Synopsis

Created February 9, 2024

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

There was a Big Bang.

On Earth, one primate species 14 billion years later took over the planet from all other species.

Nature had provided this chosen species with opposable thumbs, extra brain frontal cortex, relative hairlessness, bipedalism, and took away their tails, encouraging them to stop swinging through the trees, encouraging them to take over the ground.

The species took over by inventing tools. This included axes, arrows, flint, fire, the wheel, planting, domestication, more advanced weapons, oral language, written language, art, architecture, media, and a few other things.

And proceeded to kill off other species at an alarming rate.

Meanwhile, those dominant primates also eyed each other as ripe for elimination or takeover. And proceeded to take over as many as they could until eventually, their bloated empires collapsed, to be replaced by other empires.

They mostly did this by organizing along military lines. The supreme leader of a culture was usually called a King, and typically started out as the toughest soldier of them all or the son of the former King.

Through all this, the domination cultures all tended to brainwash their subjects. This was only partially on purpose, mostly it was automatic. Those below tended, in one way or another, to fawn upon those higher up, and to believe or at least conform to whatever they said.

Thinking for oneself was generally never a popular entertainment. But it popped up over and over again, and there were always individuals who stepped outside of the main game, and made observations that often got them in trouble.

A time-lapse photography map of empires over centuries shows balloons blowing up and deflating, one after the other, endlessly.

Initially, these expansions of one culture of dominants over other cultures of dominants were over land, and then as shipbuilding became part of the toolkit, over oceans as well.

Although symbolic counters for lending and borrowing – money – had been a fairly early invention, during the great expansionism over oceans, rarefied ideas about money were put into practice, such as stock markets and bond markets. These provided ambitious dominants to rise to positions of greater power in ways they didn’t have before, and opened up the game and also opened up many minds to think outside the classical domination game.

This led to the idea of democracy, a social compact among equals, creating systems of self-governing, thus replacing Kings.

Kings obviously did not want that to happen and continued to do things to retain their special place at the top of the heap. One of the things they did in some cases was to stop calling themselves Kings, and make up other titles, even copying titles used in democracies, merely changing the labels but not the spirit of the domination relationship.

From the very beginning there was a strong intuition that they were not alone, but rather, presided over by an unseen great being of unlimited power and intelligence who had somehow created them. This became formalized within structures fitting into the master game of that species, centered around domination. Those structures were named religions.

Most of the time religions and everything else were used within the domination schemes.

Abraham, Angiras, Lao Tsu, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Muhammed, Baha’u’llah, and hosts of other prophets communicated with the Universe itself and brought invaluable insights to the dominant species.

The dominant species fitted these inputs into its schemes.

Nevertheless, many of the domination species felt the truth in the information brought back from divine contacts with the unseen superpower, and practiced kindness as a first principle, in sharp contrast with the behavior of the race in general.

Not only that, but their spirituality also gave them a sense of peace, acceptance, and at times, joy. This inspired great art, music, architecture, and deep thinking. And you might suspect where deep thinking would naturally lead…

Along came Science.

Science saw what was perverted about religion and decided to fight it. They themselves felt the sanctity of nature and were disgusted by knowledge being shaped for domination. They did not seem to notice all the good being done by the truly spiritual individuals within religions.

They mounted strong arguments against the existence of anything resembling God, although they felt the divinity of nature, but did not have approved language to express it.

Matter seemed to them to be the obvious fundamental substrate of the universe.

Denying the existence of a conscious overseer and creator, they explained the existence of the universe as an accident.

At first, disbelief in a conscious creator spread mostly among scientists and people impressed by science.

Then there was Einstein. He felt no compunctions. He expressed his intuitions caring not what the reactions might be. He openly stated that his religion was his immense respect for the intelligence existing in nature itself. He denied the logical explanatory power of accidentalism.

Nevertheless, the masses of dominants, who were themselves dominated by the most extreme dominants of the race, and had been kept under control partly by the religions, started to break away from the religions.

Instead, they chose charismatic dominants of various kinds to whom to ascribe degrees of divinity. This played into the hands of the Kings who had always claimed to be divine themselves, and would-be Kings who did not want to wind down the domination game, but simply to win it.

The masses of the species who had gone along in docile fashion generally did not see themselves as slaves, except when they were explicitly labeled that way and bought and sold as property, or rented out as in the sex slave trade.

This all came to a head about 100 years ago, when a contemporary of Einstein named Hitler made a play to take over the world, armed with some of the best weapons of the time. Democracies and a mixed bag of other cultures joined forces to prevent this world domination attempt. The USA was first to build a working atomic bomb and used it to end the world war and establish its leadership of the world. This was seen by everyone else as just another form of domination, rather than as a whole new game. And some American leaders have always been infected by the undertone of domination running through the entire species culture from the beginning.

This was followed by a long era of optimism that the world was heading in the direction of happiness and plenty for all. That optimism generally held up despite endless violence and suffering in many places in the world, still playing the old game. The old-game countries continue to seek to take over the democracies in one way or another.

Four years ago the pandemic changed everything. It gave many people free time to think about life. The media which used to be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission in the USA but which had gone completely out of control by digital disruption now included social media, meaning that anyone could say anything they wanted and those statements could be escalated to reach vast audiences by players of the old game. We swung into a period of pessimism which is the exact opposite of where most heads and hearts were at for about 75 years. We are still in that dark cloud. It’s hard to see in here. Most of us are not used to this degree of pessimism.

How we break this ancient cycle is to wake up to its underlying existence. As my friend Harvey Kraft says,

“The past was about domination. The future is about liberation.”

We need to free ourselves from patterns of our own mental and emotional behavior that we don’t realize exist. Patterns that have been pounded into us from birth go back thousands of years and are so built into everything around us that we can’t notice them.

Each of us is a unique nature package that has never existed before and will never exist again (even if reincarnation is real, each life is different). That is the gift of life given to us by the Universe. Why do we need to dominate others, isn’t that gift enough in itself to make for a meaningful and fun life?

What good would it do to have more money and power than everyone else, but to realize that you don’t have love in your life, and that you are not thrilled with the creations you channel?

In order to finally evolve out of the primitive war game and into a world of collaboration, learning, creativity, kindness, love, and open-mindedness, we need to retrain our minds, including our feelings and imagination not just our intellect and knowledge. HI – Human Intelligence – is what we need more than anything else.

What is such training like? How can you get some of it yourself right now?

Click here for a free booklet that is a sample of the kind of training needed.

Love to all,
Bill

The Supreme Depression

Powerful Mind Part 37

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, October 25, 2024
Created November 17, 2023
Read Powerful Mind 36

You don’t have to let everything in, you can let love and joy in without reservation, and filter everything else out, not allowed in, rise above it!

We call the economic depression of 1929-1939 “The Great Depression”. I call the psychological depression period we are now in “The Supreme Depression”.

From my readings, it appears to me that the current Supreme Depression is far more psychologically damaging to the human race than was The Great Depression. In The Emotional Life of The Great Depression, John Marsh (Oxford Press, 2019) describes the negative feelings evoked during The Great Depression as despair, fear, panic, righteousness, and anger, all of which had been chronicled by many historians. It was the righteousness and anger which Hitler and Mussolini manipulated to bring themselves to power.

However, Marsh also adds that there were positive feelings during that period, mostly after 1932, three years into the ten-year depression, as a result of the election of FDR, and they were hope, awe, and love. From our observations about our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, we know that the economic depression made us stronger in many ways.

Our current Supreme Depression is similar but different. The economic situation is cloudy and volatile, but there has been no market crash affecting the USA, our economy here is still standing, and many people’s incomes have kept steady with inflation, while many people keep getting richer, although it’s also edge city for many people in America. In the rest of the world, economic conditions are worse in many places and better in a few.

Moving from economics to psychology, however, the modern world has never seen such widespread doom and gloom thinking, hatred, cynicism, gullibility, and willingness to give up personal freedoms in exchange for perceived greater physical safety. The Great Depression was a walk in the park by comparison, and yet enabled so-called “strongmen” to almost take over the world. The Supreme Depression could enable the new crop of charismatic tyrants to enslave us. Many influential journalists and politicians worldwide assume that dystopia is here to stay and will soon be consolidating its grip everywhere, there are now new digital media that make it easy to have a screen and perhaps earpods washing one’s mind with negativity for nearly every waking minute.

Everyone knows that polls can be wrong. Nevertheless, poll results are a guarantee of attention, because everyone is so attached to the political party propaganda war and frightened of the outcomes. What people say in surveys has a low degree of predictivity of their actual behavior. The response rate to polling surveys is generally under 10% and sometimes hits a high of as much as 13%, meaning that the random sample that was predesignated is not random anymore, 13% of us willing to take part in polls are (mis-) representing the other 87% of us. Even people in the research business who know these things are drawn as if by an addictive substance to reading the poll results.

Negativity is such a powerful influence that it doesn’t need absolutely continuous access to your mind in order to poison your attitude. Negativity even for only 10% of your waking minutes can ruin your day and your life, let alone the constant diet of negativity which has become our lives.

Chaim Oren reports that a rabbi once told him “Optimists and Pessimists are both right.” Meaning that the pessimist is going to experience exactly what he or she expects, and so is the optimist. We draw to ourselves whatever our mind projects onto the world. As I’ve pointed out here perhaps too many times, even the greatest physicists agree that our consciousness affects the probability waves of matter and energy around us and how that magma manifests as definite and concrete events in our timeline. Our mind sharpens possibilities into actualities that we experience. Allowing our minds to be constantly poisoned by negativity is absolutely self-defeating, not to mention unpleasant.

What can we do about this, once we have become serious about opening our minds to the greater possibilities of our own life?

It might seem like a hard pill to swallow, but we can actually turn off the negative noise. We don’t have to read or watch the negative news. We don’t have to stay on a social media page that offers no solutions only problems and invective. We don’t have to be hooked on downers for the rest of our lives. Paraphrasing Tim Leary, now would be an ideal time to “Tune In (to our true selves), Turn On (our subtle inner guidance systems), and Drop Out (of the negative media inputs that only weaken us).”

There is of course the fear of missing out. How can we be good conversationalists if we don’t know the latest events? Isn’t that burying our heads in the sand? If you enjoy the news then continue to tune into it at your usual times, but if you find yourself getting into a negative mood, be aware of it and of your freedom to switch away.

GPT4 and the other new LLM (Large Language Model) AIs can come in handy here. Ask your favorite AI to summarize the latest news events that might point to positive outcomes ahead. Ask what new solution ideas to world problems were announced today. You can stay well-informed and decide which articles to read based on using what I call a Hate Filter, that is, asking an AI the right questions, designed to keep you in the know and inspired by new discoveries and solution ideas, not trapped in a bubble of hopeless cynical negativity. If you are pessimistic about the world, that will not translate into your being able to make the most of your opportunities in life.

You don’t have to let everything in, you can let love and joy in without reservation, and filter everything else out, not allowed in, rise above it!

The way to take charge of your new life which starts right now is to stop allowing yourself to be given these daily injections of hypnotic suggestions that bring down your effectiveness and immune response. Use that time to contemplate and plan your new life, to meditate and apply metacognition to rule your mind castle, and to use media to find the ideas and knowledge and fun that relate to your purpose and meaning in life, to your gifts and passion work, to the dreams and aspirations that you used to have, the subjects that have always fascinated you, and to ideas that once inspired you that you have put aside. Not all of them may still be relevant to you, but some will be and will give you new surprises and whole new canvases to paint your life on.

My best to all,
Bill

 

Live chat with my avatar now.

Awakening Your True Will

Powerful Mind Part 16

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, November 1, 2024.
Created June 23, 2023

Read Powerful Mind Part 15

 Although the inelegant coinage “Woke” has been given many layers of automatic associations by today’s external world, use the strength of your own personal will to prevent being in any way affected by the word “awakening” – it’s as good as any other word, and it’s important because the entire species is walking around in a kind of dream state.

To review, what we are shifting over to when we cut away remnants of conditioned thinking imposed on us from the outside, is our own God-given self, not just our mind but our body and feelings and intuitions – the “ME” that was born. The unique nature package that will never be duplicated again. With your own gifts to bring to the world. When awakened to your own gifts you will be a soul-inspired and in Flow state for much of the time your gifts will actually help the world.

You are cutting over to your own will power, your ability to force aside old habits, and teach your mind and your body new and better habits, those which come from inside you.

This will take resolution and perseverance because of the strength of the conditioning each of us has received. Hundreds of thousands of hours of habit creation and reinforcement. Each habit repeated over and over tens of thousands of times. Most of the neurons in the brain perform automatically and at a subconscious level to determine 95% of our decisions. This is the part of you that I call “the robot”.

What is not the robot is the real you.

From moment to moment, from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, impulse to impulse, you need to know where it is coming from. Is it coming from you, or from the robot?

If it’s coming from the robot, you don’t want to act on it. If it’s a bad feeling, you want to drop it as if it were a living leech. Because that’s exactly what it is. Habits you have acquired that work against who you are. Leeching energy, time, and attention which you would prefer to use in other ways. Be aware of your own will power as the strength to enforce these decisions in the moment without backsliding into being controlled by a mind invader.

How do you know if you are in the robot or in your own true self?

One sign it’s the robot is the presence of fear. Take control by befriending the robot and discussing the situation with it. It is a biological AI, and you have common interests, so you are leading consensus, not bickering.

What are you afraid of, old chum?

Tell the robot where you are going with this, and why that fear is not useful. You have that situation figured out and are patiently applying the solution step by step, and the robot can cancel those ancient alarm requests.

Of course, if you don’t have the solution worked out yet, you can thank the robot for calling your attention to it, and ask it to turn off the distracting alarm emotions so you can work out the solution clearheadedly.

Anger is another sign that it’s not you. It’s the robot. The real you has reservoirs of courage and forgiveness that prevent flareup of anger. If you are not experiencing that arc, that space between having cause to feel angry and actually letting the anger in, you are not exhibiting metacognition. Metacognition is that arc. The space between neurons is where the synapse connection occurs, and in your consciousness, you need to have that kind of space too, where any action of the mind arises to consciousness to first be inspected, rather than automatically engaging the gears of the fight-or-flight response.

Overwhelming sadness is another sign of the robot. The true you is not overwhelmed by anything. You have your free will, your agency, your resoluteness, and courage. If you are sad you might be in your true self or in your robot, but take the reins and move into your real self by objectively determining the cause of your sadness and your alternative courses of action to remove the cause of sadness. If you come up with some solutions which favor you but not others, be suspicious it could be coming from the robot.

Put aside the fear of schizophrenia. Guiltless housecleaning of the mind, and finding that there is a robot you built yourself by giving yourself a great number of subconscious orders, doesn’t mean you have a split personality. It means you have a lot of externally imposed requests you are still obeying years later and you no longer need to follow those constraints. Your one self is your one self. These other automated parts of yourself are like Clippy the Microsoft Office Assistant and all of the other unhelpful and annoying attempts computer system designers have made (with good intentions) to provide even better service to users. In the case of your personal Clippy inside, you threw every external exhortation that hit you in that steamer trunk and expected it to sort everything out and cause your behavior to be found exemplary in the eyes of others. Your instinct to seek the approval of others is what caused the robot in the first place.

You only need the approval of yourself – and God (if you accept the possibility of the universe being conscious because that is what God could actually be, scientifically speaking).

Running after the approval of others is definitely robot behavior.

Not caring about others is definitely robot behavior.

Look out for these conditions as you observe yourself. Switch into objective Observer state and do not wish for specific outcomes, start from observation first, then problem statement, then solutions, then a plan. That plan will aim at specific outcomes but do not allow yourself to become attached to the outcome, the situation or your knowledge and understanding of it might change, and that might change the outcome targeted. Stick with the plan and enjoy carrying it out.

If you find yourself rushing, that’s the robot. Set up your plans so that you don’t need to rush anything. You want top quality Flow state within the time constraints that are beyond your control. Reduce the number of specific things on your list to permit non-rushing. If you overbook yourself, you are forcing the robot on yourself.

Love to all,

Bill

 

 


Listen to my recent interview about my book THE GREAT BEING
Moments with Marianne with Bill Harvey KMT radio interview about THE GREAT BEING book

In this 15-minute interview with Marianne Pestana on KMET ABC News Affiliate, I talk about THE GREAT BEING, my latest book in the Agents of Cosmic Intelligence series.
Listen here.

 

 

 

You may know that I’ve been publishing a sci-fi series called Agents of Cosmic Intelligence, an alternative history of the Universe, in which some of the main characters put into practice the mental methodologies I’ve compiled into my nonfiction books. All of this is aimed at enabling the human race to become more effective and to undo the messes made in the past. By contradistinction to AI, Artificial Intelligence, I think of this as HI, Human Intelligence. I feel that it’s obvious we should be putting at least as much time, money, and effort into HI as into AI – especially if we are fearful of what AI can do to subjugate us.

The books in the series so far take place long ago or in the near future, but what was missing until now is how the Universe began, and what happened on Earth before ~3000 BC. That is now in The Great Being, which is chronologically the first book in the series.

Two reviewers have already written reviews of The Great Being and they really “get” what the whole series is aiming at. I’ve waited for this feeling of someone really getting it for a long time and it is heartwarming to say the least. Here are excerpts and links to the reviews. — Bill

Reviews of The Great Being Warm the Cockles of My Heart

Indie reader approved

4.2 stars. A compelling and thought-provoking work of science fiction. Harvey’s sprawling, hugely ambitious exploration of consciousness, free will, and the eternal dance between light and darkness is intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant. The novel’s central message—that all beings, no matter how lost or misguided, are ultimately part of a greater cosmic unity—is a hopeful and uplifting one…Read the full review. — Indie Reader

IR Independent Review

A singularly unique and eye-opening work of visionary fiction, Blending realms of historical, religious, spiritual, and mythological traditions, this is an ambitious and epically creative read … The full value will be more readily apparent to those readers who can see the threads of allegory, legend, and science woven into one unified whole. Enlightenment and radical self-awareness are powerful undercurrents within the narrative; the role of dogmatic thinking, hierarchical power structures, and the tyranny of knowledge are explored in various ways through the characters’ revelations, opinions, and personalities. The story within a story here is one of psychological development and the real-life pursuit of higher modes of thinking … A wide-reaching and insightful assessment of human civilization and behavior…Read the full review.—Self-Publishing Review / Independent Review of Books

bluelink review

Tonally amusing, aesthetically fearless, and packed with witty observation and divine incident … By turns accessible, erudite, and hallucinogenic, it is an intriguing philosophical romp that cleverly fuses psychedelic science-fiction and fantasy elements with organized religion’s creationist ideologies and the scientific theories of evolutionism … An ambitious, entertaining novel packed with spiritual curiosity, one that will greatly appeal to fans of intelligent science fiction and alternative history stories alike… Read the full review—BlueInk Review

booklife by Publishers WeeklyBlending spiritual philosophy, alternate history, pre-historic adventure, and brisk life-after-life storytellingThe Great Being is above all a beginning. First comes creation itself, which gets started with the knockout opening line (“The Nothingness felt surprise upon realizing itself.”), … This is the fourth entry published but the first chronological chapter. It shares the swift pacing, spiritual seeking, twisty plotting, and sharply human dialogue of the earlier books, though its focus feels tighter… Read full review, —BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly.  

kirkus reviewsIn Harvey’s retelling of the creation myth, heavenly agents combat a growing rebellion unfolding on Earth … this story deftly explores human nature—the uplifting qualities and dour traits alike … enthralling tale of humanity’s origins and cosmic espionage… Read full review, — Kirkus Reviews

Midwest Book ReviewA real standout…The radically inviting nature of this story brings with it the opportunity to view life and God in an entirely different light…Designed to awaken and introduce new interpretations of spirituality and life meaning. As readers who may not have expected such nuances come to absorb the greater gift of The Great Being‘s message, they will find the radically inviting nature of this story brings with it the opportunity to view life and God in an entirely different light … The story evolves with a reinterpretation of myths, events, and concepts that doesn’t just invite, but demands discussion and insights on the parts of all kinds of spiritual thinkers as the story evolves a unique and compelling flavor of discovery … One of Bill Harvey’s great talents lies not just in his storytelling ability, but his focus on translating life events and history with new interpretations … Readers interested in transformative reading… will find The Great Being‘s message to be one of hope, discovery, and new ways of viewing the universe [and] will find The Great Being a standout. Read the full review— Diane Donovan for Midwest Book Review

THE GREAT BEING is available in print and Kindle. Read an excerpt.

Powerful Mind Pt. 4

Created March 31, 2023

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

To read Powerful Mind Pt. 3, click here.

Chapter 2

The Observer State

A clearer, more effective state of consciousness —
only seconds away from your daily state of consciousness.
Just knowing it exists can benefit you

This entire book is about states of consciousness. In this chapter we will focus on one particular state of consciousness we call the Observer state. The Observer state is more powerful than the state most of us are in most of the time, and leads to the Flow state, which is more powerful still in terms of your ability to make an impact on others around you and on the world. We speak about both states as being “The Upper Mind”. The purpose of this book is to show you the simple yet easily missed doorways into the Upper Mind.

Why is it important to think about consciousness at all? Because life is all about consciousness. We do not exist without consciousness. While modern science has made brilliant progress in almost every other sphere of reality, too little is known about consciousness.

Yet all the ills of the world are rooted in ignorance of how consciousness works. We have made the world we see around us. It all started in our minds. Every day we do things we regret because we listen to and act on whatever our minds dish up to us. We need our minds to perform better, to become powerful, to gain insight into ourselves and others, to come to better decisions on a moment to moment basis.

The extreme anti-heroes who have become powerful on the world stage, who have driven much of our history so far, might not have chosen paths of destruction if their genius had been creatively channeled, if they had not lost touch with their compassion and love.

If we collectively knew our own minds better we would not go to war but rather we would find creative win/win solutions — the ones we get to in the end anyway after all the bloodshed. The path to a better world lies through the terrain of consciousness. One day when we all really do know our minds better the world will be a relative paradise compared to the way it has been throughout all recorded history. As the great science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells said, “History is a race between education and destruction.” If we can make our minds powerful now, we can gain the maturity as a race necessary to not destroy ourselves, given the extreme weaponry we have now at our disposal and our habitual disregard of our destructive effect on the environment (the air we breathe, the water we drink).

Because war is a pattern repeated throughout recorded history, we tend to assume this is the way it has to always be. And yet, “recorded history” literally means since the onset of written language. In short, written language and the thinking processes that go with it have led to acceleritis, information overload and Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP), which blocks upper mind and leads not only to war but also to crime and personal cruelty born of our disconnection from innate compassion. Our minds need to become more powerful in order not to be confused by the information overload so much that we are easily led and manipulated into a life nearly devoid of positive feelings, squandering the opportunity of life.

Each of us knows intuitively that the only thing we can change is ourselves. This is the only way we can make a better world.

Powerful Mind seeks to reveal specific information and techniques for attaining specific states of consciousness. We will be talking about waking states of consciousness, not about sleeping states. Sleeping states are important too, but in the interest of focus we’ll leave these to another book.

A Broader View of What Science Is

Around 400 BC, in the Golden Age of Greek philosophy, one branch of philosophy called “epistemology” focused on understanding “how can we know”? Over time, different schools of thought evolved about how we can know: rationalists believe that we can know things directly through our intellect; authoritarians believe we know by listening to authority figures who tell us what we know; empiricists believe that we know by direct experience, by testing things in the real world; intuitionists believe we can know directly through a mysterious faculty.
Science developed out of empiricism, basing what we consider to be “truth” on factual experience, testing and validation. In the case of science as practiced in the West, especially in the last few hundred years, that “experience” is usually the taking of measurements using instruments with dials and displays from which one takes readings. The person taking the readings is the “observer” often mentioned in relativity and quantum mechanics, the latest forms of science. In the East, science is also based on experience, and there the experience can often be inner experience where dials and displays are not involved. This is still science and still based on empirical experience.

This Eastern willingness to accept internal evidence explains why science in the West has not validated the existence of the more effective states of consciousness. Starting toward the end of the 19th Century, inner experience or introspection fell out of favor in psychology, after William James, the last of the giants of psychology to accept inner evidence directly. The more externally-oriented culture of the West created a blind spot. In psychology, work shifted to behaviorism, the focus on externally quantifiable actions, along with the study and social application of conditioning to alter these actions.

Eastern epistemology actually fuses empiricism and intuitionism. No conflict is seen between these ways of knowing because they both involve experiencing reality for oneself.

Although based on empiricism, Western science became authoritarian and elitist in its epistemology: the common person was excluded from “knowing” by the reduction of all science to mathematics, a difficult language to master. Science at its cutting edge moved out of the sphere of something the common person could totally visualize and comprehend.

Science and States of Consciousness

Regarded academically as a “soft science”, traditional Western psychology recognizes only three states of consciousness: dreamless sleep, dream sleep, and waking consciousness. Eastern psychology since the fifth century B.C. recognized ten states of waking consciousness: the normal everyday waking state, the access state which precedes meditation, and eight progressively deeper states of meditation. Oscar Ichazo, a modern student/teacher of consciousness techniques and founder of the Arica Institute in 1968, fuses ideas from consciousness explorers throughout history (plus his own) to propose fifteen waking states of consciousness ranging from psychosis, through six levels of neurosis, three levels corresponding to the Eastern access state, and five levels of higher consciousness.

It is revealing that Western psychology reduces waking consciousness to a single state. William James was the first prominent Western psychologist who warned against “prematurely closing the book” on the existence of other states of waking consciousness. More recently, Mihaly Czikszenthmihalyi (pronounced “cheek-sent-me-high-ee”), former head of the University of Chicago Psychology Department, coined the term “Flow state” (known in show business as “Being On”, and in sports as “The Zone”), and conducted valuable research into this state, which was published in his 2008 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Details to follow in the subsequent posts.

Love to all,

Bill

 

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