ARTICLE 22

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW

Craig Eisendrath has written a book titled AT WAR WITH TIME, The Wisdom of Western Thought from The Sages to a New Activism for Our Time. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at M.I.T. and other institutions.

His book is helping people understand what HP/SOS has named “first reality”.

On the first page of his Preface he states:

“In response to crisis, thoughtful people search inside themselves for confidence or security. For many, traditional beliefs, which provided comfort for earlier generations, no longer work. These beliefs include a faith in God, in the soul, and in eternal ideas; a belief that science can deliver sure answers; and confidence that history will inevitably have a favorable outcome. Together, these beliefs form what I call “permanence complex”. With these beliefs in question, many people are beset with the uncertainty which marks our age.”

The first part of his book explains what he means by “permanence complex” which is basically that for the past 5,000 years humans have been conditioned to believe what they were told by their authorities and they continued to do so up to about 150 years ago.

The second part of his book deals with “activism”, which has to do with a new paradigm shift in which he states on page 109:

“Accordingly, in part II, we will review as succinctly and as accurately as we can developments in the last 150 years, and particularly in the last seventy-five, across major scientific disciplines, and in history and human experience, which can be seen as converging on a new way of thinking. Particularly in the physical and biological sciences, we will rely heavily on a relatively handful of representative scientists who have seen, in the advances in their fields, implications for a new view of the world. In some cases their work is controversial, and its final worth is not settled. Many other scientists could have been chosen. The work represented here illustrates not only the excitement of modern science but the fact that its basic findings are still in flux, and that any conclusions we reach must, accordingly, be tentative.”

Thank you Dr. Eisendrath for daring to challenge human history.

HP/SOS research is exposing how humans have allowed secular and sacred authorities to establish rules and regulations that were either “RULER ORDAINED” or “GOD ORDAINED”.

These rules and regulations have taken place over the past 5,000 years and they have been accepted as history rather than the way in which human beings have been controlled by the authorities of their cultures without the ability to question either the rules and regulations or the authorities that created them.

What Dr. Eisendrath has named “permanence complex”, HP/SOS has named “first reality” definitions that every culture on planet Earth has accepted as “truth” (secular ruler’s law) or “scripture” (God’s laws or commandments).

Most cultures of the world still practice this absolute control over their populations.

The change that Dr. Eisendrath has named “activism” in the second part of his book started about three hundred years ago in Europe when secular rulers and church rulers started to lose absolute control over human creativity. This waking up of humanity was responsible for what has become known as 1) the renaissance, 2) the reformation, 3) the birth of modern science, 4) the industrial revolution. The printing press allowed these breakthroughs wide circulation.

What has brought us to this point in history, where humans have created weapons that are capable of destroying humanity, is most rulers of the cultures of the world, both secular and sacred, are still attempting to practice absolute control over their populations.

The important paradigm shifts that Dr. Eisendrath’s excellent book states are a requirement for human progress and are already happening in small populations around the world as more and more people are asking questions.

The first requirement is a human’s capability to understand: 1) how humans know what they know, and 2) how behavior is the result of human knowing.

This knowledge has only been discovered during the past 150 years with 1) the physiology of the brain, 2) the psychological schools of behavioristic, psychoanalytic, humanistic and transpersonal psychology, 3) the research of analytic philosophy and linguistics, 4) self-image psychology and 5) quantum physics.

All of these fields of research are of recent origin in which the focus of attention is on the human being’s awesome creativity capability.

It is this research into the nature of human beings that HP/SOS and its research team have been actively involved in for over 50 years. Members of our research team are publishing books about our research and we have a number of websites on the internet for those that are ready to question the rules and regulations that have been given to them by the authorities of their cultures.

Our major website is thescienceofspirit.com with other websites mentioned on this website for those that are interested in our research.

This article will explain both the importance of these new sciences and the developing sciences of mind and spirit as transcendent aspects of a human when researching the nature of a human being. We will also explain when, where and how ancient teaching of Plato and Aristotle are changed from a monism cosmology by later scholars to a dualism cosmology to justify the theistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The evidence for this will also be shown later in the article by the mystic writings of Plotinus. 

Please be advised that for a human to “learn” anything s/he must challenge what s/he currently believes. The challenge can be simply an additional “proof” to what s/he already believes, an add-on. However, the challenge can be a paradigm shift which totally contradicts what s/he currently believes.

Question: Please give an example of what you mean by the two types of challenge.

Answer: The add-on challenge would be any learning that increases one’s excellence in an area already being learned, for example, golf, or any sport, or in business, going from an employee to an owner. The paradigm shift challenge would be any learning that requires a contradiction to what has already been accepted as fact or truth in any field of expression, for example, leadership, when s/he has always been a follower, creative, when s/he has never created anything, happy, when life has never give her or him any reason to be happy, or basically, the ability to question what has been accepted as truth or fact in any area of life. The most important paradigm shift is the new definition of God that happens when one’s cosmological belief changes from a first reality understanding to a third reality understanding.

Question: Are you saying that a human is capable of questioning her or his entire belief system?

Answer: Yes, and that is what has required the research of many of the above named new sciences. For example, humans begin their learning process by believing that their five senses are how they relate to their world. This is a basic paradigm which is what has produced the 5,000 years of what Dr. Eisendrath named the “permanence complex” and HP/SOS named “first reality”. It is the basic beliefs that humans have accepted throughout history of the rules and regulations of their cultures, both secular and sacred.

Question: How can a human question the history of the world within one lifetime?

Answer: This is the genius of Dr. Eisendrath’s discovery and the 50 years of research of HP/SOS. It is the focus on human nature that recent sciences made possible. It is not the history of the world that is being questioned, it is the history of human understanding that relates to that world that is now capable of being questioned. That is why the two types of learning mentioned above are so important. We will be exposing that in the brain’s processing of information, myths are metaphors and that reason and faith are no different in the behavior they produce when based on the physiology of the brain. This research has only been available during the past 50 years.

Question: Dr. Holmes never used reincarnation in his teachings. Did he have a paradigm shift to justify its exclusion when most Eastern teachings use it as one of the major requirements for enlightenment?

Answer: Fantastic question. Dr. Holmes had as the basis of his teaching the awakening of Universal Mind as the same mind that is the human mind. This requires a paradigm shift from thinking and feeling from a finite and separate human being (self-image) to an awakening INFINITE I AM (SELF-IMAGE). It is this basis of his teaching that justified his healing method of “feeling as if” you already are the desired, because to him “wholeness” pre-existed an individual’s treatment of practicing the acceptance of wholeness. It also justified why prayer works for every religion on planet Earth.

Question: How can a limited human being “cause” his or her self to awaken from a finite human to an awakening INFINITE I AM?

Answer: Another fantastic question. HP/SOS uses the psychological schools to answer that question as an evolutionary process available to every human being on planet Earth. We will answer that question in greater detail later on in this article, however, the answer requires a cosmological change from believing in the separate God of theism religions to the Absolute God of panentheism. The belief in a theistic God uses a subject/object language model and the belief in a panentheistic God requires a process language model.

We can now begin explaining this process of an awakening INFINITE I AM with an exposure of how words relate to human understanding rather than the world they are describing.

As I write these words and you read them, first reality understanding assumes that the meaning I am using when writing these words is the same meaning you are giving my words when reading them.

How else could humans communicate if they did not have the same or at least similar meanings for the words they are using?

The answer to this simple question is one of the major discoveries of the HP/SOS research. The answer is complex because it requires a number of areas of information that are relatively new.

1. Words are symbols (metaphors) that humans use to represent the reality being related to by the individual that is using words.
2. The English language uses words that relate to a person, place or thing in what is named a subject/object language model.
3. Subject/object language uses nouns and verbs to name objects and the actions being taken by those objects.
4. English also uses adjectives to add descriptions to the objects.

You may say: none of what you have listed above seems very new.

First reality understanding does not normally think those things about the words being used. However, after an individual is “reflectively aware” (second reality) of the above four observations, another set of observations is now possible.

1. Recent research into the human brain has discovered that humans do not understand their reality with their five senses. It is the brain that determines the meaning and feeling of an individual’s reality.
2. Subject/object language relates to particular objects (person, place or thing), which are never the actual objects being symbolized by words.
3. It is the brain that relates to the data of the senses and it is the brain that acts as a memory bank of programmed data (current acceptances or beliefs) which determines the meaning and feeling (individual’s belief system) that relates to sensed data.
4. C-fibers or neurons in the brain can never be the actual objects being described because it is an individual’s current beliefs or acceptances that the c-fibers or neurons of the brain use for its descriptions.
5. An individual’s current acceptances or beliefs are programmed in his or her brain as a result of three sources: a) human genetics of over a million years, b) one’s environment beginning at conception, c) one’s connection to what Carl Jung named “the collective unconsciousness” or what Ernest Holmes named the “Universal Mind”.

HP/SOS names this aspect of human nature “the transcendent”.

These discoveries by an individual are the result of paradigm shifts (a first, second and third reality), in which s/he becomes aware in reflective second reality that s/he never actually related to an outside world of so-called “empirical observation”, but s/he relates to his or her beliefs within his or her brain.

This new awareness within a reflective second reality understanding produces an individual that is now responsible for his or her reality and the behavior it produces along with an empowerment to actualize more desirable options.

S/he has located what is determining his or her responses that are no longer based on external input as s/he believed in first reality.

After second reality has awakened, the understanding of input is realized as the result of subjective evaluation, not external observation.

Blaming others as the cause of his or her reactions changes in reflective second reality to responsibility and an empowerment capability in which s/he can replace unacceptable acceptances or beliefs with more beneficial ones.

Question: Are you telling me that a wife is not actually relating to her husband or vice versa?

Answer: Yes, and that is why so many people struggle so often with each other. Until we are aware of the part our brain’s conditioning plays in the reality we are living, how or why would we be capable of having any awareness that our reality is a “projection” of our conditioned brain rather than an observation of our five senses (in first reality, reaction is believed to be to external input). Only after the awakening of reflective second reality’s location of comprehension is an individual responsible for his or her behavior. In first reality we believe that we are reacting directly to our outside world of person, place or thing, not to the acceptances of our conditioned brain.

Question: Are you suggesting that my whole life has been incapable of understanding the reality I have been living?

Answer: Yes and no. Yes, in first reality you have been living a life assuming that you were relating directly to an outside world and that your responses were caused by that world. No, in second reality you are not (in how you understand) relating directly to your outside world because after reflective second reality awakens, you are aware that your reality is not a result of input from your five senses but is a result of your conditioned brain’s evaluation process.

Question: If I have been living a reality unconsciously how or why would I not be aware of this?

Answer: Because for countless centuries humans have been unaware of how and why life produces so much struggle. After awakening to reflective second reality, humans are finally capable of comprehending the part their brain plays as hardware, and their belief system plays as software, in producing their reality.

Our conditioned brain produces our behavior, not input from external sources via our five senses. We are not responsible or empowered in first reality when believing that it is our world that is causing our behavior, which makes us a victim of our environment.

Prior to the reflective awareness of second reality, humans have been living by definitions of fact and truth, agreed to by “consent or custom” which is determined by a culture’s authorities (sacred and secular).

In second reality we are aware that understanding is not of an “actual” reality but is a “virtual” reality of our own acceptances or beliefs within our brain.

We are now aware that our brain acts as a memory bank or hardware with our transcendent aspect (Universal Mind) furnishing the software.

This takes us all the way back to Plato, who attempted to help us become aware of our connection to a “perfect” world (Universal Mind) that he felt is forgotten by most at birth.

Plato referred to this ability of reflection of our perfection as “remembering”.

Plato’s (427-347 B.C.) theory of knowledge described how the human mind achieves knowledge, and indicated what knowledge consists of, by means of 1). his allegory of the cave, 2). his metaphor of the divided line, and 3). his doctrine of the Forms or Ideas.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) enrolled in Plato’s Academy in Athens when he was seventeen years old, where he spent the next twenty years as a pupil and member. Aristotle was also the tutor of Alexander The Great.

Aristotle invented formal logic. He also invented the idea of separate sciences.

For him, there was a close connection between logic and science, in as much as he considered logic to be the instrument with which to formulate language properly when analyzing what a science involves. Science, as Aristotle understood it, consisted of true statements that accounted for the reasons why things behave as they do and why they have to be as they are. In this sense, science consists in the knowledge of the “fact that” and the “reasons why”. It includes both observation and a theory that explains what is observed.

The most important thing about science is therefore the language in which it is formulated. Scientific language must indicate as precisely as possible what constitutes the distinctive subject matter of a science, and it must describe why things act the way they do.

Logic, then, is a study of words or language, but not the way a grammarian would study them. Aristotelian logic is the study of the thought for which words are signs; it is an attempt to get at truth by an analysis of the thought that reflects our understanding of the nature of things. Remember, for Aristotle as for Plato, there is a perfection to be actualized by nature as reflection awakens an individual to his or her transcendent potential.

In short, for Aristotle, logic was the instrument of analysis of human thought as it thinks about reality. To be sure, thought does not always reflect reality accurately, but it is the function of logic always to work toward a more adequate relation between language and reality.

HP/SOS explains a close connection between Plato and Aristotle that has been missed by most scholars because of their misinterpretation of Plato’s theory of knowledge.

Plato’s three examples mentioned above have been assumed by scholars to be examples of a dualism cosmology in which Forms or archetypes were separated from the world that represented them in a less-than-perfect copy. His divided line example was not of a dualism cosmology but was of a monism cosmology in which he was exposing levels or stages of human understanding. His allegory of the cave example is an excellent explanation of the dynamics a human expresses as they experience or live these different levels or stages.

Why this is so major to understand Aristotle’s logic is that both he and Plato developed systems in which particular examples were a result of universal sources. What Aristotle did was he took Plato’s Forms or universal archetypes and developed a system of why and how universals were innate within an individual or particular expression of all of nature.

The important part these two giants played in HP/SOS research is they both established a universal basis for reality, with Plato more interested in explaining the principles determining reality and with Aristotle’s focus more on how Plato’s universal principles became actions experienced and expressed individually.

This was the genius of Dr. Ernest Holmes. He took the writings of the mystics of the world in every religion and synthesized them into a spiritual psychology for the individual to practice as a dynamic reality.

Aristotle looked at life through the eyes of a biologist. For him, nature is life. All things are in motion and in the process of becoming. He believed that all things are involved in processes of change. He used two new concepts that explain how this change happens from Plato’s Forms or archetypes of perfection to what Aristotle will call “potentiality actuality”. This is Aristotle’s orientation to what will be later called “teleology”. There is in all things a dynamic power of striving toward an end or purpose (which was to actualize or become perfect).

In essence, Aristotle realized Plato’s Forms as transcendent aspects that are immanent within all of nature.

HP/SOS names the awakening to our transcendent aspect, when it happens, “third reality”.

As a human awakens to his or her transcendent aspect, learning is realized as inner actualization of our transcendent aspect (pre-existing potential of wholeness) rather than originating from outside sources.

This also validates Ernest Holmes’ attempt to awaken us to what he named our Universal Mind, when in our first reality we mistakenly believe we have only an individual brain in a separate individual body.

Question: Can you give me an example of what you are saying?

Answer: Yes, and the example I will give you explains how and why this example is still practiced as a first reality belief in today’s world.

When I went to a hypnosis school to become certified, I was told that all hypnosis is self hypnosis, even though the public believes that a hypnotist controls his or her subject when practicing the art of hypnosis.

I was told that when a public performance is taking place the hypnotist begins with a “trial run” on the group to discover who in the group is “suggestible”. Those that obviously go into a deep trance are the ones that later will be called onto the stage to perform his or her act of hypnotizing.

What is actually happening is those people that are oriented to taking orders will accept what the hypnotist is saying, which will result in the subject entering into deeper brain wave experiences, or self hypnosis.

It is in alpha and/or theta brain wave levels that humans “learn” or “accept” their conditioning that produces their behavior. It is this “group” conditioning or “cultural” conditioning mentality that has allowed authorities to control most of our world’s populations for centuries.

It is a result of this discovery that led HP/SOS to recognize the correlation of first reality (believing that one reacts to an outside world) to an individual’s belief that s/he relates directly to an outside world via his or her five senses rather than to his and her conditioned brain. For example, in first reality the wife and the husband believe that they are reacting to each other, rather than what is actually happening. In first reality, they are both continuing to practice habit patterns of reaction and/or struggle within themselves with monotonous regularity.

After awakening to reflective second reality (locating comprehension as one’s own belief system), reactions are realized as habits within the individual that is reacting. Reactions are no longer blamed on “outer” causes.

HP/SOS discovered that the research of two relatively new psychological schools were exploring these first two realities as 1) behavioristic, with its orientation to “outer” cause with the human’s conditioned brain’s response the effect and 2) humanistic, with its orientation to a human’s ability to foster creativity with the ability to “create” their world.

Humanistic psychology totally reversed the cause and effect of behavioristic psychology by the human being the cause of change rather than the effect.

It is the discovery of the correlation between the psychological schools and their differing orientation to human behavior that enabled the research of HP/SOS to be aware that stages are evolutionary steps taking place in an awakening human being.

Using the four major psychological schools (behavioristic, psychoanalytic, humanistic and transpersonal), HP/SOS discovered three paradigm shifts in human understanding that are determined by an evolutionary process within human beings. HP/SOS named this process, “Spiritual DNA”.

What HP/SOS named first reality is how humans start understanding reality without having any knowledge of how or why humans believe what they are told by their mentors as being factual or true.

First reality is the ancient stage of understanding (believing what we are told by authorities) that has produced libraries of information in countless areas of knowledge that humans have used for centuries to determine their realities (both secular and sacred).

These stories were “created” by early cultures when explaining the creation of the world and the supernatural creatures and forces that were responsible. These stories became known as “myths”, with each culture justifying its original story. An excellent book titled Myth, A Biography Of Belief is available.

Question: The Yahoo search engine listed over 265 countries in the world with over 5,000 languages. If only half of these have stories that justify their religions how can a human ever find out which one is true?

Answer: Fantastic question: It is the growing number of countries and religions that have produced the struggles between nations for centuries. There has been no real solution until the recent research this article is exposing in which the human is being examined. For example, there are 34,000 separate Christian groups listed on Yahoo, with each one having its own unique rituals and ceremonies. Yahoo even listed 42 conflicts currently happening on planet Earth. All of these vast numbers are of no importance when we examine the physiology of the human brain. The brain interprets its understanding which removes any distinction between a myth story and a true story. Every individual on planet Earth is programmed to accept the data that produces his or her behavior. It does not matter as to its true or false nature. Because of the individual’s belief system, accepted data will determine behavior whether it is true or false. This is why the location of data in the brain that is determining behavior deals with reason or faith in the same way. There is a textbook with 2,500 names of different Gods. Because of the nature of how the brain processes beliefs, all will process in the same way. Since humans are discovering as one evolves from first reality monism (all is matter) to third reality monism (all creation is an extension of the same SOURCE) humans are beginning to recognize why all religions “work”.

“It is done unto you as you believe” is the determining psychological factor regardless of the multiple names, bibles, ceremonies and rituals being practiced. It is about time humans started appreciating uniqueness.

It is this relationship to knowledge acceptance by an individual from his or her environment that will be the first psychological school of behaviorism. This is the level of understanding in which a human assumes that his or her five senses are relating “directly” to an “empirically” observed reality, which is false.

It is this data acceptance that Dr. Eisendrath has named a “permanence complex” and HP/SOS has named “first reality”.

This justifies an individual reacting to people, places and things in his or her world, pointing to his or her outside world as the cause of his or her inner experiences of meaning and feeling.

This belief that an individual’s environment is the cause of his or her brain’s conditioning is named by behaviorism “operant conditioning”.

Question: Are you telling me that first reality has been lived for centuries?

Answer: Yes, because authorities created the rules and regulations determining what is factual or true. The rulers produced dictionaries that continue to be definitions accumulated by consensus or custom.

This only becomes a problem for a culture when a few humans begin to question what others have told them is factual or true. It is this learning from authorities that Dr. Eisendrath is naming the “permanence complex”.

The next psychological school, founded by Freud, will produce the same behavior as behaviorism because the only difference between behaviorism and psychoanalysis is that Freud adds an unconscious or subconscious capability in one’s brain (wounded child) which includes a past with its repressed programming as another determining factor in what produces human behavior.

Both behaviorism and psychoanalysis assume that a human is a body with a brain in which all human behavior is reducible to the brain and its conditioning by its environment, both past and present.

This form of “reductionism” is currently the dominant belief of most physical scientists. Human behavior is believed to be an epiphenomenon of the brain.

This behavioristic orientation means that humans are victims of their environment (culture) and the behavior produced is a result of their conditioned brain. This is what HP/SOS has named “first reality”.

The next stage discovered by HP/SOS requires a paradigm shift of understanding that first reality cannot comprehend because: 

• An ego, I, self or person is “born” (awakens) with a reflective ability to analyze his or her currently conditioned brain.
• This is a result of a new ability to recognize awareness of awareness in which an individual is now reflectively aware that his or her reality is a virtual reality within his or her brain.
• This awakens a responsibility within the individual for the first time that reactions to input from his or her outside world are actually being determined by his or her current acceptances or beliefs within his or her brain (a result of subjective evaluation rather than external cause).
• This awakens an empowerment to entertain options to his or her current conditioned acceptances which is unknowable in first reality because a first reality understanding is automatically reacting (stimulus/response) to his or her feelings and meanings believed to have been caused by the data inputted from his or her outside world by a person, place or thing.
• Second reality reflection produces a freedom unknown to first reality understanding because blame of an outside cause (person, place or thing) is now replaced with an inner evaluation capable of practicing change when one’s current reaction (habit) becomes no longer acceptable.

It is reflective second reality understanding in which humans realize a freedom that is quite impossible in first reality when two people are arguing differing definitions believing that they are arguing facts or truth.

Second reality reflection produces an awareness that it is one’s own acceptances that are producing behavior that is either beneficial or not.

This is the result of a developing self mastery that is no longer interested in the winning of arguments with someone else who is defending a different definition.

The next paradigm shift starts to be intellectually entertained after one is practicing the fun of second reality creativity. It is a result of the questioning that takes place as an individual is having fun “creating” a whole new reality of actualizing talents and abilities.

A new self-image is happening. A new language model is now being used which HP/SOS has named “process” language. Process language is conscious participation in the dynamics of change as excellence is achieved.

As s/he manifests new and exciting change, s/he will start to question how and why change that s/he is practicing subjectively is manifesting change in his or her outside world. In other words, why or how would changes in how I understand reality affect or change my world outside of my self.

As I practice change (feeling as if) I discover it validates by producing the change I am practicing as external manifestations.

Ernest Holmes named this process of change, “the law of correspondence”.

It is as a result of these questions that the next paradigm shift of a third reality begins to happen in which the transcendent aspect starts to consciously awaken and be recognized.

HP/SOS explains that the motivation to ask these new questions is a natural motivation of an individual’s Spiritual DNA. It is an awakening that often starts happening after experiencing an NDE (near death experience) or an OBE (out of body experience). The ancients named this process “involution”.

Such experiences are an exciting “proof” of an inner “space” aspect beyond the physical body’s world. This is akin to reports of mysticism experiences in which “oneness” is experienced.

HP/SOS observes a major difference in the West as a result of second reality, where humans learn to practice fun when actualizing talents and abilities. This is because of the discovery of one’s self, I, ego or person in second reality understanding with a strong desire to create in an important world.

Many Eastern teachings attempt to jump from a first reality to a third reality because they make the ego, I, self or person an “enemy”. HP/SOS shows the importance of the individual self mastery long before one awakens to his or her transcendent aspect.

This is due to the West’s importance of “creating” a better world. The East has a tendency to relate to both one’s world and one’s individual self as an illusion.

Most Eastern gurus still attempt to destroy the important second reality step of individual creativity in their push for Nirvana. The East uses reincarnation to justify its custom of “fixed” or pre-determined stages of rebirth that requires one to be reborn as another individual in order to change one’s caste.

This is not a problem for the West with its orientation to genetics, the science in which every human inherits some genes of every other human throughout history. Therefore, the change of stages are currently possible in this lifetime.

It is now easy to understand why “past life regression” works when being used to practice change in one’s life. Any former life is available to experience after we awaken to our transcendent inner connection to all of creation.

Most mystics of the past and present (East and West) have had no way (without the knowledge of the psychological schools) to explain the transcendent aspect (oneness) they were experiencing without using traditional explanations of person, place or thing in subject/object language models which were often “labeling” their world and the individual self as an illusion of the individual self. This seems to be why the individual self is often considered an “enemy”.

Question: Is this why so many Eastern and some Western teachings suggest that one’s ego, as well as desire, is an enemy of enlightenment?

Answer: Great question. How can a limited self awaken to an unlimited SELF? Teachings that deny the individual self, as well as desire, are intellectually correct, however, desire is required for creativity and excellence by any individual self-mastery in first or early second reality. It is also the ego, I, self or person of second reality that is justifying the massive market of self-help systems (secular and sacred) currently. Why denial of an individual self is intellectually correct is because after one has awakened to his or her transcendent aspect, why would one desire what they already are? Also, after awakening to one’s transcendent wholeness, they are no longer operating from a finite and limited self or ego.

This is probably why Dr. Ernest Holmes has two methods of treatment in his textbook. The first is 1) the argumentative, which is an individual arguing with his or her self when attempting to demonstrate a change that his or her current conditioning cannot accept. This is why the ego can look as if it is a problem because it is the ego that often is blamed for the limiting scope of an individual’s current belief system.

In contrast, after awakening to one’s transcendent aspect, one would use the second method of treatment in which 2) one “feels as if” their desire has already happened or manifested, in which one is no longer desiring but one has accepted. A great “tool” for this type of manifestation is the use of “treasure maps”.

This is what HP/SOS names third reality and Dr. Holmes named Universal Mind as the pre-existence of wholeness awaiting actualization.

It is this acceptance of pre-existing wholeness that justifies the use of “healing” regarding Religious Science practitioners and ministers.

Without the current physiological research of the human brain, it is difficult to be aware that our outside reality is actually an inside evaluation of our conditioned brain.

In the West, with our strong emphasis on the importance of the world and technology, we have the benefit of including the physical sciences as well as the mental and spiritual sciences of psychology, including its multiple levels.

In today’s world, an increasing number of people are having an epiphany or cosmic consciousness experience which is their awakening to the transcendent aspect of their nature.

This is a human’s pre-existing wholeness that justifies every form of healing, sacred or secular. It is the awakening to the oneness experienced by the mystics of every culture.

It is the awakening that Ernest Holmes named Universal Mind.

It is what HP/SOS has named third reality, in which oneness or wholeness is practiced as the basis of an awakening INFINITE I AM.

Question: How can a subject/object language model explain what you are saying?

Answer: You are asking an important question about how can a language model that is “static” relate to the awesome dynamics HP/SOS research is discovering. The quick answer is that it cannot.

Early in second reality, HP/SOS introduces a process language model to understand the dynamics being discovered and practiced.

It is the “static” reality of accepted definitions denoting what is truth and fact that Dr. Eisendrath has labeled “permanence complex” in his book.

When a human first begins to practice change, s/he is into process dynamics. This takes us back to the two methods of treatment explained by Ernest Holmes in his textbook.

Remember, first reality is not aware that its brain is using definitions as its reality. First reality acts as if thoughts are the things being symbolized.

Second reality is where the paradigm shift to the importance of a separate and unique individual happens as s/he is practicing increased excellence in talents and abilities. This requires awareness of awareness in which a self, I, ego or person has awakened to the part s/he plays in practicing change when accepting what s/he will name cause and effect. This is the awakening of an individual’s self mastery.

Third reality is aware of pre-existing wholeness or perfection as aspects of one’s transcendent nature which justifies “feeling as if” the desired already exists. This is why all “healing” is acceptance by degree of pre-existing wholeness whether practiced by sacred or secular methods. This is also why the cause and effect of first and early second reality changes to what HP/SOS names third reality’s acceptance by degree because of the pre-existing wholeness of Universal Mind awaiting actualization.

This new identity (often labeled “divinity” by many metaphysical self-help systems) justifies practicing an eternal existence of love, joy and happiness.

One of the most famous mystics to have lived on planet Earth is an Egyptian named Plotinus. Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) is considered by many scholars as the father of Christian Mysticism. He was born in Egypt and lived at a time when there was no single compelling philosophical doctrine that could satisfy the special concerns of his age. It was an age of syncretism, when ideas were taken from several sources and put together as philosophies and religions.

The great variety of religious cults attested to the desperate attempt by many in the second and third centuries of the Roman world to lay hold of an explanation of life and its destiny.

The cult of Isis combined Greek and Egyptian ideas of the gods; the Romans developed the Imperial Cult and worshipped their emperors, living and dead; devotees of the Mithric Cult worshipped the sun; and there was the Phrygian worship of the Great Mother of the Gods.

Christianity was still considered a cult, even though there had been a number of Christian thinkers such as Justin Martyr (100-220 A.D.), Clement of Alexandria (150-220 A.D.), Tertullian (160-230 A.D.),and Origen (185-225 A.D.), who sought to give the Christian faith a systematic character and an intellectual defense. Origen has tried to provide a Platonic and Stoic framework for Christianity.

The decisive bridge between classical philosophy and Augustine (354-430 A.D.) would be the writings of Plotinus even though Plotinus never mentions Christianity in his extensive writings.

The original contribution of Plotinus consisted in his fresh version of Plato’s philosophy, and for that reason the writings of Plotinus are known as Neoplatonism.

Plotinus was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. Alexandria was at that time an intellectual crossroads of the ancient world, and here Plotinus developed a wide grasp of classical philosophy, including the ideas of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics. Out of all of these strands Plotinus selected Platonism as the surest source of truth.

At the age of forty, Plotinus moved to Rome, where the atmosphere was charged by considerable chaos in morality and religion and by social and political unrest. In Rome, Plotinus opened his own school, to which he attracted some of the city’s elite, including the emperor and his wife.

What made Plotinus’s philosophy distinctive was that he combined a speculative description of reality with a religious doctrine of salvation.

He not only described the world, but he also gave an account of its source and the human’s place in it. He explained how humans overcame their moral and spiritual difficulties.

In short, Plotinus developed a doctrine about God as the source of all things and as that to which humans must return. Plotinus used the metaphor of emanation to describe the things of the world by saying that they came from God.

Things flow from God in the same way that light emanates from the sun.

Just as light closest to the sun is the brightest, so also the highest form of being is the first emanation. Plotinus described this first emanation from God or the One as Mind (nous). Nous is THOUGHT or UNIVERSAL INTELLIGENCE and signifies the underlying rationality of the world.

THE WORLD SOUL

Just as light emanates from the sun in ever diminishing intensity, so also the gradations of being, which emanate from God, represent a decline in the degree of perfection.

Moreover, each succeeding emanation is the cause of the next lower emanation, as if there were a principle at work requiring that every aspect of nature bring into being that which is immediately subordinate to it.

In this way, the nous (universal intelligence) is in turn the source of the Soul of the world. The Soul of the world has two aspects: looking upward, toward nous or pure rationality, the Soul strives to contemplate the eternal FORMS (Plato’s perfect archetypes) of all things; looking downward, the Soul emanates by reasoning one thing at a time, providing thereby the life principle to all of nature, thus bridging the gap between the FORM (universal archetype) of things and the actual realm of the natural order.

This was how Plotinus connected the One or God, the nous, and the World Soul as a trinity within all creation as co-eternal.

THE HUMAN SOUL

The human soul is an emanation from the World Soul. Like the World Soul, it also has two aspects. Looking upward the human soul shares in the nous or universal reason, and looking downward, the human soul becomes connected with, but not identical, with the body.

Here Plotinus is reaffirming Plato’s doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul, believing also in the union of the soul with the body which is a product of a “fall”. After death the soul survives the body.

WHAT CAUSES EVIL?

By the doctrine of emanation, Plotinus argued that God necessarily overflows in order to share Its perfection. Plotinus felt that since God did not duplicate Its nature perfectly, It made it possible for humans to discoverer all the possible degrees of perfection and limitation.

For this reason, It established not only the nous (archetype of perfection) but also the lowest level of being (or limitation), which he named “matter”.

But, Plotinus was asked by his students, how do humans account for moral evil, sin, pain, and the continued warfare of the passions, and finally, sorrow and death?

How could the PERFECT ONE (GOD), from whom everything ultimately emanates, permit that kind of imperfection to exist among human beings?

For Plotinus, matter is the necessary and final reach of the emanation from the One or God. The very nature of emanation is that the higher levels necessarily move toward the lower, which is what generates the human body of matter.

Matter itself, however, continues the process of emanation in which it moves farther and farther from the One in the same way that light grows dimmer the farther it moves from the sun. There is the tendency for matter to move beyond control by the soul and it then engages in motions that are no longer rational.

In contrast, as matter faces upward, it encounters the soul or the principle of rationality; for objects in nature this accounts for the orderliness of their movements, whereas for an individual person it means that the body responds to the activity of the soul at the levels of rationality, sensitivity, appetite and vitality.

But, as matter faces downward, which is its natural tendency because of the downward movement of emanation, it encounters darkness itself and is separated from rationality. For Plotinus it is this separation from rationality of matter that humans have named “evil”. Matter is at the fringe of emanation and therefore expresses the least degree of perfection.

However, since matter is an emanation of God, it could be said that God is the source of evil. Evil for Plotinus is not a destructive force; it is not a devil or rival god warring with a good god. Evil, for Plotinus, is simply the absence of something, the lack of perfection or limitation.

A human’s struggle is not a struggle against some outside force but is against the tendency to be practicing imperfection within, to become disordered, to lose control of one’s passions.

Evil is not a thing, it is rather the absence of perfection and order.

SALVATION

Plotinus moved from the philosophical analysis of emanation to the religious and mystical program of salvation. Plotinus described the soul’s ascent to UNITY with GOD as a difficult task. The ascent required that a person develop successively the moral and intellectual virtues.

Since the body and the physical world were not considered evil, it was not necessary to reject them as many Eastern mystics suggested. The key insight was that physical things of the world must not distract the soul from its higher aims. One must discipline one’s self in rigorous and correct thinking.

All of the steps up the ladder of knowledge lead toward the final union of the self with the One or God in a state of ecstasy, where there is no longer any consciousness of the self’s separation from God.

The personal soul is purified in its love, as Plato had indicated in his Symposium, and one is capable of total self-surrender. At this point the process of emanation is fully reversed, and the self merges once again with One (Plato’s remembering).

Question: Is Plotinus telling humans that they are Oneness but are born in a state of ignorance of this fact?

Answer: Yes, and it is the pre-existing wholeness of perfection that motivates humans to awaken to their awesome potential.

Question: Is the suggested “fall” the reason humans start their lives unaware of how and why learning is a process of inner awakening rather than outer acceptance?

Answer: Yes, and it requires certain paradigm shifts before this process is capable of being consciously participated in. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas rewrote Plotinus’s monistic “all is God” and established for the Roman Catholic Church a theism in which humans are separated from God and women are responsible for evil in the world as a result of the Adam and Eve parable in the Old Testament.

Plotinus understood both Plato and Aristotle as writing a monism cosmology in which Plato’s FORMS of perfect archetypes are the source of creation. Humans for countless centuries have accepted a “genetic dysfunctional nature” as a result of this “SPIN” by a male clergy justifying Scriptures that have been written by men. Most individuals think and feel from an individual identity.

Plotinus brings us to an updated mentality in which change in identity changes how humans relate to others and to themselves. HP/SOS explains evil as the ignorance of humanity before awakening to a different identity in which responsibility and empowerment of a human’s multiple levels of potential awaiting actualization is comprehendible.

Plotinus introduced a capability for attaining a universal identity at an individual human level of comprehension with his emanation principle.

Such was also the genius of Dr. Ernest Holmes. He gave us a method for two levels of comprehension: 1) the individual level in which cause and effect is rational with his argumentative treatment and 2) the universal level in which acceptance by degree is rational by feeling as if the desired “is” already accepted.

In an article by Dr. Holmes in the September 2007 issue of The Science Of Mind magazine he explains these two differing identities. On page 6, he exposes a quotation of what HP/SOS names a third reality cosmology in which the individual has graduated within to a level of universal mind identity or INFINITE I AM identity of pre-existing wholeness actualized in particular areas.

“The Spirit may offer, but we must accept the gift before it can be made. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’”.

On page 7, Dr. Holmes justifies this Universal identity by saying:

“The sooner we get away from the thought that we have to create, the sooner we will be able to work in line with the Spirit. ...Always man uses, he never creates anything”. 

On page 8, Dr. Holmes justifies the individual identity by saying:

“The great truth that was revealed from Moses to the time of Jesus is the same truth that is still revealed to all who will accept it; it is simply this: we are now living in a Spiritual Universe, governed by mental laws of cause and effect”.

This is a “truth” for an individual’s cosmology that still lives in a time-space reality of particulars.

In this cosmology that HP/SOS names second reality, cause and effect is rational when desiring change from what one is not to what one desires to become. Dr. Holmes gives us the argumentative treatment method because the individual does not currently believe change has happened yet.

On page 9, Dr. Holmes gives us the clue to the difference between these two differing cosmologies:

“We do not have to treat people; what we have to do is to embody Principle. … ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega.’ Our life, then, is to be governed by Spirit. We need look no farther. It will do for us all that we can ever ask, provided we believe.”

The individual identity believes that they must cause what is not expressing currently in their life, which justifies cause and effect. The universal identity believes change pre-exists its acceptance so feeling as if is justified which is bypassing the process of time/space becoming an individual’s perspective.

Both methods are true for the level of understanding practicing them.

In 1960, The Science Of Mind Publishing Co. gave to the world an epic poem that was the last book to be written by both Ernest S. Holmes and his brother Fenwicke L. Holmes.

It is a story about the spiritual evolution of the way in which a human being believing themselves to be a separate, finite being begins questioning his or her beliefs as s/he journeys from a limited, fearful beginning to an unlimited INFINITE I AM. The book’s name is The Voice Celestial, Thou Art That.

The characters in the book are:

• The farer or wayfarer, you or me or anybody who tries to solve the riddle of human life.
• The Presence (which was one of Ernest’s names for God) or The Voice Celestial becoming audible to all who develop the inner ear.
• The Scribe or Observer, who reports the conversation between the Farer and the Presence or Voice.

The dynamic that these characters represent is akin to the individual that is motivated to awaken to his or her transcendent nature and is asking questions about a different reality that is based on Oneness or Wholeness. This has always been presented to those awakening humans by The Masters Of The Ages (East and West), who appear to the questioning farer when s/he is awakening to his or her higher states of consciousness.

When one is ready to understand this evolutionary process, how does HP/SOS deal with the age old question of evil as a major aspect of the pair of opposites?

 Question: Does HP/SOS do away with evil?

• Answer: No, HP/SOS does not do away with anything. By using the levels of understanding that every human is capable of discovering, HP/SOS shows how and why every human belief is justified and practiced at any one of the three levels exposed by the physiology of the brain and the four psychological schools researching human behavior in which s/he can live his or her entire life from three different cosmologies or world views.
   
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