Truth vs Falsehood (7 page)
Despite the above, major religions developed ecclesiastic authority that was intended to prevent disruptive disagreement by the specification of agreed-upon scripture, the authenticity of which was then authorized by the process of ‘canonization’. This, however, led to further abuse and the utilization of dire threats to enforce adherence to orthodoxy.
In contrast, by means of consciousness research, the truth of the world’s foremost teachings indicates that high levels of truth have always been available and continue to be, just as the great spiritual classics that have stood the test of time. Additional verification of these truths has been provided by the documented, independent rediscoveries of the same basic truths repeatedly throughout diverse cultures and in widely separated time periods. Every verifiably genuine mystic or person with advanced consciousness declares essentially the same historic truths, independent of cultural setting or personality. The calibratable levels of consciousness confirm an intrinsic reality that has been reaffirmed repeatedly over great periods of time (see
Chapter 18
).
The maximum calibrated level of consciousness possible in the human domain historically has been at 1,000, which is that of the world’s acknowledged great avatars (saviors of mankind) and divinely realized, enlightened sages of antiquity. In contrast, the top limits of the intellect, the mind, reason, and logic calibrate at 499, which represents the mastery of the linear domain. Consciousness level 500, however, reflects the emergence of a new, more advanced paradigm of reality that unfolds by inclusion of the subjective and experiential substrate of consciousness itself, knowable only by virtue of its irreducible, experiential reality. While the ego is narcissistic by design and primarily self-oriented, at level 500, consideration and the loving of others become dominant, and that unique quality called ‘love’ gives life its meaning and value. Statistically, love at level 500 is reached by 4 percent of the world’s population, unconditional love at level 540 by 0.4 percent, and over level 600 is reached by only a few.
Very advanced states of consciousness are extremely rare. At the present time, there are six sages (anonymous) on the planet who calibrate at 600 or over. Of these, three are between 600-700, one between 700-800, one between 800-900, and one between 900-1,000. Together with the populace that calibrates over 200, they counterbalance and offset the massive negativity of the majority of the world’s population that calibrates at less than 200. The net consequence is that the overall consciousness level of mankind is currently at 207.
As love appears on the calibrated Scale of Consciousness, its first appearance is emotional and dualistic (i.e., between a ‘me’ and a ‘you’, or ‘myself’ and ‘it’). With further evolution, it is progressively nondualistic and becomes a way of living and not just an emotion; instead, it signifies what one has become. The power of love is transformative and recontextualizes experience that is progressively focused on the nonlinear prevalence of the field instead of the limited linear content of the field as form. The emphasis then moves from getting to giving, and it is discovered that happiness is the intrinsic, automatic consequence of contributing to the happiness of others, thereby fulfilling one’s own potentiality as well as autonomy.
Clinically, it can be observed that all healing ministries, faith systems, and recovery modalities trust the importance of letting go of or surrendering negative belief systems and emotions and adopting a more merciful and forgiving attitude towards self and others. When one relinquishes emergency emotions, resentments, and judgmentalism, the guilt and self-hatred that were previously projected onto others diminish, and instead, the positive (welfare) healthy emotions replace the negative ones (Rado, Tiebout, 1949-53; Rado, 1933), with the resultant change in the dominant physiological pathways in the brain itself. As will be described later in
Chapter 7
, information in the spiritually-oriented person is actually processed differently by the brain, producing positive psychological and physiological benefits.
Paradoxically, benefit is derived by the self-interest of the ego when it begins to realize that there is a great advantage to unselfishness. When it learns of the benefit of letting go of egocentric goals, the ego itself then becomes the springboard to spiritual inquiry and the means to its own transcendence, realizing that humility is strength, not weakness, and that it is wisdom and not ignorance. The willingness to ‘forgive and forget’ calibrates at 450. The willingness to ‘forgive and surrender to God’ calibrates at 550.
The Evolution of Consciousness
It has been generally assumed throughout intellectual history that the mind, with its capacity for reason and symbolic thinking, is the irreducible, fundamental hallmark of humanness. It is often quoted that it is the capacity to think that differentiates man from the animal. Upon examination, however, we shall discover that the mind is actually not a fundamental but an epiphenomenon of consciousness, with a circumscribed range of usefulness and reliability.
Intellectualization calibrates at 410, indicating that the belief that the intellect is the ultimate capacity of man is in itself a limitation. In examining mental functions, it is useful to realize that an almost automatic accompaniment to the mind is its innate, unstated, but ever-present naïve presumptiveness. This becomes the basis for lack of insight into the mind’s limitations by the mechanisms of denial and pride, i.e., “I think, therefore I am” (cal. level 400), rather than its corollary, “I am, therefore I think” (cal. level 480).
Everyone secretly believes that their view of the world is correct and any other is wrong. Thereby opinion becomes promoted to ostensible ‘fact’ and pseudo validity.
Inasmuch as the mind is readily observed to be a product of consciousness rather than its substrate (calibrates as true), then it is essential to understand in detail the nature of consciousness and its origins, development, and potential. Consciousness is an expression or quality of the essence of life itself (calibrates as true). A fundamental, verifiable statement about life is that it is neither subject to nor vulnerable to death but can only be made to change form. Like the laws of conservation of the energy of matter, the law of conservation of life is almost identical. It cannot be destroyed but can only change form (cal. at 1,000). It is astonishing that mankind has not been aware of this crucial understanding. A probable reason is that although all the great sages, avatars, and spiritually advanced teachers throughout history have made statements that life is eternal, this great truth was compartmentalized by the ordinary mind, which assumed that the statement was limited to teachings of spirituality or religion rather than being a general truth. It was therefore inferred to be a matter of faith rather than fact.
Another obvious explanation for this unawareness is that the average human identifies life with a body, and death is therefore viewed as primarily a physical, and therefore a terminal, phenomenon. Despite this seemingly plausible belief, the majority of mankind has also generally surmised and believed that after physical death, the life of the spirit continues on with relatively well-understood implications as to its destiny.
In spite of the massive accumulation of knowledge that man has acquired over the centuries, uncertainty still dominates all philosophical and intellectual discussions, and spiritual teachings are considered to be belief systems rather than provable facts. Therefore, a thorough investigation of the matter is of general interest to a mankind that still asks the basic questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? And where do we go?
Despite the purported erudition of the great intellects and philosophers of the past, the questions still remain unanswered because the questions asked cannot be answered by the mind at all. They can only be discovered by delving into its source—consciousness—without which the mind could not exist and without which man would not even know that he has a mind. The nature of consciousness itself—how it arose, what it is, and how it functions—becomes apparent from the study of its evolution.
Planet Earth apparently arose as a spin-off of condensed energy of galactic origin, the mechanics of which are still under study by advanced theoretical physics as well as astronomy. The irreducible substrate of all physicality is that of the primordial energy of consciousness itself, with its innate potentiality of infinite possibilities and expressions discernible as form. Out of energy arose visible mass as well as unseen ‘dark’ energy and matter that constitute the greater part of the detectible universe.
Only 4 percent of the universe is visible matter, 23 percent is invisible ‘dark’ matter, and 73 percent is invisible ‘dark’ energy (Howe, 2004). Thus, the invisible domain is analogous to potentiality, and the visible represents manifestation of confirmable actuality. The details of the exact relationships between energy, mass, gravity, space, matter, and antimatter constitute the focus of study of the leading edge of the possibilities of the intellect. Although quantum mechanics provides a means of understanding the transition between the linear and the nonlinear domains, to do so requires a paradigm jump that begins at the calibrated consciousness level of 500 (i.e., beyond the limitation of the concept of causality).
As can be discerned by consciousness research at this time, the infinite potentiality of the unmanifest became manifest as the energetic submatrix of the potential physical universe. The energy of consciousness in its contact with matter actualized the potential of biological life. Consciousness as life is one and the same basic reality (calibrates as true). In spiritual terminology, consciousness is the radiance of Divinity (“the light of God” of Genesis). Because the terms ‘God’ or ‘Divinity’ are problematic, in their place one can refer to Deity as “the ultimate omnipotent reality,” the absolute, irreducible source of all existence.
When the surface of the molten mass of earth cooled sufficiently, consciousness plus matter evolved first as primitive, simple life forms, such as algae or lichens. Eons later, the intelligence of animal life first appeared as the DNA of viruses, and later, of bacteria. The first conscious organisms were bacteria, and on the Scale of Consciousness, they calibrate at ‘1’. Although viruses reproduce their own DNA and are a product of the intelligence of consciousness, they themselves are not innately conscious, i.e., they lack subjectivity. A significant observation is that the exact locus of the process of evolution, including form and function, is specifically within the field of consciousness itself, where the
anlage
of form is a pattern potentiality that was termed a “morphogenetic field” by Rupert Sheldrake (calibrates as true).
Potentiality resides as patterns (the information of intelligence) in the field of consciousness and transforms into actuality as an appearance in the phenomenal world when conditions are favorable and actualized by intention. This is facilitated by the capacity of the unmanifest to become manifest by virtue of its omnipresence, omnipotence, and the quality classically termed ‘omniscience’, meaning that the all-inclusive primordial Reality incorporates all the known and the knowable because it is the source, substrate, and context of the Allness of Existence. Intelligence is the quality of omniscience by which information (i.e., form) becomes known and thereby transmissible.
For life to survive and later evolve, the prime requisite is that it be designed with survival as its primary goal or consequence. Self-propagation, self-interest, and self-servingness were
a priori
requirements for any primitive life form to survive or to succeed. In turn, the survival of life in form depends on the accumulation, organization, utilization, and integration of pure energy itself. Energy is a necessity of life that had to be acquired. On the vegetative level, photosynthesis became the primary mechanism by which chemical molecules could be integrated and utilized. Microorganisms developed integrated systems that incorporated molecular components of the environment. The survival of life depended on the acquisition of needed energy sources of whatever forms were available.
The fulfillment of this basic necessity was accomplished by the development of survival systems of extraordinary complexity and ingenuity. These were developments of the quality of intelligence innate to the field of consciousness itself before they appeared in the physical world as living forms. Learning occurred specifically within the nonphysical domain of the energy field of consciousness. This was the level designated by Rupert Sheldrake as “formative causation” (Sheldrake, 1981).
Imprinted information in the form of recorded energy frequencies and patterns is common in the modern world as both analog and digital program sources, including radio, television, CDs, DVDs, etc. Form itself is encoded information transferable into instruction, such as the genetic code. Analogous processes occur in the imprinting of images in digital cameras, and chemistry and physics use the electromagnetic spectrum frequencies to identify the presence of specific chemical properties by electrospectrometry. Thus, the modern mind accepts that invisible energy patterns, which include not only information but also even specific instructions, precede and are the source of their appearance and unfolding as programs or structures within the observable Newtonian dimension of physicality and form.
A characteristic of the energy field of consciousness is its innate propensity to evolve to higher and higher levels in order to give expression to the highest potentialities. At some point along the progression of the field of consciousness, the capacity for awareness occurs, which provides the a priori substrate of subjectivity and the capacity for experiencing, thinking, feeling, and understanding that generally have been considered to be primary animal as well as human capabilities.
The demonstration of the above propositions reveals that when we calibrate the level of consciousness of the animal kingdom, we see a very definite progression of consciousness over great eons of temporal time.
