Synopsis or abstract :
Applications of model and paradigm to social conditions. Special emphasis on public education in schools and mass media. The removal of the responsibility for education from the immediate family in a home environment is a great leap forward in human development. Private or public schools allow the introduction of a common shared map of [more detail] finer levels of resolution than just a family. It also allows for a more global map contrasted with home education or craft apprenticeship that was for a specific and bounded / constrained use.
Home education or craft apprenticeship allowed a development of skills to finer levels of resolution at a specific location. It also was a resource for nurturing as well as competition among a few. This did not foster the "superman" model of high achievement by only a few as in the world of sports. The group and team was more important. The "ordinary" was "normal". There was less extreme, and more emphasis on the "middle way" or "moderation in all things".
So what is the difference between the "superman" and the highly skilled craftsman? There are more "addresses" at subtle levels of resolution for craftsman. The modern culture replaces these higher skills with mass produced items whose utilitarian value is greater. This robs the culture of levels of individual skill development and the need for uniquely chosen life. Is it a wonder that the movements of the industrial production age towards individual expression and opinion grew in reverse proportion to the loss of skilled crafts?
There are innate or a priori structures to the human species. It they do not receive expression various forms of "Suffering" / dissatisfaction and deprivation emerge. They have been refereed to as needs. Modern culture is learning about these structures by their loss. The implications in the school setting is that there is rebellion and a so called crisis.
The main paradigm of self organization and uniqueness of individual structure as it impacts on the principle mode of operation in schools is discussed. Just as in learning a native language at 2 years, humans must examine, test or play with and self organize what they are taught.
The implications and limits of the heliocentric chart as the structure of the neocortex or shared language brain are discussed. The inner planets can be moved, but the outer do not move as much from the geocentric view. This movement of ones planets by others as authority, teachers, parents or the composite peer group in called accommodation by Piaget and the movement of others and ones own by ones self organizing efforts is assimilation.
The levels of resolution as they appear in society is discussed.
Development / path chapter on rules to allow correct and respectful connections and bonding without abuse, shame, "for your own good" as narcissism and merging / fusion / grasping.
Recognize your mind as a mother recognizes her own child. Recognition is Qi and attention as fully formed map. Students do not need repetition as assumed, but awareness that they have recognition at some level and this is the building block, not error or "dumb" if it is not yet fully formed. The question is how to make it fully formed: to bring it to maturity, to grow it and self nurture.
Wholeness is looking at a system and its growth. Students are classified as machines and not on growth vectors. Even slow and fast learner is a machine concept. The student is not taught how to grow, just accumulate and judged on amount.
Since the system is set up for machine production as in an assembly line, the system has not developed time and effort and intelligence into self organization and its growth. Thus the self organization remains at a 5yr. old level since it is cut off from self reference.
Metaphor of high rise as whole mind of self organization with us living in a single apartment created by the culture with and by limits / walls of rules. As in data / perception in , rules / procedures out. The conflict of family rules and the school rules is difficult, but even more so with bi-lingual and bi-cultural. If the rules are too severe, then the person shuts down in emotions which are the rules and limits of the midbrain.
>Family was our "duty" Our "duty" was to our Family!: because family was the name that we were given as a sign of skill and extended knowledge. Now our "duty" is to ourselves and the culture as the repository of knowledge and skill. The shared skill and knowledge allows us to shed the extended family system in order to be in touch with the latest and newest and best developments!
> Desire is one's intention as information about our input: it is the rules and procedures output of the midbrain. Attention is energy or Qi as the output rule of the reptilian brain. Desire was repressed as the competition and threat to the rules of the cultural brain. The Real-time self-organizing process is over-riding the "parent" rules and cultural tapes and threatened to turn one's duty as dharma or rules into personal or selfish non-resonant rules. Thus no intention or expectation or desire was allowed in shaping ones mind according to A Buddha's mind. All this can accomplish is insight into no-self and the plasticity of mind, which means there is no self that cannot be changed or molded. There is no Absolute self which is one's Chart and Fate.
This classification is a determined system which science is set up to handle. We can move to heuristic and self organizing systems. This chapter details and outlines self organizing systems, deterministic systems and proposes how to move from one to the other.
[ Development / path chapter on rules to allow correct and respectful connections and bonding without abuse, shame, "for your own good" as narcissism and merging / fusion / grasping.]?here?
I have many applications for my model and paradigm. I have chosen one direction for this book: public education and how the new paradigm and model impact. How would the idea of teaching and learning change given self regulation / organization and self examination.
Other aspects of this paradigm are:
1. the ways of development of consciousness in direct connection with holographic awareness and psychic powers usually associated with "spirituality" and religion.
2. Ways humans manipulate their preverbal consciousness with food and drugs. This does not target psychedelic drugs whose use is very rare, but common drugs such as caffeine and nicotine.
3. Sports and competition.
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I will describe how each point / issue or feature of my model impacts public education.
[ These dysfunctional attitudes have become part of public education, where I will focus the application of the ideas developed in this book. There are other applications that will be more fully treated elsewhere.]
So in summary, what are the chief points:
1. Self organization and self regulation / examination is primary. It is the foundation of knowledge and is totally necessary before "learning can take place on a operational level other than stimulus / response.
2. Neural networks come with built-in processes. One cannot "educate" them out or remove them or outlaw them. To do so results in dysfunction and compensations by hiding them with other labels. This is a real deprivation as intense as starvation or pollution. [Called poison by Buddhist tradition]. Such functional processes as competition, resonance and connections are primary. The soviet communist society tried to abolish competition. Other points of outlawing resonant associations have resulted in increasing the problem for which they were intended to "fix".
3. Competition
4. Resonance. Narcissism.
5. Shared map as language and the implications of mapping competitive categories of "Good/bad" as classes / categories of people.
6. Experimentation and "play" as part of self organization.
7. Rules output is the behavior of all neural networks, but only some are allowed to develop rules and see their implications. Leaders and followers. Power and skill. Shame as telling others what to do!?
Teaching is advance thru / mastery of levels of resolution
Example is truth / not-truth function which is transformed / reframed [put in the context of] into skill. Honesty is a process which allows acquiring skill, whereas cheating may give the same or better results of good grades, but the end is empty of skill.
Depravation and fulfillment:
1. My model indicates areas of developmental needs.
2. Work done / resources developed in this area by family and other therapy systems.
3. Effects in schools. Judgments and grades. Classes [groupings / grades: dumb-smart] of people at one level of resolution and the act of classification at another.
The rest of the book is about specific models: developmental, traditional and "scientific" with special emphasis on their global implications in developmental issues and problems. where does science, Christianity, Buddhism and metaphysical systems like Astrology produce global conclusions that are contrary to the behavior of n.nets, and may produce dysfunction models of behavior like Fate, helplessness, "dog-eat-dog", perfectionism, sin and guilt.
These models also produced advances in human development.
The details of my global model and its advantages will be introduced and explained.
The traditional spiritual disciplines emerge from our n.nets, so they point directly to our n.net structures. Thus Astrology, I Ching, Tarot, Chakras, acupuncture etc. can be unified as embodiments of n.net structures. In modern times, science has "discovered" mathematical tools that describe complex - fuzzy life processes, and I will use those same tools to reframe the mechanical and biochemical universe in terms of the same mathematical structures as has been demonstrated to be used by the cognitive processes in our brains. I will argue that "spin" and handedness of electron shells and molecules and crystals can be found in self organizing living fuzzy systems that incorporate cycles as dimension into their cognitive structures. That phase spaces are important in all levels of existence and cognition.
Problems of science and religion defined.
The political and social organization of religions which asserts that perfection is beyond the ability of all but the one perfect hero, or some supernatural being, emerges from the confusion of the activity of the brain. Lateral all in one layer organization must use winner take all inhibitory activity for operant behavior to take place. In simple language, this means that any organism can only perform one action, even if this is very complex and has many facets, at a time. We call more that one action confusion or uncoordinated - incongruous behavior. An example is a person who helps with an angry or bored or inattentive attitude. We know that they are not unified in their intent. In life -death situations, indecision or unresolved competing brain models of action may be fatal, thus species that could not come to some immediate action would not survive.
Science is locally objective, but globally and epistemological subjective and bias.
3. Science is locally objective, but globally and epistemological subjective and bias. This bias exists in the fragmentation of wisdom into knowledge, Laws and facts, which change with changes in the frame of reference. The metaphor is one of a scattered jigsaw puzzle, where it is disallowed to "turn over" [view] all the pieces at the same time. By applying "local" rules, such as Newtonian mechanics of force, energy, and matter to understand human/living systems, one arrives at the behaviorist "proofs", which are totally misleading in self-originating, fully connected adaptive systems.
4. Without having resonance with Science and "religious belief", knowing and direct understanding is not possible.
Science has nominalized consciousness into laws.
Removing this primary dysfunctional way of considering / approaching the `universe' allows a unity of science and spiritual thinking. So what is nominalization and how does it subvert so much activity, especially how we model our actions in the world. Nominalization is changing processes into things, especially the process of the creation of the universe that is taking place at every here-and-now moment, into things called `laws' which only describe how things work. Not only are there no `things' or `objects' but there are no `actions' or `workings' that take place. All things and actions are parts of systems and processes that can access all the structural levels because relationships of levels are `holographic'. This nominalization of process is the basis of treating ourselves as things and of looking for what `caused' us, which is the way astrology damages us, and by understanding this attachment to labels can free us. Making `things` and `selves' out of process / development / evolution is the root ignoring which allows these `selves' to appear to have a life of their own, autonomous and needing `control'. This fixes a moment of time when the `self' becomes separate from the process and follows the procedures enfolded in the `astrological chart' of that moment. At that point development / change is stopped and activity - `work' - doing - performance takes over, with all the implications of judgment (good - evil), control and obedience of moral laws. (Morals are seen as descriptions of behaviors that emerge in the development of maturity as humans, and thus are natural and simple ordinary human behavior.)
way science labels structures
The way science labels structures from a primitive pos. / neg. number system is not consistent with consciousness. All that is available is the power set, so the electron shells resonate with these logics, not with an absolute global so called real number system. The "electrons" are confined to these logics and are these logics!! Like a liquid before states of matter come into existence.
layers are exaggerated
When this way of processing information spills over to or is confused with bi-directional resonance processes between layers, the importance of certain models and layers are exaggerated to become rules and heroes and over important as Gods. They must be obeyed without thought. This is the evolution of the human species: a application of horizontal processes to "vertical" time binding cycles and to the inhibition of the "animal" relationship to our ecological niche. We internalize this relationship as knowledge - rules - data that can be manipulated and objectified as language!
Thus the exaggerations that make Jesus into the perfect man God that can only happen once in all of human history, or that makes the Buddhist enlightenment attainable only after death as some Buddhists now believe, emerge from this winner take all functionality of the inhibitory neocortex.
The task of spiritual development is to individuate -
differentiate the Self from this cultural ego mass which is not me, but belongs to centuries and generations of habit energy and unfinished gestalts, wishes: such as everyone being loving, yet my culture - family - city is "best" or the dream of life lived "intelligently" or freedom etc. This is not a process of causation, but of discovery. There are many psychic structures associated with personality and Self Mind and each has different "chart" structures. These have not been available or explored in detail in the past. Only the cultural "I" is rooted in what is called Astrology. The male - female, mind - feeling, competitive - bonding dichotomies all relate to different structures. I can not, and do not want to tell you the meaning of these structures, but wish to participate in the discovery of the life and meaning you have embodied: I wish to share with you what I am developing regarding the process - function structure of consciousness. I wish to awaken from the cultural trance produced by the power of suggestion related to nominalizations assigned to planets and the Zodiac: there are real mapping indexing information functions and bioenergetic cycles to be discovered - uncovered in all of this.
science not tying anything together
I see science creating new information continuously, but not tying anything together: for instance, brain research, neural net theory, behaviorist psychology, and education - social systems. In religions the experiment, test, verification cycle in social systems is performed over generations.
Scientific global positions not only do not generate an answer
Thus global framework of mind was provided by traditional systems that were "friendly" to human mind structure. "God is Love" or the four Nobel truths of Buddhism which declare that there is a solution to "suffering" are examples. Einstein stated that the only important question is if the universe is friendly. Scientific global positions not only do not generate an answer, but they do not show any relationship between life and the cosmos but "accidental random variations" and subsequent evolutionary development by "survival of the fittest". They picture a dead mechanical universe as the "God" that made man in its image. That image of life without any "real" mind [mind is only a byproduct of biological brain activity] is embedded in the system of stimulus / response and operant behavioral conditioning now used in education, advertising, and other social systems. My model rejects conditioning models as inconsistent with the reality of self organizing neural networks, but sees conditioning as a myth of the new religion that maximizes control and emerges from the new scientific global framework for "mechanical mind".
dysfunctions resulting from inflations
This concept of "sin" was originally borrowed from a concept in Hebrew which meant to "miss the mark". This implied a need for adjustment in one's skills, not a complete halt of effort to be punished, or that there is a need to pay back some "God" for not being perfect the first and every time. This is further exacerbated by the sacrament of "Confession". The real need to share one's efforts and goals with another as a reflection of one's true unique individuality has been distorted into a self abasing shaming experience. If shame was the result of original sin, then the creation of shame out of attempts to master a skill is itself the real "sin".
Inflation is another result of the attempt to be "perfect". Seeing one's hero as a person who never sinned, who was immaculate, is an inflated model of how the brain functions. Such models can be translated into a physical system in this way. The physical system is a body of water, air, and some locations, and a need to travel between the locations. The obvious means of transport is to swim the distance. But in the model of perfection, Christ walked on water, so to achieve perfection, one must first master walking on water before traversing the distance. The resulting procedure is to master rising to ones feet while in the water, and the one who comes closest to this "spiritual goal" is "better" than others. But any level of skill in this task is obviously dysfunctional: the only answer to this is to awaken to or acknowledge this as a dead end and begin to swim or get back in the boat. These "miracles" seem to resemble Zen Koans.
fabric of consciousness is fuzzy
Before going on to the nature of man, I will point out that this model does not end up giving clear-cut predictive theories of human behavior. They do not exist, since the very fabric of consciousness is fuzzy. More that one state can be the successor or antecedent; and more than one state can be occupied at the same `time', all of which is avoided by `good science'. Thus the `meanings' associated with any one `astrological sign' contains material relevant to overlayered historical `times' as well as polar systems of behaviors, activities and levels of resolution. If causality could be strictly applied, then it would be applied the same for all those hundreds of persons with the same birth day and time. The controversy between Fate / Karma and free will is an indication of the history of this contradiction. My model provides for many types to emerging from a single birthday and that persons in ones' environment can shift the placement of planets in ones' internal map. Language itself results from this new skill developed at the emergence of the human species. Human languages and history are the content of astrology, and no one man can sort that out for the easy consumption of others. Yet if you begin to comprehend the generating principles of consciousness, this model can facilitate your understanding of the ways you have followed being a part of the herd and operate with archaic and dysfunctional solutions at the expense of your heritage as a unique, one of a kind, self-reliant being.
what "shines thru" enlightenment is the self organizing mind.Altered states of consciousness and Buddhist enlightenment also arises due to this functioning when applied even to the winner. What emerges is a clean slate, free of all cultural encumberments and concepts, and what "shines thru" is the self organizing / self regulating mind evolved over hundreds of millions of years using the enormous resources of life's genetic code that links all life forms.
My global position is that the "universe" is the output - surface of creative "programs"
My global position is that the "universe" is the output - surface of creative "programs" which are mistaken for "laws" only because very few "subjects" at certain moments change the "source code" or the program, and if or when this is done, rational consciousness dismisses it as illusion or anomaly. If creativity exists, then anomaly is not an "exception", and "everything" is a "one-time-event". "Everything" is the object surface of the "universe" and the "true" stability are the "programs" and their creative sources which can connect "cycles of time and space" into new programs.
how all models can emerge from a central source
The subject of Science has exclusively been the mechanical Universe and models and theories of the mechanical universe. Now new developments in science open connections between mathematical models and life processes that include consciousness and self originating processes. In the first part of this book I have introduced some of these models, and in the second part I will introduce my global model that explains how all models can emerge from a central source and can be contained within it. This fuzzy logic is the set that contains itself and its complement, or the circle that is inside itself. This is possible in folded higher dimensions. On a mobius strip, the other side of a sheet is the continuation of the same side. Traditional philosophies called this "meta" as in meta physics or as cosmology as global models. The experience and activity of making models is common to all human cultures, and it is the ability to make models that I am describing without making judgments about the truth of any of the models.
Paradigm of single emergent pattern of circumstances from which various viewpoints emerge
The scientific paradigm of change happening by single random events that propagate is the same as the god creationist dogma: a single cause.
My paradigm is a single emergent pattern of circumstances from which various viewpoints emerge. The pattern is invariant and each viewpoint that emerges as different species [within a complete ecological system (the pattern) ] does so with the other species as mappings - transformations with differing parameters.
This is seen in the rise of rational thought as a reduction of information to `simpler' principles.
(Thus philosophy in the West Started by statements about Truth and reason `I think, therefore I am' to look for absolutes outside of `nature'. This is explained by levels of resolution which trade awareness of detail and organic wholes [poetry] for connections of `outlines' where detail is smoothed or ignored and forgotten in the effort to find `underlying principles'[philosophy]. Thus the creations of abstract thought [like mathematics] seem to take on a life of their own, which in and of itself is only an embodiment of the direction of human evolution and not a think in itself apart from human endeavor. These are only distractions from investigation of the real principles of life, in that the expectation of finding some principle of mechanical operation that life can be reduced to, separate from all the fine structure. This furthers the dualistic thinking of monotheistic religions, now kept alive in science, that there is some generative principle behind appearances that accounts for the material world, with mind, consciousness and `spirit \ psychic energy' only an illusion that disappears when `things are taken apart'. The possibility is not entertained that this is a reflection of the `taking apart of the extended family' and the emergence of individual fulfillment as a goal and is driven by the emergence of new levels of resolution in the cultural psyche.)
This model is developmental in that there still remain social skills that where developed 22,000 years ago of the `farmer' as well as skills - consciousness [called instincts] which are rooted in our `reptilian' and `mammal' brains of the hunter. This model is rooted in `group consciousness' out of which the individual emerged as the first Adam at a new level of resolution, based not on a `higher' development, but on self consciousness as shame which arrested development. This slowing down of human development resulted in mastery of fewer skills removed from their context of origin. This development of `work' which can be performed at any arbitrary time devoured from any organic connection with the cosmos. This in turn gives rise to the idea of motivation or reason for activity [doingness] disconnected from `being', since no individual is self sufficient as are all individuals of other species.
This model makes possible precision in the understanding of human development / evolution in language, interpersonal relations, learning, and the structure of personality.
Medically it points directly to the most vulnerable organ systems. It explains the concepts of soul, spirit, emptiness, trinity, world as illusion, enlightenment, grace, etc.. It unifies & expands theories of personality such as transactional analysis, neural linguistic reprogramming, Jungian-Freudian-bioenergetic analysis, behavioral modification, etc..
After having seen how self-organization can be synergized with the public domain, especially in public school environment, I end with an illustration of my own personal awakening to self organization, which is often refereed to in religious writings as a spiritual awakening or enlightenment.
A look at how the evolution of consciousness resulted in an offspring (child): the EGO.
This is a moment of time fixated into a map of procedures \ events; the performance of which becomes our "life" or Fate. Marriage can only fail when it is a continuation of this structure. Yet marriage can be our best chance of dissolving the fixation and moving on. The word Yoga means to yoke to a discipline: usually for the purpose of self realization. Marriage can be a Yoga or just a yoke: it's your choice.
The nuclear family has become a modification of "ego" to be a fusion of two egos into one,
instead of a separation and dissolving and the forming of a relationship. What is formed is a fusion \ confusion. The separation is between generations: children, parents and grandparents. This becomes an isolation from wisdom and a new form of fixation: knowledge experts \ specialists. The extended family was the source of open nurturing to all, not just to the single resonant structure of "compatible" choices: which is the triumph of separateness and the decent into the "hell" of loneliness. In the modern culture we detest parents arrangement of marriage as intrusive. Even Mythic structures point to "true love" as the path to self realization, as in Triston, etc. Yet where is the examination of the spiritual benefits of the yoga of submitting our ego to a relationship, not to an absorption of others into our ego structure.
Language and culture are organized as a neural net!!!
Words are the nodes and connections and weights of this unique net which is basically a projection - mapping of our internal representational nets, both neural and biological. (Which is why hypnosis can affect the internal systems workings of organisms.) Thus cultures and subcultures have some of the same properties as a single brain. ( statements about there being no self does not imply that what we call a `person' with all the human self reliant normal properties does not exist, but is a statement that all objects of consciousness are cognitive processors, as well as the so called `subject'. Further discussion is beyond the scope of this `short' introduction.)
In the school environment, parents were only marginally included.
The scope of the resulting disaster is only now being measured. This resulted from failure to apprehend the brain as structured as a internal family group.
Teachers do not check to see if the student has mastered the logic of subjects before their are taught. During the teaching the only checks on the progress of the building of fully implemented inner representations is the single dimensional logic (appropriate to the 4 year old developmental stage) of giving grades to tests, which a student easily learns to defeat. This system quickly establishes `errors' as the enemy instead of the necessary insight into the organization of the inner representation. In cognitive development insight into error production is more important for uncovering representational weakness and distortion than already mastered skills.
The clash starting at puberty of the self organizing mind
is brought about by the establishments refusal to acknowledge this development by becoming a partner in learning. Instead they continue the same autocratic training agenda. The need is for the student to understand the difference between the self organizing logics of their emerging adult mind and the logics of the child involved in the enthusiasm and excitement of discovery. One of those properties is the emerging `cool' emotional response, which is the emerging response of `deep feelings' appropriate to the `adult' self organizing of stable skills that no longer have the `heat' of enthusiasm appropriate to the stage of concrete operations. (I use some of Piaget's' constructs as closest approximations to my work) The brain is now ready to accept abstractions and long term individual and group projects. The logics that support this stage are the same rules of evidence introduced by men like Locke, Hume and others in other cultures, but applied to discipline the subjective interpretation of experience based on `like and dislike' and other nominalizations that characterize earlier stages. Finer levels of resolution of cognitive skills are needed, but are only covertly inferred from the `advanced' nature of the subjects. They need to be applied to the persons cognitive organization in the their total context - environment, and as stated above this transference does not and cannot happen because of a presumed `global' property of knowledge or UNIVERSAL TRUTH. Stated again: cognitive skills are local to the generating connections to a specific sequence of `events'. We often encounter the person who is brilliant in one subject, but seems below average in so many others settings, especially social. One list of possible cognitive distortions already used in cognitive therapies is: All-or-nothing thinking, Over-generalization, Mental filter, Discounting the positive, Jumping to conclusions, Magnification, Emotional reasoning, `Should statements', Labeling, Personalization and blame. ("The Feeling Good Handbook", David Burns, M.D., 1990)
Clearly the perception in educational theory that there is no inner representational `self',
and if there is it does not need to be consulted, has done immense harm to our culture. This is compounded by the attitude that accessing the persons' context is optional. This attitude is supported, by the behaviorists in their stimulus - response theories, and by the belief that knowledge can be abstracted from life and experience and taught as fragments by their successors: the cognitivists.
But since all mind is self originating - self organizing - self reliant, our elders show us the way of knowing ourselves, not of forcing us into a mold of centrist "death" which is really a viewpoint from the extreme as in the geocentric position where all ideas are expected to not be a threat of extreme. The middle way is to develop diversity, not conformity as in the heliocentric position where different views shift or change the states to reveal the behavior of a system. The extremes of the geocentric use force and passivity - conformity to maintain a single position. Behaviorism is based on the obsolete physics of force - energy and power. At the same time competition is not allowed.
[My position is that science has no general system to guide it, and consequently cuts off its orienting BAMs. like a man lost in a forest of facts and not able to assemble what is before his face, and other metaphors like selling water by the river: only because others don't realize what a river is!! Science is drowning in Buddhist ideas. SCIENCE has an active taboo inhibition resistance repression of insight, realization and anything of general systems that "smells" [reptilian brain] of metaphysics!!!!]?
Model was initiated from an unexpected intuitive insight
This model was initiated from an unexpected intuitive insight of a basic connection between the organization of life and the cosmos. This experience took place in 1968 and overturned my scientific disdain for traditional attempts in this direction referred to as astrology, but it did not dampen my critical facility. I cannot ignore the archaic structure of astrology, which has not produced new models or successfully developed any explanation of how astrology in any form could operate. The implication that somehow energies from distant planets and stars influences directly human actions, when the energies from nearby sources, such as other humans in the same room, are stronger than the `stars'. Some persons have proposed that the influence is indirect, thru the agency of the solar wind or fluctuations in gravity fields. If this were so then the `influence' would be random over any population, just as rain is variable plus shield able; and no such effects can be found.
personal enlightenment experience
I am writing about self originating mind, from personal enlightenment experience, which I had in 1958 at the age of 22. From that point on I have devoted myself to the discovery of the structure of human mind and spirituality in the light of the modern scientific method. This "task" presented itself to me as an obvious choice since the split - wound between the life of mind and spiritual - traditional values is the most important problem now affecting all of human culture.
In 1958 I had a personal enlightenment experience
which I can now model as a "emptying" of my local personality, and awakening to a higher dimension of cognitive abilities which can best be seen as a global perspective that saw all other cultures and systems of thought on an equal footing and could experience openly the dimensions of my mind-body that stretched millions of years in my "animal" evolutionary "past", but had now become a participant in my present experience as a human being.
This model was initiated from an unexpected intuitive insight of a basic connection between the organization of life and the cosmos.
This experience took place in 1968 and overturned my scientific disdain for traditional attempts in this direction referred to as astrology, but it did not dampen my critical facility. I cannot ignore the archaic structure of astrology, which has not produced new models or successfully developed any explanation of how astrology in any form could operate. The implication that somehow energies from distant planets and stars influences directly human actions, when the energies from nearby sources, such as other humans in the same room, are stronger than the `stars'. Some persons have proposed that the influence is indirect, thru the agency of the solar wind or fluctuations in gravity fields. If this were so then the `influence' would be random over any population, just as rain is variable plus shieldable; and no such effects can be found.
The common sense view of and by `science' is to discover the underlying laws and structures of `nature' by reducing superfluous detail until principles can be established that explain and predict the essential behavior. Thus the laws of nature do not depend on individual and unique fluctuations. Nature does not require a unique set of laws to generate each case. OR DOES IT? This contention has never been called into question, and what kinds of laws of the universe would allow such action. I propose that a model of the universe which includes matter, mind, and spiritual structures has a structure in which the laws of the universe is precisely a holographic structure which has local qualities that have been called MIND. That these `laws' create the universe at every moment and are the first level of resolution of `consciousness'!!! "The proper study of man is man": finding the structure of uniqueness at all times and places, not the study of laws of collective behavior followed autonomously as cause and effect.
My enlightenment experience 32 years ago seemed to strip away my personality.
I was able to look at what was being human and the unlimited possibilities of inner development. I see the true nature of consciousness as each moment presenting a fully constructed inner representation of the world and myself complete with all the calculations needed for my interaction with that world. Thus what we call thought and mental processes takes place after and in addition to an already perfect presentation. In fact the act of perception is created from the procedures and actions which go to make up human behavior. We have been taught by culture to ignore this direct involvement and participation in our total situation. Then we begin to look upon our world as filled with objects of which we can have knowledge about in the descriptive sense of seeing attributes and traits. As this process continues we become one of those objects. Then our idea of our real self is as a collection of traits as likes, dislikes, and predictions which must be maintained, protected and added to just like a car or house. We assign ourselves certain values as to our abilities and our real nature and birthright as humans of knowingness in the here and now (real time planing and knowing) atrophies. Then everything must be `performed' by rote or learned from `masters'. Experience is knowing. Feelings are predictions of outcomes an a self monitoring approval or warning system. Sight is already the plan of action if one only `jumps' in to it with no-mind. Smell is the recognition of the state and quality of the environment. Hearing is the unseen movement as well as communication.
The experience of enlightenment for me was an awakening from the sleep of the acculturation of my youth. I had no prior interest in Buddhism or desire to meditate. I didn't expect anything to happen when at age 22, I read a simple paperback with the title "Introduction to Zen Buddhism" by D.T. Suziki. I had done no "work" or made no effort, I just read for an hour, and when I got to the passage: "all things here are characterized with emptiness: they are not born, they are not annihilated; they are not tainted, they are not immaculate; they do not increase, they do not decrease. Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no thought, no confection, no consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no form, sound, color, taste, touch, objects; no Dhatu of vision, till we come to no Dhatu of consciousness; there is no knowledge, no ignorance, till we come to there is no old age and death, no extinction of old age and death; there is no suffering, no accumulation, no annihilation, no path; there is no knowledge, no attainment, [and] no realization,* because there is no attainment. In the mind of the Bodhisattva who dwells depending on the Prajnaparamita there are no obstacles; and, going beyond the perverted views, he reaches final Nirvana. All the Buddhas of the past, present, and future, depending on the Prajnaparamita, attain to the highest perfect enlightenment."
What happened then was as if I was reborn:
all my preconceptions, attitudes and the opinions of myself and others about who I was disappeared. I no longer attached labels to myself like "nerd". I saw that my posture, my way of doing and thinking was based on false, empty assumptions mostly made by others during my early school years.
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4. Human development now and then: Stripping away the cultural necessities to find a unifying "essence" or inner structure.
Independence and enmeshment.