipulated within
hierarchical structures by those with power, who present themselves as
benefactors who reduce the fears of underlings and who support them, provided,
of course, that they, the 'lower income levels', will submit to the dictates of
the 'middle income levels' who, in turn, will submit to the dictates of the
'upper income levels'. These arrangements are devised, to a considerable extent,
by deceptive means. If subordinates can be persuaded to deceive themselves that
thay are free citizens within the best of all possible worlds, these
self-serving ploys may become entrenched within military, social, economic, and
religious systems.

What are some of those ploys? Stated very simply they
usually have to do with rewards and punishments -- with carrots and sticks. For
example, two theorists discuss management theories in this href="http://members.tripod.com/PeterVenn/brochure/complete/xyz.htm">link.
Douglas McGregor's theory X assumes that people are lazy and will avoid work
whenever possible, and so need to be driven. His theory Y assumes that people
are creative and eager to work, so need to be led. William Ouchi's theory Z
includes the notion that workers tend to want to build co-operative and intimate
working relationships with those that they work for and with, as well as the
people that work for them.

These theories will be discussed again in
connection with heirarchical structures such as those noted above.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Needs and Wants

Abraham H. Maslow, in his Motivation and
Personality, second edition (1970), constructed a heirarchy of needs,
discussed briefly at this href="http://www.wynja.com/personality/needs.html">website.

A study
of this book, and the links from this site, provide a comprehensive list of the
characteristics of a self-actualized person. As such they suggest the
motivation required to develop a pleasureable lifestyle, as opposed to a
synthetic one, and offer a practical path to worthwhile
goals.

Needs are quite different from wants.

Heirarchies are defined as "persons or things arranged in a graded
series." For example, I've said that "controls are generally devised and people
are manipulated within hierarchical structures by those with power, who
generally present themselves as benefactors who will reduce the fears of
underlings, and who will support them, provided, of course, that they, the
"lower classes", will submit to the dictates of the "middle classes" who, in
turn, will submit to the dictates of the "upper classes". These arrangements are
devised, to a considerable extent, by deceptive means. If subordinates can be
persuaded to deceive themselves that thay are free citizens within the best of
all possible worlds, these self-serving ploys may become entrenched within
military, social, economic, governmental, and religious systems." Within these
and other systems, and within the social classes mentioned above, are formed a
great variety of hierarchies, with each persons having a variety of needs and
wants.

My dictionary doesn't distinguish between needs and wants in ways
that I wish to discuss here, so I'll use my own definitions. By a need
I wish to convey a meaning that suggests a wish or desire for something
requisite, desirable, or useful; a condition requiring supply or relief (when
the need arises) so that it may satisfy a healthy lifestyle. By a want
I wish to convey a meaning that suggests a wish or desire for anything more than
that need. That implies an unhealthy lifestyle. Each of the persons, within each
of these classes and systems, has his or her own levels of needs and wants,
depending upon his or her status, perceptions, perspectives, and circumstances
as these occur and as they have developed at a specific moment. For example, a
baby may have a need for about eighteen hours of sleep each day; an adult may
need only eight hours of sleep each day. In either case, too much, or too little
sleep, even if wanted, may be unhealthy.

All of this may seem obvious.
However it needs to be said that if we are to find remedies for personal and
social problems, we need to distinquish, carefully, between the needs and wants,
within realistic limitations and constraints, of persons and other living
things, from the needs and wants, sometimes valid, sometimes simply
manipulative, off hierarchies, per se.

To distinguish between
needs and wants more vividly, I'll illustrate my view by giving my own economic
situation, in 2005, as an example. I've already noted that, although living far
below the Canadian poverty level, I feel I am, compared with 95% of the world's
population, incredibly rich. As a single person, I live on a pension of about
$1240 per month ($14,880 per year), after tax.

According to Statistics
Canada, href="http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/gap/files/CanadianIncome.pdf">Canadians'
Income in the year 2000, the median income was $25,052. The median was thus
about $25052 / $14880 = 1.68 times my pension. About 32.5% of Canadians had an
income of less than $14,999.

At my income level, a family with an income
of, say, 3 x $1240 = $3720 per month after tax should, I believe, be able to
live very comfortably. Any income, above that level ($44,640 per year) would, I
suggest, be unnecessary and desirable only if wants are to be funded. 74.3% of
Canadians had an income of less than $44,999 per year.

About 7%
Canadians had income over $75,000 per year; that is 75000 / 14880 = 6 times my
current income.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Consciousness

I've noted that the primary purposes of life,
dictated by nature, would appear to be to survive as long as one can, with as
little pain and as much pleasure as possible, and to reproduce. I've suggested
that many of the words used to describe the self are interchangeable, except
that I recognize that my mind appears to be quite separate from my body and
operates at different levels of activity.

David R. Hawkins, in Power
vs. Force (1995) differentiates consciousness into seventeen measureable
levels, ranging within a scale of 0 to 1000, from shame, at 20, to
enlightenment, at 700 to 1000. While I find his methodology scientifically
suspect, I note that his conclusions seem empirically attractive. I also see
some consistency between his levels of consciousness and the Hermetic levels of
vibration. These levels might helpfully be used to define the different terms
used for the self.

A summary of Hawkins' levels
follows:

Energy Level 20: Shame
The level of Shame is perilously
proximate to death, which may be chosen out of Shame as conscious suicide or
more subtly elected by failure to take steps to prolong life. Death by avoidable
accident is common here. We all have some awareness of the pain of "losing
face," becoming discredited, or feeling like a "nonperson." In Shame, we hang
our heads and slink away, wishing we were invisible. Banishment is a traditional
accompaniment of shame, and in the primitive societies from which we all
originate, banishment is equivalent to death.
Early life experiences that
lead to Shame -- such as sexual abuse -- warp the personality for a lifetime
unless these issues are resolved by therapy. Shame, as Freud determined,
produces neurosis. It's destructive to emotional and psychological health and,
as a consequence of low self-esteem, makes one prone to the development of
physical illness. The Shame-based personality is shy, withdrawn, and
introverted.
Shame is used as a tool of cruelty, and its victims often become
cruel themselves. Shamed children are brutal to animals and to each other. The
behavior of people whose consciousness is only in the 20s is dangerous: they're
prone to hallucinations of an accusatory nature, as well as paranoia; some
become psychotic or commit bizarre crimes.
Some Shame-based individuals
compensate with perfectionism and rigidity, becoming driven and intolerant.
Notorious examples are the moral extremists who form vigilante groups,
projecting their own unconscious shame onto others whom they then feel justified
in righteously attacking. Serial killers have often acted out of sexual
moralism, with the justification of punishing "bad" women.
Since it pulls
down the whole level of personality, Shame results in a vulnerability to the
other negative emotions, and, therefore often produces false pride, anger, and
guilt.

Energy Level 30: Guilt
Guilt, so commonly used in our society
to manipulate and punish, manifests itself in a variety of expressions, such as
remorse, self-recrimination, masochism, and the whole gamut of symptoms of
victimhood. Unconscious Guilt results in psychosomatic disease,
accident-proneness, and suicidal behaviors. Many people struggle with Guilt
their entire lives, while others desperately attempt escape by amorally denying
it altogether.
Guilt-domination results in a preoccupation with "sin," an
unforgiving emotional attitude frequently exploited by religious demagogues, who
use it for coercion and control. Such "sin-and-salvation" merchants, obsessed
with punishment, are likely either acting out their own guilt, or projecting it
on to others.
Subcultures displaying the aberration of self-flagellation
often manifest other regional forms of cruelty, such as the public, ritual
killing of animals. Guilt provokes rage, and killing frequently is its
expression. Capital punishment is
an example of how killing gratifies a
Guilt-ridden populace. Our unforgiving American society, for instance, scorns
its victims in the press and metes out punishments that have never been
demonstrated to have any deterrent or corrective value.

Energy Level 50:
Apathy
This level is characterized by poverty, despair, and hopelessness. The
world and the future look bleak; pathos is the theme of life. Apathy is a state
of helplessness; its victims, needy in every way, lack not only resources, but
the energy to avail themselves of what may be available. Unless external energy
is supplied by caregivers, death through passive suicide can result. Without the
will to live, the hopeless stare blankly, unresponsive to stimuli, until their
eyes stop tracking and there isn't enough energy left to even swallow proffered
food.
This is the level of the homeless and the derelicts of society; it's
also the fate of many of the aged and others who become isolated by chronic or
progressive diseases. The apathetic are dependent; people in Apathy are "heavy"
and are felt as a burden by those around them.
Too often, society lacks
sufficient motivation to be of any real help to cultures (as well as
individuals) at this level, because they're seen as drains of resources. This is
the level of the streets of Calcutta, where only the saintly, such as
Mother
Teresa and her followers, dare to tread. Apathy is the level of the abandonment
of hope, and few have the courage to really look in its face.

Energy
Level 75: Grief
This is the level of sadness, loss, and dependency. Most of
us have experienced it for periods of time, but those who remain at this level
live a life of constant regret and depression. This is the level of mourning,
bereavement, and remorse about the past; it's also the level of habitual losers
and those chronic gamblers who accept failure as part of their lifestyle, often
resulting in loss of jobs, friends, family, and opportunity, as well as money
and health.
Major losses early in life make one vulnerable to passive
acceptance of grief later on, as though sorrow were the price of life. In Grief,
one sees sadness everywhere -- in little children, in life itself. This level
colors one's entire vision of existence. Part of the syndrome of Grief is the
notion of the irreplaceability of what's been lost or that which it symbolized.
There is a generalization from the particular so that the loss of a loved one is
equated with the loss of love itself. At this level, such emotional losses may
trigger a serious depression or death.
Although Grief is the cemetery of
life, it still has more energy to it than Apathy does. Thus, when a traumatized,
apathetic patient begins to cry, we know they're getting better. Once they start
to cry, they will eat again.

Energy Level 100: Fear
At the level of
100, a lot more life energy is available -- fear of danger is healthy. Fear runs
much of the world, spurring on endless activity. Fear of enemies, of old age or
death, of rejection, and a multitude of social fears are basic motivators in
most people's lives.
From the viewpoint of this level, the world looks
hazardous, full of traps and threats. Fear is the favored official tool for
control by oppressive totalitarian agencies, and insecurity is the
stock-in-trade of major manipulators of the marketplace. The media and
advertising play to Fear to increase market shares.
The proliferation of
fears is as limitless as the human imagination; once Fear is one's focus, the
endless worrisome events of the world feed it. Fear becomes obsessive and may
take any form -- trepidation of losing a relationship leads to jealousy and a
chronically high stress level.
Fearful thinking can balloon into paranoia or
generate neurotic defensive structures and, because it's contagious, become a
dominant social trend.
Fear limits growth of the personality and leads to
inhibition. Because it takes energy to rise above Fear, the oppressed are unable
to reach a higher level unaided. Thus, the fearful seek strong leaders who
appear to have conquered their own Fears to lead them out of its
slavery.

Energy Level 125: Desire
Even more energy is available at
this level; Desire motivates vast areas of human activity, including the
economy.
Advertisers play on our Desire to program us with needs linked to
instinctual drives. Desire moves us to expend great effort to achieve goals or
obtain rewards. The desire for money, prestige, or power runs the lives of many
of those who have risen above Fear as their predominant life motif.
Desire is
also the level of addiction, wherein it becomes a craving more important than
life itself. The victim of Desire may actually be unaware of the basis of his
motives.
Some people become addicted to the hunger for attention and drive
others away by their constant demands. The yearning for sexual approval has
produced an entire cosmetics and fashion industry.
Desire has to do with
accumulation and greed. But Desire is insatiable because it's an ongoing energy
field, so that satisfaction of one itch is merely replaced by unsatisfied
craving for something else. For instance, multimillionaires tend to remain
obsessed with acquiring more and more money.
Desire is obviously a much
higher state than Apathy or Grief, for in order to "get," you have to first have
the energy to "want." TV has had a major influence on many oppressed people,
inculcating wants and energizing their longings to the degree that they move out
of Apathy and begin to seek a better life. Want can start us on the road to
achievement. Desire can, therefore, become a spring-board to yet higher levels
of awareness.

Energy Level 150: Anger
Although Anger may lead to
homicide and war, as an energy level it's much further removed from death than
those below it. Anger can lead to either constructive or destructive action. As
people move out of Apathy and Grief to overcome Fear as a way of life, they
begin to want; Desire leads to frustration, which in turn leads to Anger. Thus,
Anger can be a fulcrum by which the oppressed are eventually catapulted to
freedom. Fury over social injustice, victimization, and inequality has created
great movements that led to major changes in the structure of society.
But
Anger expresses itself most often as resentment and revenge and is, therefore,
volatile and dangerous. Anger as a lifestyle is exemplified by irritable,
explosive people who are oversensitive to slights and become "injustice
collectors", quarrelsome, belligerent, or litigious.
Since Anger stems from
frustrated want, it's based on the energy field below it. Frustration results
from exaggerating the importance of desires. The angry person may go into rage,
just like a frustrated infant. Anger leads easily to hatred, which has an
erosive effect on all areas of a person's life.

Energy Level 175:
Pride
Pride, which calibrates at 175, has enough energy to run the United
States Marine Corps. It's the level aspired to by the majority of our kind
today. In contrast to the lower energy fields, people feel positive as they
reach this level. This rise in self-esteem is a balm to all the pain experienced
at lower levels of consciousness. Pride looks good and knows it; it struts its
stuff in the parade of life.
Pride is far enough removed from Shame, Guilt,
or Fear that to rise, for instance, out of the despair of the ghetto to the
self-respect of being a Marine is an enormous jump.
Pride generally has a
good reputation and is socially encouraged, yet as we see from the chart of the
levels of consciousness, it's sufficiently negative to remain below the critical
level of 200. This is why Pride feels good only in contrast to the lower
levels.
The problem, as we all know, is that "Pride goeth before a fall."
Pride is defensive and vulnerable because it's dependent upon external
conditions, without which it can suddenly revert to a lower level. The inflated
ego is vulnerable to attack. Pride remains weak because it can be knocked off
its pedestal back to Shame, which is the threat that fires the fear of loss and
pride.
Pride is divisive and gives rise to factionalism; the consequences are
costly. Man has habitually died for Pride -- armies still regularly slaughter
each other for that aspect of it called nationalism. Religious wars, political
terrorism and zealotry, the ghastly history of the Middle East and Central
Europe -- these are all the price of Pride, for which all of society
pays.
The downside of Pride is arrogance and denial. These characteristics
block growth; in Pride, recovery from addictions is impossible because emotional
problems or character defects are denied. The whole problem of denial is one of
Pride. Thus Pride is a very sizable block to the acquisition of real power,
which displaces Pride with true stature and prestige.

Energy Level 200:
Courage
At the 200 level, power first appears. When we test subjects at all
the energy levels below 200, we find, as can be readily verified, that all go
weak. Everyone goes strong in response to the life-supportive fields above 200.
This is the critical line that distinguishes the positive and negative
influences of life. At the level of Courage, an attainment of true power occurs;
therefore, it's also the level of empowerment. This is the zone of exploration,
accomplishment, fortitude, and determination. At the lower levels, the world is
seen as hopeless, sad, frightening, or frustrating; but at the level of Courage,
life is seen to be exciting, challenging, and stimulating.
Courage implies
the willingness to try new things and deal with the changes and challenges of
life. At this level of empowerment, one is able to cope with and effectively
handle the opportunities of life. At 200, for instance, the energy to learn new
job skills is available.
Growth and education become attainable goals.
There's the capacity to face fears or character defects and to grow despite
them; anxiety also does not cripple endeavor as it would at lower stages of
evolution. Obstacles that defeat people whose consciousness is below 200 act as
stimulants to those who have evolved into the first level of true
power.
People at this level put back into the world as much energy as they
take; at lower levels, populations as well as individuals drain energy from
society without reciprocating. Because accomplishments result in positive
feedback, self-reward and esteem become progressively self-reinforcing. This is
where productivity begins.
The collective level of consciousness of mankind
remained at 190 for many centuries and, curiously, only jumped to its current
level of 207 within the last decade.

Energy Level 250:
Neutrality
Energy becomes very positive as we get to the level we have termed
Neutral, because it's epitomized by release from the positionality that typifies
lower levels. Below 250, consciousness tends to see dichotomies and take on
rigid positions, an impediment in a world that's complex and multifactorial
rather than black and white.
Taking such positions creates polarization,
which in turn creates opposition and division. As in the martial arts, a rigid
position becomes a point of vulnerability; that which doesn't bend is liable to
break. Rising above barriers or oppositions that dissipate one's energies, the
Neutral condition allows for flexibility and nonjudgmental, realistic appraisal
of problems. To be Neutral means to be
relatively unattached to outcomes; not
getting one's way is no longer experienced as defeating, frightening, or
frustrating.
At the Neutral level, a person can say, "Well, if I don't get
this job, then I'll get another." This is the beginning of inner confidence;
sensing one's power, one isn't easily intimidated or driven to prove anything.
The expectation that life, with its ups and downs, will be basically okay if one
can roll with the punches is a 250-level attitude.
People of Neutrality have
a sense of well-being; the mark of this level is a confident capability to live
in the world. This is the level of safety -- people at this level are easy to
get along with and safe to be around and associate with because they're not
interested in conflict, competition, or guilt. They're comfortable and basically
undisturbed emotionally. This attitude is nonjudgmental and
doesn't lead to
any need to control other people's behaviors. Correspondingly, due to Neutral
people's value of freedom, they're difficult to control.

Energy Level
310: Willingness
This very positive level of energy may be seen as the
gateway to the higher levels. For instance, at the Neutral level, jobs are done
adequately, but at the level of Willingness, work is done well and success in
all endeavors is common. Growth is rapid here; these are people chosen for
advancement. Willingness implies that one has overcome inner resistance to life
and is committed to participation.
Below the 200 calibration, people tend to
be close-minded, but by level 310, a great opening occurs. At this level, people
become genuinely friendly, and social and economic success seem to follow
automatically. The Willing aren't troubled by unemployment; they'll take any job
when they have to, or create a career or self-employment for themselves; they
don't feel demeaned by service jobs or by starting at the bottom. They're
helpful to others and contribute to the good of society. They're also willing to
face inner issues and don't have major learning blocks.
At this level,
self-esteem is high and is reinforced by positive feedback from society in the
forms of recognition, appreciation, and reward. Willingness is sympathetic and
responsive to the needs of others. Willing people are builders of, and
contributors to, society. With their capacity to bounce back from adversity and
learn from experience, they tend to become self-correcting. Having let go of
Pride, they're willing to look at their defects and learn from others. At the
level of Willingness, people become excellent students. They're easily trainable
and represent a considerable source of power for society.

Energy Level
350: Acceptance
At this level of awareness, a major transformation takes
place, with the understanding that one is oneself the source and creator of the
experience of one's life. Taking such responsibility is distinctive of this
degree of evolution, characterized by the capacity to live harmoniously with the
forces of life.
All people at levels below 200 tend to be powerless and see
themselves as victims, at the mercy of life. This stems from a belief that the
source of one's happiness or the cause of one's problems is "out there." An
enormous jump -- taking back one's own power -- is completed at this level, with
the realization that the source of happiness is within oneself. At this more
evolved stage, nothing "out there" has the capacity to make one happy, and love
isn't something that's given or taken away by another, but is created from
within.
This level is not to be confused with passivity, which is a symptom
of apathy. Acceptance allows engagement in life on life's own terms, without
trying to make it conform to an agenda. There's emotional calm with Acceptance,
and perception is widened as denial is transcended. One now sees things without
distortion or misinterpretation; the context of experience is expanded so that
one is capable of "seeing the whole picture." Acceptance has to do essentially
with balance, proportion, and appropriateness.
The individual at the level of
Acceptance isn't interested in determining right or wrong, but instead is
dedicated to resolving issues and finding out what to do about problems. Tough
jobs don't cause discomfort or dismay. Long-term goals take precedence over
short-term ones; self-discipline and mastery are prominent.
At the level of
Acceptance, we're not polarized by conflict or opposition; we see that other
people have the same rights as we do, and we honor equality. While lower

levels are characterized by rigidity, at this level social plurality begins
to emerge as a form of resolution of problems. Therefore, this level is free of
discrimination or intolerance; there's an awareness that equality doesn't
exclude diversity; acceptance includes rather than rejects.

Energy Level
400: Reason
Intelligence and rationality rise to the forefront when the
emotionalism of the lower levels is transcended. Reason is capable of handling
large, complex amounts of data and making rapid, correct decisions; of
understanding the intricacies of relationships, gradations, and fine
distinctions; and expert manipulation of symbols as abstract concepts becomes
increasingly important. This is the level of science, medicine, and of generally
increased capacity for conceptualization and comprehension. Knowledge and
education are here sought as capital. Understanding and information are the main
tools of accomplishment, which is the hallmark of the 400 level. This is the
level of Nobel Prize winners, great statesmen, and Supreme Court justices.
Einstein, Freud, and many of the other great thinkers of history also calibrate
here.
The shortcomings of this level involve the failure to clearly
distinguish the difference between symbols and what they represent, and
confusion between the objective and subjective worlds that limits the
understanding of causality. At this level, it's easy to lose sight of the forest
for the trees, to become infatuated with concepts and theories and end up
missing the essential point. Intellectualizing can become an end in itself.
Reason is limited in that it doesn't afford the capacity for the discernment of
essence or of the critical point of a complex issue.
Reason does not of
itself provide a guide to truth. It produces massive amounts of information and
documentation, but lacks the capability to resolve discrepancies in data and
conclusions. All philosophical arguments sound convincing on their own. Although
Reason is highly effective in a technical world where the methodologies of logic
dominate, Reason itself, paradoxically, is the major block to reaching higher
levels of consciousness. Transcending this level is relatively uncommon in our
society.

Energy Level 500: Love
Love as depicted in the mass media is
not what this level is about. What the world generally refers to as love is an
intense emotional condition, combining physical attraction, possessiveness,
control, addiction, eroticism, and novelty. It's usually fragile and
fluctuating, waxing and waning with varying conditions. When frustrated, this
emotion often reveals an underlying anger and dependency that it had masked.
That love can turn to hate is a common perception, but here, an addictive
sentimentality is likely what's being spoken about, rather than Love; there
probably never was actual love in such a relationship, for Hate stems from
Pride, not Love.
The 500 level is characterized by the development of a Love
that is unconditional, unchanging, and permanent. It doesn't fluctuate -- its
source isn't dependent on external factors. Loving is a state of being. It's a
forgiving, nurturing, and supportive way of relating to the world.
Love isn't
intellectual and doesn't proceed from the mind; Love emanates from the heart. It
has the capacity to lift others and accomplish great feats because of its purity
of motive.
As this level of development, the capacity to discern essence
becomes predominant; the core of an issue becomes the center of focus. As reason
is bypassed, there arises the capacity for instantaneous recognition of the
totality of a problem and a major expansion of context, especially regarding
time and process. Reason deals only with particulars, whereas Love deals with
entireties. This ability, often ascribed to intuition, is the capacity for
instantaneous understanding without resorting to sequential symbol processing.
This apparently abstract phenomenon is, in fact, quite concrete; it's
accompanied by a measurable release of endorphins in the brain.
Love takes no
position, and thus is global, rising above separation. It's then possible to be
"one with another," for there are no longer any barriers. Love is therefore
inclusive and expands the sense of self progressively. Love focuses on the
goodness of life in all its expressions and augments that which is positive --
it dissolves negativity by recontextualizing it, rather than by attacking
it.
This is the level of true happiness, but although the world is fascinated
with the subject of Love, and all viable religions calibrate at 500 or over,
it's interesting to note that only 0.4 percent of the world's population ever
reaches this level of evolution of consciousness.

Energy Level 540:
Joy
As Love becomes more and more unconditional, it begins to be experienced
as inner Joy. This isn't the sudden joy of a pleasurable turn of events; it's a
constant accompaniment to all activities. Joy arises from within each moment of
existence, rather than from any other source; 540 is also the level of healing
and of spiritually based self-help groups.
From level 540 up is the domain of
saints, and advanced spiritual students and healers. A capacity for enormous
patience and the persistence of a positive attitude in the face of prolonged
adversity is characteristic of this energy field; the hallmark of this state is
compassion. People who have attained this level have a notable effect on others.
They're capable of a prolonged, open visual gaze, which induces a state of love
and peace.
At the high 500s, the world one sees is illuminated by the
exquisite beauty and perfection of creation. Everything happens effortlessly, by
synchronicity, and the world and everything in it is seen to be an expression of
love and divinity. Individual will merges into divine will. A Presence is felt
whose power facilitates phenomena outside conventional expectations of reality,
termed miraculous by the
ordinary observer. These phenomena represent the
power of the energy field, not of the individual.
One's sense of
responsibility for others at this level is of a different quality from that
shown at the lower levels: there's a desire to use one's state of consciousness
for the benefit of life itself rather than for particular individuals.
This
capacity to love many people simultaneously is accompanied by the discovery that
the more one loves, the more one can love.
Near-death experiences,
characteristically transformative in their effect, have frequently allowed
people to experience the energy level between 540 and 600.

Energy Level
600: Peace
This energy field is associated with the experience designated by
such terms as transcendence, self-realization, and God-consciousness. It's
extremely rare, attained by only 1 in 10 million people. When this state is
reached, the distinction between subject and object disappears, and there's no
specific focal point of perception. Not uncommonly, individuals at this level
remove themselves from the world, as the state of bliss that ensues precludes
ordinary activity. Some become spiritual teachers; others work anonymously for
the betterment of mankind. A few become great geniuses in their respective
fields and make major contributions to society. These people are saintly and may
eventually be officially designated as such, although at this level, formal
religion is commonly transcended, to be replaced by the pure spirituality out of
which all religion originates.
Perception at the level of 600 and above is
sometimes reported as occurring in slow motion, suspended in time and space --
nothing is stationary, and all is alive and radiant. Although this world is the
same as the one seen by others, it has become continuously flowing, evolving in
an exquisitely coordinated evolutionary dance in which significance and source
are overwhelming. This awesome revelation takes place nonrationally, so that
there is an infinite silence in the mind, which has stopped conceptualizing.
That which is witnessing and that which is witnessed take on the same identity;
the observer dissolves into the landscape and becomes equally the observed.
Everything is connected to everything else by a Presence whose power is
infinite, exquisitely gentle, yet rock-solid.
Great works of art, music, and
architecture that calibrate between 600 and 700 can transport us temporarily to
higher levels of consciousness and are universally recognized as inspirational
and timeless.

Energy Levels 700-1,000: Enlightenment
This is the level
of the Great Ones of history who originated the spiritual patterns that
countless people have followed throughout the ages. All are associated with
divinity, with which they're often identified. This is the level of powerful
inspiration; these beings set in place attractor energy fields that influence
all of mankind. At this level, there is no longer the experience of an
individual personal
self separate from others; rather, there is an
identification of Self with Consciousness and Divinity. The Unmanifest is
experienced as Self beyond mind. This transcendence of the ego also serves by
example to teach others how it can
eventually be accomplished. This is the
peak of the evolution of consciousness in the human realm.
Great teachings
uplift the masses and raise the level of awareness of all of humanity. To have
such vision is called grace, and the gift it brings is infinite peace, described
as indefinable, beyond words. At this level of realization, the sense of one's
existence transcends all time and individuality. There's no longer any
identification with the physical body as "me," and therefore, its fate is of no
concern.
The body is seen as merely a tool of consciousness through the
intervention of mind, its prime value that of communication. The self merges
back into the Self. This is the level of nonduality, or complete Oneness. There
is no localization of consciousness; awareness is equally present
everywhere.
Great works of art depicting individuals who have reached the
level of Enlightenment
characteristically show the teacher with a specific
hand position, called mudra -- herein the palm of the hand radiates benediction
-- this is the act of transmitting this energy field to the consciousness of
mankind. This level of divine grace calibrates up to 1,000, the highest level
attained by anybody who has lived in recorded history -- to wit, the Great
Avatars for whom the title "Lord" is appropriate: Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha, and
Lord Jesus Christ.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Life

The Kybalion presents some fundamental questions,
"Why did the All create the Universe and how and why does the All continue to
maintain it? No satisfactory answer has been found or offered, even by the most
advanced Hermetists".

The use of the term All and the statements "as
below, so above; as above, so below" seem to me to be anthropomorphic and of
questionable validity. Of course my outlook comes from my human perspective and
from my many different levels of perception.

I've suggested that nature
is amoral, as opposed to moral or immoral. We all find, in nature, much that
ranges from cruelty to bliss, with a huge number of intermediate qualities
between those extremes. I've noted that the primary purposes of life, dictated
by nature, would appear to be to survive as long as one can, with as little pain
and as much pleasure as possible, and to reproduce. I'll comment on these drives
more fully later.

Why created? There are innumerable speculative
answers. One that I favour suggests that the Universe may have been created,
assuming that there is a reason, so that living things might exist to experience
life, with all its opportunities and challenges, all its joys and sorrows. I try
to transcend simplistic ideas about life's purposes by subscibing to a "higher"
purpose: one which I call altruistic harmony.

How created? There
are are least five theories. The creationist theory is usually
identified with reasons that are often claimed to have been revealed to certain
individuals by some deity and which are now contained within legends and sacred
scriptures. The theory of evolution suggests that life evolved from the
simplest of life forms into more complex ones. The intelligent design
theory is one that I favour. This reflects a compromise between the previous two
theories. It suggests that one of more intelligent entities exists which direct
the emergence, development, evolution, maintenance, and dissolution of all
things, visible and invisible, on Earth and Universally. A fourth theory
suggests that life forms, at least the simplest ones, originated in other solar
bodies and became transplanted to the Earth by way, for example, of
solar winds. A fifth theory suggests that life forms were brought to the Earth
by aliens[1].

These theories may possibly be reconcilable,
depending upon the definitions we give to the terms we use, like intelligence,
revelation, deity, creation, and evolution. For example, the term
intelligence may be defined to include an intrinsic ability, as in
plants, to germinate and grow; and, as in rocks, to absorb and reflect heat;
and, as with humans and other animals, to have the "ability to learn and
understand or to deal with new or trying situations" (Webster). The term
revelation may be defined to include the ideas resulting from an
intrinsic ability to think creatively, as in scientific discoveries. The term
deity may be defined to simply mean nature or to include entities with
superior human and/or non-human characteristics, perceptions, and perspectives.
The terms creation and evolution may be defined to include
actions that result in DNA modifications, whether these occur naturally and/or
by some form of intervention

Notes
[1] This
theory is humourously supported in this href="http://www.alternet.org/story/22039/">link

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

7. Gender

Proposition
Gender is in
everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender
manifests on all planes. To the pure, all things are pure; to the base, all
things are base.
It is said that this principle works in the direction of
generation, regeneration, and creation.

Arguments

1. (a) Electricity is now generally regarded as the something into which all
other forms of energy seem to meld or dissolve; this is the electrical theory of
the universe. (b) Corpuscles, ions, or electrons constitute the basis of matter.
(c) These, in certain combinations, form atoms, previously regarded as invisible
units. (c) Negative (feminine) corpuscles revolve around positive (masculine)
ones, vibrating at a high degree of intensity, and exerting an influence upon
them, thus creating or generating an atom.
2. (a) The feminine pole is the
mother principle of electrical phenomena; the creative corpuscles or electrons
are composed of feminine energy. (b) Detached feminine neutrons (female
corpuscles) actively seek union with protrons (male corpuscles), being urged
thereto by the natural impulse to create new forms of matter or energy. (c) This
detachment and uniting form the basis of the greater part of chemical activity.
(d) This union begins a certain process: the female particles vibrate rapidly
under the influence of the masculine energy, and circle rapidly around it,
giving birth to a new atom. (e) The new atom, composed of both male and female
energy, becomes a separate thing, having certain properties but no longer
manifesting the property of free electricity. (f) The process of detachment or
separation of the female electron is called ionization.
3. (a) Electrons are
the most active workers in nature's field. (b) Arising from their unions or
combinations, electrons manifest the varied phenomena of light, heat,
electricity, magnetism, attraction, repulsion, chemical affinity and repulsion,
and similar phenomena. (c) The part of the masculine seems to be that of
directing a certain inherent energy towards the feminine and thus initiating
activity into the creative process. (d) In some life forms, the male and female
principles are combined in one organism.
4. (a) Everything in the organic
world manifests both genders: the masculine in the female form, and the feminine
in the masculine form. (b) Gender is in constant operation and manifestation in
organic matter and in the energy or force field.
5. On the mental plane the
masculine and feminine polarities are manifested as dualities: subjective (f)
and objective (m); conscious (m) and sub-conscious (f); voluntary (m) and
involuntary (f); active (m) and passive (f); etc.
6. (a) Hermetist students
are able, by giving some attention to their mental capacity, to distinguish
between their self and their person, i.e., the self who is able to observe the
person that they are, and the person that they are aware of as a body with
certain features, and as one capable of certain feelings, tastes, likes,
dislikes, habits, ties, characteristics, etc. (b) Students are able to see that
they may change their internal states by an effort of will, and may produce a
state of an exact opposite nature; they are able to set aside various mental
states, emotions, feelings, habits, qualities, characteristics, and other
personal belongings and replace these with opposite forms. (c) Students are thus
able to experience the dual nature of self and person, a self that may produce
thoughts, emotions, feelings, and other mental states in their person.
7.
(a) Students find they are able to will that their masculine self act along
certain creative lines and may mentally stand aside and witness the mental
creation of their female person. (b) The self represents the masculine aspect of
being; the person is the feminine aspect of becoming. (c) The two are similar in
kind although vastly different in degree.
8. (a) Latent mental powers in the
self may thus be released as creative energy, to be employed on one's person or
on another person. (b) The normal method is for the masculine and feminine
principles in a person's mind to co-ordinate and act harmoniously in conjunction
with each other.
9. (a) However, the vibratory energy of the masculine
principle may be projected towards the feminine principle of oneself or another
person, who may then take the seed thought and allow it to develop into
maturity. (b) In consequence such persons may be ruled almost entirely by the
minds and wills of oneself or other persons whom they allow to do their thinking
and willing for them.
10. (a) Telepathy, charisma, suggestion, and hypnosis
operate in this way. (b) Examples of magnetic persons, able to use this
masculine principle, are actors, orators, statesmen, preachers, writers,
doctors, teachers, psychics, etc. (c) These powers may be used for good or ill.

Summum Exposition - The Principle of Gender: "Gender is
in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender
manifests on all levels."
This Principle embodies the idea that there is
GENDER expressed in everything -- the masculine and feminine principles ever at
work. The NATURE of the copulation of CREATION displays in this principle. This
is a fact not only of the physical level, but of the mental and even the
spiritual levels. On the physical levels the Principle presents itself as SEX;
on the higher levels it takes higher forms, but the Principle is ever the same.
No creation, physical, mental, or spiritual, is possible without this Principle.
An understanding of its laws will throw light on many a subject that has
perplexed the minds of humans.
The Principle of Gender works ever in the
direction of generation, re- generation, and creation. Everything and every
person contains the two elements or aspects of this great Principle within it,
him, or her. Every male thing has the female element as well; every female
contains also the male principle. If you are to understand the philosophy of
mental and spiritual creation, generation, and re-generation, you must
understand and study this Principle. All the Principles of Summum have an inter-
relationship with Gender. As the NOTHING "comes in" and the POSSIBILITY "out of
bond," Gender is created. Gender draws its NATURE from the copulation of
CREATION. It contains the solution to many mysteries of
life.

Comments
I've departed from the text of the
Kybalion by using the term gender when discussing this principle since, as in
this case, the term sex is used when gender was intended. In my writing I
reserve the term sex to mean sexual play between persons, of whatever gender. It
should be noted that I regard terms such as positive and negative, masculine and
feminine, higher and lower, and complexity and simplicity as neutral, not
necessarily attributing preference to either one in each case. Instead, I view
such distinctions as complementary rather than in opposition. The terms cathode
and anode are sometimes used in electrical systems for negative (feminine) and
positive (masculine) potentials. In so doing the attachment of any pejorative
connotations to the feminine, negative potential may be minimized.

6. Cause and Effect

Proposition
Every cause has
its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to law;
chance is but a name for law not recognized; there are many planes of causation,
but none escapes the law.
It is said that one may, by rising to a higher
plane, dominate lower level cause-effect
relationships.

Arguments
1. (a) This principle
underlies all scientific thought, ancient and modern. (b) Disputes between
various schools of thought arise principally from the definition of terms used
and upon details regarding the operation of the principle.
2. (a) Nothing
can act in the phenomenal universe independent of law, order, and the continuity
of the universe. (b) The existence of such a Something would render all Natural
Laws ineffective, and would plunge the universe into chaotic disorder and
lawlessness.
3. (a) There is, in reality, no such thing as pure chance. (b)
What is called chance is merely an expression relating to obscure causes --
causes that we do not or cannot understand. (c) Back of seen causes there are
chains of unseen preceding causes, all of which have an effect. (d) Under the
law of averages, what appear to be random effects obey statistical laws.
4.
(a) No event creates another event, but is merely the preceding link in a great
orderly chain of events flowing from the creative energy of the All. (b) An
event is that which comes, arrives, or happens, as a result or consequence of
some preceding event. (c) There is a continuity between all events precedent,
consequent, and subsequent. (d) There is a relationship existing between
everything that has gone before, and everything that follows.
5. (a) The
principle of polarity (4, part 1) shows that free-will and determinism are
opposing poles of truth. (b) A person may be both free and yet bound by
necessity, depending upon the meanings given to those terms and the height from
which a matter is examined. (c) The further the creation is from the center, the
more it is bound; the nearer the center it reaches, the nearer free it is. (d)
Consequently one may want to do something, or the reverse, depending upon one's
position within the mental pole continuum.
6. (a) Within this continuum,
Hermetic masters are able to will to will , that is, to act instead of react in
a specific situation. (b) Masters are consequently able to rise above the plane
of material life and, placing themselves in touch with the higher powers of
their nature, are able to dominate their own moods, characters, qualities, and
polarities, as well as the environment surrounding them. (c) This ability may be
used for good or ill.

Summum Exposition - The Principle
of Cause and Effect: "Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause;
everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not
recognized; there are many fields of causation, but nothing escapes the Law of
Destiny."
This principle embodies the idea that there is a cause for every
effect; and an effect from every cause. It explains that "everything happens
according to law"; that nothing ever "merely happens"; that there is no such
thing as chance; that while there are various fields of cause and effect, the
higher dominating the lower fields, still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law
(destiny). The masters understand the art and method of rising above the
ordinary field of cause and effect, and by mentally rising to a higher field
they become causers instead of effects. The masses of people are carried along
obedient to environment, the wills and desires of others stronger than
themselves, heredity, suggestion, and other outward causes moving them about
like pawns on the chessboard of life. But the masters, rising to the field
above, dominate their moods, character, qualities, and powers as well as the
environment surrounding them, and become movers instead of pawns. They help to
PLAY THE GAME OF LIFE, instead of being played and moved about by the
environment. They USE the Principles instead of being used. The masters obey the
causation of the higher fields, but they help to RULE on their own level.

All the Principles of Summum have an interrelationship with Cause and
Effect. Cause "comes in and out of bond" with Effect; all EVENTS are between the
cause and effect. Cause and Effect draws its NATURE from the copulation of
CREATION. In this statement there is condensed a wealth of knowledge.

Comments
While much of that which is argued above
is undoubtedly true, or at least has the appearance of truth, the proposition
seems to me to attempt the impossible -- to reach beyond reality -- to claim the
existance of absolute, immutable laws. What seems to be happening here is a
yearning for security under conditions of certainty in a world that's full of
surprises and uncertainties. What Hermetists claim seem to me to be attempts to
explain the unexplained (maybe even the unexplainable) by saying that
explanations must be there but have not yet been found, and that some laws may
be subject to even "higher" laws.
But perhaps "pure chance" is occasionally
in evidence. Perhaps miracles occasionally do happen. On that score, I repeat
here two definitions taken from 2. Vibration.:
Random
variable (chance variable, stochastic variable): a quantity that can
take any one of a number of unpredicted values.
Uncertainty
principle (indeterminancy principle): in quantum mechanics, the
principle that it is meaningless to speak of a particle's position, momentum, or
other parameters, except as results of measurements; measuring, however,
involves an interaction (such as a photon of light bouncing off the particle
under scrutiny), which must disturb the particle, though the disturbance is
noticeable only at an atomic scale. The principle implies that one cannot, even
in theory, predict the moment-to-moment behaviour of such a system.

So
even some hard-headed scientists accept the possibility that at least some
variables can be random, unpredictable, or subject to chance, and that their
laws are relative, that is, expressions of the currently accepted "truth", with
the full understanding and proviso that all their laws are themselves not
absolute, but subject to revision in the light of new knowledge.
Under the
title Ethics I have suggested that the "truth" of a matter is, itself, always
subject to the situation within which it occurs.
So I suggest that, while
some propositions may be relatively true, all are seldom, if ever, absolutely
true. Of that I feel only relatively certain!
Determinism and
Freedom, edited by Sidney Hook, "provides a vigorous exploration, by 25
leading intellectuals, of the philosophical, scientific, and social implications
of the doctrine of determinism, the concept of human freedom, and the issue of
moral responsibility in our modern world".

5. Rhythm

Proposition
Everything
flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the
pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is
the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.
It is claimed that
there is always an action and a reaction and that an understanding of this
principle may provide a means to overcome some of its effects.

Arguments
1. (a) This principle is closely
associated to the principle of polarity : rhythm manifests between two
contrasting poles (described in 4, part 1). (b) Rhythm rarely reaches the
extremes of the poles, which are usually difficult to establish; more usually it
swings towards one pole, then towards the opposite one.
2. (a) Suns, worlds,
tides, winds, men, animals, plants, minerals, forces, energy, mind, matter, and
even spirits manifest this principle. (b) It manifests in the creation and
destruction of worlds, in the rise and fall of nations, in the life history of
all things, including all phases of human existence: enthusiasm and depression;
courage and fear; birth, growth, maturity, decadence, death, and rebirth. (c)
Night follows day, day follows night; spring follows winter, which follows
autumn, summer, and spring. (d) So it is with movements, philosophies, creeds,
fashions, nations, and governments. (e) It manifests as the outbreathing and
inbreathing of the spirit and in evolution and involution.
3. (a) There is
no absolute rest, no cessation of movement, and all movements are rhythmic. (b)
Rhythmic manifestations and influences extend to all mental activities, thus
accounting for the bewildering succession of mood swings, feelings, and other
changes we experience.
4. (a) Hermetic masters, recognizing two general
planes of consciousness -- a higher conscious plane and a lower subconscious
plane -- have learned to escape some of these influences by way of
transmutation, following the law of neutralization, by rising, consciously, to a
higher plane. (b) This is akin to rising above a situation and letting it pass
beneath one; the process is similar to refusing to participate in the backward
swing, to denying its influence over one, while the pendulum swings back along
the subconscious plane. (c) Masters are able to carry this law to a high degree
of proficiency; by the use of will they attain a high degree of poise and mental
firmness and self-control. (d) The will is thus superior to the manifestations
of the principle -- we can escape its effects, even though it cannot be
destroyed.
5. (a) With the principle of rhythms comes the law of
compensation or counterbalance. (b) The swing towards one pole determines the
swing in the opposite direction, towards its opposite pole. (c) The seasons,
tides, gravitational forces, etc., balance each other in this way. (d)
Similarly, enjoyment is balanced with suffering; he who feels little pain also
feels little joy; pleasure is balanced by pain.
6. (a) Hermetists hold,
however, that the negative is precedent to the positive, i.e., that in
experiencing pleasure one does not necessarily have to pay for it with a
corresponding level of pain later. (b) The reason for this, they say, is because
the pain may have been experienced previously, either in the present life or in
a prior incarnation.
7. (a) This reason throws light on the problem of pain.
(b) Hermetists regard the chain of lives as continuous and as forming a part of
one overall individual life, so that in consequence each rhythm swing is
understood in this way. (c) Rhythm swings would be meaningless if the truth of
reincarnation is not admitted. (d) Hermetists claim that a master or advanced
student is able, to a great degree, to escape the swings towards pain by the
process of neutralization. (e) Nevertheless, the law of compensation is ever in
operation, striving to balance and counter-balance, and always succeeding over
time, even though several lifetimes may be required for the return swing of the
pendulum of rhythm.

Summum Exposition - The Principle
of Rhythm: "Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things
rise and fall; the pendulum swing expresses itself in everything; the measure of
the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm
compensates."
This Principle embodies the idea that in everything there
exists a measured motion to and fro; an outflow and inflow; a swing backward and
forward; a pendulum like movement; a tide like ebb and flow; a high tide and a
low tide. All things "come in and out of bond" between the two opposing points
which exist in accordance with the Principle of Opposition described previously.
There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and
a sinking. This is in the affairs of the universe, suns, worlds, humankind,
animals, mind, energy, and matter. This law is established in the creation and
destruction of worlds; in the rise and fall of nations; and finally in the
mental states of humans. The students that realize this Principle find its
universal application and discover the means to overcome its effect upon
themselves. They apply the mental Law of Neutralization. They cannot annul the
Principle or cause it to cease its operation. They do not escape the effect the
Principle will have on them at one level, but they have learned how to escape
its effects upon themselves to a certain degree. They have learned how to USE
it, instead of being USED BY it. In this and similar methods consist the art of
the masters. The masters immerse themselves at the point at which they desire to
rest, and then neutralize the rhythmic swing of the pendulum which wants to
carry them to the opposite point. All individuals who have attained any degree
of self mastery do this naturally, more or less unconsciously, but the masters
do this consciously by the use of their Will. They attain a degree of poise and
mental firmness beyond belief of the masses who are swung backward and forward
on the pendulum of Opposition. All the Principles of Summum have an
interrelationship with Rhythm. Rhythm draws its NATURE from the copulation of
CREATION. This principle and that of Opposition have been closely studied by the
masters, and the method of counteracting, neutralizing, and USING them forms an
important part of Psychokinesis.

Comments
This proposition raises
enormously complex issues such as those relating to action and reaction, will
and determinism, immortality, karma, and pain. Regarding these issues, when
limited to physical questions, like gravitational and electromagnetic forces,
there is generally close agreement among physicists. However, when considered by
neurologists and metaphysicists, there is a wide range of opinions.

4. Polarity

Proposition
Everything is
dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and
unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

An understanding of this principle is said to enable one to change one's own
polarities, as well as those of others.

Arguments

1. (a) The difference between things seemingly diametrically opposed to each
other is merely a matter of degree. (b) For example, spirit and matter are but
the two poles of the same thing, intermediate planes being merely different
degrees of vibration. (c) Another example: the All and the many are the same,
the difference being merely a matter of degree of mental vibration. (d) Thus the
Law and laws are the two opposite poles of one thing; likewise Principle and
principles, Infinite Mind and finite minds.
2. (a) On the physical plane the
same principle applies, the terms used being relative. (b) Heat and cold are
identical in nature but different in degrees of temperature (i.e., having higher
or lower vibrations). (c) East and west are, as one travels around the world,
relative directions. (c) Light and dark are relative constructs, with many
shades of grey between them. (d) Musical notes on a scale are related, yet
differ only by degree of sound vibration. (e) Light passed through a spectrum
varies by degree of colour. (f) Large and small vary by relative size and
volume. (g) Similarly, noise and quiet, hard and soft, sharp and dull, positive
and negative, good and bad, health and sickness, are all relationships within
continua.
3. The tendency of nature is to move in the direction of the
positive pole.
4. (a) On the mental plane opposite terms are similarly
relative. (b) Love and hate are opposite poles of emotional feeling. (c) Courage
and fear are opposite poles of another emotional feeling.
5. (a) Things
belonging to different classes cannot be transmuted into each other, but things
of the same class may have their polarities changed (i.e., things may change by
degree within a continuum). (b) Hermetists claim to be able to transmute
physical, mental, and spiritual states within classes but not between classes.
(c) They, and even students of hermetic principles, thus claim to be able to
gain various degrees of control over their own mental states and the mental
states of others. (d) Transmutation may be initiated for good or for bad
purposes, these terms themselves being relative ones.

Summum
Exposition - The Principle of Opposition: "Everything is dual;
everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and
unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be
reconciled."
This Principle embodies the idea that everything is dual;
everything has two opposing sides; everything has its pair of opposites, of
which all are ancient aphorisms. It explains the paradoxes that have perplexed
so many and have been stated as follows: "Thesis and antithesis are identical in
nature, but different in degree"; "opposites are the same, differing only in
degree"; "the pairs of opposites may be reconciled"; "in and out of bond NOTHING
and POSSIBILITY meet"; "extremes bond"; "everything is and is not at the same
time"; "every truth is partially false"; "all truths are a paradox"; "there are
at least two sides to every story," etc. It explains that in everything there
are two opposing points or opposite aspects (complementarity), and that
opposites are really only the two extremes of the same event, with many varying
degrees between them. To illustrate, "hot and cold," although opposites, are
really the same phenomenon, the differences consisting merely of degrees of the
same "event." Look at your thermometer and see if you can discover where hot
terminates and cold begins! In actuality, there is no such thing as absolute hot
or absolute cold -- the two terms "hot" and "cold" simply indicate varying
degrees of the same event, and that same event which manifests as hot and cold
is merely a form, variety, and rate of vibration. So "hot" and "cold" are simply
the two opposing points of that which you call "temperature" -- and the
phenomena attendant thereupon are manifestations of the Principle of Opposition.
The same Principle is involved in the case of "light and darkness," which are
the same event, the difference consisting of varying degrees between the two
opposing points of the phenomenon. Where does darkness leave off and light
begin? What is the difference between "large and small," "hard and soft," "black
and white," "sharp and dull," "noise and quiet," "high and low," "positive and
negative?" The Principle of Opposition explains these paradoxes.
The same
Principle operates on the spiritual and mental levels. Take an example from the
mental level -- that of "love and hate" -- two mental states apparently totally
different. Yet there are degrees of hate and degrees of love, and a middle point
in which you use the terms "like or dislike," which shade into each other so
gradually that sometimes you are at a loss to know whether you like or dislike
or neither. All are simply degrees of the same event as you will find if you
will but feel it for a moment. More than this (and considered of more importance
by the students), it is possible to change the vibrations of hate to the
vibrations of love in one's own mind and in the minds of others. Many of you who
read these lines have had personal experiences of the involuntary rapid
transition from love to hate, and the reverse, in your own case and that of
others. You will therefore realize the possibility of this being accomplished by
the use of the Will, by means of knowing the Will. "Good and evil" are but
opposing points of the same event, and the student understands the art of
altering evil into good by means of an application of the Principle of
Opposition.
In short, the Art of Immersion becomes a phase of Psychokinesis
known and practiced by the ancient and modern masters. All the Principles of
Summum have an interrelationship with Opposition. Opposition draws its NATURE
from the copulation of CREATION -- the Big Bang if you will. An understanding of
the Principles will empower one to change their own vibration as well as that of
others, if they will devote the time and study necessary to master the art.

Comments
Physical properties clearly lie within
continua: hot/cold; east/west; light/dark; musical notes in a scale;
noise/quiet; colours in a spectrum; hard/soft; sharp/dull; positive/negative;
healthy/sick. By the application of heat, cold becomes hot; by the application
of bulldozers (or earthquakes), mountains become valleys.
And some mental
conditions, too, clearly lie within a range of preferences: good/bad; love/hate;
courage/fear.
However, to extend this proposition by juxtaposing paradoxes,
like spirit/mind/matter, Law/laws, Principle/principle, and Infinite/finite,
seems to me to be manipulating the proposition to justify a preconceived idea --
that everything falls within a continuum with opposite poles. In the words of a
song: "It ain't necessarily so".
Take, for example, related concepts like
body, brain, mind, consciousness, thinking, intention, personality, character,
soul, and spirit, and place them, if you can, in a continuum within which some
oppose others. What, if anything, is in opposition to which? Is one just a
matter of a different degree of vibration in comparison with the others?

Philosophers have debated questions like these since before the time of
Plato and Aristotle. Are mind and matter distinct things? Descartes said they
are because, he maintained, they exist separately. Modern neurologists aren't so
sure.

Thomas Nagel, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy:

Scientific materialists claim that what happens in the mind clearly
depends upon what happens in the brain. ... Substance dualism holds that the
mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also double aspect
theory or property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from
the body, but only one thing, the person, that has two irreducibly different
types of properties, mental and physical. Substance dualism leaves room for the
possibility that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, before
birth or after death; property dualism does not . ... But these theories have
trouble accounting for consciousness and its subjective qualia. Neither dualism
nor materialism seems likely to be true, but it isn't clear what the
alternatives are.

Questions like these may seem to be mental
masturbation but are, in fact, of vital significance. Upon our answer to the
question: "Is there life after death?" hinge motivating forces that determine
many of our attitudes, our values, our sense of purpose, our lifestyle, and so
on. Paul's motivation rested upon his hope of immortality: "If it is for
this life only that Christ has given us hope, we of all men are most to be
pitied". (1 Cor. 15:12-19) On the other hand Omar Khayyam, in the
Rubaiyat, found a far different motivating force:
For in and
out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in
a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all
Things end in -- Yes --
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou
shalt be -- Nothing -- Thou shalt not be less.

3. Vibration

Proposition
Nothing rests;
everything moves; everything vibrates.

Arguments
1.
(a) Recent scientific discoveries tend to verify this proposition. (b) The
hermetic teaching is that not only is everything in constant movement and
vibration, but that the differences between the various manifestations of the
universal power are due entirely to the varying rates and modes of vibrations.
(c) Not only this, but that even the All, in itself, manifests a constant
vibration of such an infinite degree of intensity and rapid motion that it may,
for practical purposes, be considered to be at rest. (d) Even on the physical
plane, a rapidly moving object (such as a revolving wheel) may seem to be at
rest.
2. (a) Spirit is at one end of the Pole of Vibration, the other pole
being certain extremely gross forms of matter. (b) Between these two poles are
millions upon millions of different rates and modes of vibration.
3. (a)
Modern science has proven that all we call matter and energy are but modes of
vibratory motion. (b) Hot and cold are but degrees of temperature manifested
within a range of heat vibrations. (c) Similarly light, magnetism, and
electricity are forms of vibratory motion connected in some way with, and
probably emanating from the ether.
4. (a) Hermetists hold that universal
ether, postulated by science without its nature being clearly understood, and
called the ethereal substance, is an extremely tenuous and elastic substance
that pervades universal space and serves as a medium for the transmission of
waves of vibratory energy, such as heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. (b)
They hold that this substance is a connecting link between matter (i.e., forms
of vibratory energy) and energy or force, and that it manifests a degree of
vibration, in rate and mode, entirely its own. (c) They further hold that the
phenomena of attraction, including cohesion, chemical affinity, and gravitation,
are also manifested forms of vibratory energy.
5. (a) All particles are in
circular movement, from corpuscle to suns, all in orbits and many also rotating
on their axes. (b) In many cases the orbits themselves move around even greater
orbits. (c) Molecules, of which matter is composed, are also in a constant state
of vibration and movement around and against each other. (d) Molecules are
composed of atoms which, likewise, are in a constant state of movement and
vibration. (e) Atoms are composed of corpuscles, also called electrons, ions,
etc., which are also in a state of rapid motion, revolving around each other and
manifesting a very rapid state and mode of vibration.
6. (a) A child's top
may be used to illustrate modes and vibration. (b) When rotated at a slow speed
the images on the surface of the top may easily be seen and no sound is heard.
(c) As the top is rotated at a faster speed, the images appear blurred and a
deep growl can be heard. (d)At faster speeds the sound rises in pitch,
corresponding to a musical scale, until it reaches a shrill, piercing shriek,
and the top will not appear to be rotating because its speed has passed the rate
at which the human eye is able to differentiate visual impressions. (e) At even
faster speeds the noise level will exceed the range of human hearing and the top
will seem to be rotating silently.
7. (a) With other objects, such as a
wheel or cylinder, as their speed of rotation is increased beyond a certain
limit, they begin to heat up and to change colour, from dull red, to bright red,
then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and are finally translucent,
following the pattern in a spectrum as seen, for example, in a rainbow or prism.
(b) Images that appear to be transparent may actually have colour, but are in a
range beyond the human ability to differentiate them. (c) These colours may be
within infrared or other ranges as used, for example, in photography and
medicine.
8. (a) Electricity and magnetism are emitted at certain rates of
rotation and vibration, after which the molecules of the object may begin to
disintegrate, resolving into their originating elements or atoms. (b) At even
faster speeds the atoms may separate into corpuscles or even into ethereal
substance.
9. (a) Hermetists teach that, at very high rates of vibration,
objects manifest the various mental planes and even the various spiritual planes
listed under the planes of correspondence (see part 2). (b) They go even
further, and teach that all manifestations of thought, emotion, reason, will,
desire, and all other mental states or conditions, are vibrations, and that a
portion of these may be thrown off and may tend to affect the minds of other
persons and things by induction. (c) Some of the more advanced scientists are
rapidly moving towards the position of occultists who hold that the phenomena of
mind are likewise modes of vibration or motion. (d) Hermetists claim that
induction is the principle which produces the phenomena of telepathy, mental
influences of mind over mind, etc.
10. (a) With a knowledge of the
principles of vibration, as applied to mental phenomena, one may, Hermetists
claim, polarize one's mind to any degree one wishes, thus gaining a perfect
control over one's own mental states and the mental states of others. (b) This
power, acquired by instruction, exercises, practice, etc., is called mental
transmutation and is one of the branches of Hermetic art. (c) Masters and
adepts, excercising these powers, are using higher natural laws against lower
ones, thus performing what are commonly called miracles or magic. (d) Such
miracles may be initiated for good or ill.

Summum
Exposition - The Principle of Vibration: "Nothing rests; everything
moves; everything vibrates."
This Principle embodies the idea that
everything is in motion; everything vibrates; nothing is at rest; facts which
science endorses and which each new scientific discovery tends to verify. Yet
this Principle was enunciated thousands of years ago by masters of old. This
Principle explains that the differences between various manifestations of
matter, energy, space-time, mind, and even spirit result largely from varying
rates of vibration. From CREATION'S copulation (SUMMUM), which is pure spirit,
down to the grossest form of matter, all is in vibration. From the "in and out
of bond infinite times in a finite moment" (CREATION'S copulation), to the
expansion and collapse of a universe, the rate of vibration is observed as
states of "proper" time. The higher the vibration, the higher the position in
the scale. The vibration of spirit is at such an infinite rate of intensity and
rapidity that it is seemingly at rest -- just as a rapidly turning wheel seems
to be motionless. At the other end of the scale, there are gross forms of matter
whose vibrations are so low as to seem at rest. Between these two opposing
points, there are billions upon billions of varying degrees of vibration. From
quark, squark, lepton, slepton, electron, atom, and molecule, to planets and
universes, everything is in vibratory motion. This is also true in the fields of
energy and force (which are but varying degrees of vibration); and also at the
mental levels (whose states depend upon vibrations); and even at the spiritual
levels. All the Principles of Summum have an interrelationship with Vibration.
Vibration draws its NATURE from the copulation of CREATION. An understanding of
the Principle, with the appropriate application, empowers the student to control
their own mental vibrations as well as those of others. The masters also apply
this Principle to the conquering of natural phenomena in various ways. "Those
who understand the Principle of Vibration have taken hold of the scepter of
power."

Comments
The Kybalion was first copyrighted
in 1912. Since then scientists have taken huge strides as they continue to
uncover natural laws. To some extent they agree, to some extent they disagree,
with Hermetic concepts. As examples, here are some current views:

Corpuscular theory: the theory that light travels in the form of particles
(or 'corpuscles'). The theory went out of favour in the early nineteenth century
when it seemed proved that electromagnetic radiation consisted of waves.
However, near the end of the century it was shown that in certain circumstances
light may be thought of as particles rather than as waves. Modern quantum theory
claims that light travels in 'packets' (called quanta, or photons), which can
show either wave properties or particle properties.[1]
Wave theory of light:
the theory that energy is transmitted by electromagnetic radiation in the form
of waves. The theory is ancient, as is the opposing corpuscular (particle)
theory. Tests could not distinguish between them for centuries, until the
interference of light was demonstrated in 1801. As this cannot be explained with
particle radiation, the problem appeared resolved.
Some decades later, the
photoelectric effect was discovered. This cannot be explained by wave theory.
The modern view, based on the quantum theory, is that electromagnetic radiation
has a dual nature; it shows wave properties in some situations and particle
properties in others.[1]
Elementary particles (fundamental particles;
subatomic particles): indivisible particles from which all matter is formed. At
one time atoms were believed to be the elementary particles. Later it was
realized that they were divisible, that is, made of protons, neutrons, and
electrons. More recently many new particles have been identified and attempts
made to group them into families and explain their relationships with each
other.[1]
Ether (aether): a hypothetical fluid, formerly thought to permeate
all space and to be the medium through which electromagnetic waves were
propogated.[1]
Vibration (oscillation). Any regularly repeating to-and-from
motion or change. Examples are the swing of a pendulum, the vibration of a sound
source, and the change with time of the electric and magnetic fields in an
electromagnetic wave. [Some variables used to measure displacement are
amplitude, frequency, distance, and wavelength.][1]
Orbit: the curved,
usually closed, path or trajectory along which a moving object travels. Examples
include the elliptical orbit of a planet in the solar system, the circular orbit
of an electron in a magnetic field, and the parabolic trajectory of a projectile
under gravity.[1]
Orbital: 1. pertaining to an orbit; for example, an
orbital electron is one that is bonded around the nucleus of an atom. 2.
according to quantum theory, the electrons in an atom do not have fixed orbits
around the nucleus; instead, there is a finite probability of finding the
electron in a given volume at any distance from the nuclus.[1]
Dimension:
the number of co-ordinates needed to represent the points on a line, shape, or
solid. A plane figure is said to be two-dimensional; a solid is
three-dimensional. In more abstract studies, n-dimensional spaces can be
used.[2]
Dimensions and units of some physical quantities: mass, length,
time, area, volume, density, acceleration, force, pressure, momentum,
pulsatance.[2]
Variable: a changing quantity ... that might have any one of
a range of possible values. It may be dependent, because its value depends on
another value, or independent, because it has no such relationship with another
variable.[2]
Random variable (chance variable, stochastic variable): a
quantity that can take any one of a number of unpredicted values.[2]

Uncertainty principle (indeterminancy principle): in quantum mechanics, the
principle that it is meaningless to speak of a particle's position, momentum, or
other parameters, except as results of measurements; measuring, however,
involves an interaction (such as a photon of light bouncing off the particle
under scrutiny), which must disturb the particle, though the disturbance is
noticeable only at an atomic scale. The principle implies that one cannot, even
in theory, predict the moment-to-moment behaviour of such a system.
This
principle was established by German physicist Werner Heisenberg, and gave a
theoretical limit to the precision with which a particle's momentum and position
can be measured simultaneously: the more accurately the one is determined, the
more uncertainty there is in the other.[3]
Alternate universes: ...
mainstream physicists have stumbled onto their own alternate universes, hidden
among the complexities of science's most arcane equations.
Nobody knows what
form these parallel universes might take, and it's far from clear that we could
detect their existence, let alone step through a mirror [like Alice] or a space
warp [like Captains Kirk and Picard] for a visit. But hints that ours is just
one of many universes keep cropping up in all sorts of different theories -- and
in ways that can seem far stranger than fiction.[4]
Neural variables: every
facet of mind, from metal images to moral sense, from mundane memories to acts
of genius, has been tied to tracts of neural real estate. Using fMRI, a new
scanning technique that measures blood flow, scientists can tell whether the
owner of the brain is imagining a face or a place. They can knock out a gene and
prevent a mouse from learning, or insert copies and make it learn better. They
can see the shrunken wrinkles that let a murderer kill without conscience, and
the overgrown folds that let an Einstein deduce the secrets of the universe.
...
One challenge is that we are still clueless about how the brain
represents the content of our thoughts and feelings. Yes, we may know where
jealousy happens -- or visual images, or spoken words -- but where is not the
same as how.[5]

~~~~~
Did the ancient Masters have this knowledge?
Archaeological findings tend to suggest that they did. That question provides a
topic for another entry.
Do current Masters have this knowledge and more? If
so, why do they keep it hidden? What do we know about psychic experiences? Are
there parallel universes? If so, what do we know about them? Have past and
present humans communicated with beings from other universes? All these
questions deserve examination.

References
1. Facts
on File Dictionary of Physics, Dr. John Daintith (ed.)
2. Facts on File
Dictionary of Mathematics, Carol Gibson (ed.)
3. Quality Paperback Book Club
Dictionary of Ideas
4. Will We Discover Another Universe? Michael D. Lemonick
(Time, April 10, 2000)
5. Will the Mind Figure Out How the Brain Works?
Steven Pinker (Time, April 10, 2000)

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

2.Correspondence

Proposition
As above, so
below; as below, so above.
This principle is said to embody the
principle that there is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena
of life and the various planes of being: material, mental, and spiritual.

Arguments
1. (a) While all is in the All, it is
equally true that the All is in all. (b) To him who truly understands this truth
hath come great knowledge.
2. (a) Hermetic teachings are to the effect that
the All is imminent (remaining within, inherent, abiding within) its Universe,
and in every part, particle, unit, or combination, within the Universe. (b) To
the degree that humans realize the existence of the indwelling spirit (i.e., the
creative source) within their being, so will they rise in the spiritual scale of
life.
3. (a) There are many planes of being, many degrees of existence
within the Universe, from grossest matter to one in which the highest being is
separated only by the thinnest division from the spirit of the All. (b) All
progress is in an upward and ongoing path along the scale of life towards the
All; it is a returning home. (c) The spirit of each soul is thus infinitely
expanded, over time, but is never annihilated, even when it has returned home.

4. (a) In the creative cycle, the All, in its aspect of being, projects its
will towards its aspect of becoming, and the process of creation begins. (b) The
terms meditation and contemplation are used by Hermetists to describe the
process of creation. (c) This process consists of the lowering of vibratory
energy until a very low degree of vibrations is reached, at which point the
grossest possible form of matter is manifested. (d) From this outpouring stage
of involution (in which the All becomes involved or wrapped up or rapt in its
creation), is begun the process of evolution or indrawing. (e) The cycle of
involution and evolution takes aeons of time, as humanly measured, but is as the
twinkle of an eye to the All.
5. The questions, "Why did the All create the
Universe and how and why does the All continue to maintain it?" still remain. No
satisfactory answer has been found or offered, even by the most advanced
Hermetists.

Summum Exposition - The Principle of
Correspondence: "As above, so below; as below, so above."
This Principle
embodies the idea that there is always a correspondence or correlation between
the laws and phenomena of the various levels of being and life. This aphorism,
"As above, so below; as below, so above," gives one the means of solving many a
mysterious paradox and hidden secrets of nature. There are levels beyond your
knowing, but when you apply the Principle of Correspondence to them you are able
to understand much that would otherwise be unknowable to you. This Principle
exists at the various levels of the material, mental, and spiritual universes
and is of universal application. This Principle has been considered to be one of
the most important mental instruments by which humankind is able to set aside
the obstacles which hide the unknown from view. Its use can even remove the
"Veil of Isis" (death) so that one can catch a glimpse of the other side. Just
as a knowledge of the principles of geometry empowers the astronomer to measure
distant suns and their movements while seated in an observatory, a knowledge of
the Principle of Correspondence empowers you to reason intelligently from the
known to the unknown. All the Principles of Summum have an interrelationship
with Correspondence. Correspondence draws its NATURE from the copulation of
CREATION. Studying the monad, one is studying the universe.

Comments
For the purposes of convenience and study,
Hermetists classify entities into three planes of phenomena: physical, mental,
and spiritual. They divide each of these into seven classes, and sub-divide each
class into seven sub-classes. Many humans, in their struggles to understand how
the universe began, presumed, and many still presume, to attribute human
characteristics to that beginning and to the universe's continuing existence. To
presume, as Hermetists do, that there was one ultimate source, infinite,
unchanging, immutable, eternal, absolute, and beyond time and space, who (sic)
created a perfect, yet illusory universe, is surely stretching the imagination
of even such an entity, let alone us lower-level creatures! I wonder how
Hermetists, and they are by no means alone, can believe such arrant
nonsense.

There are several possible explanations. One is that
Hermetists, having accepted a basic premise that "God" is quasi-human, have
allowed their will-to-believe to take on many strange, preposterous,
science-fiction forms. Another explanation may be that they were not in fact
deceived, yet taught such dogma, because they were pursuing some entirely
different, undisclosed agenda. However, if I were to be more generous in my
assessment of this Hermetic proposition, I might be open-minded (or mentally
vacant) enough to accept the possibility, however incredible it may seem, that
their theses in fact represent some extraordinary forms of reality and that I'm
simply unable to appreciate that possibility!

Playing with possibilities
can, of course, become most entertaining as long as wild, speculative ideas are
not taken too seriously. However many humans do take such ideas seriously,
invent religions around them, and then all hell breaks loose (pun intended)!

The Planes of Correspondence concept puts me in mind of the taxonomy of
biologists, who classify matter hierarchically: species, genus, family, order,
subclass, class, kingdom. I find repugnant the idea of one class being
categorized as higher than another, since that term is often used
judgementally in common parlance. Surely every class has its own importance,
deserving great respect. What is involved here is complexity. Entities that are
more complex, i.e., vibrate at a greater rate, are not necessarily
worth more. Plankton is much less complex than a whale, yet without it
a whale wouldn't enjoy an important part of its diet and might even become
incapable of existence. Air is much less complex than a human brain, yet without
oxygen a human would perish. The term gross is also often used
pejoratively, so I'd prefer to see a more appropriate one used. Heirarchical
concepts form the basis of many organizational systems and are discussed
separately.

The principle of vibration is discussed in part 3. Meanwhile
I note here that I view being as a static, transitory state, of
interest in that it is a fragment in the process of becoming. Like a
photographic negative, it captures, in limited form, a moment in time. Each
moment, each state of being, is important since without each one there could be
no existence, no activity, no thought. Each of these fragments forms part of
life's flow, part of life's purposes, whatever these may be. Questions about
time and space are also discussed separately.

Hermetic concepts of
involution and evolution fit with the idea of an expanding and contracting
universe posited by Hawking and others. Hermetic evolutionary concepts
correspond with the ideas developed by Charles Darwin's Origin of
Species, and Thomas Huxley's Man's Place in Nature. Current views
are entertainingly provided by William S. Beck, Modern Science and the
Nature of Life.

There are at least three theories about the origins
of life on earth: the creationist, the evolutionist, and various mixes of these
two, such as one I'll call the extra-terrestrial. These also are discussed
separately.

Ancient views of heaven and earth are still popular, and are
described in this critical extract from Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle:

Middle Platonism, which soon came to dominate philosophical thinking in
the period of early Christianity, was fundamentally religious and even mystical.
A.J. Festugiere, "Personal Religion Among the Greeks", describes it as embodying
a desire to escape: "Ah! To leave this earth, to fly to heaven, to be like unto
the Gods and partake of their bliss".
This was the great religious yearning
of the age: to undergo transformation, to transport oneself into a new world, an
immortal life, union with the divine in a metamorphosed universe. The buzzword
was "salvation." The ways to achieve it became the central concern of a
proliferation of schools and cults, both Hellenistic and Jewish.
It is
largely to Plato (who absorbed earlier ideas from the mystery religion known as
Orphism) and to the stream of later "Platonic" thinking which he set in motion,
that we owe this sense of alienation from the world and the urge to move beyond
it. In Platonism, there was a clear separation between the higher world (above
the earth) of spiritual ultimate realities, where things were perfect and
unchanging, and the earthly world of matter and the senses of which humans were
a part. As an imperfect reflection of the upper one, comprised of things that
were changing and perishable, this lower world was decidedly inferior. Human
beings possessed a portion of the higher reality in that part of themselves
called the "soul." It had existed before birth and been a part of the spiritual
world. Now it was trapped in bodies of matter, but ultimately it would achieve
release and unite with the divine. The soul was immortal. Through the soul, the
human being was destined to merge into some larger life.

Monday, May 16, 2005

1. Mentalism

The Proposition: The ALL is
MIND; the Universe is Mental.
By ALL is meant the substantial reality or
spirit underlying all the outward manifestations and appearances which we know
under terms like the phenomena of life, matter, and energy.

Arguments
1. (a) The ALL is unknowable. (b) (i) We must either think
of spirit as infinite living mind, while at the same time acknowledging that we
cannot fully understand it, or (ii) we must stop thinking of the matter at all.

2. (a) Mind (as well as metals and elements) may be transmuted from state to
state, degree to degree, condition to condition, pole to pole, vibration to
vibration. (b) True Hermetic transmutation is a mental art. (c)"Transmutation
means to change from one nature, form, or substance, into another; to
transform." (Webster) (d) The term is usually employed to designate the ancient
art of the transmutation of base metals into gold, but may also be applied to
the changing of mental and spiritual states: a form of mystic psychology.
3.
(a) If the universe is mental in its nature, then mental transmutation must be
the art of changing the conditions of the universe along the lines of matter,
force and mind. (b) If all be mental, then the art which enables one to
transmute mental conditions must render the Master the controller of material
conditions as well as those ordinarily called "mental". (c) Students and
Hermetists of lesser degree than Masters -- Initiates and Teachers -- are able
to freely work along the mental plane, in mental transmutation, transmitting
mental conditions, states, etc., into others, according to various formulae,
more or less efficaciously. (d) The principles and art, underlying all Hermetic
forms and practices, may be used for good or evil.
4. (a) Under and back of
the universe of time, space, and change, is ever to be found the substantial
reality -- the fundamental truth. (b) The All must be all that really is; there
can be nothing existing outside the All, else the All would not be the All.

5. (a) the All must be infinite, for there is nothing else to define,
confine, bound, limit or restrict it. (b) The All must be infinite in time, or
eternal, for there is nothing else to have ever created it, and something can
neither evolve from nothing nor devolve into nothing. (c) The All must be
infinite in space, for there is no place outside it, and it must be continuous
in space for there is nothing to break, separate, or interrupt its continuity.
(d) The All must be infinite in power, or absolute, for there is nothing to
limit, restrict, restrain, confine, disturb or condition it. (e) The All must be
immutable, or not subject to change in its real nature, for there is nothing to
work changes upon it; nothing into which it could change; nor from which it
could have changed.
6. (a) The All, being infinite, absolute, eternal, and
unchangeable, it must follow that anything finite, changeable, fleeting, and
conditioned cannot be the All, so that any and all finite things must be as
nothing in reality. (b) Since we see that which is called matter, what we see
does not really exist -- it is really energy or force at a low rate of
vibration. (c) Energy and force are blind, mehanical things, so there must be
something or somethings higher than matter, or energy, that really exist. (d)
Those things are life and mind. (e) There is an infinite, living mind, what
illuminated souls mean when they call this SPIRIT.
7. (a) The All cannot
transfer or subtract a portion of itself, nor can it reproduce or multiply
itself -- in the first place there would be a taking away, and in the second
place a multiplication or addition to the All, and both possibilities are
absurd. (b) Is there no third way in which Man creates? Yes, there is -- he
creates mentally! In so doing he uses no outside materials, nor does he
reproduce himself, and yet his Spirit pervades the Mental Creation. (c)
Following the Principle of Correspondence [see the second principle] we are
justified in considering that the All creates the Universe mentally, in a manner
akin to the process whereby man creates mental images.
8. (a) The first
thought that comes to the thinking man after he realizes the truth that the
Universe is a mental creation of the All, is that the Universe and all that it
contains is a mere illusion; an unreality, against which idea his instincts
revolt. But this, like all other great truths, must be considered from both
absolute and relative points of view. (b) From the absolute viewpoint, of
course, the Universe is in the nature of an illusion, a dream, a phantasmagoria,
as compared to the All in itself. (c) There is nothing real except the All, no
matter what terms we may use to think of, or to discuss the subject. (d)
Nevertheless, to the finite minds forming a part of that universe, and viewing
it thorough mortal faculties, the Universe is very real indeed, and must be so
considered. (e) It is the only one we can ever know, though we rise from plane
to plane, higher and higher in it. (f) To know otherwise, by actual experience,
we must be the All itself.

Summum Exposition - The
Principle of Psychokinesis: "SUMMUM is MIND, thought; the universe is a mental
creation."

This first great Principle embodies the idea that "All is
Mind." It explains that SUMMUM (which is the substantial essence underlying all
the outward manifestations and appearances which you know under the terms of
"the material universe," "the phenomena of life," "matter," "energy,"
"space-time," "distance," "speed," "relativity," and, in short, all that is
apparent to your material senses) is SPIRIT. This SPIRIT may be considered and
thought of as A UNIVERSAL, INFINITE, LIVING MIND.
This living MIND performs
gastrulation, which is a turning of itself inside out, manifesting its esoteric
NATURE outwardly. Therefore, all the phenomenal worlds and universes are simply
a mental creation of SUMMUM (MIND), subject to the laws of created things, and
the universes, as a whole and in their parts or units, have their existence in
the Mind of SUMMUM. It is in this Mind that we "live and move and have our
being." This SUBJECTIVE OBSERVATION of CREATION is the Principle which
establishes the mental nature of the universes and easily explains all of the
varied mental and psychic phenomena. Without such explanation these phenomena
are not understandable and defy scientific inspection. An understanding of this
first great Principle of Psychokinesis empowers the individual to comprehend the
laws of the mental universe, and to apply the same to his or her well being and
RHYTHMED advancement. The serious student is empowered to apply intelligently
the great mental laws, instead of using them in a haphazard manner. With the
Master Key in his or her possession, the student may unlock the many doors of
the mental and psychic sanctuaries of knowledge and enter the same freely and
intelligently. This Principle explains the NATURE of matter, energy, space-time,
and why and how all these are subordinate to the mastery of mind. Those who
understand the knowledge of the mental nature of the universe are well advanced
on the path to mastery. Without this master key, mastery is impossible, and the
student knocks in vain at the many doors of Creation.

Comments
We
don't know how the universe began or what created it, although some very
creative theories have been advanced, such as ones presented by Galileo Galilei,
Isaac Newton,and Albert Einstein. Current theories include those of Stephen W.
Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time. Here are some selected
paragraphs, edited for brevity:
"Ultimately one would hope to find a
complete, consistent, unified theory that would include all partial theories
such as those of gravity, of relativity, electromagnetic forces, nuclear forces,
and quantum mechanics. The quest for such a theory is known as "the unification
of physics". It seems that the uncertainty principle* is a fundamental feature
of the universe we live in. A successful unified theory must therefore
necessarily incorporate this principle. Even if there is only one possible
unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that
breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? [*
The uncertainty principle, developed in the context of quantum physics by Werner
Heisenberg, states that "The more precisely the position is determined, the less
precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.]
"The usual
approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the
question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does
the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so
compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator
and, if so, does he [sic] have any other effect on the universe? And who created
him?
"If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be
understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then
we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to
take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we would be the
ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of
God."

Far be it from me to theorize, in this entry, about who or what or
if God is! However some remarks may be relevant, concerning the principle under
consideration.

To state that there is an All, a Mind, whether knowable or
not, a Spirit, a Substantial Reality, a God, seems to me to be pure speculation,
stemming from a fear of uncertainty and a desire to attribute creation to a
supreme entity who or which is the cause or creator. Such a proposition might be
entertaining if we don't insist that we've uncovered forms of Ultimate Reality
and Truth. To argue, based upon such guesswork, that there is One, and only one,
Source for all that is, is simply an extension of that orginal guess without any
supporting evidence whatsoever. And then to insist that the All is the
Fundamental Truth, beyond Time and Space, Unchanging, Infinite in Power,
Immutable, Eternal, and Absolute, seems to me to be compounding an unprovable
proposition with more speculation. To describe that Source in human terms is
unquestionably anthropomorphic.

My preference is to suggest that there
appears to be some form of intelligence permeating the universe. Many names have
been given to this phenomenon, like Substantial Reality, Deity (under many
titles), the Infinite, Eternal Energy, Matter, the All, etc. I usually use the
term Source to try to avoid anthropocentrisms, and the term Intelligence to
suggest that there may be a level of awareness, a direction, a purpose, behind
all thought, all tangibles, all states of being, all activities. That is, I
suggest, about as far as we can go with any degree of confidence.

Of
course there is much we can learn about the characteristics of this
intelligence, about how it is manifest under conditions we generally accept as
reality. But to state that reality is both an illusion, from an absolute
perspective, and at the same time is substantial, from a relative viewpoint,
seems to me to be a vain attempt to justify the preconceived notion that "God"
is an "absolute" being. I question the proposition that there are, in fact, such
constructs as absolute entities, since all things, all propositions, are
evidently relative, all are in relationships that depend for their existence
upon the circumstances within which they occur at any specific point in time.
(I'll address questions about time and space in separate entries.)

Yes
indeed, we can and do sometimes suffer from illusions, but that is not to say
that we are all, all of the time, in a state of illusion. Come on! Let's get
real!

According to the Kybalion, the ancient Hermetic Masters had a more
comprehensive knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, physics, and psychology than we
possess today. Modern masters claim that they still possess this knowledge, but
keep it hidden within esoteric societies. As evidence of ancient, transcendent
knowledge, modern masters point, for example, to the pyramids, which show the
connection between their design and astronomical facts made public only
recently; to ancient theories regarding the physical and chemical properties of
matter that are being slowly verified by the latest discoveries (or uncoveries)
of modern science; and to ancient psychic science which modern psychologists are
now, reluctantly, beginning to admit may be accurate.

Translating the
arcane language of the Kybalion into more current terms, this last thought
simply suggests that trained astronomers, physicists, chemists, and
psychologists, whether Hermetists or not, may have some understanding of, and
may even have a degree of control over, certain material, mental, and maybe even
spiritual conditions. Ancient knowledge is described as transcendent, i.e.,
surpassing and superior to common knowledge, and as inner as well as outer
knowledge. Those claims appear to have some substance, and will be discussed in
another entry.

One writer, Joel McCain, says: "Hermetic Law must be
understood and accepted before one can see the higher planes of existence". This
seems to me to be an unjustifiable conclusion. If Hermetists do have a more
comprehensive knowledge they're not sharing it with us unless we become "true
believers", so we'll just have to make do without them and without that
knowledge! Meanwhile we need to be cautious about whether or not they use their
so-called hidden knowledge to control and otherwise manipulate the rest of us.
The Kybalion could very possibly be a work of error or even of deliberate
misinformation.

The Hermetic principles that follow this one attempt to
justify the conclusions reached under this first principle.

An
understanding of Kybalion concepts may possibly help to explain why millions
hold on so tenaciously to patently fallacious beliefs and thus seem to be
looking in wrong directions for solutions to personal and social problems. My
interest in the Kybalion lies mostly in my curiosity to see whether its
arguments may lead towards viable solutions for personal and social problems.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Hermetic Principles

In attempting to find solutions for personal and
social problems, it may be wise to look, however briefly, at the origins of some
of the basic principles that now govern human thinking. It is quite possible
that we need to re-think some of these principles rather than give them blind
acceptance. I've noted that I'm more interested in what is said
than in who said it, or when it was first
said. I choose to begin philosophical discussions with Hermetic principles
simply because I find that the list of principles, claimed to have originated
with Hermes, provide a useful point of departure, even though other persons may
have preceded Hermes, if Hermes did in fact exist at all, as the fathers and
mothers of philosophy.

According to mystic tradition, Thoth Hermes Trismegistus, also known as
Enoch to the Jews, and Mercury to the Greeks, was a wise man in ancient Egypt
who was thought to be a messenger of the gods. He was venerated, himself, as a
god. Many theological, metaphysical, and scientific ideas can be traced back to
this claim and to concepts said to have been taught by Hermes. For example, it
is said that with the help of the gods he invented writing, founded the social
order, created languages, introduced medicine, and instituted several other
branches of learning including law, art, music, rhetoric, magic, philosophy,
geography, mathematics (especially geometry), anatomy, and oratory. Hermes is
credited with being the founder of astrology (later developed into astronomy),
of alchemy (later developed into chemistry), and the study of the soul (later
developed into psychology). Many of his teachings are believed to have been
occult (considered to be beyond the range of ordinary knowledge) and esoteric
(designed for and intended to be understood only by initiates).

He is often portrayed as the personification of Universal Wisdom, with
his foot upon the back of Typhon (the vanquished dragon of ignorance and
perversion). "Typhon signified the lower world which swallows up the spiritual
nature of the individual who, being imperfect, is forced to descend from the
higher spheres and be reborn into the physical universe." (Manly P. Hall,
The Secret Teachings of the Ages)

Doctrines of arcane societies like the Masons, Rosicrucians, and
Theosophists probably originate from Hermetic thought, now called the Hermetic
Corpus. Some claim to possess copies of Hermes' writings, although almost all
such attributions were proably destroyed when the famous library and museum in
Alexandria was burned (in BC 47, 272 AD, 391 AD, and 640 AD).

Here, from Hall, is a small portion of a typical ritual, taken from a
meeting of such a society:
Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, the veil
of the Temple was rent from top to bottom. The venerable initiator, in his robes
of blue and gold, slowly raised his jeweled wand [in the form of a caduceus] and
pointed with it into the darkness revealed by the tearing of the silken curtain:
"Behold the Light of Egypt!"
The candidate, in his plain white robe, gazed
into the utter blackness framed by the two great lotus-headed columns between
which the veil had hung. As he watched, a luminous haze distributed itself
throughout the atmosphere until the air was a mass of shining particles. The
face of the neophyte was illumined by the soft glow as he scanned the shimmering
cloud for some tangible object.
The initiator spoke again: "This Light which
ye behold is the secret luminance of the Mysteries. Whence it comes none
knoweth, save the 'Master of the Light'. Behold Him!"
Suddenly, through the
gleaming mist a figure appeared, surrounded by a flickering greenish sheen. The
initiator lowered his wand and, bowing his head, placed one hand edgewise
against his breast in humble salutation.
The neophyte stepped back in awe,
partly blinded by the glory of the revealed figure ...

Seven propositions, claimed by Hermetic Masters to be universal
principles, are attributed to Hermes. These are listed and defended in The
Kybalion, a work edited by Three Initiates, and available at this href="http://kybalion.home.att.net/kybalion.html">link. A more recent group,
Summum, accessable at this href="http://www.summum.us/philosophy/principles.shtml">link makes the
claim, "Since its first publication, The Kybalion has fallen into the public
domain, and as time passes, its language becomes more and more archaic. In
addition, The Kybalion is incomplete since it lacks the basis and foundation of
the information contained therein. Summum: Sealed Except to the Open
Mind rewrites the information found in The Kybalion in a manner more
appropriate for our modern era. It also presents new material not found in The
Kybalion, thus giving a complete and more indepth outline of an age old
philosophy."

I consider these claims in separate entries.

Deception

Eduardo Giannetti, Lies We Live By: The
Art of Self Deception (1997), extracts:
"The drive towards a more objective
cognition is linked to the analysis of what can justify, or not, our belief in
something. Tradition and authority, for example, do not pass muster. A theory or
a proposition does not become more or less objective because of who states or
defends it, but because of what it states or defends. The knowing subject may be
more or less objective in his knowing. His ideas and conclusions may be more or
less believable. ... What, then does objectivity consist in? The fundamental
idea is to eliminate from the search for knowledge everything that does not
belong to reality as it really is. Knowledge will be the more effective the more
independent it is of the cognition subject, and this is as valid with respect to
the individual characteristics of the person knowing as, at one extreme, with
respect to the culture, the society, or even to the specifity of the biological
species that he happens to belong to. The ideal of objectivity is the complete
annulment of bias and subjectivity in the search for knowledge. ...
"The
basic conclusion of the argument on the gap between the objectivity pursued by
science and the subjectivity of human experience is that one should not expect
from the progress of science what it cannot offer. ...
"Doubts cannot lie.
Ask yourself whether you know yourself and you will have serious reasons to
begin to doubt. Familiarity blinds us. The epistemological peculiarities of
introspective self-knowledge, on the one hand, and the insulating presence of
powerful psychological forces, on the other, make the search for knowledge of
oneself a formidably difficult and slippery task. What is astonishing, however,
is the almost irrepressible human propensity, present in each of us to a certain
degree and in certain selective spots, for shutting the door on doubt and quite
innocently losing the key. Self-deception is not the simple ignorance of not
knowing and recognising that one does not know. It is the illusory, unfounded
claim to self-knowledge -- imagining that one knows without this being so, the
convinced belief that seduces and confuses, the feverish faith that carries one
away, the cocksure certainty of knowing something that is not the case. ...

"The internal hypocrite that dwells inside us is a different animal from the
social hypocrite that prowls around and lies in wait for us. Subtly seductive
and ingratiating, but cunningly sly and oblique, he knows that 'the best way to
persuade consists in not persuading'. The lie that we silently tell ourself
doesn't so much lie as it seduces. It acquires the semblance of truth, the
better to lie."

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda:The Formation of Men's
Attitudes (1962), extracts from the introduction:
"Most people are easy
prey for propaganda ... because of their firm but entirely erroneous conviction
that it is composed only of lies and 'tall stories' and that, conversely, what
is true cannot be propaganda. But modern propaganda his long disdained the
ridiculous lies of the past and out moded forms of propaganda. It operates
instead with many different kinds of truth -- half truth, limited truth, truth
out of context. ...
"A second basic misconception that makes people
vulnerable to propaganda is the notion that it serves only to change opinions.
That is one of its aims, but a limited, subordinate one. Much more importantly,
it aims to intensify existing trends, to sharpen and focus them, and above all,
to lead men to action (or, when it is directed at immovable opponents, to
non-action through terror or discouragement, to prevent them from interfering).
...
"[Ellul designates intellectuals] as virtually the most vulnerable of all
to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of
secondhand, unverifiable information; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an
opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to
opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of
information; (3) they consider themselves capable of 'judging for themselves'.
They literally need propaganda.
"Cast out of the disintegrating microgroups
of the past, such as family, church, or village, the individual is plunged into
mass society and thrown back upon his own inadequate resources, his isolation,
his loneliness, his ineffectuality. Propaganda then hands him in veritable
abundance what he needs: a raison d'etre, personal involvement and participation
in important events, an outlet and excuse for some of his more doubtful
impulses, righteousness -- all factitious, to be sure, all more or less
spurious; but he drinks it all in and asks for more. Without his intense
collaboration by the propagandee the propagandist would be helpless.
"Thus
propaganda, by first creating pseudo-needs through 'pre-propaganda' and then
providing pseudo-satisfactions for them, is pernicious."
-----
Faced with such insights, how is one to embrace the
formidible challenges that confront those who strive to determine the truth or
falsity of any proposition? Answer: with great difficulty, much perseverance,
and a lot of discernment! The alternatives would seem to be to just ignore all
controversy, or lie down and play dead, or simply absorb, secondhand, the credo
of so-called authority figures.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Identity

These brief thoughts will serve to introduce the
topic of identity. Together with the topics of altruistic
harmony and situation ethics, these three concepts form the
foundation blocks of this blog.

Plutarch: Consolation to Appollonius

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely
accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too
much"; and upon these all other precepts depend.

From what, or from
where, does the sense of self originate?

The deterministic opinion
insists that the perception of self is a necessary, though temporary, lifetime
evolutionary step resulting from the reactions of electrochemical variables that
become structured in the brain into mental characteristics like
recognition/repression of pleasure and pain, the development of
determinism/free-will, conceptual thinking (e.g., faith, belief, creativity),
language, perception, decision making, actions, and so on. This opinion implies
that the self does not exist before birth or independently of the brain, and
ceases to exist at physical death.

One opinion suggests that the sense of
self may possibly be transferred from parents to children through DNA and
chromosomes, and may even include elements of instinct, intuition, social
consciousness, and knowledge, which the parents acquired genetically through
their own parents. To this source, persons presumably add information acquired
during lifetimes and, in turn, pass this enhanced (or debased) information to
progeny.

For more information see Mind and Brain, in
Scientific American, special issue, September 1992, and href="http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0503/feature1/">Beyond the
Brain, in National Geographic, March 2005.

An
opinion is that persons have souls and that the sense of self resides
in these souls. If so, are souls created or transferred to individuals by their
parents via semen, ovum, or both, or in some other way? What might be that way?
Does the creation or transfer occur at conception, some time during pregnancy,
at birth, or at some time after birth? Where, in the body, does this soul
reside? At conscious, subconscious levels? Are souls independent, eternal
entities, residing in specific bodies during their lifetime? If so, where do
they exist before birth and/or after the death of the body? Upon what basis, if
at all, is the selection of lifetime parents made?

Barbara B. Brown,
Supermind
Even if science ultimately concluded it can account
for every feat, fancy and phenomenon of mind and consciousness, it will, in the
meantime, be unqualified to work at knowing mind as if it operated differently
from the workings of the brain.

James Hollis, The Eden
Project
Consciousness is achieved only through the loss of the Other
[the mother or her substitute], and the perception that the Other is truly
Other. ... The care and feeding of the infant then becomes a subtle combination
of 1) reassurance that the Other is there, and 2) progressive separations
imposed on the child. In fact, one might say that the primary psychological task
of the parent is to ease the burden but prepare the passage into full
separation, into that later state we call adulthood. ...
Jung's use of the
term Self, as distinguished from the ego [self], is meant to honor the mystery
that we are. The Self, like God, is essentially unknowable. So one must speak
both of the mystery of God and the mystery of the Self. The Self is not an
object or even a goal, but an activity, a process.
The Self is the
purposiveness of the organism, the teleological intention of becoming itself as
fully as it can. As the rhizome contains the fullness of the flower, so the
unified self-hood of the organism is expressed through the variegations of root,
stem, flower, pistil and stamen.
The Self is unknowable, though its
intentionality may be inferred from its expression through the venues of body,
affect, cognition, symptom, dream image and the like. Reading the intentionality
of the Self is the prime task of Jungian-oriented therapy and presumed to be the
key to healing. As the Self embodies the totality of the organism and its
mysterious, autonomous activity, so we may never know it fully any more than a
swimmer could know the ocean, or a thinker conjugate the dome of Heaven. Hence
the fragile ego [self] must content itself with a sense of
Self...

To all these opinions and questions I can only say, "I don't
know; does anyone?". The facts are that most of us have a strong belief in the
independent existence of a self, and a conviction that each of us is autonomous
and immortal. Given those conclusions, if true, we feel justified in attempting
to exploit a potential for personal control, growth, self-fulfillment, and
enlightenment, and in accepting concepts of personal authority and
responsibility.

Choice and character are grounded in the belief that we
exist, individually, as selves, with capacities to make choices and to develop
as separate persons. It is a moot point whether these capacities are, at least
partly, responses that result from imprinting. Either way, I feel free to make
choices, to develop as I see fit and, to a considerable degree, to transcend the
limitations imposed upon me by imprinting. Because I feel free I also feel
accountable for my thoughts and actions. That freedom has enabled me to choose
wisdom (that is, altruistic harmony) as my highest good, to list my values, to
identify my purpose, objectives, and projects, and to define love and a few
other terms in ways I find appropriate.

In the search for self I find I
have a basic choice: to submit to social expectations or to follow my own paths.
Each choice has implications:

Sidney M. Jourard, The Transparent
Self.
We camoflage our true being before others to protect ourselves
against criticism or rejection. This projection comes at a steep price. When we
are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood. When
we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the "lonely
crowd". Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose
touch with our real selves. This loss of self contributes to illness in its
myriad forms. ...
There is increasing scientific evidence that man's physical
and psychological health are profoundly affected by the degree to which he has
found meaning, direction, and purpose in his existence. ... man can attain to
health and fullest personal development only insofar as he gains courage to be
himself with others and when he finds goals that have meaning for him --
including the reshaping of society so it is fit for all to live and to grow in.
...
Loving is scary, because when you permit yourself to be known, you expose
yourself not only to a lover's balm, but also to a hater's bombs! When he knows
you, he knows just where to plant them for maximum effect. ...
We are said to
be a society dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Yet, disclosure of the truth,
the truth of one's being, is often penalized. Impossible concepts of how man
ought to be -- which are often handed down from the pulpit -- make man so
ashamed of his true being that he feels obliged to seem different, if for no
other reason than to protect his job. Yet, when a man does not acknowledge to
himself who, what, and how he is, he is out of touch with reality, and he will
sicken. No one can help him without access to the facts. And it seems to be
another fact that no man can come to know himself except as an outcome of
disclosing himself to another person. ...
I began to wonder if professional
helpers were not so much helping people discover their own possibilities and
live them, as they were unwittingly helping people to confine themselves to a
way of being that maintained a social or family status quo. If that happens to
be true, then you could view sick or maladjusted people as unenlightened and
ineffective revolutionaries and the professional helper as an agent of social
control, that is, as some kind of counter-revolutionary. ...
Some of us work
for advertising firms, manufacturers, the military, and other concerns where the
aim in studying man is not to help the man who is being studied, but to help the
person who is paying the research costs. ... Eighty years of scientific research
in psychology, as it reposes on the library shelves, may not embody an authentic
image of man. In fact, it may be a museum of the lies told by suspicious
subjects to experimenters they did not trust. ...
Social systems require
their members to take certain roles. Unless the roles are adequately filled, the
social systems will not produce the results for which they have been organized.
... Broadly speaking, if a person carries out his roles suitably, he can be
regarded as a "normal" personality. Normal personalities, however, are not
necessarily healthy personalities. ... The people who live the ways of life
typical to their social position become ill because they behave in ways
exquisitely calculated to produce just those outcomes. They sicken because they
behave in sickening ways. ...
Counsellors, guidance workers, and
psychotherapists are obliged to treat both patterns of healthy personality --
those people who have been unable to learn their roles and those who play their
roles quite well, but suffer agonies of boredom, anxiety, or stultification. If
our clients are to be helped, they must change in valued directions. A change in
valued directions may be called growth. ...
We [helpers] do not have a
problem of individual psychotherapy so much as a problem of a social structure
that exploits the many for the benefit of a few, while these few become
increasingly adept at mystification and at anesthetizing people to the pain of
social control. ...
Workers in the psychotherapeutic disciplines are
commissioned to foster mental health in a social system which generates
alienation, violence, stupefaction, and annihalation of all growing
possibilities save those that will perpetuate the status quo. No matter how many
more psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and qualified
pastoral counsellors are trained, there still will not be enough to cope with
the output of despair, crippling, rage, entrapment, and suffering which our
system generates as surely as it produces more hardware than any nation has in
the history of the human race.

In the face of these admissions, how
then am I to act? Firstly, I have to try to be totally honest with myself; to
expose myself to my loved ones, friends, and associates; to be authentic, even
if this means to be abnormal, to be different. I must allow my so-called
neuroses to surface so that I can face them boldly and, it is hoped, then deal
with them. Then I can live my chosen lifestyle by making conscious
choices.

There are many words used to describe the self: body, mind,
soul, spirit, breath, intelligence, consciousness, subconsciousness, intuition,
libido, memory, wits, entity, ego, super-ego, anima, animus, individual, etc. To
my mind, all of these are interchangeable terms except that I recognizing that
my mind appears to be quite separate from my body and operates at different
levels of activity. I suggest that, to avoid confusion, it is incumbent upon
those, who use these terms in any sense other than that one which identifies a
specific human person as a currently living entity, with a body and a mind,
needs to define their meaning in a way which will differentiate that meaning.
For example, it is customary to refer to John Doe as the late John Doe,
if he has died. For specific purposes I may occasionally use the term
Self (upper case S) to distinguish higher levels of self-awareness from
self (lower case s), being lower levels of self-awareness. Since there
is a prevalent belief that the mind survives death, some of these terms have an
added meaning which suggests that, in an afterlife, the self retains certain
characteristics and is enclosed within some form of boundary, or body, so that
it retains its identity and continues to be distinguishable from other selves.

As far I can determine, the self resides within the brain during one's
lifetime, although some people identify other parts of the anatomy as well, like
the heart, guts, spleen, or blood, as sites of consciousness. However most
persons seem to regard all these body parts as quite separate from the self as
such. This is of little interest until one begins to consider whether one's
self, one's mind's apparent separate existence, continues to exist, with or
without another body, after death. One's conclusions in this regard determine to
a large extent how one will approach one's life and experiences. One may strive
to understand whether one's life has only temporal significance or whether one
is immortal. One's determination will govern one's attitudes, ideologies, sense
of life's purposes, motives, ambitions, ethics, and lifestyle. Does one live for
the day or for eternity, or both?

Much of life is spent on striving to
develop and maintain some level of autonomy and independence, while balancing
personal needs for intimacy and solitude with desires for social interactions.
Behind these determinations lie anxieties about human suffering, pain, and
death, and how people variously strive to come to terms with these anxieties.
Coupled with them are naturally implanted strivings to survive and to reproduce
(or perhaps, more honestly, to enjoy one's sexuality). These strivings include
ones for security, for control over others, control over one's environment, and
drives to satisfy various needs and wants. We have a hierarch of needs; males
and females have similar but different ones. Is there some divine purpose behind
these drives, behind our perceptions of reality? I conclude, from those who have
naturist perspectives that, if there is some deity, and if that entity's
characteristics are reflected in nature, that deity is amoral, as opposed to
moral or immoral. So the primary purposes of life, dictated by nature, would
appear to be to survive as long as one can, with as little pain and as much
pleasure as possible.

As part of the desire to manipulate and control
others for personal or social gain, religions, slavery and servitude,
conscription, economic, political, and legal systems take form. These play, to a
considerable degree, upon one's anxieties and one's systems of beliefs and of
reality. Controls are generally devised and people are manipulated within
hierarchical structures by those with power, who genearally present themselves
as benefactors who will reduce the fears of underlings, and who will support
them, provided, of course, that they, the "lower classes", will submit to the
dictates of the "middle classes" who, in turn, will submit to the dictates of
the "upper classes". These arrangements are devised, to a considerable extent,
by deceptive means. If subordinates can be persuaded to deceive themselves that
thay are free citizens within the best of all possible worlds, these
self-serving ploys may become entrenched within military, social, economic, and
religious systems.

If we are to find remedies for our personal and social
problems, we need first to uncover their sources. In this blog site I attempt to
do that and then offer some practical suggestions about how one might proceed to
build a better future for oneself and for others within realistic human
limitations and constraints.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Situation Ethics

In another article I provide my own definition of
my highest good: altruistic harmony. In this entry I expand upon my
definition of ethics by considering, very briefly, the views of Joseph Fletcher,
expressed in Situation Ethics: the new morality. I've selected passages
somewhat randomly and have done some minor editing for brevity, clarity, and
continuity.

Fletcher approaches the subject of ethics from a Christian
perspective within which he describes love as the highest
good. I find that love is too nebulous a term with which to describe my
highest good. That is why I prefer the phrase altruistic harmony. Apart
from this preference, I find I am in almost total agreement with Flether's views
about what it means to be ethical.

Are principles unchanging? Are they
eternal, absolute, universal? Fletcher thinks that the only eternal, absolute,
universal principle is love, by which he means agape. His views are
based upon four presuppositions and six propositions. As I summarize these I'll
include some thoughts based upon my own perspectives. Those thoughts will help
to define my altruistic harmony concept.

PRESUPPOSITIONS
1.
Pragmatism.
"In those cases where there is no valid intellectual
reason for choosing between conflicting propositions, we have a right to believe
in that alternative which will have the most satisfactory consequences as a
result of our belief, in the long run, and insofar as we can foresee the
consequences." (William James)
"The primary issue is a value problem, our
choice of our summum bonum (highest good). This is a pre-ethical or
metaethical question, relying on some other source for a faith proposition or
commitment." (Joseph Fletcher)
Comment: For Fletcher, that
highest good is Christian agape, and this, he believes, relies upon Christian
faith and Christian commitment. My highest good is altruistic harmony, which
relies upon a conviction that virtue is its own reward (i.e., that it is
independent of love, mysticism, metaphysical, and religious origins, even as I
find support from these concepts while I define my highest good). I feel a
commitment to that conviction.

2. Relativism.

"Major cultural shifts include a more global outlook, rather than an insular
one, the use of symbol and nondiscursive reasoning, rather than formal language
and logic, acceptance of subconscious and motivational dynamics as the
foundation of human behaviour, rather than rules of rationality, and a fluid
spectrum of values, rather than a hierarchy of values, ranged in some supposedly
given and permanent order of bad or better.
"In this last shift, we see
values as concepts falling within a continuum -- falling within limits defined
by the highest good, rather than polarized, to give some examples, in the
law/love, authority/experience, and fixity/freedom dichotomies, and being
dependent upon both subjective and objective assessents of the content in which
they occur and of the personal preferences of those involved." (Fletcher)

Comment: With Fletcher, I see these cultural shifts as
valuable in that they provide a more transcendent, more holistic, more relative
view of ethical questions than those that occur within the narrow limits of
absolutism and fundamentalism.

3. Positivism.
"With
faith being founded on love (i.e., agape), there are only two ways to approach
religious knowedge:
theological naturalism, in which reason adduces
or deduces faith propositions from human experiences and natural phenomena;
nature yields the evidences, natural reason grasps them; or
theological
positivism, in which faith propositions are posited or affirmed voluntarily
rather than rationistically; that is, it is arational (outside reason) but not
irrational (against reason); it is thinking supported by faith rather than faith
supported by thinking; reason goes to work because of the commitment to love and
in the service of love.
"Reason can note facts and infer relations, but it
can't infer values, such as love, beauty, goodness, pleasure, happiness, morals,
ethics, and/or wisdom, without a leap of affirmation -- a leap of faith. Ethical
decisions seek justification or vindication, whereas cognitive conclusions seek
verification or validation; we cannot climb across the gap from descriptive to
prescriptive proposition: from is to ought
statements.
"Leaps of faith are not steps in logic or even steps in common
sense. The decision of the Christian to make an axiomatic assertion, that God is
love, then proceeds, by inference, to the value assertion that love is the
highest good." (Fletcher)
Comment: So Fletcher's decision,
in common with that of many other Christians, is to choose love, axiomatically,
as his highest good, whereas I choose altruistic harmony, axiomatically, as
mine. My choice requires naturalistic, positivistic leaps of faith, just as does
Fletcher's. However my choice is not theological, as his is. Like Fletcher, I
seek to justify or vindicate my choice, but as a choice, not as an a
priori given.

4. Personalism.

Comment:In Fletcher's view, based upon the theological
dogma that God is personal, having made man in his own image, situation ethics
is concerned only with human relations.
"In the Christian version, for
example, a basic maxim is that the disciple is commanded to love people, not
principles or laws or objects or any other thing. There are no values in the
sense of inherent goods -- value is what happens to something when it happens to
be useful when love works for the sake of persons living within a social
context, rather than as individuals. Love is of people, by people, and for
people. Things are to be used; people are to be loved." (Fletcher)

Comment: I find this view incredibly narrow. My preference
for altruistic harmony over love embraces all things, including persons.

General comment.
"Taking these four presuppositions, or working
principles, together, their shape is obviously one of action, existence,
eventfulness. The situation ethic is one of decision. It does not ask what is
good but how to do good for whom; not what is love but how to do the most loving
thing possible in the situation. It focuses on pragma (some tenet), on
anticedent conscience (retrospective judgement-passing). It keeps
principles sternly in their place, in the role of advisers without veto power!
The commandment to love is a normative ideal, not an operational directive."
(Fletcher)

PROPOSITIONS
"1. This
proposition asks: What is the highest good? and answers: Only one thing is
always intrinsically good, namely love; nothing else at all."
"The
rock-bottom issue in all ethics is value. Where is it? What is its
locus? Is the worthiness or worthness of a thing inherent in it? Or is it
contingent, relative to things other than itself? Is the good or evil of a
thing, and the right or wrong of an action, intrinsic or extrinsic? Is it good
because God says it is good (the view of the nominalist); or does God will it
because it is good (the realist view)?
"There are no values at all; there are
only things (material and nonmaterial) which happen to be valued by
persons (including God). Apart from the helping or hurting of people, ethical
judgements or evaluations are meaningless. Love is a formal principle,
expressing what type of real actions Christians are to call the highest good.
But love is not something we have or are. It is something we do [God, Fletcher
says, is the only person who is love]. When we say that love is always
good, what we mean is that whatever is loving in any particular situation is
good! Love is for the sake of people and not good-in-itself.
"Because love
holds this supreme position, any thought or action, expressed in love,
supersedes all other thoughts and actions. It only is intrinsic. Whatever is the
most loving thing in the situation is the right and good thing, not some
excused, or forgiven, or pardoned thing. It is above the law; when necessary for
the sake of love, it permits breaking confidences, lying, cheating, stealing,
adultery, divorce, abortion, suicide, euthanasia, and killing, and thereby
becomes the right thing to do." (Fletcher)
Comment: I've
said, above, that I approach the subject of ethics from a non-Christian
perspective. So, as I substitute altruistic harmony for love
in these paragraphs from Fletcher, I find it necessary to modify his conclusions
before they will fit mine. I take the position of a realist: values are
intrinsically good or bad depending upon whether or not they serve the highest
good (i.e., altruistic harmony, from my perspective), within a particular
situation, independently of any or all gods (whoever, or whatever,
these may be, or even whether or not they exist). I'll list some of my more
important values. These values, and who I am, are determined by my highest good,
whether or not I do anything with those values. In my view, holistic harmony is,
simply and intrinsically, good-in-itself.

"2. This
proposition reduces all values to love. The ruling norm of Christian decisions
is love: nothing else.

"At best, love employs law only when it seems
worthwhile and appropriate. Neither the ten commandments nor the precepts in the
sermon on the mount override this proposition. What matters is not what is
lawful but what is uplifting. All rules, all principles, all virtues, all
universals, are love's servants and subordinates. Dilige et quod vis,
fac. (Love with care and then what you will, do. Latin: Saint
Augustine.)
"Christian love is not desire. Agape is giving love;
nonreciprocal, neighbor-regarding love (neighbor meaning everybody, even an
enemy). Christian love is will; it is an attitude, not a feeling.
"A common
objection to situation ethics is that it calls for more critical intelligence,
more factual information, and more self-starting commitment to righteousness
than most people can bring to bear. The motive and purpose behind law, however
hidden it may be, is to minimize obligation, to make it clear exactly how much
you may do and no more. Love, on the other hand, optimizes obligation: it seeks
the most good in every situation. The situationist is called upon to be mature,
to respond to life, to be responsible. He is called upon to lead by example, not
by obedience to law. He is always vulnerable to error in any decision-making
situation; but decisiveness is risky -- rooted in the courage of being free. He
will therefore put a high premium on knowing what's what and when to act,
calling upon expert advice only when it seems prudent to do so, and then acting
appropriately (and not necessarily in accord with that advice). To be a
situationist is to make a choice: to be a free human being who loves, rather
than a subhuman being who is an obedient slave to law." (Fletcher)

Comment: Altruistic harmony is all these things. I'm
reminded of the definition of heretic: one who chooses. I feel glad to consider
myself an heretic, in that sense.

"3. This proposition
equates love and justice: Love and justice are the same, for justice is love
distributed: nothing else."

"Prudence and love are not just partners,
they are one and the same. Prudence: careful calculation gives love the
care-fulness it needs; with proper care, love does more than take justice into
account; it becomes justice. When we see love in this way we are forced to pull
back from sentimental and irrational ideas about love." (Fletcher)

Comment: How can love's favors be distributed among many
beneficiaries? To answer that, Fletcher turns to his personalism presupposition:

"As persons we are individuals-in-community. Therefore agape's outreach is
many-sided and wide-aimed, not one-directional; it is pluralist, not a
one-to-one affair, which would be philia or eros. Faced as we
always are in the social complex with a web of duties (i.e., giving what is due
to others), love is compelled to be calculating, careful, prudent, distributive.
It must be omnified (taking everything into account), and
opimific (doing all that it can).
"It will not do merely to keep
love and justice separate, and then to give one or the other priority. Love's
calculations (prudence) keep love's imagination sharpened and at work. It saves
love from any sentimental myopia [selective blindness] as it does its work. Each
of its claimants must be heard in relation to the others. This is the
operational and situational discipline of the love ethic -- it needs to find
absolute love's relative course.
"The traditional systematic habit of
separating love and justice needs to be dropped. Faith-works is not faith versus
works, faith or works, or faith and works; faith is works. Similarly
love-justice is not love versus justice, love or justice, or love and justice;
love is justice. To be loving is to be just; to be just is to be loving. You
have a right to anything that is loving; you have no right to anything that is
unloving. All alleged rights and duties are as contingent and relative as are
all values. The right to religious freedom, free speech, public assembly,
private property, sexual liberty, life itself, the vote -- all are validated
only by love." (Fletcher)
Comment: Only by extending
Fletcher's presupposition beyond personalism to embrace all things, can I find
that, in general terms, I agree with this proposition.

"4. This proposition frees love from sentimentality:
Love is not liking: love wills neighbors' good whether we like them or
not."

"To love Christianly is a matter of attitude, not of feeling. Love
is discerning and critical; it is not sentimental. Agape's desire is to
satisfy the neighbor's need, not one's own; it is an attitude ethic, volitional
and cognitive, not an emotional norm or motive." (Fletcher)
"In reality, the
love which is based on emotions of sympathy, or affection, is self-love; for it
is a love of preference, of choice, and the standard of the preference and
choice is the self" (quoting Rudolf Bultmann).
"Agapao has neither
the warmth of phileo nor the intensity of erao" (quoting Alan
Richardson).
"Agape is not primarily an emotion or affection; it is primarily
an active determination of the will. That is why it can be commanded, as
feelings cannot" (quoting C.H. Dodd).
"Those for whom love is an emotion will
naturally take hate to be its opposite; those who follow the Biblical
understanding will readily see that its opposite is indifference, simply not
caring".
"Christian love is the business of loving the unlovable (i.e., the
unlikable). To suppose that we are required by any Christian imperative to like
everybody is a cheap hypocrisy ethically and an impossibility psychologically.
It is impossible to love in obedience to a command. Loving and liking are not
the same thing. We cannot command that one feels love for a person but only that
one deal lovingly with him."
"Christian love does not ask us to lose or
abandon our sense of good and evil, or even of superior and inferior: it simply
insists that, however we rate them, and whether we like them or not, people are
our neighbors and are to be loved. It does not presuppose any return of concern,
even though it hopes for it. It is an ethic in which justice -- impartial,
inclusive -- and love are one and the same thing."
"Self-love is not
necessarily selfish. We cannot love others, nor can we be honest with them, if
we are not able to love or be honest with ourselves. To love God and the
neighbor is to love one's self the right way."
"Only those who sentimentalize
and subjectivize love look upon calculations and figuring the angles as cold or
cruel or inimical or a betrayal of love's warmth. Love can not only make people
angry, it can be angry too. Love makes judgements; it does not say, Forget
it but Forgive it. To love is not necessarily to please. Love
grows up, is matured and actualized, when it permits a reasonable fire to warm
its work, but seeks more and more light, less and less heat. The heat it can
leave to romance." (Fletcher)
Comment: I find
contradictions in these statements, since Fletcher says that agape is an active
determination of the will (quoting Dodd) and then says that it is impossible to
love in obedience to a command. In fact, I question whether, without sentiment,
warmth, intensity, or other emotional content, the term agape, as used
by Fletcher, can reasonably be classified as love, using any of Webster's
definitions.

"5. This proposition states the relation
between means and ends: Only the end justifies the means: nothing else."

"Unless some purpose or end is in view, to justify or sanctify it, any
activity we take is literally meaningless (i.e., is means-less, accidental,
merely random, pointless). Every action without exception is haphazard if it is
without an end to serve: it only acquires its status as a means (i.e., it only
becomes meaningful by virtue of an end beyond itself). And ends, in their turn,
need means.
"It should be apparent, of course, that not any old end will
justify any old means. The means must be appropriate and faithful to the end.
Everything has its price. Even a pearl of great price -- whatever it is -- might
be sold for love's sake if the situation calls for it.
"If the end does not
justify the means, what does? The answer is: obviously, nothing!
"Means are
ingredients, not merely neutral tools, and we are called upon therefore to
select them with the greatest care. Means are not ethically indiffererent. Good
and evil are not properties, they are predicates or attributes. And therefor
what is sometimes good may at other times be evil, and what is sometimes wrong
may sometimes be right when it serves a good enough end -- depending upon the
situation. As Paul noted [in 1 Cor.6:12 and 10:23], the intrinsic approach
simply fails to grasp that it is not its being lawful that makes a thing good,
but only whether it is expedient, edifying, constructive -- whether it builds
up.
"There are four questions of basic and indispensable importance to be
raised about every case, four factors at stake in every situation, all of which
have to be balanced on love's scales:

what is the end? the object sought? the result aimed at?

what is the motive? the drive behind the act?

by what means might the end be accomplished?

what are the foreseeable consequences of the act?
"There are no foregone
decisions. There are always many implications, and all of these must be weighed
and weighted. An action is imperative only if the situation demands it for
love's sake.
"Then it needs to be remembered that not only means but ends,
too, are usually relative: these ends are only extrinsically justifiable,
because they become simply the means to a further end, ad infinitum,
until the final end, the highest good -- love -- is reached. We cannot say that
anything we do is good, only that it is a means to an end and therefore happens
in that cause-and-effect relation to have value.
"Legalists argue the wedge
principle: that the consequences of disobeying law, moral or civil, is that, as
a wedge driven under a structure may weaken it, so disobedience acts like a
wedge to weaken law and order and so the ultimate result would be anarchy, no
matter how desirable the immediate consequences. At first sight this looks like
a realistic awareness to be taken into account in every decision. However this
argument fails because it attempts to generalize all situations, when not one is
precisely similar to another. This argument is actually one of the maneouvers
used to discredit personal responsibility and leave law in control. It is a
fundamental antisituational gambit, a form of obstructionism, a delaying action
of static morality. It is a snare and a delusion to think that we can escape
doubts and conflicts by turning to law." (Fletcher)

"6.
This proposition authenticates every decision within its own context: Love's
decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively."

"Moving over from
law to love can be a painful and threatening step to take. The situationist,
cutting himself loose from the dead hand of unyielding law, with its false
promises of relief from the anguish of decision, can only determine that as a
man of goodwill he will live as a free man, with all the ambiguities that go
along with freedom. His moral life takes on the shape of adventure, ceasing to
be a blueprint. In all humility, knowing that he cannot escape the human margin
of error, he will sin bravely.
"Decisions are seldom made from a platform
that looks towards black or white facts -- the view takes various shades of
grey. Making decisions means meeting situations here and now, without a romantic
focus on the past or an escapist focus on the future. This contextual,
situational, clinical case method, this way of dealing with decisions, is too
full of variables to please some people. They like better to latch on to a few
well-anchored constants, sanctioned in law, and ignore all the variables. They
are too petty or to rigid to fit the acts to reality, prefering to fit reality
to rules. That is the law's way. But it is not love's way. Freedom is required:
an open-ended approach to situations.
"Situation ethics always suspects
prescriptive law of falsifying life and dwarfing moral stature, whether it be
the scriptural legalism of Biblical Protestants and Mohammedans or the natural
legalism (natural law) of the Catholics and disciples of Confucius. To learn
love's sensitive tactics, such people are going to have to put away their
childish rules. This means that love is for the present, here and now. By faith
we live in the past, by hope we live in the future, but by love we live in the
present. This means looking carefully at the full play of ends, means, motives,
and results. The rightness is in the shape of the whole action, not in any
single factor or ingredient.
"Here we are in direct opposition to the
detachment of the mystics and abstractions of metaphysics, to be seen for what
they are in a Buddhist sutra:

Our mind should stand aloof from circumstance;
on no account
should we allow it to influence the
function of our mind.

The
situationist counters with:

Every moral action should have in view a concrete living person
and not the abstract good." (Fletcher)

Comment:
However the altruistic harmony abstraction may, in appropriate circumstances,
trump the interests of living persons.

General comment:
Except as noted, if I substitute the phrase altruistic harmony for the
word love in each of these presuppositions and propositions, I find
that I am in general agreement with them.
Fletcher classifies the term
love in three ways: agape, philia, and eros,
and restricts his discussion of ethics by limiting it to mean agape, which he
defines in Christian terms. Using agape within his stated presuppositions and
propositions, he says what he means by his term situation ethics. He
maintains that any thought or action, within any situation or circumstance, is
ethical if, and only if, it satisfies his definition of agape. In this entry
I've attempted, by replacing the term agape, wherever Fletchers uses it, with
the term altruistic harmony, and by making appropriate modifications to his
arguments, to expand the meaning of agape beyond the constraints Fletcher's
imposes upon his own arguments by way of his Christian preconceptions. In
effect, for the purposes of my personal lexicon, I redefine agape as altruistic
harmony to avoid confusing Fletcher's definitions with my own. Either term
implies the dependent nature of ethics upon situation and circumstance, a
dependency that I find myself in total agreement with, and a concept that I
find, philosophically, to be extremely valuable.

It seems to me that
Fletcher thoroughly confuses the terms ethics, love, and agape, so I try to
unscramble that confusion.

Friday, February 25, 2005

My Highest Good

Tao Te Ching
The highest good
is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not
strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling,
be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with
others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In
business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

Proverbs,
29:18
Where there is no vision, the people
perish.

Author unknown:
Pythagoras stated that the
kosmos is a harmonia - a "fitting together." Through the principle of harmony,
the parts fit together into the whole; and even though the universe contains an
unlimited number of things, they are all miraculously and beautifully reconciled
into the greater whole. This is called the law of unity in multiplicity.

~~~~~
We need a good reason to get out of bed each morning.
Some of us need to be driven; some of us need to be persuaded; some of us just
do it out of habit.
There are many reasons we can find for living. For some
the reasons are what I call the persuasive P's: such as power, prestige,
possessions, and patriarchy. For some it is to find the bare necessities of
life. For some it is to find love, in one or more of its variants, like love of
Self, or of The Magical Other. Some dedicate their lives to Beauty, or to a
Cause, a Guru, or a God.

Having a reason for living is very much a matter
of personal choice. The stronger our reason, the stronger our will to live. I
find each of the reasons I've listed to have value, but none so important as
that which I term altruistic harmony. That is, for me, more compelling
than love, or even life itself.

So what is altruistic
harmony?
Altruism: the principle or practice of unselfish
concern for or devotion to the welfare of others. (Webster)
Harmony:
a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts. (Webster
2)

Altruistic harmony is a philosophy that serves principles,
not principals or people; good, not God.

It requires a dramatic paradigm
shift in consciousness before benefits may be realized. It is an idealistic way
of being; as such it may seem unrealistic or impossible to those who don't try
it for themselves but, as Petra Kelly, founder of the Green Party has said: "If
we don't do the impossible we shall be faced with the unthinkable".

An
example of altruistic harmony in action may be found in a report of US citizens
who resist military service: AWOL in America: When desertion is the only
option, by Kathy Dobie href="http://www.notinourname.net/troops/awol-23feb05.htm">[link].

Altruistic
harmony embraces the Latin proverb: "Virtue is its own reward". I see it as the
abstract principle beneath this quotation from Rabi'a, a Sufi
woman-saint:
God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell.
And
if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise;
But if I
worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting
Beauty.

It is a subjective way of being; as such each person may define
it differently.
It is subordinate to neither political nor religious ends,
since it transcends all affiliations.
It is concerned with and devoted to
the welfare of oneself, other persons, and all other living things within the
environment of planet Earth.
It means living, consistently, in harmony with
ones highest values, while allowing all others the same privilege (as such it is
a variation of the Golden Rule).
It is empirically pragmatic.
It is
based upon both intuition and logic.
It is situationally ethical, since it
accepts that values are dependent upon circumstances and situations.
It
regards love as an highly important, but subordinate value.
It is
relativistic, since it does not accept absolutist, fundamentalist
presuppositions.
It assumes an axiomatic choice; it means to believe that
humans live, in common with all other life forms, within an impersonal,
non-theological, naturalistic system that includes, from the human perspective,
positive, benign, and negative forces.
It provides guidance during the
process of being and becoming.
It means being relatively
free to decide what attitudes to adopt, how to behave, and with whom and with
what to interact, throughout one's lifetime.

Since I reduce all values
to altruistic harmony, I believe that my thoughts and actions have real value
only if and when I can demonstrate, to myself, that they serve altruistic
harmony; consequently I regard all human laws and regulations as mere
recommendations; I feel obliged to respect and serve these only if and when they
seem to me to be worthwhile, prudent, impartial, objective, merciful, just, and
appropriate, in the service of altruistically harmonic social, political, and
economic systems and cultures. I extend respect to persons, animals, and all
life forms and things, even those for whom, or about which, I may have little or
no liking or regard.
It governs my values, attitudes, and lifestyle.
It
is the basis for my defined life purposes, objectives, and projects.
It is
superior in my estimation to any other vision, to any God, Avatar, Guru, Leader,
Association, and Hierarchy, since I believe all these to be subordinate to the
principles intrinsic to altruistic harmony.

This means that I feel free
to use any and all reasonably available means to serve altruistically harmonic
conditions, having due regard for my motives and drives, and to the foreseeable
consequences of my acts. It is my chosen way of being; as such it is,
intrinsically, a perception of my highest good -- the highest state of being to
which I aspire.

I need to explain, here, how fortunate, how blessed I
feel that, by luck or good judgement, I'm in a position where my basic needs are
being met.
I am healthy in body and mind, although my eyesight and hearing
are beginning to fail.
I have a beautiful, loving partner, full of vitality,
wit, and good will, a fine family, and several close friends. I feel a sense of
belonging in my community. My self-esteem is at a high level (mostly because
I've long since forgiven myself and others for our human failings and
weaknesses).
I have a lively sense of humour (I certainly don't take myself
very seriously), and I'm growing, daily, in knowledge and understanding (even
though I readily admit my woeful ignorance).
In materialist terms, my net
worth is probably less than $5,000. I have enough income (even though this is
well below the nationally-defined poverty level) to supply my basic physical
needs, yet have enough left over that I can offer some financial support to
others (blessings go to the Canadian social safety net).
I feel relatively
secure in my small apartment, overlooking a lake on the outskirts of a city with
all the facilities I could possibly wish for. Power, telephone, television, and
internet services are connected to my apartment.
I have an old truck that
provides me with freedom of movement.
I have a small store of food, fuel,
and tools to cover emergencies.
I have a large personal library of books,
records and disks, purchased mostly for 25 cents to one dollar from a local
thrift store. I have a record player, a tape deck, and a computer. These give me
access to some of the most beautiful minds, music, voices, and hearts, past and
present, wherever they may be found, throughout the world.
Compared with 95%
of the world's population I am incredibly rich. Who could reasonably ask for
anything more than I have! "When you are at peace with yourself anywhere is
home." What is there left to wish for, to hope for, but the desire to share this
bounty, and my vision of altruistic harmony, with others within a good society?

From the descriptions I've given, it can be seen that I view the term
altruistic harmony as sociological and spiritual rather than religious.

In short [and with a nod to Romans 8:38-39 (NEV)] "... for I am
convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or
superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the
forces of the universe, in heights or depths -- nothing in all creation that can
separate us from ... altruistic harmony!

Overview

It has been suggested that the proper British
attitude is that religion, politics, and sex are subjects that are too private,
too sensitive, to be discussed anywhere at all, but particularly not in mixed
company or at the breakfast table. However these are subjects that I find most
interesting, so they find a lot of space in my notebooks.

*****
Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground:
"In every
man's remembrances there are things he will not reveal to everybody, but only to
his friends. There are other things he will not reveal even to his friends, but
only to himself, and then only under a pledge of secrecy. Finally, there are
some things that a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and any honest man
accumulates a pretty fair number of such things. That is to say, the more
respectable a man is, the more of them he has."

Anna Comnena:
"Time
in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created
things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history
forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some
measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as
history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to
slip away into the abyss of oblivion."

Francis Parkman:
"Faithfulness
to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and
scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute
exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue.
The narrator [and the reader - ed.] must seek to imbue himself with the life and
spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in
the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must
himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes."

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat:
"We have, each
of us, a life-story, an inner narrative -- whose continuity, whose sense, is our
lives. It might be said that each of us constructs, and lives, a 'narrative',
and that this narrative is us, our identity.
"If we wish to know about a man,
we ask, 'What is his story -- his real, innermost story? -- for each of us is a
biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed,
continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us -- through our perceptions,
our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our
spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from
each other; historically, as narratives, we are each of us unique.
"To be
ourselves we must have ourselves -- possess, if need be re-possess, our life
stories. We must 'recollect' ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the
narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner
narrative, to maintain his identity, his self."

Richard Bach, Running
From Safety:
"My truth has been a long time refining. I've explored and
drilled for it with hope and intuition, filtered and condensed it the best I
could with reflection, then run it through my engines, wary at first, to see
what would happen."

Mary Haskell, Journal:
To think about oneself is
terrifying.
But it is the only honest thing:
to think about myself as I
am, my
ugly features, my beautiful features,
and wonder at them.
What
other solid beginning can I have,
what to make progress
from
except myself?

*****
The impetus for my notebooks was a letter from my
eldest daughter who, in May 1984, suggested a "Family Reunion by Mail". Her
purpose was "to carry bonds of love and friendship and continuing knowledge of
one another over the miles".
I started, on Prince Edward Island, in June
1984, to try to respond to this suggestion with an autobiography. I called it
"Reminiscences and Recriminations of a Maverick". In the preface I said:
"Hopefully we have experiences worth recording. Ideally we can pass on a few
suggestions to our children and friends which may help them to enjoy a fuller
life and avoid some of the pitfalls". I'll now add that I want to bring to them
a smile or two and a hope that I have avoided any introspective brow-beating or
sophistry.

A number of events occurred to cause me to postpone the
project, but when I retired I found that I could pick up the threads again. I
decided to re-start, since my ideas had changed significantly over time. In any
case, the idea of writing a life-story intrigues me. Once I began I had to have
somewhere to put the ideas I was gathering. The internet provides a medium; my
notebooks are the result. I sent a preliminary copy of my notes to family
members in December 1998.

I've wondered, from time to time, whether I
should publish my private views during my lifetime, or whether I should share
them with anyone at all. I've felt torn with indecision since I don't want to
offend or to disrupt the settled convictions of others while I also want to be
totally honest and yet have something worthwhile to say. I decided to publish
(damn the torpedoes!) because I want to respond by sharing, in some small
measure, in the efforts of those others who pass their ideas and experiences
into cyberspace so freely.

One of my friends suggested that the term
"Incites" may have made a more fitting alternative to the title "Insights" which
I used in a previous version of my notebooks. While I recognize that many of my
ideas are provocative, I have not (that is, not usually) advocated controversial
views except as a means to stimulate a response from my readers. Life would be
dull indeed if we all were to agree with every viewpoint, so I avoid the
temptation to be conservative just for the sake of being "agreeable". I ask
myself: "would my readers prefer to know me as the person I am or the person I
may yet become". I have no interest in creating a false image, so I opt for pure
concepts of reality, as I see these to be. For readers who see matters
differently I ask them to remember the motto:
"Honi Sont Que Mal y
Pense!"
[Old French: Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it! This is the
motto of the Knights of the Order of the Garter.]

Erich Fromm, in For
the Love of Life, puts the matter succinctly:
"The intellectual [or even all
those others, except lawyers and politicians, for they are all clearly beyond
the pale!] has one prime task to fulfill, first, last, and always. It is his job
to search out the truth as best he can and to speak that truth. It is not the
intellectual's primary calling, it is not his primary function, to draft
political platforms. ... [His special task is] to pursue the truth without
compromise and without regard for his own or anyone else's interests. ... For I
feel that political progress depends on how much of the truth we know, how
clearly and boldly we speak it, and how great an impression it makes on other
people. Man is not a thing; he is a living being caught up in a continual
process of development. At every point in his life he is not yet what he can be
and what he may yet become.
"If human reason is to become an effective guide
for our actions it cannot be dominated by irrational emotions. Intelligence
remains intelligence, even if it is turned to evil purposes. Reason, however,
our awareness of reality as it is and not as we would like to see it so that we
can exploit it for our own ends -- reason in this sense can be effective only to
the extent that we can put aside our irrational emotions; that is, to the extent
that we as human beings become truly human and that irrational drives cease to
be the main motivating force behind our actions." [My additions.]

So
please think of my notebooks as a bridge from me to you. I hope that, like Robin
Hood and Friar Tuck, we will still be friends even when we disagree, or even if
we fight, as we cross over the rivers of time on one of those bridges! I would
like to have been able to spend much more time with my family and friends,
getting to know them better, and getting them to know me better too. Time is
precious, and we have to set priorities:
"So much to do, so little done."
Cecil John Rhodes [his last words].

I would like to think of these
notebooks as part of a "conversation" with my readers, in the sense of that word
by as used by Erich Fromm, in For the Love of Life:
"Our word 'conversation'
derives from the same Latin root as 'conversion' does, and the possibility of a
conversion, of a 'turning around', is always inherent in any conversation, for
when we converse we take part in a game in which exchange, not victory, is the
goal, an intellectual game in which no one stars and everyone
wins.
"Conversation has become either a commodity or a way of doing battle.
If the conversation battle takes place in the presence of a large audience, then
it assumes the quality of a gladiatorial contest. The participants go for each
other's throats, and each one tries to destroy the other. Or they converse
merely to show how clever or superior they are. Or they converse to prove that
they are in the right once again. Conversation is a way of demonstrating to
themselves that what they happen to think is indeed correct. They go into
conversation determined not to admit any new thoughts into their minds. They
have their opinion. Each knows what the other will say. And all they demonstrate
is that neither one can be moved from his position.
"A genuine conversation
is not a battle but an exchange. The question of who is right and who is wrong
is completely beside the point. It doesn't matter whether what the participants
say is particularly cogent or profound. What matters is genuineness of what they
say. ...
"The art of conversation and joy in conversation -- there are ways
to converse -- these things will become possible again only if major changes
take place in our culture, that is, only if we can rid ourselves of our
monumaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that
recognize the expression and full realization of human potential as the only
worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters
is being as opposed to having, to just using and consuming and getting ahead."

Understanding another person, or even oneself, is a complex task. Even
when we attempt to articulate, carefully and precisely, those characteristics
and ideas which constitute our being, we are able to communicate only a small
fraction of the whole. Like the iceberg, only the tip is showing. It is almost
impossible to describe even that visible part with words that will do an
adequate job. But we can improve our chances of understanding another person by
sharing some of the same music, looking at some of the same art forms, and
reading some of the same books.

So I've included many quotations. These
bring together ideas and works I've used. Some books were published many years
ago by writers who, because their education was broadly based, had and still
have much to say. Most have profoundly and positively infuenced my thinking; but
some are included because I've found them to provide glaring examples of the
kind of thinking I want to avoid.

I would prefer that my readers go as
often as possible to source materials so that they can gain a more comprehensive
view of subjects being treated. My ideas and those of others should not be taken
as gospel but as food for thought. We are each responsible for the conclusions
we reach and for the actions we take. I urge my readers: "Don't necesarily think
as I think, or do as I do, but become informed and then do what your highest
values prompt you to do".

These quotations make some points better than
I can:
"Perhaps our greatest responsibility is to help our children to grow
beyond ourselves. It has been said that the worst thing that could happen to the
next generation is that they might turn out to be just like us. ... We need to
... concern ourselves about how we can arrange to free our children from our
prejudices, our limiting loyalties, so that they may go on from where we left
off, and develop levels of maturity that are entirely beyond our possibilities."

Chisholm, quoted by Duncan B. Blewitt, Class Notes, Psychology 235, Univ. of
Saskatchewan.

"What I have tried to do is to interest my readers in
certain ideas and to stimulate their curiosity as to the meaning and value of
what they have before, possibly, rather taken for granted. My method has been to
describe some great work, some significant phrase of the past in order to let
the present be seen in relief. I have not tried to exhaust the questions that I
have raised or even to deal with them adequately: much less have I tried to
supply the answers. For one thing I do not know the answers, since I think that
the adventure of human society is an endless one and that the 'margin fades for
ever and for ever as we move'. ... If somebody would use the word 'stimulating'
about this work I should be very content."
Lord Radcliff, The Problem of
Power.

"The basic value question is, What vision do you aspire to? ... If
you really look in the mirror, what kind of person do you want to be? Obviously,
this doesn't happen by accident. You have to work at it, train for it. ...
Anything is tough if you want to be good... It's like asking, what do you want
to grow into? What does self-actualizing mean to you?" Abraham H. Maslow, The
Taboo of Tenderness.

"My attitude towards life changed, following a
near-fatal heart attack. The word I use for it now is the postmortem life. I
could just as easily have died, so that my living constitutes a kind of extra, a
bonus ... Therefore, I might just as well live as if I had already died. One
very important aspect of the postmortem life is that everything gets doubly
precious ... You get stabbed by ... flowers and by babies and by beautiful
things -- just the very act of living, of walking, breathing, eating, having
friends, and chatting. Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less,
and one gets the much-intensified sense of miracles. If you're reconciled with
death or even if you are pretty well assured that you will have a good death, a
dignified one, then every single day is transformed because the pervasive
undercurrent -- the fear of death -- is removed ... I am living an end-life
where everything ought to be an end in itself, where I wouldn't waste any time
preparing for the future, or occupying myself with means to later ends.
Sometimes I get the feeling of my writing being a communication to my
great-great-grandchildren who, of course, are not yet born. It's an expression
of love for them, leaving them not money but in effect affectionate notes, bits
of counsel, lessons that I have learned that might help them." Abraham H.
Maslow, from a cassette tape, quoted in Psychology Today.

In brief: I
recognize my own and others' imperfections, forgive myself and them, try to
improve upon my shortcomings to the extent that I can, generally try to be
helpful to others, and design my own belief-system and lifestyle in ways that I
find satisfying.

My life has been and is fun, interesting, and
enlightening. It is a life-long learning experience which I feel is progressing
favourably, despite some minor setbacks. Much more learning will undoubtedly
follow, if not in this lifetime, then possibly in the next!

preliminaries