Reality: Understanding The Concept of "Layers"

Life is experienced within various levels of reality.  Some levels are variations on others according to perception, but most are self-contained and require a certain kind of intent in order to be known, or to be known accurately, in any case.  World systems, designed for interaction, are fashioned in such a way as to obviate or preclude all levels of reality—and hence, all other organizational systems—save the one within which they function.  The one within which these obsolete systems operate is the most illusory of all.  The ancient Hindus named it ‘Maya,’ meaning ‘the world of appearance and illusion,’ and indeed this is the fitting name for our everyday base reality, facilitative of so few of our human capabilities and aspirations.  One simply cannot ascend to the level of self-actualization while remaining mired in the illusion of ‘this vs. that.’  This fact serves to substantiate the idea that experience must stand alone, apart even from all effectual extension of the self upon the plane of mutual interchange.  Only then may it be said to be viewed rightly, thereby remaining impervious, as it were, to logical deconstruction.  What degree of serious thought is required to understand that the entire World System is a total Re-Do?

Out Here On The Perimeter

Opening ourselves to experiences lying closest to the perimeter, and if possible, beyond it, is the only chance we have for achieving our evolutionary awakening.  The decision for or against this awakening is the one and only ‘given’ that we encounter in the moment at every moment, and it is thus that our reaching for the outer limits acquires validity. Simply put, we are unable to evolve if we refuse to raze the entire edifice of cultural imperatives to dust.  There is no longer any hope of reform.  Even the notion of Revolution is now become a misnomer of sorts.  The only hope for anything worthy of the name 'Revolution' now resides in the stripping away of every last vestige of normality and authority in existence.  Our only potential, our only comfort shall come in the form of Tabula Rasa!

For me, it has taken time to come all the way here. As an adolescent, I recognized the evil inherent in the development of culture, and believed that through revolution anything was possible in terms of change. Even violent overthrow of established systems seemed a real option for a time. Once that was shown to be a pipe dream, I reluctantly settled for the lesser notion that reform was possible. But the years of our lives go by, and reform is also shown to be not merely a pipe dream, but the incurable delusion of fools.  Along with this comes the even more horrifying realization that power has continued to successfully corrupt the very concept of progressive thought, just as predicted by the apocalyptic writers such as Orwell and Huxley. At the end of the day, there are only two real options remaining; three, if you count selling out. We’re not going to do that. The two legitimate options are world-negation, that is, some variation on the precepts of Eastern Philosophy that sees the world only as illusion and renounces it, or the thoroughgoing rejection of all authoritative ideologies in favor of a comprehensive and uncompromising individualism, through which we endeavor to make ourselves aware of our own truth, or self-actualization, by refusal to be hoodwinked into adopting the conformist identity of the herd. Clearly, I have made my choice for the latter.

The Choice: The problem with world negation is simply that it is a passive philosophy. Our inclinations toward action always get siphoned off into the anonymity of a rigid admonition to self-sacrifice (because the self is not real anyway) for the good of others. It actually becomes far closer to the Christian ethic than the Easterners OR the Christians would have us believe. It is a renunciation of the world combined with an active ethic of unconditional compassion. Nutshell-wise, it is simply full-scale world-negation and its shadow, unconditional altruism, with Buddha or Shiva on the label instead of Jesus of Nazareth. This world-negation allows for action-in-the-world only in the service of self-sacrifice, and as such, is no action at all. It's function is only to ease suffering in the short term as we await the ultimate transformation.  The New Man, on the other hand, views action as something possessed with trans-formative power!  It is perhaps even sufficiently trans-formative as to hold the potential for alteration of the ultimate transformation.  Action must always be aimed squarely at the eradication of the disease.  It is, of course, absolutely a strong possibility that our actions will be of no avail. They may even become the causes of regression. But if an ethic of ‘going down fighting’ indeed leads ultimately to the same end as that of 'comforting the dying during surrender', I must choose to work and to accomplish, even in the face of inevitable meaninglessness. For me, working within the illusion holds the possibility of understanding it. Convinced that there is no ‘right or wrong,’ at least between these two alternatives, I’ll pay the cover and take my chances.

The Agenda:  Knowing, then, that the only pathway leading forward is that of razing the entire edifice of present-day civilization, our work is cut out for us, to say the least.  Our preaching becomes the most radical preaching ever preached and the most unsettling preaching ever heard.  If anyone thinks of Christ’s Gospel as ‘radical’ teaching, such a one will stand in utter stupefication in the face of a message that extols the renunciation of EVERYTHING, including itself!



The beauty of our renunciation, however, is that it signals a beginning, not the end.  For in spite of the fact that a new ‘program’ or ‘formula’ are not advocated by our agenda, the admonition to discover ones own truth remains, not as a prescription, but more as the only legitimate response to the inescapable imperative of choice that we encounter in the form of ‘living’ at any given moment.  Our hand-me-down ethic, bequeathed to us down through the centuries of so-called civilization, has always been a socially inspired ethic.  That is, it is its job is to facilitate the perpetuation of a given social order, and to do so in such a way that the power remains in the hands of the ‘Chiefs,’ and never becomes the possession of the Braves.  This ethic is firmly entrenched in all educational and cultural processes, and is especially notable in the overall patterns of child-rearing.  Because parents in our culture become terrified of their own inadequacies and incompetence once their progeny has arrived, they turn away from trusting themselves, opting instead to do what?  To take on the formulas suggested by the experts, the cultural experts whose job it is to insure that the young grow up to be carbon copies of the old.  This pattern of clinging to the status quo is at the root of all of humanity’s great ills.  Falling back becomes a way of life, handed down to us surreptitiously in the guise of 'tradition.'  Falling forward is a curiosity at best; and at worst an alliance with unreality.  The alternative to this pattern of social xeroxing is obvious, and that is, to cultivate individuality and not conformity.  But the obvious, unfortunately, is that which is most often misunderstood.

This is not meant to suggest that we shouldn’t be influenced by those rare instances of greatness that do arise from time to time.  There are those whom we should rightly desire to emulate; individuals who have learned to embrace walking in the shadows in order that they may arrive at the true source of light.  The imperative here is simply that we stand with The New Man against the mindless following of the herd and its herd philosophy that says 'do as suggested so you can remain an atomic piece of the whole!’  The one principle that must be applied consistently to our task is that of the dismantling of the traditional.  Ideologies wear out.  Most are ill conceived and designed only for the maintenance of mediocrity from their inceptions.  And so it is that only through summoning the courage to tear down the past are we able to come into a right relationship with the present.  And the most effective way of dismantling the past and its grip on our notions of right action and thought is to consider in detail all of the forces that stand, through any and all disciplines of knowledge, in opposition to those granite idols.

Study: Notes for an Outline on Sex and Cosmic Consciousness

The perceived antipathy between spirituality and sexuality is a cultural construct, and a quite artificial one at that. In truth, there exists no such antipathy, and rather, conversely, the two realms are so intimately connected as to be considered mere divisions of the same human experience and imperative, namely, Transcendence. This is why it strikes me as hilarious when people (as they continually do!) accuse me of committing a gross hypocrisy by writing passionately on the subject of Cosmic Consciousness and illustrating the same articles with photos of lovely—and invariably voluptuous—women. Such persons, who astonishingly remain legion, are still operating within the confines of the woefully anachronistic cultural structure of ‘proper’ social and even personal attitudes as they existed over a hundred years ago. Times have changed immeasurably since then, and much of that change is fully embraced by society. But why does sex continue to exert such a fiendish, frightening hold upon the minds of the masses? This one exceptional human endeavor, which should by now be enjoying its greatest period of freedom and self-expression, still exists in the collective consciousness as some sort of eternal taboo, and more than anywhere else when it is suggested that it might indeed bear a positive relationship to our spiritual lives. Spirit and Flesh. The ageless dichotomy.

Well, the simple truth is that culture’s ongoing expression of this so-called dichotomy is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on modern man. And who’s behind such an enduring hoax? You guessed it. Organized Religion. Our good friends, the fundamentalists. Pagan cultures, on the other hand, have routinely had healthy attitudes toward sex. In fact, it has always enjoyed the status of high ritual within these viable and progressive religious trends. Don’t misunderstand me here. I don’t mean to suggest that the prohibition of ‘good clean sex’ began with the tent revivals. It didn’t. The division between spirit and flesh is as old as the written word itself. My point is that while scientific progress has stripped away most of the untenable world-views and false ideologies of antiquity, it has made little headway in this regard where the realm of the Erotic is concerned. And it is here that the fundamentalist zealotry of the past 80 years or so has maintained the structural paradigm of ‘Fear of Sex’ at the foundational level of modern culture in general.

Western culture is so thoroughly immersed in its Christian heritage, that even many who know the myth of Jesus-as-God to be an intellectual and historical absurdity still discover that the weight of history and tradition psychically encoded within them produces a strange and conditioned sort of difficulty in renouncing it fully. This kind of cultural-historical narrative, encoded into the very fabric of our sociological ideology is what we define as ‘Structure.’ Structures function in such a way as to guide culture along unconsciously as these underlying systems dictate individual and collective attitudes that remain firmly entrenched in our internal makeup even though the tenets of the system itself may have become obsolete. In this way, structures work to create ‘residue,’ the dregs, if you will, of the obsolete systems. These residues act upon us symptomatically, and we find ourselves unknowing victims of symptoms for which the actual diseases have long ago been cured. In the case of sex and spirituality, for example, one need have no overriding connection with the religious institution itself to nevertheless maintain encoded feelings that sex is something unfit for cultural discourse, something shameful, embarrassing, inappropriate, in word; frightening.

By its very definition the unconscious is a realm resistant to access and influence, or manipulation. The dismantling of these unconscious structures, so necessary to right understanding of the world, requires a strong measure of philosophical self-analysis and a willingness to stay current with regard to the unfolding model of the Cosmos as revealed by the scientific community. It becomes considerably more difficult to lean on unsubstantiated belief systems in the face of the extraordinary discoveries being made in the worlds of Physics, Astronomy, and Cosmology, and it is precisely these discoveries that open our minds to new possibilities of thought and thereby to the erecting of more accurate structures upon which new and more progressive cultural models may be established. Such a future model will be erected upon the foundation of sexuality-as-ultimate-religious-vehicle. Transcendence will become the watchword of religious thought, and the immersion of self within the ultimate fantasy world of free sexual expression will become the primary means of experiencing that transcendence.

So, just what kind of transformation is needed to usher in this sexually utopian society? A re-ordering of education at every level of development is one idea. But education is slow. It is effective when combined with a legitimate enthusiasm for its subject matter, but it is also met with substantial force and potential resistance in the realms of the popular and environmental constancy. Much more effective is the idea of a youth movement to initiate sweeping change. Youth must become enamored of a new paradigm, and if they do so, the world can change dramatically and quickly. Popularity is the way of all major waves. It washes its protégés into fashion like a giant tsunami, obliterating every feeble strand of resistance with consummate ease and unbridled power. This new movement, then, must be one of spiritual enlightenment combined with uninhibited sexual experimentation in order to create the context for the next great evolutionary shift; Cosmic Consciousness. In order to reach this sacred plateau, the masses must cast off their fear, their anxiety, and their inauthenticity and enter a new mode of being. Sexual freedom is the real key to this state of enlightenment. Through a highly developed and fully legitimated sensual lifestyle, the connection between Sex & Spirit may be recognized for the sublime interplay that it is, freed entirely from the fetters of the puritanical past that has tried to hold Sex hostage forever behind the paper walls of sin and infamy.

We look, then, to a new and vibrant generation that understands human interplay on an elevated spiritual level; a new movement that realizes the connection between sexual experience and Cosmic Consciousness. A new era of Dionysian celebration—the celebration of life—must be erected, a sensual utopia of Jim Morrison’s ‘Golden Copulations.’ A free society can, after all, only be made up of free individuals. The raising of awareness consists to such a great extent in the casting off of outmoded tradition, and the time is now to bury the ruins of puritanical culture deeply and permanently. All ye illustrious young! Awaken and arise to the truth of your calling, your grand destiny. And don’t let anyone say it can’t happen. Young people are sharp. They can see clearly the ills of the world, and the solutions as well. As Bob Marley once said; ‘Youth always knows where it’s at.’

A Study: The Evolution of Consciousness.

It is not likely that our universe is all there is to it. Prevailing trends in Physics and Cosmology lean heavily towards a model of reality that is far more deeply layered than we dare imagine, complete with multiple universes (perhaps an infinite number of them), parallel realities, wormholes, black holes, vibrating strings, higher dimensional ‘branes’ and dark matter, as well as the bizarre, imprecise machinations of quantum activity, which mysteriously guide the the workings of the world at the sub-atomic level. What we now understand about reality seems more wildly fantastic than anything we dreamt of in even the most outlandish creations of Science Fiction a mere 50 years ago. The more we learn, the more complex and beautiful reality reveals itself to be, and the more clearly does the idea of universal evolution reveal itself in our observations. Even more astounding than the evolution of living organic forms is the evolution of consciousness and universal energy. The fact that humankind came to evolve into a self-conscious being is the evolutionary marvel of marvels. It is this ability to think in the abstract that allows us a subjective comprehension of higher realities and the capacity for direct experience of those realities as well. Unfortunately, however, the majority of humankind uses its intellect as nothing more than a glorified calculator, determining the most efficient pathways to the solution of mundane worldly exercises usually amounting to little more than the procurement of the daily bread. This disparity, more than a mere curiosity to my mind, between the totality of our evolutionary potential and the real life choices we actually make, is the subject of this brief essay.

It would appear as if this very fact of Man’s evolutionary acceleration has given him exceptional tools for both progression and regression. While those given to wonder and philosophical inquiry recognize the fact that humanity is even now in a unique position to take an unprecedented leap toward collective Cosmic Consciousness, the masses who are not so disposed are intent upon making little of the salient matters of human development, and seem actually determined to remain earthbound in the most pejorative sense of the term. As a result, we find our world inexplicably mired in trivial pursuits and all manner of needless conflicts attending to greed, intolerance, base materialism, and mindless self-absorbtion. We look on in astonishment and often in hopelessness at the folly of life lived in the blind following of these cultural ‘norms.’ And while it may be said that Western culture offers a considerably wider variety of lifestyle alternatives than is found in the East, and certainly in the underdeveloped societies, it in no way follows that these alternatives are progressive. The problem is that virtually all operative choices in our culture are based on a faulty foundation, that is, the myth of uber-capitalism. Rampant capitalist culture has set us back, in an evolutionary sense, to a degree we don’t even yet fully understand. And the vast majority of our species shows no indication of any impending epiphanies that might lead to enlightenment.

What is needed is an awareness of the concept of transcendence. Transcendence, after all, is what EVERYONE is going for, but it’s a tricky devil to get a hold of. Our deepest innate human need is for transcendence. It is the recognition of the fact that every decision we make, right down to the color of our socks, is a decision made in the face of our inevitable death. Because of the fact that we have evolved to the point of finding ourselves travelling along the plane of self-conscious awareness, the fact of death is now a problem. At the very least, it is a limitation, and in the minds of most a relatively severe limitation. But like it or not, it colors everything we do, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it is the wise person who recognizes this and understands that it is precisely this sense of ultimate limitation that we seek—at the deepest core of our being—to transcend. And this sense of transcendence is so necessary to our inner completion that to remain without it is to remain incomplete and, by definition, far short of our human potential. We call this alienated, incomplete mode of being ‘inauthentic.’

Still, our cultural models reflect no awareness of any of this. More than ever, in fact, the cultural model—certainly in America—is that of base materialism masquerading as the ‘Christian Society of our Fore-Fathers.’ This mottled and self-contradictory attempt at cultural modeling has left us with the kind of insipid and untenable discourse that characterizes our nation. People don’t know if they’re supposed to become mindless religious zealots or mindless atheistic materialists, and in the long run, there’s not as much difference between the two as you might think. What is certain is that you don’t get transcendence in either camp. So, what do we do? How do we even hope to propogate a message of sanity based upon transcendence and a grasp of the evolution of consciousness to a world buried up to its neck in the quicksand of the global marketplace? All we can do is live the life. We’ve got to show ‘em what we’ve got. We’ve got one powerful thing going for us; Higher Awareness. And if we can demonstrate that awareness in our lives, it can’t help but have an impact. So we’ll do it. We’ll keep preaching the power of sexual freedom, and the transcendence that provides. We’ll look to the New Physics, which keep bringing us closer to God with every new discovery. We’ll point them to the humanities, because without The Arts and the appreciation of them on a grand scale, the world is going to keep churning out useless M.B.A.’s with their brains wired and their minds closed until it atrophies and hurtles into the Sun. We’ll continue to open ourselves, until untold numbers of us have achieved Cosmic Consciousness and understand the eternal nature of The Cosmos and our relationship to it. We’ll see ourselves accurately as the universe manifesting itself through our Being, and as people tire of the endless drudgery of inauthenticity, there will be an example before them, a people with light upon its collective countenance and a whisper on its lips; ‘Transcendence,’ these will say, ‘is everyone’s.’



Join me in upcoming posts for more in-depth discussion on the concepts of Cosmic Consciousness and the Evolution of Consciousness. J.T.