It’s such a wonderful theme, Super Consciousness– I could write volumes on the topic but with my time constraints and my reality constraints, I will share with you but a few key quotes from great philosophers. Hmm! Constraints? I wonder what those are?
I’m reminded of the work of Jane Roberts who channeled the Seth Materials in the 60s and 70s – and was one of the first who brought us the notion that we create our own reality and what the “Oversoul” might be. I’m sure many of you were influenced as was I by the breakthroughs in thoughts and possibilities the Seth Materials gave us.
In working with Norm over the past 25 years, I’ve learned of philosophers who have worked deeply and with great stretches in consciousness over centuries of human development to get at the rudimentary foundations of what is most fundamental about reality... what is the ultimate reality – the most basic assumptions about reality from which all life combines and removes. At first I thought it all too abstract, too removed from experience, too “heady” as some would call it, that I didn’t bother to read, to look into these great philosophers but now I’m reading and studying and finding to my surprise so much clarity and meaning and yes, simplicity. This is what Norm has committed his life to – the understanding of life – of God – if you will – not to name it, explain it or reason it, but to expand what we can know of our existence.
Each of our lives is in some way this journey of such expansion. Norm’s focus has been on the unfolding of Process philosophers – Alfred North Whitehead who wrote Process and Reality in the 1930s and Charles Hartshorne, a Process Theologist – the founder of Panenthesim in 1950s, and Robert S. Hartman, discoverer of value intelligence in the 1950/60s, and Charles Peirce who goes back to 1870s, creator of Semiotics.
Beyond these roots we explore Paul Tillich whose writings spoke of:
“God is not a being.” “As the ultimate is not a being (besides others), neither is God a ‘thing’, an object, a natural object, a person, a reality, a meaning, one level, a power, or a cause, nor a part ...”
David H. Nikkel summarizes in his Creative Synthesis on Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich: where Tillich speaks of our awareness of ultimate reality in terms of:
Such awareness is not a ‘state of mind’ or an encounter standing apart from others. Instead it is ‘in, with, and under’ other states of mind and ‘within’ other "encounters."
There is much opening in all life right now as we encounter reality at many new levels. We are being stretched and for many who have forgotten the greater reality beyond materialism, it seems like there is little “light” to anchor us. It can get really scary. However, there seems to be no answer, thing or state on which to land, instead we get to “feel,” “re-connect-with” the “felt sense” within us to experience this ultimate consciousness. So as we each are opening to this awareness, Norm and I add our perspectives to the mix with looking at What is Life and exploring how it creates togetherness, novelty through us and with us. I share with you here some of the quotes that have inspired me:
Whitehead –
That the actual world is a process, and that the process is the becoming of actual entities.
That an actual entity... is a concrescence of prehensions which have originated in its process of becoming.
The ultimate abstract principles of existence are “creative synthesis” or “creativity.
Each fact is more than its forms, and each form participates through the world of facts. The definiteness of fact is due to its forms; but the individual fact is a creature and creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplicable by forms, and conditioned by its creatures...
The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively many in process of passage into conjunctive unity.
The pragmatism of Peirce and James –
Ideas must be expressible in living and behavior or they are merely verbal.
Hartshorne –
The problem is to find or create a view of first principles that is livable and rationally defensible.
A philosopher, however, should also have a sense for the non-logical side of awareness. Ideally he should have more in common with poets...
The most essential metaphysical lesson of all, perhaps a lesson the Buddhists had learned long before. This was to detect the element of illusion (or if you prefer, confusion) in the idea of a plurality of selves mutually external to each other.
The notion that self-preservation is the law of nature is poor biology. Species preservation is closer to the true law and rather the basic motivation is the appeal of life for life.
Why is one interested in oneself?
- Because like other selves one is an interesting, complex and more or less harmonious or beautiful reality,
- one is intimately, acquainted with this reality, one has power to change, guide, protect and help it in its successive adventures. (To do this is satisfying in the doing, but this – the only essential "reward" of virtuous action is in the action, right now, not in the future.) One may add that social customs expect and inculcate a measure of self-concern. But all these reasons justify being interested in valuing and wanting to help various other persons. The degree may differ, not the principle. The basic motivation however, is neither the appeal of a self for the same self, nor even the appeal of other selves for own self... Rather it is something more general and yet, in its instances, more specific or concrete: the appeal of life for life.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee says on Spiritual Ecology:
Those of us who have been given a knowing of the sacred within ourselves and within the world have a responsibility at this time. We may ask ourselves, “What can I do?” but the inner world primarily requires consciousness rather than action. It is the lack of an awareness of the sacred that is at the root of this crisis. Therefore we first need to bring the light of our spiritual awareness into the present predicament. We need to recognize what is really happening within the inner world as much as the outer, within our own soul and within the soul of the world. Only then can we begin to redeem the sacred and open the door to any real change or transformation. Only then can we begin to heal the world and bring it back into balance.
And from Joseph Campbell’s conclusion to his lecture series as shared in The Mythic Dimension:
Can one treat of such things with the balanced vision of an artist? Has a human heart such magnitude? “Love bears all things,” Saint Paul has said. “Judge not that you may not be judged,” said Christ. The limitation comes where your judgment comes. The revelation of art is not ethics or a judgment – not even of humanity as one generally thinks of it – but a marveling recognition of the radiant Form of forms that shines through all things; and as our own great American master, Nathaniel Hawthorne has said, (telling of what dreams and fancies show of the innermost truth of each of us): “Man shall not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest.”
And Skye says, each of us is real potentiality – we are connected to all that is and potentially is. We sense, feel the “prehensions” of all this through our intuition, our individual and unique “self-knowing” ways. The power of our creative togetherness is truly a Super Consciousness. Autognomics means the self-knowing processes of Life – the self-knowing of individual self, and the self-knowing of the many as one. Such becoming can lead us back to the direct “felt sense” experience of sacred Life and that of unconditional love.
Whitehead – The exactness of logic is a fake.
Hmmm, now that’s exciting! And That’s Life!!!
Skye Hirst, Ph.D. provides executive and personal coaching and writes a blog on www.autognomics.org.
Skye’s blog on life with Norm, her husband and partner, lessons and challenges of learning about living and loving together. Norm and Skye are co-founders of The Autognomics Institute and continue together to do research on life as creative organisms, bringing their insights on creative processes to audiences and new leaders for the emerging shifting living consciousness. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.