Establishing the Foundations Returning Home to Wholeness The Absolute Whole I began this brief exposition of omniology on the solid gnostic foundations of the direct inner knowing of the Absolute, about which there can be no dispute for it is an experience of absolute certainty. I then went to outline relational logic, which provides the framework or system of co-ordinates for organizing all knowledge into a coherent whole. This process has been concerned with how we categorize the relativistic world of form. But now it is time to look at the world beyond all categories, to see how knowledge of the formless Absolute Whole can be represented in relational logic. This is essential, for if I am to return home to Wholeness after all this analytical activity, I need to include the Absolute in my model of the totality of existence. Otherwise, I would not be able to see the Universe as a coherent whole, for Wholeness is the union of all opposites. Of course, despite the irrefutable certainty that the immediate knowledge of God gives, there is no concept that is more surrounded by confusion and controversy than the Absolute in society today. It is this controversy about how different cultures and religions have viewed the Absolute that has been the cause of all the holy wars of human history, wars about the Whole. Yet the Absolute is something that we all share, it is our common Ground of Being. Why then is there so much controversy about something that we all share in common? If we are ever to live in peace and harmony with each other, it is thus vital that we can all transcend the mind to share the exquisite sense of completeness that arises when we return home to Wholeness. For me, as an individual, there is nothing more important in life than reconciling all these conflicts, not only between all the different religions in the world, but also between religion and science. My own search for Wholeness has been the primary motive power in my life for forty-five years, ever since I discovered, when entering adolescence, that science and religion as practised today do not make sense, either in themselves or, more particularly, as an integral whole. There is one thing that we can say about the Absolute that is beyond controversy. That is that the Absolute exists. This might seem a rather strange thing to say, for there are many people in the world today who deny the existence of God. However, what they are denying is the reality of God, not the existence of God. It is vitally important not to confuse existence with reality. Many things exist that are not real. For me, something exists if there is a word that denotes it in the dictionary. This does not mean that it is real, even for one individual, never mind everyone. And Absolute is in the dictionary, usually with a lower-case 'a'. The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives philosophical and theological definitions of the absolute as 'that which can exist without being related to anything else' and 'ultimate reality; God', respectively. So how do I reconcile the concepts of the Absolute or God and the Universe? Well, in my model of the totality of existence, I have a universal set that represents this totality as a whole. This universal set, like all other universal sets in logic, is divided into pairs of concepts, form and formlessness and relativity and absoluteness. And as the concept of relativity is directly associated with that of form, it follows that the Absolute has the property of formlessness. What else can I say about the Absolute? Well, in order to maintain the logical consistency of my reasoning, I can only answer this question in exactly the same way that I determine the qualities of any other data pattern in the universe. That is, by carefully examining the similarities and differences between this data pattern and all others. I can do this in two ways: by viewing the Absolute as a Unity, consisting simply of itself, and as a Whole, consisting of both itself and the aggregate of all its parts. As an illustration of this distinction, we can view our own beings as a whole, as an aggregate of atoms, molecules, cells, organs, thoughts, feelings, and emotions (what might be called a 'white box' in computer terminology), or as a unity, as just a being ('a black box'), without reference or access to the constituents. So to say that the Absolute Whole does not exist is like saying that we consist of separate physical, mental, and spiritual elements, which do not form a coherent structure, which have no relationships to each other. And to say that the Absolute Unity does not exist is like saying that we do not exist as individuals, a word that has a Latin root meaning 'undivided'. When I view the Absolute as a Unity I can see that it differs from all of its parts, for the Absolute is the only data pattern that is not limited in some way. When I define a data pattern relativistically as a part I give it boundaries, I say what it is and what it is not. This is obvious from the root of the word define, which comes from the Latin word definire meaning 'to limit' or 'to end'. But because the Absolute is beyond the limits of all parts of the Universe it is not possible to define it or to give it any qualities whatsoever that belong to the world of form. For if I were to do so I would be treating the Absolute relativistically, and it would no longer be absolute. I can therefore see that the Absolute Unity is, and will forever remain, unknowable, undefinable and, of course, unanalysable, qualities that can best be described as transcendent. On the other hand, when I view the Absolute as the totality of existence, I can see that the structure of all its parts is exactly the same as the structure of any of its parts. This situation arises quite naturally from the holographic nature of the Universe. The structure of the Universe is a hierarchical network of relationships, just like every part of the Universe. But as the structure of each part of the Universe is determined solely from these relationships, I can see that ultimately the Universe consists of nothing but these relationships, which lie within everything there is. I can therefore also say that the Absolute Whole possesses the property of immanence. So the Absolute has the properties of existence, formlessness, transcendence, and immanence, and to use adjectival forms, unknowable, undefinable, and unanalysable. It is thus, to all intents and purposes, attributeless. But is it real? Is what I have written merely philosophical speculation, or is there some real substance to these words? Is there any evidence for the existence of the Absolute in human experience? The answer to these questions is a resounding Yes. To find the scientific evidence for this process of reasoning, I have been led to the mystics and spiritual teachers, most particularly the increasing number of enlightened beings who are appearing on the world stage right now. So what is enlightenment? This question was the main theme of the journal What is Enlightenment? in its fall/winter 1998 issue. The secondary question was, "Does anyone know what they are talking about?" It is a valid question, for even among enlightened beings there are many differences. The way that I resolve these differences is by observing that an enlightened being is one in whom the sense of a separate self has completely and permanently disappeared. This says nothing about the person in whom such enlightenment occurs. For there are as many differences among such people as there are among nonenlightened people. To be enlightened does not mean that an individual is a perfect being, a saint. For there are a number of enlightened beings who could hardly be called saints. And while we are on this subject, what exactly is perfection? Well, our notion of perfection arises when we idealize an individual or situation, along the lines of Plato's Ideas or Forms. But when we create ideals, such as the perfect body or the concept of marriage, we are no longer looking at existence just at it is. We are imposing a constraint on our observations. In Reality, the Universe is both perfect and imperfect, whatever we might mean by these terms. And the synthesis of these opposites is perfection. So the world that we live in is perfect, just as it is, for it could not be any different. So all those seeking perfection through self-improvement programs will never succeed. It is only when we give up this seeking to accept ourselves just as we are that we can transcend the conflict of all opposites. So it is not necessary to be enlightened, to be 'perfect', to establish the scientific evidence for the existence of the Absolute. A great number of people in the world today have experienced the mystical or divine within and around themselves. The question that we need to ask here is why not everyone? For the Absolute is our common ground. Why is it that we cannot all experience the Divine? The way that I do this for myself is through Intelligence. The enlightened teacher, Barry Long, talks about two modes of Intelligence: clarity and feeling. In my case, I prefer to use the word witnessing to clarity, because it is clarity that arises from the divine Witness. So far on this page, I have been using the witnessing mode of Intelligence to determine the properties of the Absolute, as it exists in reason. But to find evidence that the Absolute is real in my own experience, I must use the feeling mode of Intelligence. When using the witnessing mode of Intelligence, I looked at the Absolute from two perspectives: as a Unity and as a Whole. I need to do the same when using the feeling mode of Intelligence. First of all, feeling into the Universe as an aggregate of all its parts, I let go of all the concepts and forms that constitute the universe as a whole. All these forms dissolve leaving me with experiencing the Universe simply as a "web of relationships", to use the term of the systems theorists. Then, as I sink deeper into myself, even these relationships disappear, and I am left with the feeling of Cosmic Consciousness, without any divisions or borders within it. In other words, I drop everything that I know about relational logic, which I have been developing for nineteen years. For I now know that the conceptualizing process of relational logic is what is called maja in the East. It is an illusion that the world of form has an existence separate from the formless Absolute. These concepts are nothing but mental images, rather like a pack of cards. So I can, somewhat like Alice, throw the whole lot up in the air and cry out, "You're nothing but a pack of symbols!". The feeling of liberation that results from waking up from this dream world is quite exhilarating. But now a curious thing happens. When I looked at the totality of existence with the witnessing mode of Intelligence, I described what I saw as immanent. But by dissolving all the borders within my consciousness using the feeling mode of intelligence, I feel embraced by Consciousness, I feel utterly full, an experience I can best describe as transcendent. Conversely, when I feel into the Absolute as a Unity, I feel stillness and emptiness deep inside me, an experience that I most clearly can describe as immanent. So the feeling and witnessing modes of Intelligence result in opposite experiences of the Absolute Whole. It seems that I cannot escape from duality, even when addressing the Absolute. The key point about these properties of the Absolute Whole is that they are entirely independent of my semantic model, from any interpretations that I make about the ever-changing world of form. As I gain experience of the world about me, my concepts and their relationships might change. But none of this changes the nature of the Absolute; it is timeless, quite independent of all cultures in all times. I can thus see that the uninterpretable data pattern that consists of the Absolute Whole provides the universe with its Ground of Being. I therefore call the Absolute the Datum of the Universe, that which is given. In my model, the Datum of the Universe thus represents not only everything, but also, because it is the only uninterpretable data pattern, nothing at all. The Datum of the Universe provides me with the overall context in which I interpret the data patterns in the world of form as a whole. If I were to use a context from the world of form, for example, the physical universe, my interpretations of my experiences would be influenced by these preconceptions, and my view of existence would be distorted. Of course, the physical universe does provide me with a satisfactory domain of discourse or context for much of what I do in my daily life. But if I am to understand the relationship of God to the physical universe, it is only the Absolute that can provide me with the necessary context. Notice that when I used the words immanent and transcendent just now, I was using them with respect to myself as a human being. I am thus taking an anthropocentric view of the Absolute here. However, at the same time, I am using the divine Intelligence that is within me to see that I am doing this. I can thus say, with Meister Eckhart, "The eye with which I see God is the same as that with which he sees me". However, there is one significant difference. I do not use the pronoun he, or indeed she, for God, for God does not have human form or any other form to which these pronouns could be used. For me, there is no personal God, with whom I can have a communication, like on the telephone or the Internet. For there is no gap between myself as an individual and God. God is not 'other' as the monotheistic religions believe. Everyone of us is both human and divine. At the deepest level, we are all one in the Divine. As Vijay Shankar beautifully expresses it, "You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience". Earlier I used a number of synonyms for the Absolute without explaining why I was doing so. I can begin to rectify this now. In general, when I attribute a characteristic to the Absolute from human experience, I capitalize the word that I am using. This works OK in written English. However, I am uncertain how a German or a Chinese studying omniology would deal with this situation. Be that as it may, the first word I would like to look at briefly is Love. Love, when attributed to the Absolute, has no opposite. Neither is it an emotion and neither does it have an object of devotion, whether this be a person, a place, an activity, or whatever. For Love, as the Absolute, transcends all divisions and borders, all conflicts. "Love is the sea in which the intellect drowns", as the Sufi poet, Rumi, beautifully expressed it. Another word that I attribute to the Absolute is Truth. This is not something that can be attributed to propositions, as is done in philosophy and logic. Truth provides the overall context for learning about myself and the world I live in, free from false beliefs or delusions about God, the Universe, money, and what it means to be a human being. And as Jesus said, "know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free". How true this is! After forty-five years of intense struggle, I am free from the shackles that the cultures and subcultures of the world impose on our learning, free from what William Blake called our "mind-forged manacles". By basing my experiment in learning on the Truth, I am thus free to learn in a way that is completely natural to me; I am no longer forced to learn what is clearly false, as our children in school and university are required to do today. The Absolute Truth is not something to have a discussion about, for any such arguments arise from the dualistic mind, and Truth, like Love, has no opposite. Truth is thus a certainty, the absolute, nondual certainty. There is no theory or argument that can refute this. So does relational logic provide scientific proof, not only for the existence of God, but also for the reality of God? Yes, I would say so. For me, science is a coherent body of knowledge that corresponds to my all experiences, both inner and outer. On the first count, relational logic provides a way of bringing all knowledge into a coherent whole using the framework and system of co-ordinates I have outlined. Secondly, all this knowledge, including my deep inner knowing of God, provides an accurate mapping of both my experiences and also those of many others. I have thus returned to the gnostic foundations of omniology; I am back where I began. Indeed, I have never actually left, for as many spiritual teachers point out, it is Truth that seeks itself. There is thus no gap between the beginning and ending of evolution. Alpha and Omega are one. It is in this nondual state that even the sense of being a human being disappears. This is a sense of Wholeness that transcends all beings in the Universe, wherever and whatever they might be. In a way, omniology provides the fulfilment of the dream that Descartes had in Bavaria in 1619. For omniology provides the means of unifying all knowledge using the method of reason. However, omniology has not come into existence through reason alone; intuition has played the primary role. There is a primary-secondary relationship between intuition and reasoning as there is between nonduality and duality. Also, this does not mean that all knowledge can be expressed in mathematical language, as was implied by Descartes' dream. For the unification of all knowledge can only come about by diving beneath the foundations of mathematics, as I have endeavoured to indicate on these pages. This also involves diving beneath the mind, the world of symbolic knowledge. For this reason, I can look at relational logic itself in two parts. The superficial part, the part that you are reading about on these pages, is what I call explicate relational logic. But beneath this explicate level, there is an implicate level, which gives rise to the explicate. So just as in David Bohm's theory of the implicate order, there is another primary-secondary relationship between implicate and explicate relational logic, between inner knowing and symbolic knowledge. I can illustrate what I mean by implicate here by the way that a teacher might observe that a student has a good feeling for a subject, an understanding that goes much deeper than just being able to pass exams in the subject. Another illustration is from the world of music. Judges at music competitions often refer to something called 'musicality', which again goes much deeper than mere technical proficiency, much as this might be admired. The Ocean of Consciousness In addition to Love and Truth, another word that I attribute to the Absolute is Consciousness. Consciousness is not a property of the mind or the brain, as many engaged in consciousness studies believe. "Consciousness is all there is", as the spiritual teachers Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramesh S. Balsekar, and Wayne Liquorman repeat over and over again in their teachings. Thus what is called the "hard question" of consciousness studies, "how is it possible for consciousness to arise from the brain", is actually an impossible one to answer, for it is based on a false perception of the Universe. For Consciousness is the primary reality out of which all forms, structures, and relationships arise. Consciousness is all-inclusive, it embraces everything there is. It is therefore not possible to talk about Consciousness as we might talk about objects or events from the world of form, such as bananas or football matches. We need to use metaphors to get some understanding of the nature of Consciousness, and hence of the Cosmos. The first metaphor I use is an ocean. To be one with Consciousness is like swimming in the ocean, frolicking about in it, rather like the dolphins in the sea. This play of the Divine is called lila in Sanskrit. This is a splendid word. To be free in Consciousness is like playing in the waves in the ocean, allowing the water to wash over us, to envelope us. This exquisite experience of an oceanic feeling, of Wholeness and Oneness with everything, is not unlike that which others have described, even though these experiences have arisen in quite different ways. For instance, Stanislav Grof describes a state of cosmic unity in which "we feel that we have direct, immediate, and unlimited access to knowledge and wisdom of universal significance". He describes such a state as "oceanic ecstasy", a state of being he associates with our experiences in the womb prior to the onset of labour. In a similar manner, Robert Forman refers to Meister Eckhart's use of the metaphor of an ocean to describe the mystical experience of union with God, which the French mystic Romain Rolland described with the term oceanic feeling. I call this oceanic experience of Consciousness Cosmic. Why I use these words can be seen quite clearly from the roots of the words. Consciousness has a Latin root com- and scire meaning 'to know together', the second part of this second word being cognate with science, and cosmic is from the Greek kosmos meaning 'the universe viewed as an ordered whole'. So by organizing all knowledge into a coherent whole, a state of cosmic consciousness is a natural concomitant. Again, this is not unlike the experiences of many others, as described by Richard Bucke in his classic work Cosmic Consciousness. So how do I see the relationship between the Cosmos and Consciousness? Well, in our materialistic culture, what is normally called the cosmos is the physical universe studied by the astronomers. But such a notion does not correspond to my experience of the Cosmos. For me, the ocean of Consciousness is the Cosmos, the totality of existence viewed as an ordered whole. The surface of this vast ocean is the physical universe and its depths are the psyche. But this ocean is not exactly like the oceans on Earth. The way that I visualize this today is as a sphere, where the surface is the physical universe and the centre is the nondual Ground of Being. The adjacent diagram shows a section of this sphere as a cone, where the base is spherical rather than flat, as in the diagram. The centre of the sphere is then the Absolute Unity, while the sphere as a whole is the Absolute Whole. The reason why I have drawn an inverted cone is that it better illustrates that all beings who become manifest in the physical universe on the surface are actually joined at a common point. For instance, we human beings, who appear separate from each other on the surface, are joined beneath the surface, rather like islands in an archipelago. For in the beautiful words of John Donne: No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell toll; It tolls for thee. In describing the ocean of Consciousness in this way, I am actually beginning to abstract forms from the formlessness that it is. There are many ways of doing this. The simplest is to abstract the Great Chain of Being--matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit--from Consciousness, as I show in the diagram. The Great Chain of Being leads us to look at the ocean of Consciousness in different levels, as described, for example, by Ken Wilber in Spectrum of Consciousness and by Barry Long in The Origins of Man and the Universe. However, as Ken points out in his later works, the Great Chain of Being is not really like a chain, with links in similar relationships to each other. It is more like a Great Nest of Being, for each level embraces and contains the one above it, rather like Russian dolls. Over the years, people have focused their attention on different parts of the ocean of Consciousness. The physicists and other scientists, including the behaviourists, have studied just the surface of the Cosmos, while in this century, the psychologists--the psychoanalysts, the depth or humanistic psychologists, and the transpersonal psychologists--have been penetrating ever deeper into the psyche. But it is the people that we call seers, sages, and mystics who have gone deepest into the ocean of Consciousness. However, diving deeply into the ocean of Consciousness is not enough if we are to find Wholeness, for Wholeness is the union of all opposites. To realize Wholeness, we need to broaden our awareness to encompass everything there is, on the surface and beneath the surface. So if we are to embrace the whole of existence we need both to extend outwards to the utmost breadth and to dive downwards to the uttermost depths. The key point here is that the narrower an individual's focus of attention, or the nearer the surface that an individual lives, the less of the ocean that is experienced. Tragically, that is the experience of many in our culture today. We live in a highly fragmented world of specialists, where the division of labour is dominant. We also live in a culture where the emphasis is on superficiality, on advertising slogans, on instant results, which tend to obscure the depths of the ocean of Consciousness upon which our existence and health and well-being as a species depend. These depths are the great unknown part of the Cosmos. Yet they are by far the most interesting for they tell us everything that we need to know about the Cosmos in which we live. The surface of the ocean of Consciousness, studied by the scientists today, can tell us very little about what really matters about life on Earth. This is not to deny the parallels between the physical universe and the underlying reaches of cosmos that the physicists have made. But what they are looking at in the external world is a reflection of the inner; they are not yet looking directly at the ocean of Consciousness as the Whole. For example, in the renowned Tao of Physics Fritjof Capra found many parallels between modern physics and the ancient teachings of the East, in particular. He then asked, among several other questions about the implications for science, "can there be a mutual influence between science and mysticism; perhaps even a synthesis?". To which he replied, "I think all these questions have to be answered in the negative. I see science and mysticism as two complementary manifestations of the human mind; of its rational and intuitive faculties." This is not true in my experience. When studying omniology, there is no division between rational and intuitive faculties. Like all opposites, they are just two sides of the same coin. Another physicist who has drawn parallels between modern physics and traditional spiritual teachings is Danah Zohar. She talks of a 'quantum vacuum' out of which all physical entities arise. She metaphorically describes this quantum vacuum as "a vast sea and of all else that is--the stars, the earth, the trees, ourselves and the particles of which we ourselves are made--as waves on the sea", a description that is not far removed from what I experience as the ocean of Consciousness. However, these similarities are deceptive. Danah compares this quantum vacuum to the Buddhist concept of sunyata, the Void. But they are not the same; the quantum vacuum is not the Void. Physical reality is still separate from the spiritual ground of being in her model. Indeed, it is quite clear that from her writings and her talks that Danah still regards the physical universe, including the brain, as the primary reality out of which Consciousness arises. Again, this is not true in my experience. The Art of Collumination Of course, I haven't experienced Consciousness in the way that I describe it today all my life. I have been through a long and difficult process of development from conception onwards to reach where I have reached today. So what name can I give to this process that unifies the scientific and the mystical? The word I use here is collumination, which is modelled on the word illumination. Collumination derives from the Latin words cum, meaning 'together with' and lumen, meaning 'light'. This leads me to the second metaphor I use for Consciousness, that of light. As I described earlier, the coherent light of Consciousness provides the light with which the divine Intelligence can see existence just as it is, without any anthropocentric considerations. It is the coherent light of Consciousness that enables me to view the Cosmos holographically, more like the coherent light of a laser beam, than the diffuse light from the sum. So the overall process of integrating all knowledge into a coherent whole is an iterative process. Starting with whatever intelligence is available, individuals can clarify their view of the Cosmos, which dissolves some of the clouds obscuring the coherent light of Consciousness from shining brilliantly through the psyche. This, in turn, provides the additional light that is necessary for intelligence to make further clarifications. This process is not unlike that described by the anonymous fourteenth-century English mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing. The author of this book said that if we are to know God in our own direct experience, we need to dissolve the cloud of ignorance that prevents us knowing God. However, there is a significant difference between this method of contemplation and collumination. This mystic also said that to know God we need to put a cloud of forgetting between us and the world. But this just creates a division between the formless and the world of form. In collumination there are no such divisions, no clouds anywhere. This is utterly necessary if we are to find Wholeness. We need to embrace all opposites to be Whole. So traditional meditative techniques do not lead to Wholeness, despite the many claims of spiritual teachers to this effect. For if meditation led to Wholeness, it would be possible to integrate science and religion by meditating, and this clearly is not the case. To learn to colluminate it is necessary to both learn and unlearn relational logic. Collumination is thus a natural extension of traditional contemplation methods. But how can we learn to colluminate? Well, Ken Wilber, following Aurobindo, has identified two principal paths of development, which he calls evolution and involution. Evolution progresses along the great chain of being from matter, to body, mind, soul, and spirit, while involution is the reverse of this process. Now if my reading of Ken's work is correct, he sees involution as a process that brought the physical universe into being some twelve billion years ago. Involution enwrapped the whole world of form, which since then has been unwrapping through the process of evolution. This is not how I see the relationship between involution and evolution. For me, there is no gap between involution and evolution. Both are present in the eternal now. The adjacent diagram illustrates my experience. Evolution is a process that takes place through time, as the horizontal line indicates. It is a blind, mechanical process of cause and effect. Each effect is the cause of a subsequent effect. However, nothing new can possibly emerge from this mechanical process. Everything radically new that arises in the world form does so from the timeless Ground of Being through the action of the creative power of Life, through God the Creator. So evolution and involution are both acting together to produce what we call evolution. This is the way that collumination has arisen in my consciousness. You will recall that to begin this experiment in learning, I imagined that I was a computer that switched itself off and on again, so that it had no programs within it. Collumination is thus a way of learning that begins at the origin of the Universe. But even when this process is in movement, the power of Life, of the Logos, continues to fuel it. This can be seen quite clearly when we look at how computer programs are developed. It is possible in some programming languages for programs to program themselves, as I explain in some detail in Appendix A of my book. However, no new program can possibly emerge through this process. Every computer program requires God the Creator acting through human programmers to come into being. This includes the Blind Watchmaker, a program written by Richard Dawkins, which purports to show that evolution progresses solely through natural selection without divine intervention. The overall effect of this process is that I cannot teach anyone to colluminate. To learn to colluminate it is necessary for individuals to start afresh from the very beginning, to return to the Source of Life. This is not something that any of us can decide to do through an act of will. It happens by the grace of God through divine will. However, once this process is in motion, I most certainly can help those who are learning to colluminate. It is just that I am in no position to help others to take the leap into the unknown that is necessary to begin this radical experiment in learning. What I have been describing here is actually only one half of learning to colluminate. It is the process of broadening consciousness so that it embraces the totality of existence as a coherent whole. But breadth has an opposite: depth. So if all opposites are to be integrated and unified, it is necessary also to dive to the depths of the ocean of Consciousness. This latter 'activity' is what spiritual seekers of all ages have been or are today practising. However, these spiritual practices are not sufficient to realize Wholeness in the meaning I give to this word. For if they were, the enlightened spiritual teachers of the past few thousand years would have been able to tell us how to heal the great schism between science and religion. They clearly have not done this. For if they had, it would not be necessary for many people in the world today to search for a way to bring these apparently incompatible opposites into harmony. I can best explain this by another diagram. This time, I have reversed the arrow of the creative power of Life, so that it points downwards, into the depths of the ocean of Consciousness. The horizontal line in this diagram represents the expansion of consciousness in an individual, leading eventually to a state of consciousness that embraces everything there is, that is inseparable from the Absolute Whole. This state of consciousness arises naturally from the way that relational logic is formed. By using a single word, entity, to represent everything there is, the practitioner can clarify and integrate the mind, leading eventually to a state of cosmic consciousness. I represent this evolutionary process as the horizontal line in the adjacent diagram because it takes place over time. This is the process that frees us from our cultural conditioning, from the scientific, religious, and economic delusions that we are taught in our culture today. It is a process in which all the diverse strands of evolution converge, thus bringing evolution to its natural culmination. When all knowledge is integrated into a coherent whole, there is nowhere else to go. No further process of abstraction is possible. It is the end of everything. However, in itself, this process does not free us from our personal conditioning, from the delusions that arise from our individual experience in life, most especially the traumas that we experience in early life. To do this, it is necessary to purify and still the mind so that eventually the sense of a separate self is completely and permanently extinguished. The result is what is most commonly called an enlightened state of consciousness. So what is the relationship between an enlightened and a cosmic state of consciousness? Well, to understand this, it is important to first free ourselves from our anthropocentric conditioning. We have been taught, in both the East and the West, to attribute various states of consciousness and qualities to particular human beings. Doing this prevents us from truly understanding the nature of Consciousness. For Consciousness is all there is. There is nothing else. So not only is every one of us swimming in exactly the same ocean of Consciousness, we are the ocean of Consciousness. This means that any extraterrestrial being living on a planet in another galaxy in another universe would have exactly the same understanding. The great difficulty is that by using words like understanding to describe Consciousness here, I am inevitably abstracting something from Consciousness. Words are thus hopelessly inadequate to describe Consciousness. Consciousness is not even an experience for this implies an experiencer, something that exists in Consciousness, which is not Consciousness itself. Without being concerned about a human experiencer, we can begin to abstract forms from Consciousness in a dual manner, such as the faculty and content of Consciousness, as Peter Russell does, and Consciousness-at-rest and Consciousness-in-action, like Ramesh Balsekar. So now we are making distinctions, which inevitably appear as pairs of opposites. We can also abstract the notions of nonduality and duality from Consciousness. To say that Consciousness is thus nondual is a mistake, for it is both nondual and dual. Now if we begin to relate this to human experience, specifically my experience, for this is the only experience I know first-hand, we can see that a state of cosmic consciousness is dual, but nondualistic, while that of enlightened consciousness is nondual. But essentially, there is no difference between them. The former state is totally full, while the latter is utterly empty. And we saw from the circle of duality on the previous page that these poles of a range of values join in unity. Similarly, to experience Consciousness in its Absolute glory, we need to end the distinctions between the faculty and content of Consciousness, Consciousness-at-rest and Consciousness-in-action, and the transcendent and immanent nature of Consciousness. The key point is that we can continue to abstract dualities from Consciousness indefinitely. That is in the nature of the reasoning mind. So to fully understand Consciousness, to be totally awake, we need to abandon logic, Aristotelian or non-Aristotelian. Most particularly, trying to explain the differences between different individual's experiences of Consciousness takes us away from Consciousness. For any comparisons whatsoever create distinctions, thus violating the indivisibility and infiniteness of Consciousness. Nevertheless, we as human beings all clearly have different experiences of consciousness. I can best explain why this is so by saying that Consciousness is the faculty of Consciousness, while our experience of consciousness is the content of Consciousness. So in the sense that we all have the same faculty of Consciousness, we are all both enlightened and in a state of cosmic consciousness. The difference between us all is that our contents of consciousness are dependent on a host of historical factors, unique to each of us. Yet, as Consciousness embraces the totality of existence, including every human being who has ever lived on this planet or who ever will live, when we experience Consciousness in its totality, there is no difference in these experiences. How could there be? For Consciousness is all there is. So our experiences of consciousness are both exactly the same and quite different. This is vitally important to recognize if we are to maintain our sense of complete and utter Wholeness. In practical terms, we all live in the world of time and form and we are not born with the sense of Consciousness and Wholeness that I am describing on this web site. So we all go through a process of development, which, ultimately is guided by Life itself. I don't think that it will help others to describe my own process in great detail, for we are all different. All I need to say here is that the most important lesson I have learned in this journey is that as I cannot affect anything that is happening to me in my life, I need to accept myself just as I am, warts and all. For any attempt to change myself, any effort I expend with the intention reaching some goal, takes me away from the timeless, formless Whole. So what is called self-realization in Advaita circles is really a realization of complete self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is key. For it is in this state that we can fully accept the world as it is right now. If evolution is carrying us all to a major catastrophe in the coming years, as looks increasingly likely, that is what is meant to happen. There is nothing any of us can do about it. This is most likely Nature's way of guiding us out of the mental-egoic era of human development into the superconscious Age of Spirit. For no one is led to make major changes in the way they live their lives if the pain of doing so in greater than the pain of not doing so. Mind and Consciousness As we move into the post-mental-egoic age, one of the most important distinctions that we need to make is that between the mind and Consciousness. For computers have minds in the sense that they can reason after a fashion, but they have neither Consciousness nor Intelligence. So if we do not make this distinction, we shall continue to believe in the possibility of artificial intelligence, artificial consciousness, and even artificial life. We shall remain living at the level of our machines, falling far short of our potential as cosmic, divine beings. We shall continue to drive our cars blindly and recklessly, without seeing the great dangers that lie ahead. This differentiating activity is a natural evolutionary process from both an ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspective, as Ken Wilber explains in The Atman Project and Up From Eden, respectively. We can look at human evolution in a series of levels, like the storeys of a tall building. Most of the time, as individuals and as a species, we remain on one floor. But when the time is right, we move up a floor through a process of differentiation, integration, and transcendence. There are many people in society today who recognize the all-inclusiveness of Consciousness and the radiance of Love, although they might not use these exact words. These individuals are the nucleus of the emerging culture that is beginning to move up a floor, a culture that will become fully manifest as materialistic Western civilization inevitably decays and dies. By learning to differentiate mind from Consciousness and Intelligence, we can integrate body, mind, and spirit, and so carry humanity to an epoch of quite radiant beauty. The adjacent diagram clearly illustrates the distinction between consciousness and mind. The key point about this figure is that the characteristics associated with consciousness, namely, intelligence, intuition, inner knowing, and seeing, have a primary-secondary relationship with those associated with mind: intellect, rationality, symbolic knowledge, and reasoning. Notice that what I call thinking bridges both Consciousness and the mind. In my experience, thinking is a creative process that generates new images, ideas, and concepts. It is a completely natural process. Yet many spiritual teachers beseech us to give up thinking. Yet how can we do this? We cannot stop the creative energies of Life emerging within us. Yet, nevertheless, much of our thinking is undoubtedly very disturbing. It is this aspect of thinking that we need to give up if we are to be completely whole and healthy. I therefore distinguish between healthy and unhealthy thinking. It is easy to recognize the latter. When the creative power of Life is picked up by the mind, the memory often projects the past into the future, resulting in worry and anxiety, if the past experience is negative, and in expectant excitement when pleasurable experiences from the past are projected forward. When this happens, we thus lose touch with the eternal now. Effectively we stop living because we can only live in the present, not in the past or the future. As one wit put it "I've had a terrible life. Thank goodness most of it never happened." Healthy thinking, as I call it, arises directly from Consciousness as insights that help us to clarify and integrate all our ideas into a coherent whole, free from false beliefs and preconceptions about what it means to be a human being. From this space, we can make plans for the future, such as a journey that we might undertake, without any expectations that we shall reach our goal. On the broader scale, we can make plans for the development of a post-capitalist, post-communist economic system based on Love, Consciousness, and the Truth, even though such a healthy way of managing our practical affairs is not acceptable to the great majority in our sick society today. So we shall not stop thinking in the Age of Spirit. What will happen is that our anxious minds will no longer dominate the psyche because we shall have learned to distinguish mind from consciousness and intelligence. Of course, a mind that is the master rather than a servant cannot understand this. Despite such books as Jacques Hadamard's The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field and The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, which clearly show the secondary nature of mind, many minds today are trying to develop a science of consciousness using primarily the intellect. Such an endeavour cannot possibly succeed. Furthermore, there is still a belief among many computer scientists that they will one day create a machine that can think, along the lines of Alan Turing's prediction in 1950, in an article published in the philosophical journal Mind, which began with the question, "Can machines think?". Of course they cannot, as one day the scientists will discover for themselves by looking inwards. It is not only in Western science and philosophy that there is so much confusion about the nature of mind. The Sanskrit word smriti, which in Buddhism means 'attentiveness', is generally translated as 'mindfulness'. But it is not the mind that is attentive, it is Intelligence that sees, enabling us to perform everyday activities with clarity and consciousness. To denote the secondary nature of mind, some spiritual writers and traditions use the word Mind, with a capital M, to indicate what I mean by Consciousness and Intelligence. I feel that this is a mistake. The Absolute does not have a Mind in any sense similar to the human mind, for it is formless, completely transcending the world of form. And although it is quite possible to create a theory of everything using the power of human reason, for that is what omniology provides, this does not mean that in so doing we shall know the mind of God, as the mathematical physicist, Stephen Hawkings, states in the closing paragraph of his runaway best-seller, A Brief History of Time. For God does not have a mind, as I have just explained. 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