Book Two

Copyright © 1991 by Stan McDaniel
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101. Our subjectmatter is ``meaning.'' [2,3]

102. Our central idea is ``Equilibrium.''

103. Our focus of attention is the energy that fills the polar system (Figure 5). [30], [74-78]

104. We have identified the upward moving energy with ``desire.''

105. But sometimes the upward moving energy is understood to be renunciation, or self-sacrifice: quite the opposite of desire!

106. This apparent contradiction is the result of confusing desire with lust.

107. Lust is the will to blaspheme. [50], [93]

108. Virtue is the will to listen. [95]

109. Lust, or the will to blaspheme, is a form of fear.

110. Fear of what?

111. Fear of death: Lust is the result of the fear of death.

112. This teaches us how to recognize lust, and how to distinguish it from desire.

113. Death, in this case, means correction of error. [44]

114. ``Correction of error'' is a common occurrence, often called ``admitting one's mistakes.'' The therapeutic value of confession, the admonition to ``turn the other cheek,'' and the ``non-attachment'' of eastern tradition are among the various religious forms of this.

115. What really dies is the identification of the ego with a given perspective.

116. With death, the ego moves to a qualitatively different context. [39], [42]

117. The new context must invalidate the claim to primacy on the part of the old context.

118. The new context must also embrace the old context in a way that explains it and evaluates it.

119. To correct error, to embrace a wider context; in short, to die, is self-sacrifice, renunciation.

120. Conscious self correction is a characteristic of Science. Sections 117 and 118 reflect the conditions under which one scientific hypothesis may replace another. This similarity between the spiritual and the scientific is to be expected. [100]

121. What is to be avoided, then, is lust, not desire. Desire is the will to die, and implies sacrifice.

122. A traditional way of expressing the content of sections 117 and 118 is to refer to the qualitative movement there described, as a change of level.

123. It is the fashion now to frown upon the notion of ``levels'' as expressing an undesirable elitist hierarchy, or at least to view ``levels'' as a metaphysically unclear notion. But the requirement imposed for making it clear is that some single verbal formulation should be found that will, upon being heard or read, bring about understanding of the qualitative aspect of life. [92-93]

124. As section 18 informs us, this is an absurd requirement. It is absurd because it is not rational. It is not rational because it refuses to engage the experiential side of the process of explanation. In short, it is unscientific. [7]

125. Changes in level, or in contextual quality, are among our most common experiences. [14]

126. The real problem here is that a coherent system of concepts, which connects such experiences into a meaningful whole, is lacking. [60]

127. What is lacking, then, is an understanding of religious language. [83]

128. This means that an understanding of Equilibrium is lacking. [17]

129. To learn the language, one must listen; and to listen, one must learn the language.

130. Essential Atheism is the denial that there is anything to hear, that is, refusal to learn the experiential meaning of the concept of a ``level.''

131. Essential Atheism, therefore, stems from fear of self-correction; that is, it is a form of lust. [111]

132. The notion of states of being arranged according to an hierarchy of levels, on the other hand, is inherent in the schemes of Figures 1 and 4. Taking the poles of the structural axis as ``unity'' and ``diversity,'' we note that the basic characteristic of a move upward must be a change in which the many (diversity) are seen as one (unity). Psychologists Jourard and Overlade express this precept in their book Reconciliation as follows: ``The larger view takes the form of a reconciliation of contradictions.''

133. John Dewey refers to such a change as the change from an ``unsettled'' situation to one that is a ``unified whole.'' A sudden, overwhelming sense of this kind of change is sometimes given the status of a ``religious experience.'' [35]

134. But to be conscious of a change in level, one must retain an awareness of the plurality within the unity. Otherwise, the sense of height, of having gone up, is not felt. [41]

135. Consciousness of plurality within unity is called by Kant the ability to synthesize concepts. Perception, conception, and judgement, therefore, may be considered as forms of sacrifice: consciousness abandons the egocentricity of isolated sensation and adopts positions of increasing ``objectivity.'' [37-38]

136. Abstraction or Logos, and self-correction or sacrifice, are correlative notions; but their special relation is seldom noticed in these contexts. [68]

137. It follows that the ability to form abstract concepts is also an expression of movement along the path; it is language itself. Here we give the esoteric meaning of ``language.'' [10]

138. Exoteric conceptions of language cannot admit this. A deep appreciation for the essential relation between the indefinable nature of language and the indefinable nature of personhood is necessary. Then it should be self-evident why language is essentially connected with ``MAN'' as the expression of the dynamic axis. [97]

139. Language is communication; therefore it provides the possibility of conscious love.

140. It is The Word: One who can listen, can also speak.

141. That which speaks is called the ``I AM.''

142. It is the agent aspect of the energy within the polar system. A related concept is the Magus card in the Kabalistic Tarot. (A study of the etymology of the word ``magus'' can prove illuminating here.)

143. It is the concept-former: It produces the world of name and form (nama-rupa).

Some call it Karma, some Self-Nature call it;
Some call it Time, and others call it Fate;
Some say it is the eternal urge and surge
Of Prime Desire; Some name it Agni too,
The luminous fire that leadeth all to Self.
Some name it Manu, Universal Mind,
Some Praja-pati, Lord of Progeny,
Some Indra, chief of all nature-forces,
Some Brahma, vast, eternal, infinite,
Which as the ``I,'' the Universal Self,
Wears, bears, and does
All forms and names and acts.

144. It is transpersonal, in that it unifies; It is personal, in that it is necessarily apart from that which is not yet unified. Out of this duality, consciousness arises. [65-66]

145. Kant's ``transcendental ego'' has the same transpersonal character. It is that which makes possible the unifying copula, the verb ``to be.'' John Dewey calls it simply ``mind.'' Religious texts give us the image of the Creation of Being through The Word.

146. The capacity for creation is the capacity to join that which is apart, and the capacity for destruction is the capacity to part that which is one. For this is needed the secret of the unity of opposites. The process of synthesis and analysis is God's play of creation. Concept-formation or the name, is God's tool.

147. W.V. Quine speaks of an ``objective pull'' that draws evolving consciousnees upward from proto-conceptual ``mass terms'' to the naming stage of ``divided reference'' and beyond. Biologists Hockett and Ascher speak of ``the opening of the call system'' as the great step in evolution. John Dewey says concisely: Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful. [139]

148. This ``objective pull'' is none other than what we have called ``desire.'' Science, therefore, is in its essence an expression of desire. [78], [100], [104], [121]

149. This view of Science, when ``desire'' is understood as we here understand it, is the mark of John Dewey's definition of inquiry as self-renewal through unification. [133]

150. Religious language represents these ideas by identifying God and ``MAN'' (Humankind) in various ways. ``MAN'' is ``in the image of God.'' ``God is the Universal Self; The individual self is Heaven In Us.'' [146]

151. ``I and my Father are one, yet is my Father greater than I; I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.''

152. Movement along the upward path, then, means a gradual identification of the part with the whole, as wave to ocean.

153. But consciousness of the mutual support of individual and environment, and of the general laws governing this relation, is ecological. Complete understanding of the mutual dependencies of persons and the universe as a whole is the subjectmatter of Science. [97-100]

154. We have now briefly discussed the relation of sacrifice, self correction, and The Word to the energy in the polar system.

155. All these things, as essentially related to that energy, have been connected with the I AM as the agent of will, the ``divine'' in humankind.

156. Yet the final sacrifice is the Sacrifice of Sacrifice itself: the sacrifice of consciousness.

157. This is the answer to the paradox of desire: desire for the desireless state can be fulfilled, by abandoning all fulfillment. [105]

158. The way of sacrifice is therefore paved by desire. Desire for unity is desire for the death of that which is separate. [78]

159. The Sacrifice of Sacrifice is the ultimate stage of self-correction: when one's being is so ``correct'' or ``in accord with the will of heaven'' that all effort to correct oneself automatically ceases.

160. This is called Tzu-jan, ``spontaneity,'' in Zen Buddhism.

161. It is represented as ``The Fool'' in the Kabalistic Tarot.

162. It is a state in which opposites are reconciled.

163. We may refer such a state to the center of the circles in Figures 1 through 5.

164. If the final sacrifice is complete, movement ceases; Consciousness reaches the center.

165. Abiding in the center is Equilibrium.

166. It means that the forces of the opposites are reconciled in him or her.

167. This is sometimes called ``The Middle Path.'' [337], [344]

168. What is it that so abides?

169. In the Upanishads we read:

That being, of the size of a thumb,
Dwells deep within the heart.
He is the Lord of Time, past and future;
Having attained him, one fears no more.
He verily is the Immortal Self.

170. The reader shall not make the mistake, at this point, of thinking that any departure has been made from down-to-earth, observable materials of experience. [14]

171. The extreme simplicity of what is being said can be deceptive. Also, negative habits, associated with the presence of certain modes of expression, such as aversion to the use of religious terminology, or, conversely, aversion to the mention of ``science,'' can stand in the way.

172. But we are discussing religious language. Every occurrence of terms associated with religion, therefore, shall be understood as a ``display,'' not an ``argument.''

173. Such great simplicity! We have chosen a specific sort of act, and defined its occurrence as the requirement under which energy is said to be moving within the polar system. [35]

174. If our language suggests to us that such an act requires an agent, then we have also indicated certain names by which that agent is known. [141]

175. No special metaphysics is needed here, but only the ability to make simple observations. One must be able to observe and recognize the kind of act that defines the energy. [32]

176. However, observation is always observation within a language. Only the arrogance of early ``empiricism'' established the prejudice that the observer is an absolute. Science today knows better than this.

177. Therefore, while the acts we refer to are everyday occurrences, in most persons they are not conceptualized as belonging to a kind. The formal unity among such acts is more often actively repressed, because of social conditioning. [86-89]

178. Then the individual remains immune to the accumulative possibilities inherent in qualitative change, and character does not evolve, but continues to fluctuate. [58-60]

179. Socially reinforced repression of the formal unity among acts of moral quality, identifiable as a form of blasphemy, can also be understood as fear of psychology. [83], [61]

180. We have displayed some of the many names of the act and the many forms of the act; The agent, however, remains the same:

a. It is that which moves along the path.