The Paragonian InstituteLiving Beyond ConflictObjectsThe overall purpose of the Paragonian Institute is to die, to make itself redundant, obsolete. This will happen when the basic principles on which the Institute is being founded permeate through society as a whole. To help this happen, I envisage the Institute having three principal objects:
ProjectsThe most urgent task that the Paragonian Institute will need to undertake is to design and build a Carpathia that can rescue as many individuals as possible from the Titanic as it sinks. In other words, we need to turn the principles of the Serving Economy into practical, working systems. Such a radical change in the way we run our business affairs cannot take place in isolation. Inevitably, it will bring about fundamental changes in education, religion, politics, science, medicine, and law. Many of these changes are already happening in society today. But they are happening piecemeal; they do not have the synergy that is necessary to transform the infrastructure of society. So we shall need research and education projects that investigate how we can use the discipline of omniology to provide the unifying structure for this global transformation. Every subject taught in schools, universities, and spiritual communities from science-mathematics, through philosophy-psychology, to religion-mysticism looks radically different in the context of omniology. So we shall need both omniologists and specialists in their different fields to work harmoniously together to investigate what changes need to be made and how they are to be communicated. The way I see this working is very similar to the way information systems architects in business work with specialists in the various departments of an organization. Systems architects do not have detailed knowledge of the workings of every department. On the other hand, specialists in user departments do not usually have the skills necessary to integrate all the information systems of an organization into a coherent whole. It is only through team work that such systems can be designed and implemented. In this way, we shall complete what Willis Harman, the late president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, called the ‘New Copernican Revolution’, just as Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy completed the original Copernican revolution. For myself, I do not see myself as a teacher standing in front of projection screen, telling people how this should be done. This is something that we shall all need to discover as a global community. Eventually, many educated people in the world will be omniologists working in their specialist fields. But until that time, we shall need to separate the different skills involved in our research and education activities. The most important task in this transformation of the world of learning will be to develop the comprehensive science of humanity that Erich Fromm called for twenty-five years ago. We need to have a common understanding of the whole of human development from conception to death, at both the ontogenetic and phylogenetic levels. For this will give us the knowledge necessary to guide ourselves into the final phase of human development. There is one other project that could well help with this integrating process. I have developed relational logic from the semantic modelling methods that are familiar to me from my work in the information technology industry. However, no modelling method that exists in the world today exactly reflects the underlying structure of relational logic. So I would like to develop a computer tool that can assist those who wish to repeat this experiment in learning. There are a couple of principal precedents for using the computer as an educational tool. Seymour Papert and Alan Kay developed the Logo and Smalltalk programming languages, respectively, with this purpose in mind. However, the computer tool that is the closest to relational logic that I have seen so far is IBM's Thesaurus Generator/2, which runs only under the OS/2 operating system, as far as I know. It was on a visit in 1973 to one of IBM's German software development labs that I first saw a prototype for this program. It was this prototype that gave me the idea that we could use Ted Codd's relational model of data to model the underlying structure of natural language, as well as the more formal structures of computer databases. So I envisage some sort of semantic modelling tool that can help its users to see the underlying, unifying structure of the Universe. Living the VisionWe are living at a time when all the diverse strands of evolution are converging into one glorious unity. This does not mean that we are moving towards an amorphous society where cultural and individual differences that give us so much pleasure disappear. On the contrary. By recognizing our common ground in Love, Consciousness, and Truth, we shall be guided to create a harmonious society in which we all have the opportunity to fully realize our own uniqueness as individual human beings. If we are to live our vision, right now, today, and not in some dim and distant time in the future, I envisage a community of folk where all individuals are working to integrate every aspect of their being--body, mind, and spirit--each in their own way. At the social level, I envisage an organization where the divisions between science and spirituality, and between business and academia disappear. For this to happen, we need to create a sacred, loving, and accepting space where it is possible for this community to be utterly open and honest with each other. If we are to consciously carry evolution out of the mental-egoic era into the Paragonian epoch, this is essential. For without these qualities we shall not be able to generate the synergy that is necessary to stimulate the rising tide of consciousness into a tidal wave. And it is only the tidal wave of consciousness that has the energy to heal our fragmented, divisive, and cruelly competitive society in the critically short time that is available to us. During the past fifteen years, I have enjoyed many such compassionate, tolerant spaces in the various communities (both physical and virtual) I have visited and on the many workshops, retreats, satsangs, and seminars I have attended. However, they have generally focused their attention on freeing the participants of their personal delusions. While these communities and events might indirectly make a contribution to freeing participants from their cultural delusions, that is not generally the main focus of their attention. If we are to uncover the innocence of consciousness, to stop being guided by our delusions, living in a fantasy world of make-believe, we need to go much further than any organization does today. Specifically, we need to expose the three great pillars of unwisdom that support Western civilization and the global economy for what they are. There can be no hiding from this if the rising tide of consciousness is to become a tidal wave, enabling us, as a species, to carry evolution on this planet to its final destination. PracticalitiesWe must recognize that the Paragonian Institute does not belong to the cultural landscape that exists in the world at present. Nevertheless, if the Institute is to get off the ground, it must follow the norms and conventions of today's society. In other words, we need financial resources in order to purchase the premises and equipment that we shall need, and to pay the people who will work for the Institute. Where this money will come from, I have no idea. All I know is that if this initiative is meant to happen at the beginning of the next millennium, it will do so by the grace of God. I am therefore quite sure that the resources that we shall need will emerge when the time is right. At present, I'm not entirely certain how the Paragonian Institute will be organized. I feel that this will depend very much on the people who are interested in participating in this bold initiative. Whatever happens, it will need to start fairly small, and then expand in a natural evolutionary manner. At some stage in the development of the Institute, I envisage it having a geographical centre with a number of Paragonian Communities in various localities around the world, something like the way that the Institute of Noetic Sciences is organized. This might seem rather hierarchical, but this is just a natural way of creating any organization. There are a number of reasons why we need a geographical centre. One is that we need to maintain focus. Western civilization is such a strong pull on our behaviour that we might lose touch with our vision: we are endeavouring to create a quite new civilization based on Love, Consciousness, and the Truth, free from the conditioning and delusions that occlude Intelligence in today's society. Secondly, we shall need to come together in one location to work on the principal projects of the Institute. While there is much we can do through the Internet, there really is no substitute for close physical contact. In this respect, I envisage the Institute as being partly a business centre, partly a centre of learning, and partly a spiritual centre, in today's terms. It is interesting to note here that the word university comes from Latin words meaning 'turned into one whole'. But universities today are far from living up to their name. So I would like to see the Paragonian Institute as an establishment where we can truly turn our learning into a coherent whole. Thirdly, I envisage the centre as being partly residential, where a community of folk can learn to integrate body, mind, and spirit, both as individuals and as a community. In other words, we shall need exercise facilities, meeting rooms and the very latest in advanced technology, and meditation rooms where we are able to be in touch with the stillness at the core of our beings. In which country the centre should ideally be located is something that I have been pondering about for some time. There are definite advantages in locating the Institute in north-west Europe, because I sense a greater degree of freedom here than in the American culture, which is the one that is most rigidly attached to the scientific, religious, and economic beliefs of Western civilization. On the other hand, what greater challenge could we have than of locating the Institute in the USA, the hegemonic nation of the global economy? While there are oases of freedom and tolerance in the USA, I can see much evidence of intense fear and delusion in the country at large. This is something we cannot avoid if we are to have any chance of healing our grievously sick society. We need to live dangerously if we are to live beyond conflict, being governed by Love and Intelligence rather than fear and money. So if you feel moved to see how we might work and play together in this great adventure, do please get in touch, either by e-mail, or through my guestbook. Home | Introduction
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