THE NATURE OF REALITY - PART II
An essay by John W. Hawkins
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Recapitulation of Part I:
My approach to the nature of reality is a ternarian
one as opposed to a monist, dualist or pluralist one. A
monist tends to focus on one aspect of reality and ignores
or denigrates other aspects. A materialist, for example,
believes that all reality is based on what can be
perceived by the five senses and all else can be subsumed
under one or more classes of matter. A dualist, on the
other hand, believes there are two irreducible types of
reality (usually mind and matter) neither of which can be
derived from or be considered superior to the other. A
pluralist is, quite simply, one who believes in the
multiple nature of reality. Given a choice between the
classical problem of the "one and the many" he opts for
the "many".
A ternarian is one who believes that reality is best
described in groups of threes rather than by a single,
dual or multiple approach. The reason for preferring this
approach over one of the others was due to a very moving,
subjective experience which occurred to me when I was
thirty-six years old while reading about the nature of the
Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost). I called this
my "Eureka" experience from the Greek word meaning: "I
have found it!" Archimedes supposedly discovered while
taking a bath the principle that an object submerged in a
liquid has its weight reduced by the weight of the volume
of liquid which the object displaces. Whereupon he leaped
from his bath and ran naked through the streets shouting
"Eureka! Eureka!". Fortunately, when I had my "Eureka"
experience, I was fully clothed. There is truth to be
found in any approach, but this one, to say the least,
captured my imagination.
In the world of every day experience this ternarian
mode of thinking can be expressed as the familiar
spirit-mind-body triad in which our own unique perception
of "I-ness" or self acts as a surrogate for "spirit".
In Part I each of these three realms was again subdived
into threes for purposes of exposition: the realm of body
into the anabolic, metabolic and catabolic processes of
living things; the realm of mind into Freud's now familiar
triad of libido, ego, and superego; and the realm of the
spirit into Jungian terminology of the Persona (or outer
self), the Ego (or self-conscious self), and the Self with
a capital "S" (or inner self), which is similar in concept
to that of the Atman in Hindu teachings and to the "Christ
within us" in Christian teachings.
Jung's psychology and concepts are probably closer to
my own than any others I have discovered. However, the
Chinese system of "I Ching" devised by Emperor Fu Shi of
China's legendary period (circa 2900 BC) is also similar
although largely incomprehensible to the Western mind.
(Incidentally, Carl Jung was also fascinated by this
ancient Chinese system. He even wrote an introduction
for Richard Wilhelm's translation.)
Another schema which is closely akin to my own
conception of the nature of reality is the Hindu cosmology
with its trinity of persons: Siva, the destroyer; Vishnu,
the preserver; and Brahma, the creator. All three persons
of the Hindu trinity, like the more familiar (to us)
persons of the Christian trinity, are all aspects of one
Godhead, called by the Hindus: Brahman (neuter gender).
Siva is a surrogate for Brahman when speaking of Brahman's
threefold aspects just as God, the Father,stands for the
one God from whom both the Son and Holy Spirit are
begotten in the Christian trinity (Unitarians excepted, of
course). Similarly, Vishnu is the Son of the one God while
Brahma comes into being through the agency of Vishnu just
as the early Christian fathers taught that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son. (The Eastern
Orthodox church rejects this teaching, however, preferring
to say that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father through
the Son.) In Taoism we find another parallel to these
ideas. From the Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tse:
Out of the Tao, One is born;
Out of One, Two;
Out of Two, Three;
Out of Three, the myriad things. (Chptr. XLII)
- - End of recapitulation of Part I - -
In the "I Ching" (The Chinese Book of Changes), in
Taoism, in Hinduism, in Plato, in Judaism, and in
Christianity there exist two distinct realms: heaven and
earth, the inner and the outer worlds, the subjective and
the objective, the world of Ideas and the world of the
senses. To Western minds the emphasis is on the outer
world while to Oriental ones the emphasis is on the inner
world with the outer considered only as Maya (i.e.
illusion).
St. Paul tells us that all that is visible arises
from the invisible. Jesus reminds us that His kingdom is
not of this world and that the kingdom of Heaven is within
us. Socrates tells us (in "The Republic" Book VII) about
men being confined to live in a cave with their heads
constrained from looking toward the opening. The
characters that they imagine to be real are but shadows
thrown on the wall of the cave by figures moving on a
parapet behind them. Thus their world is only shadows of
the real world that lies behind them.
Carl Jung, based on his many years as a practicing
psychiatrist and psychologist who dealt with the dreams
and contents of the unconscious minds of his patients,
concluded that there exists a collective unconsious in the
psyche which we all inherit just as much as we inherit our
physical bodies from the genetic material of countless
ancestors. In other words there exists a collective
psyche of the species within each of us no less than the
inherited genetic material that is in each and every cell
of our bodies.
Modern day physicists tell us they have discovered two
fundamental types of particles underlying the universe:
matter and anti-matter. For every particle of matter
there exists its counterpart particle of anti-matter.
They even conjecture that a whole universe of anti-matter
may exist. (Only scientists could come up with a name like
"anti- matter" for what others have called "spirit" for
thousands of years.)
Man, as a conscious being, with his relatively
recently acquired sense of "I-ness", his consciousness of
self, finds himself poised midway between these two
realms. The trinity for man then becomes: spirit-man-world
or subjective world- consciousness- objective world.
Shortly after I received the 54 volume set of the "Great
Books" years ago I was struck by the words on the outer
cover of the two volumes called the "Syntopicon" which
indexes the materials covered in the 54 Great Books by the
102 great ideas contained in them. Volume I contains a
summary of what the authors of these books had to say on
ideas beginning with "Angel" and ending with "Love" while
Volume II summarizes their ideas starting with "Man" and
ending with "World".
Angel-Love-Man-World. That just about says it all: A
to W. Of course, there are four elements in this
continuum instead of three, but remember that man has a
foot in both the realm of Spirit (represented by the word,
"Angel") and the realm of matter (represented by the word,
"World") His connection with the spiritual realm then is
represented by the word, "Love". To elaborate on the
relationship between Man and Love would require an essay
all by itself. However, two familiar quotes from the New
Testament will suffice at this point to make the
connection clear to you: "God is love." and "For God so
loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son to the
end that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
Man, therefore, has two natures: one carnal (i.e.
belonging to the earth) and the other spiritual. One is
mortal (i.e. it perishes at death), the other is immortal,
like God Himself. "For since by man came death, by man
came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (I
Corinthians 15:21-22). "For this corruptible must put on
incoruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (I
Corinthians 15:53).
Many men (and women) remain unaware of this dual
nature for their entire sojourn on this "mortal coil" (as
Shakespeare so eloquently describes this material world ).
Such men are asleep. They know not (the reality of the
spiritual world) and know not that they know not. Others
have awakened to the reality of the spiritual side of
their nature (or at least are willing to consider the
possibility of its existence) but they are double-minded.
They are like St. Paul's description of the effect of the
law of Moses on him and all those who are under the law.
He found the Spirit telling him to do one thing while his
body was telling him to do exactly the opposite.
("For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do." - Romans 7:15)
Such men know not, but know they know not. They have
begun the climb out of darkness of Matter into the light
of Spirit. They are struggling to find the Truth.
Still others ( regardless of their religious
affliation or church attendance record) know the reality
of the spiritual realm and view the material world and our
life in it as but a shadow of the real world that exists
beyond the grave. They may "see through a glass darkly"
as St. Paul says, but they know that life continues in a
fuller and more wonderful way after the experience we call
death. These people know and know that they know.
One of the most important lessons for us to learn,
therefore, is to move from the consciousness of darkness
to that of light, from the state of being spiritually
asleep to being fully conscious, to progress from a state
of not knowing to one of knowing and knowing that you
know. An allegory of this process is found in the history
of the people of Israel described in the Old Testament.
You remember the story of how Joseph's brothers sold
him to a caravan of Arabs headed for Egypt for twenty
pieces of silver because of his strange dreams of becoming
a person to whom they would all bow down someday. When a
great famine occurred throughout the whole Middle East,
Egypt was not affected because they had been storing up
grain during the preceding seven years of plenty because
of Joseph's ability to interpret the dreams of the
Pharaoh. He thus became very influential with the Pharaoh
and indeed was the cause of his whole family moving from
the land of Canaan down to Egypt. After the Pharaoh that
knew Joseph died the Israelites became slaves of the
Egyptians. During the more than four hundred years of
their sojourn in the land of Egypt they grew to be a
great body of people (probably around three million in
number).
This period in the history of Israel represents their
state of ignorance of things spiritual. The word Egypt
signifies a dark land where they were in spiritual
darkness as well as in the darkness of physical bondage.
When Moses, who was to lead the children of Israel out of
bondage, heard God speaking to him from the burning bush,
he was not in Egypt, but across the Red Sea at Mt. Horeb
in the Sinai Peninsula. When Pharaoh refused to let his
people go, Moses caused plagues of frogs, lice, flies,
boils, hailstones and darkness to descend on Egypt and
when all of these measures failed, Moses was led by God to
prophesy that all of the first born in Egypt would be
killed if Pharaoh did not let the people of Israel go.
Moses instructed the people of Israel to prepare to
leave and to mark their doorways with the blood of a
sacrificial lamb (the symbol of Aries) so that God would
pass over their dwellings when He smote the firstborn
throughout the land of Egypt. True to His word, all the
firstborn in Egypt, including all the firstborn of their
animals, were slain, from the House of Pharaoh to the
lowest servant in the land, and the firstborn of Israel
were passed over. (This is why the Jews to this day
celebrate the feast of the Passover.)
Pharaoh finally relented and Moses set out with
600,000 men besides women and children for the land on the
East side of the "Reed" Sea. The story told in the Bible,
of course, is about Moses parting the waters of the "Red"
Sea with his staff for the people of Israel to cross in
safety. Once they were safely across with the armies of
Pharaoh in hot pursuit (he changed his mind about letting
all that free labor go), Moses lowered his rod and the
army of Pharaoh was drowned by the inrushing waters.
(The actual event may not have been quite so dramatic,
however, since the Hebrew words usually tranlated "Red
Sea" are "Yam Suph" where "Yam" means "Sea" and "Suph"
means "Reed" or "Papyrus". Hence a correct translation
would have produced the "Reed" Sea or the "Sea of Papyrus"
probably in the marshy area on the East side of the Nile
River.)
In any case it was the central experience in the
history of the Jewish people. The God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob had intervened directly in making possible the
release of His chosen people from the bondage of Pharaoh.
He continued his visible presence with them in the form of
a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.
When they were short on food he provided manna (bread)
from Heaven (which they gathered daily), and when they
were thirsty from lack of water, he provided water out of
solid rock.
The story of Moses going up on Mt. Sinai where "I AM
THAT I AM" , the Lord God of Israel, gave him the ten
commandments inscribed on the stone tablets is a familiar
one. [The word translated "The Lord" in Hebrew is "YHWH",
the third person singular of the verb meaning " to be" or
"to happen". Thus, a good translation of "YHWH" is: "He
will be" or "He causes to be". Since the ancient Hebrew
written language contains no vowels, the reader is
supposed to fill them in for himself when speaking the
words. Because words to primative people have always had
something magical about them, the spoken name of God was
only known to a few people. However, an "a" and an "e"
are often assumed to be the missing vowel sounds thereby
converting YHWH to "Yahweh".
The Hebrew consonants for "The Lord" are sometimes
also rendered in English by JHVH. When the early
translators went from Hebrew to Greek they used the first
three vowel points in the Greek word for "Lord" , which is
"Adonai", to fill in between the Hebrew consonants giving
them the transliteration: "Jehovah". In any event The
Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah, or God is the "Ground of all
being", He who always has been , is, and will be. [I
dwell on the identity of the name of God with the verb "to
be" (in Latin, "esse" from which we derive words like
"essence" and "essential") because it is the missing link
in the Einsteinian space-time continuum. As we shall
discuss later, this should in reality be thought of as the
space-time-being continuum because there is no "space" or
"time" without "being" underlying it.]
In spite of the many signs and wonders performed by
Yahweh while the children of Israel were in Egypt, during
the exodus from Egypt, and during the forty years in the
wilderness there were many murmurings against Moses and
even those who desired to return to the flesh pots of
Egypt rather than face privations and uncertainty in the
desert. When Moses first brought the two tablets down
from the mountain with the law inscribed by Yahweh, he
found the people had prevailed upon the chief priest,
Aaron, his own brother, to fashion a golden calf (the sign
of Taurus from the previous age) and to place it on an
altar so they could worship it. Moses wasted no time in
creating a showdown. Those that supported him and Yahweh
were told to put to death all those responsible for this
reversion to idol worship and three thousand men were
killed that very day.
Moses in anger broke the original tablets and had to
go back up Mt. Sinai in order to obtain Yahweh's
forgiveness for his people and to obtain a new set of
tablets. Not only were 3,000 killed by their own people
on this occasion but if we can believe the literal reading
of the wilderness experience, the whole generation of men
that left Egypt (about 600,000 in number) perished in the
wilderness except for Caleb and Joshua (Book of Numbers,
Chapter 14). Even Moses himself was not allowed to cross
the river Jordan, which separated the wilderness from the
"Promised Land" of Canaan.
Metaphysically, the forty years in the wilderness
represent the emergence of self-consciousness in the human
race. As documented by Dr. Bucke in "Cosmic
Consciousness", by Carl Jung and others, this occured
relatively recently in man's evolution. It corresponds to
the phase of those who know not, but know that they know
not or to the state of mind St. Paul expresses when he
says: " For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil
which I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:19) He finds two
separate natures at work within his being: one carnal and
the other spiritual. The purpose then of the giving of
the law, as St. Paul tells us, is to convict us of sin, to
convince us that " all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God", and to confess: " O wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans
7:24).
Just as none of these double-minded Israelites was
allowed to cross into the promised land, so no one who has
not given up his old life and crucified the man of flesh
is allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (i. e.
the Promised Land)."He that findeth his life shall lose
it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find
it." (Matthew 10:39); "Except a man be born again .." ;
"You cannot put new wine into old wineskins ..." etc. etc.
The self-conscious man is a man no longer under the sway
of instinct and unconscious tendencies. He now has a
measure of free-will. He can choose to follow the
spiritual path or follow the dictates of the flesh.
He has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and now
knows the difference between good and evil. "I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may
live." (Deut.30:19).
According to some philosophers you can even choose
the direction of your future lives:
"Thou constrained by by no limits, in accordance with
thine own free will in whose hand we have placed
thee, shall ordain for thyself the limits of thy
nature. We have made thee neither of heaven nor of
earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with
freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker
and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself
in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt
have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of
life which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power
out of thy soul's judgment to be reborn into the
higher forms which are divine."
Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Those who would cross the river Jordan and enter into
the Promised Land, to join those who know and know that
they know, must undergo the experience of death and
rebirth and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
"I [John the Baptist] baptize you with water for
repentance but . . . . he [Jesus Christ] will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Matthew 3:11). "I
came to cast fire upon the earth" (Luke 12:49). "Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit." (John 3:5-6). To reach this land, this
state of being, is to obtain the "pearl of great price" of
the New Testament, the "philosopher's stone" of the
alchemists, Nirvana of the Hindus, the "summum bonum" of
the philosophers, and the salvation of the Jews and
Christians.
The journey that is open to every man and woman there-
fore, is from darkness into light, from being enmeshed in
the world of the senses to dwelling in a world of the
Spirit, from being a slave to being truly free, from
living in a state of sin to living in a state of grace,
from living in a state of illusions to one where there
are no shadows, from the realm of mortality and death to
one of life eternal where there are no yesterdays or
tomorrows but only the eternal "now".
Although achieving this state of being is everyone's
birthright, we are given the power to choose our own
destiny. Even if we make the choice of life over death,
blessing instead of cursing, we must still undergo a long
journey, a pilgimage, before crossing over to the Promised
Land (Yes, "Grace is a gift of God, lest any man should
boast", but there is also the judgment where we are held
accountable for all of our deeds while here on earth and
even for every word that we speak.) "Many are called,
but few are chosen". "For the gate is wide and the way is
easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it
are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that
leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Matthew
7:13-14). "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one
comes to the Father, except by me." (John 14:6).
St. Paul tells us to "Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12), but we are
enjoined by Jesus not only to seek salvation and the
Kingdom, but to "Be perfect even as your Father in Heaven
is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). To become perfect is not
simply a matter of choosing life over death. Rather it is
a continual day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment
choice to follow the upward and spiritual path rather than
the one that leads to sin and death.
In a sense we each must find our own path . Even
though Jesus insists that "No one comes to the Father
except by me", he also tells us that "In my Father's
house are many mansions . ." (John 14:2). and to "Take
up your cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24) . . not
someone else's cross, but your cross. Your cross repre-
sents all of the unregenerate elements that are still
clinging to you that must be overcome before the prize
of entering into "His rest" can be obtained, or to use a
Bhuddist and Hindu concept, until we can escape from the
"wheel of birth and rebirth" (i.e. reincarnation).
All of these unregenerate elements must be brought to
the surface (i.e. consciousness) before they can be
purged. "Cleanse first the inside of the cup, that the
outside of them may also be cleansed." (Matthew 23:26) Or
as the alchemists taught concerning the location of the
philosopher's stone: "In stecore invenitur." (It is found
in filth.) That which you have repressed, that which lies
dormant in the unconsious mind is to be emptied out, dirty
or filthy as it may be, in order to facilitate and make
possible the cleansing process.
For those of us who can't afford the psychotherapist's
couch or who do not make confession a part of our regular
religious practice there are fortunately the time-honored
methods of prayer and meditation. After all, as Jesus
tells us: the kingdom of Heaven is within you." and Robert
Browning in his Paracelsus says: "Truth is within
ourselves . .". Solomon, the wisest of men, admonishes:
"With all thy getting, get understanding."; and Socrates
tell us simply: "Know thyself".
This advice is particularly important for twentieth
century western man with his over-reliance on the world of
things and the efficacy of the scientific method. In the
process of overthrowing the superstition and prejudices of
scholasticism and the revealed truth of the early church
fathers modern science tends to denigrate, or even deny,
the reality of the soul and the spiritual side of man.
Although "few are chosen", we are also told to ask
that we may receive, seek that we may find, and knock that
the door may be opened. Also we are told that the Father
desires that not one should perish. The opportunity is
open to all. The choice, however, is ours to make.
Even though the road be a long and difficult one, it
can be full of joy. We can raise our consciousness to
the spiritual level in spite of the pain and suffering
attendant upon "taking up your cross". As King David
sings in the 110th Psalm:
"The Lord says to my lord: [the Christ within you]
'Sit at my right hand till
I make your enemies your footstool.'" (v.1)
----
"You are a priest forever
After the order of Melchizadek." (v.4)
Who this Melchizadek is, is told to us by the author
of the letter to the Hebrews:
"For this Melchizadek, king of Salem, priest of the
most high God, met Abraham returning from the
slaughter of the kings and blessed him; and to him
Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He
is first, by translation of his name, king of
righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem,
that is, king of peace. He is without father or
mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days
nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he
continues a priest forever." (Hebrews 7:1-3)
The identification with "the Christ within you" will
enable you to to endure the spiritual journey with
patience and fortitude. As someone has wisely put it:
"God is forever begetting the only begotten."
To recapitulate (hopefully, not "ad nauseum"): Man was
created a spiritual being in the image of God ("imago Dei"). In a long process of involution spiritual man
involves himself in ever grosser layers of matter until at
last he forgets his original god-like state. The familiar
story of Adam and Eve being driven from the Garden of Eden
after eating the apple from the tree of knowledge is
symbolic of this process. After eons in a state of
darkness and ignorance man begins the equally long process
of evolution from the world of densest matter back again
to the realm of spirit.
The ancient religions of the East (primarily Hinduism
and Buddhism) teach that this path involves many births
and deaths (i.e. reincarnations in a physical body) in
order for the human soul to experience life in all its
aspects: rich and poor, male and female, saint and sinner,
etc. The Christian religion, however, (with minor
exceptions) teaches that man has only one earthly
experience and he (or she) therefore must learn all of
life's lessons in a short span of time. (The teaching of
reincarnation was officially made a heresy by the Church
in the middle of the sixth century A.D. Of course, the
Church also condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth
revolves around the sun.) In either case, however, a
growth of consciousness and knowledge of spiritual
realities is required in order to prepare oneself for the
Judeo-Christian's entry into the Father's house or for the
Eastern state of "samadhi" whereby one enters into union
with Brahman.
My own belief, although raised within the traditional
Christian point of view, is that all religions of whatever
time or place attempt to teach and describe the same
reality. ("In my Father's house are many mansions. If itwere not so, I would have told you." - John 14:2) Not
only religion but art, poetry, philosophy, and even
science attempt to describe the same reality, each in
their own medium of expression. ("All are parts of onestupendous whole, whose body Nature is and God the soul.")
Therefore, whatever one's religion might be, regardless of
time or place, background or level of understanding,
avenues exist by which the evolutionary path toward
realizing the divine within can be discerned and followed.
("To thine own self be true, and it follows as must nightthe day, thou canst not then be false to any man." -
Shakespeare.)
Contrast the belief held by many Christians that those
who are not Christians (by which is usually meant those
not belonging to their particular sect) cannot be
"saved" with the words of Jesus himself when asked about
the way to salvation by one of his own people, a Jew. He
replied: "What do your scriptures tell you?" Whereupon
the Orthodox Jew said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, with all thy strength , with all thy
mind and thy neighbor as thyself." Jesus then tells him:
"This do and thou shalt live." (i.e. be saved). (Luke
10:25-28). Loving God, in other words, with your whole
being and your neighbor as yourself is equivalent to
saying: "Take up your cross and follow me."; "No man comes
to the Father except by me."; "Except a man be born again
he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."; etc., etc.
Notice that a trinity of persons is involved in the
above summary of the Law and the Prophets: God, your
neighbor, and yourself. That is to say, you must seek to
identify yourself with that which lies within you (i.e.
Spirit) as well as that which lies outside you (the world
of other people and all things created). Jesus states
this desire to obtain unity between the realm of spirit,
himself and others thusly: "That they all may be one; as
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us." (John 17:21)
The three stages in the path of evolution from bondage
to salvation discussed above can be likened to the
development from infancy into adolescence and finally into
the fully mature adult. The infant starts life with no
sense of itself as a separate ego but rather as one
completely dependent on its mother and others to provide
it food, clothing, shelter and tender, loving care. While
this state may be more akin to bliss than to the darkness
of ignorance and slavery of the Israelites under the yoke
of the Pharaoh, they are both in this stage of development
at the mercy of others for their very life and well-being,
a state characterized by dependence.
As the child grows and develops, he acquires a very
definite sense of himself as a separate person and as
being in a world where he must compete with others to
attain what he desires. He also acquires knowledge and
skills that enable him to stand on his own feet and break
away from the bonds of juvenile dependency on parents and
others. The attainment of this stage of life is analogous
to the escape from Pharaoh into the wilderness of Sinai.
It is a world of independence rather than one of
dependence,but it is also characterized by an attitude
of "every man for himself" and by "an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth". It is a time of testing and
proving, for climbing the ladder of success, for acquiring
money, power and position. This stage lasts for a
considerable period of time. (For the children of Israel
it lasted forty years.) Some individuals never go beyond
this stage just as some never outgrow the stage of
childlike dependency on others or on society as a whole.
After one has made his mark in life or has outgrown
the adolescent need to prove himself another stage in his
growth occasionally emerges, one characterized not by
dependence or independence but by "interdependence". The
characteristic of this phase is the realization that all
men are brothers and the belief that "but for the grace of
God, there go I". Since you have already made your mark in
the world by the acquistion of wealth, knowledge, and/or
spiritual insights, you are always willing to share with
others that which you have accumulated over the years.
This can take the form of sharing material wealth with
those less fortunate but it can also take the form of
giving moral support and words of wisdom to those still
living in the phases of dependence or independence.
The person entering this phase of life continues to
receive from and exchange with others as well as to give
freely of himself and his material wealth. He realizes
that every individual possesses different talents,
knowledge, and experiences. Therefore, he can willingly
receive from those more knowledgeable about a given
subject than he and can exchange ideas and viewpoints with
those with whom he is on an equal footing. He realizes
that for him to make progress in his spiritual journey he
must needs offer to share himself and his possessions with
others. Furthermore, he will take only as much from the
world's stock of things as he needs and not attempt to
accumulate more of them out of a spirit of greed or a lust
for power. In short he will act according the Socialist
ideal: "from each according to his ability and to each
according to his need". (One need not be a Socialist,
however, in order to accept such an ideal.)
If all society and nations were at this stage of
maturity, there would not be a need for heavy-handed
government, nor huge defense budgets, nor huge outlays for
lawsuits and welfare. (According to Karl Marx the state
at this point would simply "wither away".) This is the
evolutionary stage prophesied by Ezekiel for the people of
Israel:
"For I will take you from among the heathen, and
gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into
your own land. . . . A new heart also will I give you, and
a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a
heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my
judgments, and do them." (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
It is also the state of grace as taught by St Paul and
the other apostles:
"Through him [the Christ] we have obtained access to
this grace in which we stand" by means of which "God's
love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit which has been given to us." (Romans 5:2-5 RSV)
Unfortunately the great mass of humanity has not
attained such a state of mind and being as described by
Ezekiel and St. Paul. Most utopian schemes, therefore,
that have been tried in real life situations have failed
to achieve their intended result. Nevertheless,
communities such as the Amish and Mennonites come
reasonably close to the economic, social and moral ideal
of true interdependence; but they live in a carefully
structured environment which attempts to continue life as
it was in a rural setting of the nineteenth century and
therefore limits interaction with the rest of the world as
much as possible.
On a larger scale countries such as Sweden have
adopted such Socialist policies as "free" medical services
to all their citizens and state ownership of some
industries but at the cost of extremely heavy levels of
taxation, which destroys much of the incentive for people
to increase their productivity and work harder.
Perhaps the best current examples of large-scale
interdependence, it seems to me, are the European Common
Market and Japan. Nearly all of the Western European
nations have now banded together to create a free-trade
zone among themselves and to set common policies in
trading with the outside world. We are seeing the model
of behavior for the future of the world unfold. Nations
of diverse languages and cultures are subordinating (to
some degree at least) their sovereignty (i.e. their
independence) in order to achieve a greater good for all.
Many of these same countries also belong to the NATO
alliance and therefore are also working together on a
common system of defense against that "evil empire" (as
Ronald Reagan calls it), the Soviet Union.
I use Japan as the best example of a country
exhibiting the ideals of an interdependent society
(although they have an economy based on capitalism)
instead of the United States because the United States is
still caught up, by and large, in the second phase (i.e.
the phase of independence) of its development and has not
yet reached as a society the more mature stage of
interdependence. After all we as a nation are scarcely
two hundred years old compared with a thousand and more
for countries like Japan and those in Europe. In Japan,
which is enjoying the greatest prosperity and the lowest
unemployment rate in the world today, management, workers
and the government work together to achieve commonly
understood goals and objectives. A sense of harmony and
cooperation predominates - a true feeling of being
"interrelated". In America, on the other hand, Labor sees
"Big Business" as an adversary to be confronted by big
labor unions while government sees its role largely as
harassing and restraining business, not in cooperating
with it. Another indication of the adversarial nature of
our society is the proliferation of lawyers and lawsuits.
(For example, we have forty times more attorneys per
capita than does China.) Fortunately, there are signs of
increasing cooperation between management and labor and
between business and government in America, but we still
have a long, long way to go. Perhaps the networks now
being establihed by the "Aquarian Conspiracy", as Marilyn
Ferguson labels it, will provide the necessary impetus to
bring more of us into the higher consciousness of
"interdependence".
(A number of weeks after writing the above section I
ran across some similar thinking in the November 9, 1987
issue of Time magazine, p.21: "The Japanese, virtually
tribal in their consensual citizenship, have a fairly
smooth decision-making process. The Prime Minister . . .
reports weekly to the legislature in an environment of
interaction, conciliation, and accountability. In
addition, Japanese politicians engage in continual and
intense negotiation with the private sector. In America,
the President and Congress constantly collide, as do the
Government and business. America is individualistic and
pluralistic, alive with thousands of competing
constituencies and interests, and every one of them, it
seems, is flanked by a team of lawyers.")
The dilemma the world community of nations (if we may
call it that) faces today is the clash between the concept
of nations being little changed since the eighteenth
century and the status of modern science which has grown
by quantum leaps in the last hundred years into an age of
space ships, nuclear weapons, computers, lasers,
television, and world-wide communication by satellites.
It is a commonly accepted maxim of psychologists that
large groups of people behave more after the fashion of
the lowest common denominator than of the highest. That
is to say, a country typically behaves at a stage of
development even lower than do the typical individuals
comprising it. Therefore, we are in a situation not
unlike rival gangs of teenagers who find themselves in
possession of nuclear weapons. We will be fortunate
indeed if we can keep from annihilating each other while
we as nations grow from the adolescent phase of
independence into the mature and much safer phase of
mutual respect, cooperation and interdependence.
Many Christians believe that we today are living in
the "end times" forecasted by the Old Testament prophets
and also in the New Testament by Jesus and the Book of
Revelation. This is known as the end of the "time of the
gentiles" and the "time of Jacob's trouble"; a time when
"the heavens will tremble and the earth will be shaken out
of its place." (Isaiah 13:13). "For then there will be
great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning
of the world until now,, no, and never will be. And if
those days had not been shortened no human being would be
saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be
shortened." (Matthew 24:21-22). Following these dark days
and battle of Armageddon the Messiah (Christ) will return
to earth to rule for a period of one thousand years (the
millennium) in a golden age of peace and prosperity world
wide.
Time alone will tell whether these prophesies are
right or wrong. Suffice it to say that from the time of
the disciples until the present every generation of
Christians has believed that the end of the "world" would
occur in its lifetime. Jesus himself said that many of
the generation that were alive when he was on earth would
not taste death before the tribulation period and his
coming again would occur. In order to judge for yourself
whether we are approaching the "end times" read
thoughtfully Matthew, Chapter 24 and Second Timothy,
Chapter 3 about signs preceding this period (e.g. wars and
rumors of wars, unruly chilren, perversion and unnatural
affections abounding, the proliferation of knowledge, etc.
etc.). Also books like Hal Lindsay's "The Late Great
Planet Earth" will give you some food for thought.
The "flower children" say this is "the dawning of the
age of Aquarius". They base this not on biblical
scriptures but on a well-known fact of astronomy - the
precession of the earth about its axis every 25,800 years
or so. You may say, and correctly so, that no one knows
exactly what was happening on earth 25,000 years ago, but
the heavens are divided up into twelve zones by
astrologers called the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Therefore, as the earth precesses (i.e. wobbles) around
its axis, the sign with which the earth and the sun are
aligned at the time of the vernal equinox (the first day
of Spring) each year precesses also so that every 2150
years or so (25,800/12) the earth passes from the
beginning of one sign into the beginning of another.
The signs are named beginning with Aries, the sign of
the Ram, moving East to West through the heavens and
ending with Pisces, the Fish, the twelveth and last sign
before beginning the cycle all over again. The nature of
the earth's precession, however, is retrograde. This
means that the movement through the zodiac due to the
earth's precession about its axis moves backward through
the signs of the zodiac. Thus, 2,000 years ago the sign
lying behind the sun at the moment of the vernal equinox
was near the cusp between the signs of Aries and Pisces,
while now, 2000 years later, at the beginning of Spring
the alignment is near the cusp between the signs of Pisces
and Aquarius.
The symbol of Aries is the ram. During the 2,000
years before Christ was born, the Jewish people came forth
from Mesopotamia, settled in ancient Palestine, migrated
to Egypt and after more than 400 years finally returned to
their "Promised Land". Their symbol, based on their
miraculous exodus from Egypt, is the lamb, which is a
young sheep or ram. As discussed earlier, their most
sacred, holy day is Passover, which commemorates the event
when God killed the first born throughout the land of
Egypt but passed over the houses of the Israelites which
had been marked with the blood of a lamb.
In the Christian era, now nearly 2,000 years old, the
symbol the early Christians used to identify themselves to
others was a fish, the sign of Pisces. Even today it is
widely used, second only to the cross, which is
Christianity's quintessential symbol. (For the widespread
use of the fish symbol by Christians read Carl Jung's
essay entitled "Aion" from his "Collected Works.")
What religion or movement will come to the forefront
in the next 2,000 years only time will tell. However, if
the precession of the equinox into the sign of Aquarius
can be used as a harbinger, its symbol will be the
water-bearer. (According to J. E. Cirlot: "Aquarius
symbolizes the dissolution and decomposition of the forms
existing within any process, cycle or period; the
loosening of bonds; the imminence of liberation through
the destruction of the world of phenomena." "All Eastern
and Western traditions relate this archetype to the
symbolic flood which stands not only for the end of a
formal universe but also for the completion of any cycle
by the destruction of the power which held its components
together."- A Dictionary of Symbols, p.14-15). "Mankind in
Amnesia" by Immanuel Velikovsky published in 1982 and
Marilyn Ferguson"s "Aquarian Conspiracy" referred to above
may give you some insights into the events and philosophy
of the coming age.
Two more observations should be made about the
scriptural references to "the end of the world":
1. The Greek word translated by "world" is "aion"
which would better be translated "eon" or "age". These
references then become: "the end of the eon" or "the end
of the age", which accords with the idea of the precession
of the equinox. (The Revised Standard Version translates
it as "the close of the age".)
2. The Old Testament prophets refer to the "time of
Jacob's trouble" preceding the battle of Armageddon, which
occurs at the end of the "time of the gentiles" (See
Eziekiel Chapters 37-39 and Revelation 16:16.) The
current period could certainly be thought of in these
terms since none of the prophesies concerning the battle
of Armageddon could have happened before the
re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Ever
since the dispersion of the Jews following the destruction
of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the Jewish people
have had no country of their own. Hence there could have
been no possibility of a great battle between Israel and
the countries surrounding her as described by the prophets
Ezekiel and Daniel unless there was a nation of Israel.
Instead of dwelling on such weighty matters as the
Apocalypse and the end of the current world period let us
return to the world of the microcosm - the world of the
individual human being. Thus far we have been developing
variations on a theme of the evolution of consciousness:
up from the darkness of bondage and unknowing, through the
wilderness experience of seeking and striving, to the
shore of the Promised Land where the "pilgrim" may at last
be free and rest from his labors. We have made another
analogy of this evolution to the normal growth and
development of an individual from the childhood state of
dependency to the adolescent state of independence and
finally to the mature state of interdependence. In
developing these analogies references have been made which
are (or should be) familiar to those raised in the Judaeo
Christian tradition. It should strengthen our thesis,
therefore, if similar ideas can be found in a completely
different culture and tradition.
To illustrate the universality of these ideas, which
Aldous Huxley has labeled "The Perennial Philosophy",
since it occurs in many religions and philosophies, we
could have chosen the teachings of Lao Tsu, the founder of
Taoism, or the writings of the Islamic Sufis of Ancient
Persia, the precepts of Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, or
even the dialogues of Plato. However, let us consider
instead a tradition older than any of these: namely, the
beliefs and teachings of Hinduism.
The writings of Hinduism go back at least 4,000 years
and the oral traditions undoubtedly go back several
thousand years more. Although the religion of Hinduism is