ARTICLE 6

THE HUMAN ADVENTURE IS JUST BEGINNING

Many have asked me about the “source” of these lessons. The sources discussed in every lesson are the result of inner guidance, research, contemplation and include aspects of first, second, and third reality.

Philosophy (“spirit”, “mind”, “matter”) and psychology (the behavior of the individual’s orientation resulting from their belief of these concepts) are the ingredients for the “holistic model” in these lessons.

These lessons deal with the philosophical concepts of an individual’s world view and/or belief-systems (Weltanschauung) and the psychological behaviors they produce.

As the individual’s awareness changes, a different world view awakens. With this awareness, a totally new life-style emerges.

The next few lessons will show the dramatic changes that have been taking place for the individual and their culture throughout history. These paradigm shifts continue to affect each culture. A look at history will expose how, when, and why we acquired our current belief-systems.

An individual’s philosophy is formed, or formulated by questioning:

1. How do I change myself, another or some thing in my world?
2. What is the nature of ourselves and our universe?

The goal of such questioning is to establish a life with satisfying and meaningful relationships to the universe, affording “wisdom” in conducting human affairs.

When we gain the ability to examine our own beliefs, we find that “crippling” situations in our lives are the result of our self-image. 
“Location of comprehension” (second reality) exposes the boundaries (limits) that consciousness has accepted (current beliefs and/or current self-image) as reality.

These philosophical quests were expressed by the ancient Greeks. We will follow the history of ancient Greece and see how they formulated their realities that continue to be discussed and processed even to this day.

As we examine the story of how these philosophical quests were first expressed by the early Greeks, it becomes apparent that we, as human beings, are in the process of reexamining those questions and answers derived by these “giants”. These lessons provide a glimpse of the multiple views and problems involved in the making of our belief-systems.

This includes the birth of a “new” philosophy that produces a “new” psychology. We name this “new” world view “third reality”.

We will discover that many of the questions and answers we label as first and second reality have been asked and answered for thousands of years. We will also discover when the division took place between philosophy and religion, as well as philosophy, religion and science. In the ancient world, there was no separation between science and philosophy, and “religious” orientation was polytheistic (mythological) and/or animistic.

The story of my own philosophical quest began before I was consciously aware that the way I view my world is the result of my philosophical beliefs and the evaluations that justify those beliefs.

It is our beliefs that form our psychological behaviors.

It was during my work in the business world that I first consciously realized how individuals relate to their world as a result of psychological “habits”. There I dealt with all levels of human beings as a corporation consultant. These “differences” provided the basis or clues for predicting the behavior of an employee, a manager, and/or an owner.
I found that an “employee” is dependent on outside authorities for survival. This level of understanding (employee) totally accepts the rules and customs of their parents and teachers. They resist with passion any suggestions affecting change or differences. They can be excellent workers because they generally follow orders. They are the orthodox religions in every culture. They are “patriotic” to the core because they believe that anything that deviates from their (group) accepted “norms” is wrong or evil.

They have rules and regulations (validating beliefs thought to be “truth”) in every area of their lives (business and/or otherwise). Their commitment to be “right” in all their actions is usually a result of their “blind” acceptance of their peer group’s input. This is the basis of what we name “first reality behavior”. Their “roots” are family and religion. Their cultural beliefs (peer group) are “sacred”.

Consequently, they resist any form of change threatening their belief of their accepted “truths”.

First reality people make up the majority of the world’s populations. They are what makes a culture identifiable as different from another. They happily fight in wars for their leaders because they believe their “God” is on their side and against their “enemies” (the others).

In contrast, I found that managers and/or owners are usually capable of realizing how important it is to include others. They are able to accept different opinions (other than their own point of view) within their group. Harmony and achievement are more important, and more productive, than their personal differences. These second reality expressions are the potential leaders of family, company, and/or culture.

They can make ideal managers when they have an ethic that includes what is best for others as well as themselves (I-Thou consciousness).

This can be difficult for individuals expressing a differing fixed belief of first reality (that was formed by “outside” authority acceptance). Conversely, second reality individuals usually love to learn about new ways of thinking and doing.

Second reality individuals are often labeled “skeptics”, “agnostics”, and even “atheists” by members of first reality level, because their questioning can be very threatening to a first reality belief-system. It is this second reality questioning, individual or group, that produces a culture’s “leading edge” explorers (independent from “outside” authorities), questioning themselves and their world.

This is the person participating in the fast-growing self-help systems (sacred and/or secular) by means of books, seminars, and so on.

A third reality expression is capable of including all aspects of the first two levels, plus an awareness of the existence of an unlimited collective “identity” expressing, simultaneously, multiple levels of consciousness. This awakening third reality expression has usually had an NDE (near death experience), or a contact with an “angel” or “guide” (“presence”), or out-of-body experiences that opened their individual conscious awareness to immortality or other dimensions of “transpersonal” consciousness.

Third reality individuals understand how differing belief-systems produce differing behaviors, eliminating the need to label behavior as RIGHT or WRONG.

Awareness of the “location of comprehension” changes language use from an “object” language (directed toward an external world of person, place, or thing) to a “process” language use (directed to the psychological dynamics of a subjective inner world), producing, and including (simultaneously), their external world.

Human beings do not perceive “things”, they perceive (experience) feelings, and subjective “images” (thoughts) which are given meanings. Thoughts are not “things”, thoughts are symbols of things.

Shakespeare said, “Words without thought never to heaven go, and, nothing is good or evil but thinking makes it so.” Thought uses words (languages) or symbols, and/or signs, to denote something. Language discloses its “essence” through messages of “subjectively” accepted meaning.

First reality understanding (naive realism or object language) perceives its reality as “out there”, without the awareness that perception is subjective and loaded with its presupposed meanings and emotions that will be expressed with “object” words.

Second reality (location of comprehension or process language) is aware that perception does not deal with what things “are” but with what things “mean”.

Physical qualities denoted by language are realized as psychological meanings.

This awakened awareness of “location” explains (and removes) the confusion of diverse names for one and the same object, or the same belief, expressed differently about the object. When asked the question, “what is the reason for the diversity of names?”, the answer to this question will depend upon one’s level of understanding because their level of understanding will determine the language they will use.

First reality understanding level will say that the cultural situation is different. Second reality is aware that the “object” meaning can be the same, but the word symbols used to describe the objects are different.

This is because “words” (languages) do not refer to objects, but refer to the “ideas” or “meanings” about the objects existing within the comprehension of the speaker and hearer regardless of their culture or dialect.

Only after reflection “kicks in” (begins) and there is conscious awareness that words relate to their “own” memory images (meanings and feelings), can speakers and listeners be aware that their meanings and feelings are subjective in nature.

For these reasons, language is not a mirror reflecting reality, but is exposing inside (subjective) psychological dynamics that are “projected” upon an outside world.

Language does not reveal the prehistory of material things, but the prehistory of the “human” belief-system describing the things.

Thus, after reflection awakens (second reality) to the subjectivity of its own belief-systems, the focus on need is replaced with the focus for a solution.

Pain focus (producing pain) is replaced with celebration focus because the level of awareness is now capable of comprehending the part psychological dynamics play in practicing differences (second reality refereeing).

A third reality expression utilizes all functions learned in first reality (excelling at their desired goals), and practices questioning of the “given” (second reality). They also are able to establish new hypotheses (options) of their own. First reality spends its life trying to “be” what someone else has told them is correct.

The major shift participating in third reality is the conscious experiencing of an “Infinite inner presence” as a collective universal “source” that includes their environment (an I-Thou awareness not possible in first reality).

By practicing “openness”, second reality individuals become members of a global team, networking and benefiting everyone. Their focus becomes “potential” (solution) rather than “need” (problem or pathology) orientation.

The ancient Greeks expressed many of these “levels” of understanding (paradigms), and it will be fun to see where we fit in.

By exposing these differences, it can be helpful for the reader to realize that these differences are NOT RIGHT or WRONG, but the result of perspectives of different levels of understanding performing their “believed-in” functions.
The inquiring mind will investigate and often recognize different levels of understanding. These lessons are signifying an evolution for an individual and their culture.

Current world views are often based on Descartes (AD 1596-1650), because he represented a point in history where a major split between philosophy, religion and science took place. He assumed that the whole of existence could be fitted into separate compartments of extended substance and thinking substance: namely, matter. and mind.

Extended substance, or matter, he defined as existing in space in the form of separated objects. Thinking substance, or mind for him, did not exist in space, nor did it involve spatial extensions and separations in any way.

Descartes suggested that in order to understand the nature of a question about nature, ourselves, or our world, we must break the question into constituent parts; divide and subdivide, until we arrive at “atomic” levels of questions so simple that we can easily handle them with our minds.

Unbelievable as it seems today:

This scientific model prevailed for three hundred years and received the name, “reductionism”, based on a total separation of mind and body.

In contrast:

Current quantum mechanics is discovering that nature is made of “patterns” and “wholes”. If you break “patterns” and “wholes” into their basic parts, you no longer have a complete picture. At best, you will only be able to analyze the components of more complex systems (networks).

Rupert Sheldrake, a physiologist, states in his book, THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST (1988), that what we usually think of as the laws of nature are more like HABITS.
He examines how the status and role of meaning in science, and especially biology, has changed throughout history. Sheldrake gives reasons why modern biology favors a return to meaning, purpose, and seeing a life in nature that was lost in the mechanistic sciences that developed after Descartes.

Modern physics (quantum mechanics) requires that we introduce “new” concepts in order to explain and understand nature. We must ask more profound questions about what is a good explanation, and what kind of concepts provide the most fruitful context for further discoveries including mental/spiritual concepts.

According to David Bohm, one of the early leaders in modern physics, the nature of an electron is:

“... a condensed form of meaning, which has to be unfolded. ... Thus, insofar as meaning has some inherent subjectivity, so do quantum processes, at least in a very elementary way.”

Was David Bohm then saying that matter “thinks”?

He states:

“... I am not attributing consciousness as we know it to nature ... matter may not have the same sort of consciousness that we have, but there is still a mental pole at every level of matter ... and eventually, if you go to infinite depths of matter, we may reach something very close to what you reach in the depths of mind. So we no longer have this division between mind and matter.” David Bohm, “Unfolding Meaning”, p.87, pgs. 89-90.

Bohm’s proposal that meaning plays an objective role at the quantum level of physics opened up new ways (for modern science) of conceiving the unity of mind and matter. We believe that this is the kind of unity that third reality provides.

In “Quantum Implications”, on page 450, Bohm tells us:

“The mechanistic view has created a rather crude and gross meaning which has created a crude and gross society. I am saying that the being of matter is MEANING; the being of ourselves is MEANING; the being of society is its MEANING. This new view encourages us ... toward a creative attitude, and fundamentally it opens the way to the transformation of the human being because a change of MEANING is a change of BEING. At present ... because of the confused fragmentary MEANINGS (reductionism) we have a confused fragmentary being, both individually and socially. Therefore, this opens the way to a whole being, in society and in the individual.”

What these lessons are pointing out is that when a “paradigm” or world view of the universe is accepted by an individual as truth or fact, as something “objective”, or “out there”, separated from the observer, this accepted “paradigm” will then act as the individual’s reality.

Such reality is not right or wrong, but can have crippling and limiting images (scope) for the observer’s self-image.

In order to explain how these “paradigms” came into being as a part of our individual and our collective consciousness, we will examine, in this and future lessons, questions and answers responsible for forming the paradigms and belief-systems used historically and still in use today.

These lessons cover areas of discovery that provide a glimpse into how inquiry produced world views that continue to affect an individual’s decision-making capability.

These lessons include the following major points in history when and where cultural paradigms (still in use currently) were formed:

1. How cosmology as a world view was handled prior to Descartes.
2. How cosmology as a world view was handled after Descartes.
3. How the discovery of language use was psychologically formulated (as relating to subjective beliefs and customs rather than the words used “being” the world).
4. How the nature of most theologies (religions) came into existence.
5. The breakthrough of modern physics (quantum mechanics).
6. Why science instead of religion is producing a “religious” science.
7. How inclusion of third reality (a new philosophy/psychology paradigm) changes an individual’s world view to a cosmic world view.

The basic human drives still prevailing in this lifetime (or next) are: to find love, wealth, happiness, health and peace of mind. The following categories are a few examples of how we depend (in first and second reality) on outside sources to solve our problems and answer our questions. We assume that our future will be better as a result of professional guidance, therefore:

For our cultural orientation we look to:
1. Parents.
2. Teachers.
3. Peer groups, etc.

For health purposes we seek:
1. Doctors.
2. Psychologists.
3. Health and nutrition professionals, etc.

For legal needs we consult with:
1. Lawyers.
2. Politicians, etc.

For financial needs we depend on:
1. Bankers.
2. Security and investment brokers.
3. Retirement specialists.

For our religious needs we look to:
1. Ministers.
2. Rabbis.
3. Priests.
4. Gurus, Shamans, Gods, Goddesses, etc.

These lessons show a synthesis of certain basic beliefs about the universe and the part that human beings play in these dynamics that have been evolving throughout history.
Despite the strong bias that certain cultures have held (or continue to hold) during this evolutionary process, it is now increasingly clear that it has never been the case that one is right and all others are wrong, but rather that a swing has been taking place between the two following basic concepts (paradigms):

Either:

the potential for change is INNATE or INNER or the potential for change is EXTERNALLY “caused”, or “learned” from outside sources.

For an individual, the swing between these two differing presuppositions has produced the acceptances of every world view or belief-system, be it philosophical, religious, social, political, scientific, psychological, etc..

We will cover thousands of years in a few lessons and discover that despite the masses of rhetoric stated by each party defending their beliefs, or in the “truth” and uniqueness of their particular “Zeitgeists” (spirit of the times), the actual principles involved are basic and minimal.

Answers to questions about the universe have always been decided by the ruling party or the culture’s current authorities. To challenge their “truths”, “laws”, or “facts” (cultural norms) was dangerous in the past, and continues today in the form of peer group pressure.

Any thought of experimentation, or testing a theory or hypothesis of an individual’s psychological dynamics (as modern psychology will do) would have to wait until the 19th. century. There, in 1879, Wundt (1832-1920) established the first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Wundt “broke” with philosophy and took psychology into the laboratory where experiments could be performed.

This approach was important for us as it opened the door to “new” scientific practices.

Until awareness evolves to a level of understanding transcending first reality beliefs of a separate self (globally still dominating this planet), any inclusion of complex factors and variables (such as genetics, family, community, culture, collective unconsciousness networking), will be quite difficult, if not impossible.

This ”blind spot” of awareness in first reality (missing reflection capability) produces a belief-system oriented to a reality that believes comprehension relates to its world of “senses” (of an external world) rather than to subjective evaluation processes of subjective “beliefs” where meaning and feeling are actually experienced.

For a first reality individual the environment can be a form of “slavery” because they are not consciously aware that their beliefs “cause” their reactions. Their model of belief is unable to know the location of their own comprehension. This “slavery” (paradigm) is not right or wrong; however, it can be very limiting, because it is this subjective comprehension that determines an individual’s “value” systems.

When an individual believes that they are simply reacting to their world and its events, how could it make any sense to be aware that their own psychological dynamics are giving meanings and feelings to their reactions?

To change a paradigm (“mind-set” or habit) requires an ability to entertain different perspectives (options) and the ability to know “where” (namely within the individual) testing and experience takes place.

When we say that a person has a “value” (system) we are referring to their beliefs concerning desirable modes of conduct. As a child matures and their world becomes more complex, they increasingly encounter situations where several values compete with one another, requiring “refereeing” capability. A decision must be made for the more important value.

A few examples of such questions are:

1. Should I seek success even if to do so requires dishonesty?
2. Should I act obediently and follow orders or act independently?
3. Should I seek self-respect even if it costs me social recognition?
4. Should I demand my way or be willing to test a previously unexplored way?

Gradually, through experience and a process of maturation, we learn to discern and accept our values utilizing an organized system (usually unconsciously) in which each value is given a priority of importance.

In second reality, the individual becomes a conscious participant in understanding how their values are formed as their beliefs which are governing their behavior.

This does not happen until reflection awakens (conscious awareness of location of comprehension) in which conscious awareness can participate in changing values.

In first reality, the individual must believe that they are reacting to their environment producing “fight” or “flight” (programmed reactions).

Throughout history, historians were able to fit large periods of time with particular philosophical labels (paradigms or cultural mind sets).

These include the following:

1. The worship of nature (animism developed as a paradigm).
2. The orientation to magic (worship and ritual developed to deal with animism).
3. The age of reason (intellectual rationalism paradigms).
4. The age of faith (intellectual and emotional rationalism paradigms).
5. The age of skepticism (rationalism paradigms questioned).
6. The age of science (rationalism requiring experimentation and repeatability).
7. The age of inclusion (comprehension utilizing the above steps of one through six).

As we study philosophical history we will find that each individual goes through these changing orientations.

As “revelation” happens, we replace those reactions that can only believe in a world of “survival of the fittest” with a reality that has no limits (except the limits our understanding places on us). We are then consciously participating in changing our experiences.

In second reality, we name this capability “psychological refereeing”.

All human civilizations rely on a cultural “book”, a capacity to store information for reuse. Before written languages, communication was oral. These lessons provide dates to help us understand historical sequences of inquiry that resulted in our world views.

Philosophy is a human and cultural enterprise for inquiry, and has very close relations with religion, science, and art. Any definition must emerge from careful analysis by the individual.

Philosophy attempts to do intellectually what religion does practically and emotionally, namely, to establish human life in some satisfying and meaningful relation to the universe, and “wisdom” in conducting affairs.

Historically, as today, philosophy arose as inquiry about nature and as reflective criticism of religious, scientific and moral beliefs. These conscious formulations of a world outlook have often been at variance with the current authorities and their prevailing world views because they disputed existing “norms”.

In these lessons, we will be studying individuals that made their mark in history, often at the cost of their welfare or lives by speaking or just questioning their current cultures’ accepted modus operandi.

In every epoch of history there are individuals who are aware of the distinctive intellectual temper of their culture and either give it systematic expression or seek to modify it. These are the individuals actually practicing the art of “philosophical thinking”. 

To formulate (believed-in) “principles” or “laws”, both philosophical and scientific thinking have to employ concepts or abstractions.

Philosophy is mainly concerned with questions about the meaning of human life and the significance of the world in which the human finds themselves. Secondly, it asks what is the general nature of the universe and the nature of human destiny? How far can a human affect their destiny by their own actions, and what activities should and/or can be followed within the limits of their choosing? What kind of life is most worth living individually and collectively?

Some of the areas of philosophical inquires are:

1. LOGIC, the study of methods of thought. Research using observations and introspection, deduction and induction, hypothesis and experiments, analysis and synthesis. Logic tries to guide and understand inquiry and its answers.
2. ESTHETICS, the study of beauty and the study of art.
3. ETHICS, the benefits of ideal conduct and the nature of what is good.
4. POLITICS, the study of ideal social organizations.
5. METAPHYSICS, the study of the ultimate reality of things. The nature of matter (ontology), of mind (psychology), and the interrelation between mind and matter in the processes of perception and knowledge (epistemology).

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as “art”. It arises as hypotheses and flows into achievement. 

Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown or the inexactly known. Philosophy is the “forefront” for the quest of “truths”.

Science is the captured territory, and includes those secure regions where knowledge and art build our marvelous worlds. In ancient civilizations, science as we know it today did not exist. Inquiry would have to wait until the seventeenth century for “modern science”.

Science currently observes processes and constructs the means for testing those processes. Philosophy criticizes and coordinates the meaning of the discoveries of science.

Facts of science without philosophy are facts without perspective and valuation. Science gives us knowledge, and philosophy gives us the wisdom how to utilize that knowledge.
An individual has two options or alternatives for learning. 

They are:

A. Data (are) learned from outside sources.
B. Data (are) learned from inside sources.

Individuals capable of formulating these two options make up every field of knowledge. This may be a religion, a science, or any other form of “knowledge”.

As these lessons are examined it can be interesting to ask:

1. How do we believe what we believe?
2. How do we verify the “truth” of what we believe (the source of our beliefs)?
3. Does potential for change pre-exist our acceptance? If so, where and how?
4. Does what we believe determine our world views and our behaviors?
5. How do we change our beliefs?

We discover that every reality (first, second and third) answers these statements differently.

During the evolutionary process many ancient and modern accounts suggested that the human being “started” somewhere in the past where everything was perfect.

For example, the Garden of Eden parable was interpreted to mean that the human being was “perfect” before eating the fruit of “good” and/or “evil”. Then the human being “blew it” (sinned or erred), and consequently inherited a life of struggle and pain for (and including) all future generations. Believers of this interpretation will try to return to their “lost” bliss because of their intense desire to be “perfect” again.

For this position (belief) to be rational the individual must believe they are currently imperfect (a major paradigm that is often discussed in these lessons because many religions establish this self-image paradigm of “being born in sin”).

This belief in “imperfection” can play a crippling role (limiting) in an individual’s self-esteem. The “church” played a major role in making itself the solution to this paradigm (born imperfect) establishing the “scriptural truth” of both the problem and the solution (created by the church and resolved by church doctrines).

Many of these accounts about “former perfection” received their conceptions of reality from the ancient Greek investigators, curious to the nature of reality. 

As we move through this and future lessons (and as second and third reality awakens), we will realize that the opposite direction is where understanding is actually headed as a result of evolution. Therefore, a life of multiple dimensions is awakening through discovery and growth.

Recent advances in modern physics, biology, and the medical field, have shed new light how “advances in growth” are influencing and enriching our lives. In a radically changing world, second and third reality awareness is not only responsible for enriching our lives but is also totally changing our behaviors.

As we study evolutionary trends we find the dynamics, scope, and beauty of humanity evolving from ignorance, with its struggles, to enlightenment.

This entails expanding wisdom to be able to consciously participate in our own psychological dynamics. With conscious participation we celebrate the feelings of awe and the wonder of life.

We are consciously shifting from being a spectator of a threatening environment to a creative participant of a global network. We create new and exciting environments that cross and dissolve former cultural boundaries. 

A great deal of this “climb” to enlightenment was documented by the ancient Greeks as they moved from a frightened separate human being that is victimized by many gods (external powers) to a human being that is a consciously creative part of a universal nature.

We recognize that this source of wisdom was also discovered in many other cultures of the world. However, these lessons will basically deal with the Western orientation, because in many “public” Eastern teachings a major paradigm is missing.

This lesson will only touch on the basics of this “difference” because, to cover this “difference” in depth would take an entire lesson.

When reading the Svetasvatara Upanishad, “The Eternal One should be known in the presence of your very own self”, or a Zen master report, “Ordinary mind is Buddha”, it seems as if East and West are talking about the same Universal Oneness.

This is true when talking about a Universal Source (we name this awareness “third reality”). However, the Eastern teachings because of their “attempt” to leap from first reality to third reality, leave out the “heart” of the Western Mind focus which we name “second reality”.

By attempting to leap to the “Collective”, Eastern teachings “state” a Universal “truth” that applies to all of us, but leave out a “truth” that applies to each “individual”.

The Universal in Eastern teachings is eternally invariable, producing systems of “FINDING YOURSELF”(a universal SELF, not an individual self) by dozens of specific and sophisticated methods (Yoga, Zen sitting, Buddhist ritual and meditation, Sufi dancing, etc.). Their path to “union” is time-tried and well-planned with performances to “do away” with the illusion of a “separate self”(often named the “ego”).

In the Eastern approach of FINDING YOURSELF, the teachings are NOT referring to a believed-in separate self (individual). As stated in the previous paragraph, they are referring to a Universal SELF. 

In this level, UNDERSTANDING NEVER BECOMES. Understanding is a phenomenon that is neither sudden nor gradual. The Universal SELF is always present (in the now).

It is not something that is going to happen in the future. “You” (even when under the illusion of a separate self) carry this “identity” within (subjectively) just as a seed “carries” the tree and/or a pregnant woman “carries” a child.

When the Universal SELF is comprehended (usually referred to as “enlightenment”), it is expressed as Nirvana. “prior” to this comprehension (if there were no “prior” to “enlightenment” there would be no Eastern teachings) this pre-existing understanding is “achieved” through “steps” (it is not something that “happens” to you, because a separate “you” and a separate “ego”, in their teachings, is an illusion).

“YOU” (the Universal SELF) already exist (as Being) and this is why the belief in a separate self illusion is blamed on the ego. However, we see that the Eastern teachings create their own illusion of imperfection (like the West’s “original sin”), and name it “ego” that must be “killed” (surrendered) in order to awaken to Nirvana.

The Universal in Western teachings is infinitely variable when the paradigm of second reality is included. The “beyond” (HIGHER SELF) IS WITHIN, and that is true for the East and West; however, in the West the WITHIN is “forever becoming”, a dynamic of an individual self that BECOMES (unfolds) YOURSELF (in second reality) and is unique and original before awakening to the Universal SELF (third reality).

“The Eastern classics are primarily documents of spiritual and metaphysical truth that came to be set down in literary form, while Western classics are primarily great works of literature that happen to certain profound discoveries about the human situation.

They are not products of a long lineage of spiritual “masters” who remain forever anonymous, but works of individual genius, outpourings of someone special.”

Western writings utilize (in second reality) a “Potential” paradigm in which the individual is important, and also important to everyone in their world. It is this “special someone” that has produced, and continues to produce the technological breakthroughs for the last three hundred years. It is the Western orientation “to the world” that has awakened interrelations with other countries and cultures changing the planet on which we all live (global ecological interest).

In the East, the quest to become “One” glorifies the system and the master. In the West, an individual potential (mind) is discovered (second reality), including a “drive” to share and care about other human beings as well as one’s self.

This drive to share and care with others is the meaning behind the Hero Myths according to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. The Hero (an allegory of an awakening self) returns from their quest of achievement to “bestow boons on others”.

A complete experience of human reality calls for knowing both how you are no one, identical with God, the All, as are all other human beings, and how you are someone unique, with a special mission and an original purpose that can only be fulfilled by yourself alone, distinct from all others.

Essential to the Western way is the understanding that finding yourself cannot be all there is to it, because there are many things you can discover in the process of finding yourself.

For the individual in the West, “destiny” is something special to do or accomplish. Our systems of psychology are all oriented to becoming unrealized potentials. In the West they are made rational by a pre-existing source that continues to awaken or be realized as a discovery of “mind” and/or “spirit”. “Its” dynamics are known as “consciousness”. In the West, potentials are highly valued when discovered and expressed by the human being and are usually labeled “creativity”.

This is why in Western approaches the intellect is so important, because it is the intellect (called “ego” in first reality) that guides the individual to discover, firstly, their uniqueness and their unlimited potentials (second reality), and secondly, their universal source (third reality) that includes their environment.

In the Western Mind approach there is an “eternal truth” of Oneness that is ongoing, with multiple dimensions to be discovered as potential.

In third reality, Heaven and/or Nirvana are STEPS in a continuing process of awakening; not arrival at a final destination.

Third reality consciousness has no conclusion (fixed boundaries). It goes on and on. Life is consciously always in the present as an ongoing process in which both linear and vertical “time” are utilized. In third reality, it is the awareness (ability) of inclusion that joins the science of dualism (empiricism) and the philosophy of locating consciously a collective Infinite Source (idealism) that will produce a “religious science” in the next millennium.

We will explore these paradigms in future lessons as we discover how “religions” are “created” and how they influenced our belief-systems.

It was in ancient Greece that the Western “mind” first formulated many of our world views.

We will start our evolutionary search with ancient Greece, primarily the Hellenistic era, and will move through Imperial Rome, Judaism, the rise of Christianity, the Catholic Church and the Middle Ages, the renaissance, reformation, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment and romanticism, and onward to our current exciting times.

The current Western Consciousness has been a result of a striking resemblance to our early Greek visionaries.

Their highly diversified inspirations established what had proven to be perennial sources of insight and renewal. Modern science, medieval theology and classical humanism are all outgrowths of their extraordinary culture that marked the dawn of Western civilizations.
One of the most striking characteristics “discovered” was a tendency to interpret the world in terms of “archetypal” principles.

This tendency was evident throughout Greek culture from the Homeric epics (eighth century BC) onward. It first emerged in an elaborate form in Plato’s writings during the fifth century BC and the middle of the fourth.

Socrates (469-399 BC) and the dialogues of Plato (427-347 BC) used archetypes as the basis of a cosmos in which primordial essences or transcendent first principles were conceived as “forms”, “ideas”, “universals”, “changeless absolutes”, “immortal deities” that produced the universe. Plato used the Greek word, “paradeigma” which translates into “paradigm” (pattern, model, or plan).

According to them,

These timeless archetypes or paradigms build the concrete realities.

These archetypal principles included the mathematical formulas of geometry and arithmetic; cosmic opposites such as light and dark, male and female, love and hate, unity and multiplicity, the forms of the human and other living creatures, the ideas of Good, the beautiful, the just, and other moral and aesthetic values.

During the pre-philosophical period, Greek consciousness took the forms of mythic personifications such as Eros, Chaos, Heaven and Earth, and more fully personified figures such as Zeus, Prometheus and Aphrodite.

Plato developed his doctrines over a fifty-year period, and we will see how they became the basis for approaches to reality that continue to be used in current thinking.

Plato’s “forms” are not conceptual abstractions. They are a separate reality that he believed to be perfect and therefore superior to the concrete world they formed. This reality was imperfect and was a shadow of the archetype or “form” that shaped it. A particular thing is what it is by virtue of its “idea” or “form”.
According to Plato, something was beautiful to the extent that the archetype of beauty was present in it.

Plato believed that the philosopher was capable of recognizing the “forms” or “ideas” that underlined all phenomena unveiling the authentic reality behind the appearances.

Socrates had sought to know what was common to all virtuous acts so that an individual could evaluate how one should govern one’s conduct in life. He reasoned that if one wishes to choose actions that are good, one must first know what the principle “Good” is (as an archetype or universal truth), apart from particular examples.

To evaluate one thing as “better” than another assumed the existence of an “Absolute Good” by which two relative Goods were compared. Universal concepts of Justice and Goodness seemed imperative for genuine ethics.

One of Plato’s critics once stated, “I see a particular horse, not horseness.” Plato answered, “That is because you have eyes but no intelligence”.

To Plato, the “archetypal horse” gives form to all horses and, as such, is a more fundamental reality than a particular horse. As such, archetypes reveal themselves to the inner rather than to the outer perceptions. The archetype is apparent not so much to the limited physical senses, even though they can suggest and lead the way.

The archetype is recognized by the soul with its illumined intellect.

This directs the philosopher’s attention away from the external and concrete (taking things at “face value”), and directs the conscious focus “inward” so that one may awaken to more profound levels of reality.

The Platonic perspective thus asked the philosopher to go through the particular to the universal; beyond the appearances to their essence.

Plato maintained a strong distrust of knowledge gained by sense perception since such knowledge is always changing its relative and private nature for each individual. According to Plato, true knowledge, by contrast, was possible only from a direct apprehension of the “transcendental forms”, eternal and beyond the shifting confusion and imperfections of the physical world.

Plato further stated that knowledge derived from the senses is merely opinion and is fallible by any non-relative standard; only knowledge derived directly from the archetypal “forms” or “ideas” is infallible and can justifiably be called real knowledge.

Individual trees of the natural world eventually fall and rot away, but the archetype “tree” continues to express itself in and through other trees.

A good person may express evil acts, but the archetypal “form” of the Good stands forever. The archetypal “form” or “idea” comes into and out of being in a multiplicity of physical forms, yet simultaneously remains transcendent as a unitary essence.

Plato’s writings helped develop early Christian theological writings (when Paul established the archetype of “Original Sin” in the New Testament hundreds of years after Plato’s death).

Plato stated that “forms” exist not only in an individual’s human consciousness but outside of it as well. Archetypes do not depend on human thought but exist entirely in their own right. “Forms” are archetypes that manifest in various ways and on various levels. They are the foundation of reality itself.

Plato’s archetypal “forms” and “ideas” were associated with the mind, with the transcendent spiritual, while the material world was associated with the irrational and imperfect.

Plato also opened the doorway to differing world views by a number of ambiguities and discrepancies that remained unresolved in his writings.

At times Plato seemed to exalt the inner archetypal ideal over the empirically manifested world to such an extent that he would state that all concrete particulars are imperfect. At other times, he seemed to stress the intrinsic nobility of created things, precisely because they are embodied expressions of the divine and eternal that are perfect archetypes.

The exact degree to which the archetypal “forms” and “ideas” are transcendent rather than immanent (whether they are entirely separate from sensible things, with things which are imperfect imitations, or whether the material world is created in some manner that is perfect because it is formed by an archetype that is perfect) is unclear.

This “Source” question cannot be determined from the many different references of his writings.

Ever since Plato’s time to the present these questions have been the continuing basis for controversy in religions, sciences, philosophies and psychologies.

In the large and prosperous Ionian city of Miletus lived the following three individuals that played a major role as the first “scientists”: Thales (636-546 BC) and his successors, Anaximander (611-547 BC) and Anaximenes (586-525 BC). With ample leisure time and curiosity, they initiated new approaches to understand their then existing world.

These philosophers made the remarkable assumptions that an underlying unity and order existed within the flux and variety of the world. They established for themselves the task of discovering a simple fundamental principle that both governed nature and composed its basic “substance”.

In so doing, they began to complement their traditional mythological understanding with more impersonal and conceptual explanations based on their observations of natural phenomena.

The science of observations and classifications of the physical world was born.

From Thales and Anaximander to Democritus (460-360 BC), a naturalistic science matured in step with an increasingly skeptical rationalism.

According to Democritus there was no dualism, no distinction between the mental and physical mind and body. All events came out of the same substance, the atom. He believed that all explanations were contained in nature made up of tiny atoms that were in constant motion.

None of these “scientists” commanded any cultural influence because most Greeks at that time still had their Olympian gods satisfying their “religious” needs.

The gradual rise of these different strands of early inquiry: Ionian physics, Eclectic rationalism, Democritian atomism, represented the seminal vanguard of Greek thought developed out of the era of traditional belief into the era of reason.

There was a movement away from the supernatural toward the natural. From the divine to the mundane, and from the mythical to the conceptual.

In the latter half of the fifth century BC a new intellectual milieu appeared, known as the Sophists. They asserted that each individual had his own perceptions. They believed that one individual’s perception was as good as another and that there was no truth binding to all alike.

The Sophists were professional teachers, secular humanists of a liberal spirit who offered both intellectual instructions and guidance for success in practical affairs.

With the Sophists, a new element of skeptical pragmatism entered Greek thought.
Interest turned away from its earlier speculative, cosmological concerns and the human being became the focus of attention.

According to Protagoras (481 - 411 BC), “Man (humanity) was the measure of all things”. According to him, an individual’s judgments concerning everyday human life should be the basis of their personal beliefs and conduct, rather than conformity to traditional religion with its indulgence in far-flung abstract speculations.

The Sophists’ views were that speculative cosmologies neither spoke to practical human needs nor appeared plausible to common sense.

They stated that beginning with Thales, each philosopher and/or “scientist” had proposed their particular theory of what was the “true” nature of the world. Each theory then contradicted the others with growing tendencies that were rejecting the realities of the phenomenal world revealed by the senses.

The Sophists claimed that the result was chaos and conflicting ideas, with no basis to verify one against another.

Moreover, the natural philosophers had been constructing their own theories about the external world without taking into consideration the subjective elements, namely, the human observer. In contrast, the Sophists recognized that each individual had their own experiences and therefore their own realities. They argued that all understanding is subjective opinion and that “true” objectivity is impossible, and “that all an individual can legitimately claim to know are probabilities, not absolute truths”.

According to the Sophists it did not matter that a person had no certainty about the outside world because they could only know the contents of their own mind.

This meant that a person only dealt with their subjective appearances rather than transcendent archetypes and/or external “facts”.

The true aim of human thought was to serve human needs.

Only individual experiences could provide a basis for achieving that aim. According to the Sophists each person should rely on their own wits to make it through the world. “Truth” was relative, not absolute, and differed from culture to culture, from person to person, and from situation to situation. The ultimate “value” of any belief or opinion in life could be judged only on its practical utility by serving individual needs.

Thus the Sophists were responsible for the transition from an age of myth to an age of practical reason.

The human being and their society were to be studied, methodically and empirically, without theological preconceptions. Rational acuity, grammatical precision, and oratorical prowess were the prime virtues.

The Sophists’ proper molding of a person’s character required a sound education and training in gymnastics, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, geography, natural history, astronomy, the physical sciences, history of society, ethics and philosophy.

For them, this course of study was necessary to produce a well-rounded, fully educated citizen.

During this highly charged cultural climate, Socrates and Plato began their philosophical search.

Before Plato was born, Anaxagoras (500-428 BC) in Periclean Athens had proposed that Nous, or Mind, was the transcendent source of the cosmic order.

Both Socrates and Plato were attracted by Anaxagoras’s first principle which suggested a “rational” teleology (the world is dynamically formed by archetypes) as the basis for the existence of the universe.

About a half century before Anaxagoras, the poet-philosopher Xenophanes (560-478 BC) criticized the anthropomorphic deities (the many Gods of polytheism) of popular tradition and proposed (instead) a single supreme God (monotheism), a universal divinity who influenced the world and in essence identified with the world itself.

Shortly afterward, another pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus (535-475 BC), introduced a similar immanent conception of divine intelligence with his use of the term “logos”, signifying the rational principle governing the cosmos. All things are in constant flux and yet are fundamentally related and ordered through the universal “logos”, and manifested in the human being’s power of reason.

The Pythagoreans, perhaps above all other philosophical schools, stressed the spiritual value of penetrating the world’s mysteries to achieve union between the human soul and the divine cosmos.

According to the Pythagoreans, the human soul discovered its own essence and intelligence to be the same as that hidden within nature (third reality). For them, only then did the meaning of the cosmos dawn (awaken) within the soul.

The word “kosmos” signified a combination of order, structural perfection and beauty, and was traditionally supposed to have been first used by Pythagoras (582-507 BC).

For Heraclitus and Pythagoras the great task of a meaningful future was to find new forms of integration.

They were aware that the supreme secret of evolving life was in our understanding and that we were dealing with a DYNAMIC HARMONY.

This meant that things were in flux (in transformation, in a process of becoming), yet at the same time they recognized the permanency (archetypes) of spiritual laws that gave meaning to flux (change).

Hippocrates (460-377 BC) stated that health, as “wholeness”, means that the body and the soul must be examined together, because:

1. There are spiritual laws human beings can ignore only at their own peril.
2. The human will (impulse) ensures and completes the harmony between body, mind and soul.
3. Complete beings are those human beings who have grasped the understanding of this harmony (conscious refereeing capability) and have implemented it in their own lives.
4. This harmony is the result of thinking correctly, and living correctly in accordance to the laws of their being.

Hippocrates provided a milestone to the history of Western medicine and Western thought. He was an industrious observer of his world and managed to amass more medical knowledge than anyone else at his time. He spent twelve years visiting all the renowned medical centers of the world of his time. In his school of medicine in Kos, Greece, some six thousand herbs were recognized and used. Knowledge of the organism and its reactions to herbs must have been gloriously explored.

Hippocrates realized that philosophy is not an entertaining intellectual game but the foundation on which our well-being is embedded.

He understood the wholeness of the human condition.

When we ponder these insights we realize that “illness” is a “sick” philosophy resulting in disharmonious perceptions of the body and mind as a whole. The value of philosophy becomes the key to successful living.

In third reality language (we say) “wholeness” is, therefore, like a magnet because the inner side of being (collective consciousness or infinite inner) networks our world as an equation (E=MC2 ) because matter and energy are equal and identical (belief and the form it manifests).

Many metaphysical system refer to this formula as the “Law of correspondence”.

When we are awake and aware of wholeness we enable “others” in our world to also awaken to wholeness, because on the “inner side” there is no separation.
Plato stated that to discover Kosmos in the world was to discover Kosmos as a “form” or archetype in one’s own soul (awakening to “location”).

In the thought life of a human the “world spirit” (Universal Archetype) revealed itself. This enables us to recognize that the Socratic dictum of “know thyself” was seen not as the creed of an introspective subjectivist (separate individual), but as a directive to the potential of universal understanding (collective or cosmic consciousness) within each expression.

After Plato, the terms “logos” and “nous” were both regularly associated with philosophical conceptions of human knowledge and the universal order. Through Aristotle, the Stoics, and later Platonists, their meanings were increasingly elaborated.

During his life, Aristotle (384-322 BC) attempted to create a balance between the two extremes of perfection being either transcendent or immanent.

Aristotle accepted Plato’s conclusion that the basis of reality existed in a transcendent realm of ideal or perfect entities (“forms”). For Aristotle, true reality was the perceptible (physical) world of concrete objects. Plato’s theory of “forms” (archetypes) were empirically verifiable as teleological processes.

A universal quality was conceptually distinguishable from a concrete individual, but was not separated.

Aristotle believed universals were necessary for knowledge, but they did not exist as separate entities in transcendental realms.

Aristotle established his school in Athens and named it “The Lyceum”. Unlike his mentor, Plato, whose Academy was devoted to mathematics and speculative and political philosophy, Aristotle’s new school was oriented to biology and the natural sciences.

According to the writings of Pliny, Alexander The Great (356-323 BC) while conquering the ancient world instructed his armies to furnish his teacher, Aristotle, with all the zoological and botanical material he might desire. Other ancient writers also tell us that at one time Aristotle had a thousand people scattered throughout Greece and Asia collecting flora and fauna of every land.

With this wealth of material (extensive cataloging of his samples) he was able to establish a zoological garden that influenced science and philosophy.

For Aristotle, Organic biology was more important than abstract mathematics because it brought a more pronounced recognition of nature’s processes of growth and development (a “concrete” rather than an “abstract” theory).

Each organism strives to move from imperfection to perfection, from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality.

Aristotle did not eliminate Plato’s archetypal “ideas” or “forms” because he (Aristotle) stated that although a “form” is not itself a substance, every substance has a “form” (an intelligible pattern), “making” the substance what it is. Every substance seeks to actualize what it already is “potentially”. According to Aristotle, the entire Universe resembles a gigantic organism and is directed toward some final cosmic goal.

The idea that physical processes can be determined by, or drawn toward, a predetermined end state is known as “teleology”.

Aristotle taught that an organism moves from an imperfect or immature condition in a teleological development toward achievement of full maturity in which its inherent “form” is actualized.

The seed is transformed into a plant, the embryo becomes the child, the child becomes the adult, and so on.

Thus Aristotle moved toward reconciling the Platonic “forms” with the “empirical facts” of dynamic natural processes, and he more deeply stressed the human intellect’s capacity to recognize these formal (potential) patterns in the sensible world.

Plato established that direct intuition of the transcendent “forms” were the foundation of knowledge. Aristotle’s foundation of knowledge was built on empiricism and logic. In essence, Aristotle realigned Plato’s archetypal perspective from a transcendent focus to an immanent one. It was directed to the physical world with its empirically observable patterns and processes.

In ancient times, Plato was generally judged the greater master; however, that evaluation was dramatically altered during the high Middle Ages. In many respects it would be Aristotle’s philosophical temperament (scientific naturalism) that defined the dominant orientation of the Western Mind (materialism and reductionism) until the nineteenth century.

It is in the nineteenth and twentieth century that the importance and rediscovery of the human “mind”, transcending the physical “brain”, emerged with transcendental philosophy (“metaphysics”), and with both humanistic and transpersonal psychology.

Aristotle’s system of thought was so considerable that most Western scientific activities (well into the 17th. century) were still operating on the basis of his 4th. century BC writings. Despite the fact that research had long gone beyond his scope, his writings (as the accepted authority) still dominated Western learning centers.

Aristotle and Plato had an elegant balance and tension between “EXTERNAL” EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS and “INTERNAL” SPIRITUAL INTUITION.

In Raphael’s renaissance masterpiece, THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS, we find in the center of the painting many philosophers and scientists gathered in lively discussion with Plato pointing upward to the heavens, to the invisible and transcendent, and Aristotle motioning his hand outward and down to the earth, to the visible and immanent (the power of non-verbal communication between the two philosophies, i.e., art).

The achievement of classical Greek thought forged through a dialectic process and became the basis for skepticism, naturalism, humanism, empiricism; a commitment to reason using mathematics and logic conducive to the development of science in succeeding centuries, with a metaphysical perspective in every religion and reality.

According to the ancient Greeks, the principle elements in one’s reality can be summed up in two very general sets of assumptions that represent the unique synthesis of Greek rationalism and Greek philosophy, with Plato playing the key role in this first set:

1. The world formed by its perfect archetypes is an ordered cosmos, whose order is akin to an order within the human mind. A rational analysis of the empirical world is therefore possible.

2. The cosmos as a whole is expressive of a pervasive intelligence that gives nature its purpose and design. This intelligence is directly accessible to human awareness when that awareness is developed and focused to a high degree.

3. Intellectual analysis at its most penetrating reveals a timeless order that transcends its temporal, concrete manifestations. The visible world contains within it a deeper meaning, a rationality that is reflected in the empirical order. The external emanates from an eternal dimension (archetypes) that is both source and goal of all existence.

4. Knowledge of the world’s underlying structure and meaning entails the exercise of plurality of human cognitive faculties; i.e., rational, empirical, intuitive, aesthetic, imaginative, mnemonic and moral.

5. The direct apprehension of the world’s more profound realities satisfies not only the mind but also the soul; it is in essence a redemptive vision to the true nature of things that are at once intellectually decisive and spiritually liberating.

The awesome legacy of Greek thought in its influence on human thought in subsequent evolution includes a second set of assumptions that represent the orientation in which Aristotle and the “outer” oriented rationalism played a key role:

1. Genuine human knowledge can be acquired only through the rigorous employment of human reason and empirical observation.

2. The ground of truth must be sought in the present world of human experiences, not undemonstratable other-worldly realities.

3. The causes of natural phenomena are impersonal and physical, and should be sought within the realm of observable nature. All mythological and supernatural elements should be excluded from causal explanation as anthropomorphic projections.

4. Any claims to comprehensive theoretical understanding must be measured against the empirical reality of concrete particulars in all their diversity, mutability and individuality.

5. No system of thought is final, and the search for truth must be both critical and self-critical. Human knowledge is relative and fallible and must be constantly revised in the light of further evidence and analysis.

Both the evolution and the legacy of the Greek mind can be said to have resulted from complex interactions of these two sets of assumptions and impulses.

The first set of assumptions (emphasizing transcendent archetypes) was especially visible in Plato’s writings. The second set (emphasizing the physical world) gradually evolved out of the bold, many-sided intellectual development of the pre-Socratic tradition of naturalistic empiricism of Thales, of rationalism from Parmenides, of mechanistic materialism from Democritus, and of skepticism, individualism, and secular humanism from the Sophists.

Moreover, these two sets shared a common ground in their uniquely Greek affirmations, often only implicit:

That the final measure of truth is found, not in hallowed tradition, nor in contemporary convention, but rather in the autonomous individual human mind.

The constant interplay of these two partly complementary and partly antithetical sets of principles established a profound inner tension within the Greek inheritance.

This provided the Western mind the intellectual basis for what was to become an extremely dynamic evolution. After two and one half millennia, our current knowledge continues to be challenged by these world views.

As we move from the ancient world to the more current world, an exciting observation becomes consciously visible.

When we comprehend the seven philosophical steps or paradigms of our Western Mind (stated on page ten), we are awakening to an evolutionary process (teleology) that enables us to participate consciously in these new world views.

As these lessons progress, the difference between the language used in first reality with its object (outer) orientation and second reality with its process (inner) orientation, it will be clear (when comprehendible) why the ancient mysteries included levels of initiation as the human being consciously awakens to “their” already existing “divine nature” (third reality).

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