The AIM of T he Way is to SHARE DISCOVERY and REALIZATION of the IMMEDIATE-ULTIMATE real—generally and particularly for INDIVIDUALS and CIVILIZATIONS.

The initial view—the view from BEING—is a view that is neutral to TELEOLOGY.

TRADITION is the valid in WORLD CULTURES over all time. So far as HUMAN civilization CONSTRUCTS aims they are written in PARADIGMATIC STANDARD (PRIMAL, SECULAR, and TRANSSECULAR or SUPRASECULAR), and ULTIMATE WORLDVIEWS.

Means—approach and method

APPROACH

IDEAS, ACTION, GROUND IN EXPERIENCE, COMMUNITY

BEGIN IN THE PRESENT, AIM FOR THE ULTIMATE, SHARING

WORLD, CONCEPT

The WORLD is all there is without regard to the real. Since there is no true unreal, the distinction of world from universe is also not one of reality.

The WHOLE world is all the world. A PART is the whole world, a PROPER PART of it or the NULL PART. A KNOWN or KNOWABLE part is an OBJECT.

A CONCEPT is any MENTAL CONTENT (e.g. any combination of the FUNCTIONS—explained later).

Every concept is IN-THE-WORLD, i.e. is an object; and is OF-THE-WORLD, i.e. of an object (in what is called PURE EXPERIENCE the only object is experience itself)

METHOD

REFLEXIVITY is the essential method. It is the CONSTRUCTIVE or imaginative and CRITICAL ANALYSIS-SYNTHESIS of all CONTENT, whether PERCEPTIVE, NEUTRAL, or ACTIVE.

Reflexivity includes PRINCIPLES OF ARGUMENT (and UNDERSTANDING and KNOWLEDGE) which is the drawing of SOUND CONCLUSIONS—establishment of FACT as TRUE (PREMISES) and VALID INFERENCE, e.g. LOGIC, from premises.

Reflexivity is grounded in our being but seeks to be built up, as far as possible, without need for an external ground. ARGUMENT IS IN THE WORLD. (which leads to higher order or META PRINCIPLES and meta argument).

ANALYSIS OF SUFFICIENT REASON and its application.

COMMUNICATION

WRITING TEXT as part of reflex process

Shared ideas-action, reading, UNDERSTANDING TEXT, gestalt absorption or worldview absorption on initial reading, gestalt reconciliation on later readings—reconciling with the CRITICAL-INTUITIVE GESTALT(s) of tradition and intuition or CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND RECONSTRUCTION

Meaning and Method

Referential meaning

A CONCEPT is any mental content including ‘classical concepts’, percepts, and feeling. Concept-object separation is crucial to analysis, but their join is important to intuition.

A CORRESPONDENCE or relational notion of TRUTH is appropriate to discussion of abstract notions below and requires REFERENTIAL MEANING ( RM) to be a concept and its OBJECT(s). Later, when concreteness is introduced, it is merged into a consistent blend of correspondence and pragmatic truth.

Linguistic referential meaning

A PURE SIGN is a bare object. A COMPOUND SIGN is an arrangement of pure signs. A SYMBOL is a SIGN associated with a concept. If the symbol contains a contradiction—if it is not logical, the object is the ‘NULL OBJECT’. A symbol and its object(s) constitute LINGUISTIC REFERENTIAL MEANING (LRM). Meaning may be associated with the form of a compound sign via GRAMMAR and SEMANTICS. LANGUAGE adds SEEMING CLARITY AND CONCRETENESS which may be misleading; however it is EFFICIENT in COMMUNICATING, REPRESENTING, the ability to treat language as an object.

Method

LANGUAGE AS AN OBJECT—and so to formulaic or ALGEBRAIC REPRESENTATION of the real (SEMANTIC ASCENT). LOGIC and FACT (experience of the object) are NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT FOR ADEQUACY of referential meaning.

The present concept of LRM is crucial to the concept of LOGIC; its neglect results in CONFUSION OF MEANING and SEMANTIC AND LOGICAL PARADOX

In going beyond tradition, I permit destabilization of received meaning so as to allow new understanding. When the dust settles, we expect to find some essential changes.

Ideas

Formal development now begins.

Being

Abstraction and method for pure categories

The terms in the early sections are abstract. Thus Being is Being-as-being and universe is universe-as-universe—without respect to detail. This entails perfect knowledge. Later, I note and justify transition to the concrete.

Being

DIFFERENCE is primitive. As abstract, it is perfect.

The UNIVERSE is the world over all difference and its absence. ‘Universe’ and ‘empirical cosmos’ are different concepts. There is one universe but there may be many cosmoses.

A BEING or object is the universe or part of it, abstract or other, ascertained by difference only and finally in knowing. All beings are in the universe. Two or more beings are a being.

BEING (capitalized) is the property common to all beings. There is Being; all is Being; to have Being and to be REAL are the same. Beings are not Being—they have Being: they EXIST. If cause and creation are the effect of another being, the universe is neither created nor caused. The universe can be seen as a FIELD—a FIELD OF BEING.

POWER, the ability to affect and be affected, may ascertain Being, absent direct knowledge (here we see experience as an aspect of power). Thus even unsubstantial POTENTIAL is later seen to have Being; and NONBEING, as potential of an earlier being to REMANIFEST, has Being. Not all Being is some-thing.

Possibility

For a being, a STATE is POSSIBLE if the state’s concept does not violate its CONSTITUTION or definition. ACTUAL states are possible.

Hierarchy of Possibility

Method: analysis of logic and natural law (science)

Possibility is LOGICAL or of the symbol when the only constraints on obtaining inhere in the concept. This is because logic and logical impossibility are not limits on the world. REAL possibility, over and above the logical, is marked by constraints inhering in beings. Logical possibility is the most LIBERAL—a state cannot be real but not logical. UNIVERSAL possibility has the universe as the being. Some beings or domains are marked by NATURAL LAWS (e.g., of our cosmos), which, so far as true, are true LIMITS or constraints and define NATURAL, e.g. PHYSICAL, possibility. As PATTERNS, natural laws have Being—which, except at a high level of generality, we will find to be local, e.g. to our cosmos. I later distinguish SENTIENT vs. NON-SENTIENT possibility.

Let ‘É’, ‘Ê’, and ‘ÉÉ’ be ‘includes’ (PROPER INCLUSION), ‘includes or is the same as’ (INCLUSION), ‘INCLUDES FAR MORE THAN’. For a being possibility Ê actuality. The following inclusions for possibility obtain: the logical Ê universal Ê natural Ê physical. We normally expect that the first inclusion is ‘ÉÉ’ and all but the last are ‘É’. What actually holds? We now turn attention to this question.

Logic as conceptual integrity

The aim of this tentative section is to show the following as examples of conceptual integrity.

LOGICAL TRUTH, SENTENCE, PREDICATE, VARIABLE, QUANTIFICATION

PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS, PREDICATE CALCULUS

Metaphysics and realism

Metaphysics

METAPHYSICS will be knowledge of the world as it is. Because the concept is not the object, there are traditions that see metaphysics as impossible. The metaphysics here is not essentially speculative.

Categorial thought as a method in metaphysics

‘CATEGORY’ is a term that has been used to denote concepts falling just under Being in generality. Here it denotes any idea useful toward metaphysics. The categories include all tradition; and received and emergent reason. Interactive critical and imaginative use of the categories to form a true metaphysics is the REFLEXIVE categorial process.

Abstraction and metaphysics

We have been considering only categories that are perfect due to abstraction. I now introduce a further perfect category—the void. Unlike the earlier terms, the it is hypothetical—we will need to prove its existence; however, once its existence is proven we may treat the void as perfectly known.

Later, introduction of imperfectly or pragmatically known categories is justified.

The Void and the Fundamental Principle

Method: analysis of the void or absence of being

The VOID is the null being or absence of Being. It is not clear from the definition that the void exists or whether ‘the void exists’ has meaning.

If the universe is in a void or non manifest state, there are no laws. Therefore, every logically possible state must emerge from the void state for the contrary would be a law.

But the void is present with all beings (a being and the void are just the being)—i.e., the void exists. So the universe is the realization of all logical possibility, i.e. it is limitless, for the universal actual is identical to logical possibility. This is the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF METAPHYSICS, fundamental principle, or FP. It is the pivotal result of the ideas. This section now explores its metaphysical consequences.

It is clear that many significant results follow TRIVIALLY from FP and further developments. In what follows I do not give trivial PROOF—even when common paradigms and intuition are or seem violated.

Emergence from the void (a) shows the void to have power and so Being (‘the void exists’ has meaning and the void exists) and (b) as explanation, is ultimate foundation. Except that there is one, the number of voids has no significance.

Also entailed by the omnipotence of the void are omnipotence of being, the abandonment of universal causation, mechanism, potential as necessarily ‘something’ and, the reality of logic in the absence of Being. Shortly, we will square omnipotence with experience; in fact we will observe that FP requires our normal experience.

An intuitive meaning of the void is that place where there is no being at all. It is everywhere. It is many and one. It reveals that if a law pertains to a being, all other laws present but ‘silent’.

FP is identity of the logically possible and the universal actual. It implies a NORMAL sense in which our cosmos and laws are as in tradition and infinitesimal compared to the logical-universal. The meaning of ‘normal’ includes that, except logical NECESSITY, what we regard as necessary or impossible from regularities of the cosmos, are but locally very PROBABLE or very improbable. I.e., there is local ‘conservation’ but universal violation of normal laws.

Metaphysics and Logic

Let us explore logic. Known logics exemplify it, at least roughly. We saw that in LOGIC, constraints inhere in and only in concepts; seeing facts as constraints among percepts, include facts in logic and, to avoid confusion with logic, rename it LOGIC (capitalized). A law of nature is a fact on some domain; elect this view this over law as universal hypothesis—thus Logic includes science (and tradition). This is at odds with the view of logic as deductive, science as inductive; it resolves in that discovery is inductive for both and inference under both is deductive (sciences and logics remain distinct). Thus Logic disallows only violation of fact and conceptual constraint. Define the pure UNIVERSAL METAPHYSICS (also called the pure metaphysics) as what Logic allows (logics, cosmoses, their sciences—ours or other, robust or not, and more). Then FP and the metaphysics are equivalent. Here, then, we find the metaphysics as (1) Identity of universal actuality and Logical possibility, (2) In process, (3) A join of logic and science. For abstract objects the metaphysics will be seen to include systems of mathematics as abstract sciences.

Method—How to join the pure and the pragmatic

We now abandon the height of abstraction employed so far—but with discrimination. First, the pure concepts remain pure; they will frame the pragmatic to be introduced. Second, consider the example of space and time. This knowledge is pragmatic. However, there is an abstraction to be introduced that shows a pure abstract of space and time. Third, pure metaphysics and the pure concept of space and time interact and are thus revelatory of pragmatic space and time.

Categories to be Integrated

Categories of The Way (a) Aim, Mechanism-Teleology (b) Being, Neutrality, Commitment (c) Agents—Individual, Civilization (d) Means—Ideas, Action (e) Pure and pragmatic knowledge

The categories of pure universal metaphysics—The abstract, the concrete, Difference, Whole, part, null, Universe, Beings, Beings, Possibility, Logic, Pattern, Natural Law, The Void, Logic (capitalized)

The pragmatic categories—(a) Identity, Space, and Time—or Identity-Relation-Process (b) Absolute Determinism and Indeterminism, Cause, Mechanism, Local Substance (c) Matter (first order Being—Being-as-Being), Mind (second order Being—Being-in-Relation), or Experience-Experienced, Agency

Realism and the universal metaphysics

The object of the metaphysics, as so far understood, is the universe—the real. I.e., the metaphysics is a REALISM that obtains in that the real is the object of what Logic permits. Let us flesh out the metaphysics or realism. A PURE part stemming from the notions of beings and possibility, pure metaphysics, shows the limitlessness of the universe; and, since its primitive founding objects are known precisely, it allows perfect faithfulness as its EPISTEMIC criterion. Valid pragmatic traditions including science—as validated cumulative experience—are locally and approximately faithful but this is all that is needed (or possible in so far as our form is limited); it is perfect from the point of view of adequacy and instrumentality in negotiation in and just beyond the normal. The pure and the pragmatic form a joint system: the pure will frame, clarify, extend, and be fleshed by the pragmatic; their criteria are PERFECTLY ADAPTED: each to its ends and both jointly to the metaphysics and The Way.

The potency of Being

The POTENCY of the idea of Being so far includes avoiding paradigmatic prejudices, especially of limited kinds and processes, e.g. classical causation. It’s abstract generality implies that its mirror, the void, exists and has no low; therefore the universe is ultimate. As the pure and the PRAGMATIC, each on its criteria, are perfect, the FOUNDATION is perfect (this reflects an idea—perfection does not pertain to the world as whole). Contrary to a long tradition of post-enlightenment criticism, there is potent metaphysics as knowledge of Being. Its source: perfect categories—beings, universe, Being, void, possibility, and pragmatism. This contrasts with the imperfect if useful categories of Kant and Schopenhauer.

The abstract and the concrete

FP resolves issues of the concrete and the abstract. FP: every Logical concept has an object. Consequences: no essential difference between CONCRETE and ABSTRACT objects or beings (abstraction omits the concrete—e.g. causality, spatiality, and temporality); Being is a being; abstract and concrete realisms—Logical, MATHEMATICAL, and SCIENTIFIC—on par: from FP, mathematical systems are abstract sciences of forms which are real (and in Platonic worlds as parts of the one universe); all content—perhaps neither literal nor explicit, e.g. art—that has possible objects has real objects; DEATH, real but not absolute, is reminder that this life is no less significant than the ultimate and so to live well; the ultimate abstract is a RECEPTACLE of DISPOSITION to emerging-merging-reemerging identity of substantial beings; local science as locally valid but otherwise shed like snakeskin in transcending a cosmos; religions as allegorically real and socially significant but premature if taken literally; which suggests THE WAY OF BEING, the aim of wholeness, of real religion, as discovery-realization of immediate-ultimate Being by limited beings using all §Elements of Being and agency.

Cosmology

A method for cosmology

COSMOLOGY is the study of the duration, extent, and variety of Being. But it goes beyond just that in asking about origins and the meaningfulness of origins, and the nature of extension-duration or space-time—and this requires consideration of identity. The distinction between metaphysics and cosmology is one of detail and convenience rather than essence.

The method of cosmology is (a) simultaneously consider the metaphysics and elements of tradition, especially categories such as abstract-concrete, part-whole-null, experience-experienced (b) critical analysis of the categories in light of the metaphysics, and (c) imaginatively and critically build up a coherent picture of the entire universe, distinguishing the pure from the pragmatic while integrating them.

The source of Being

Why is there Being at all? This fundamental question of metaphysics (Heidegger) is clearly resolved; this marks a universal high level law—all states of being are equivalent. A new, appropriate, fundamental question is: What has Being—to what concepts do there correspond beings? All fundamental questions can be put in this form. Even the how of becoming has Being. A prime example of cultural distortion: we argue GOD’s existence but the essential issue is What such ideals can mean!

General cosmology

The most elementary pattern is difference across the universe’s oneness. IDENTITY is sense of SAMENESS of object or person. Difference with and without identity mark TIME (duration) and SPACE (extension), respectively, which would so be the modes of difference; then the universe is Being over all spacetime and its absence (and from the analysis, there are no other LOCATING MODES OF DIFFERENCE). SPACETIME (difference) is IMMANENT in the world, not absolute, has and is of Being; relations among identities across extension mediate change over duration: this is the identity (STATE), RELATION (INTERACTION), PROCESS (CHANGE), or IRP MODEL of DYNAMICS. Identity is transparent only when local: space-time-identity does not always separate into its components. Where identity is fully absent, so is spacetime. Process, relation, and state have being. An EPOCH is a realm of fact relative to which the rest of the universe is not determined.

The universe is a FIELD OF BEING and identities (entities, processes, relations—not substances) are its concentrations.

In discussing knowing, earlier, ‘experience’ is implicit; it was then seen as an aspect of power. We will now treat experience formally.

In a first formal conception EXPERIENCE is subjective awareness in all its forms; related to sentience and consciousness, it is distinct from, e.g., cumulative experience. Its not entirely distinct modes are PERCEPTIVE (reception), REFLECTIVE (pure but potential real), and ACTIVE (agent).

In a SUBSTANCE APPROXIMATION, MATTER refers to BEING-AS-BEING or FIRST ORDER BEING, while MIND refers to experience or BEING-IN-RELATION or SECOND ORDER BEING. Analysis shows the substance case to be that of MONISM and mind and matter sides of the same substance to the root.

Introduction of experience after FP avoids substance issues of ad hoc kinds as real and other equivocation.

Seemingly ephemeral, experience is real, has Being; FP implies a fundamental extension, of EXPERIENCE AS INTERIOR OF RELATION. It is an evident principle that EXPERIENCE-EXPERIENCED (MIND-BODY) should be studied each on its own terms and on mutually informing rather than reductive terms. In the general case (beyond substance) experience and experienced are independent, but may have union. Pure formless experience is without meaning and the general (independent) case allows and so sometimes requires two separate modes of being. In the case of STABLE BEING, (to be discussed in cosmology and origins of form) these modes do have union; in this case—EXPERIENCE IS ESSENCE AND COEXTENSION OF BEING

The real world is known in and contains experience (solipsism and REALISM OF THE EXPERIENCED—external realism—are but alternate labelings). Experience—pure and engaged—is relationship, place of AGENCY which requires CHOICE (and, so, free will), and SIGNIFICANCE but experience is not all significance; subject-object meet in experience as one.

The ‘UNIVERSE OF SIGNIFICANCE’ and the ‘UNIVERSE OF DESTINY’ constitute a FIELD OF EXPERIENCE AND AGENCY; and SENTIENT AGENTS (beings) are their concentrations. Assertions and reasoning for sentience follow; those for agency are similar. All PEAKS OF FORM are accessible to sentient form. We might expect that all actuality ÉÉ sentient actuality; but from FP, for any form there is greater sentient form (and vice versa). The field of experience and agency has no limit; it is effectively and essentially the universe—it is the EFFECTIVE UNIVERSE or SIGNIFICANT UNIVERSE The universe is effectively the stable case—not because the latter is the only case but because for any state, there is always a greater stable state.

On process and becoming

Only in sentience are there PAIN, SUFFERING and joy and agency; so in and only in sentience are there pain, its sometime temporal non-overcoming, its universal cycles of release and overcoming into JOY (bliss, calm abiding) and dissolution.

The Gita’s fourfold YOGA and MEDITATION-VISION QUEST are identity with the real—and identity of Being-process in the present as ultimate (this perhaps broader than traditional sense of practice includes science, philosophy, and their methods as special cases). As expansion of awareness, meditation is concurrent to discovery and realization of the real. It may begin as technique from a range of approaches. Shamata, calm abiding, and vipasana, insight, Gates to Buddhist, Chagdud Tulku, are a good foundation. Beyul, nature pilgrimage to evoke true self, is told in Ian Baker: The Heart of the World.

The universe has identity. Identity and manifestation have no limits—especially to variety, peak, extension, duration; cycle endlessly—without simple and universal periodicity—in acute, diffuse, and non-manifest phases in relatively remote epochs; universal CAUSATION is at most weak; causal connectivity is at most local (in creation-destruction, time has causal direction); beyond ours, there are cosmoses, natural laws, physical and living forms without end or limit; these occur meshed to a void-transient background; only some occurrences have mechanism; every atom is a cosmos, every cosmos an atom; individuals and civilizations inherit these powers—while in limited form realization is eternal endeavor; LOCAL CIVILIZATIONS (webs of cultures across time and continents) merge with UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION (capitalized, the matrix of civilizations across the universe) and Being; discovery and realization beyond a cosmos—beyond the normal—is a limitless and eternal journey. What is the identity of self? In overcoming limited form individuals realize the ultimate—BRAHMAN (Upanishad), AETERNITAS (Thomas Aquinas), or PERFECT BUDDHA. But for process even these are local peaks.

General cosmology does not follow a strict substance metaphysics—i.e. one of fixed kinds and no emergence of or interaction among kinds. In monism, experience and Being are coupled through and through; in dualism their interaction is inexplicable. In general cosmology kinds and forms may occur independently but must at times merge, emerge, and export—kinds-forms are not substances and are organic to being. Our cosmos normally approximates monism. The constitution of beings is normal—only normally inviolable (see the discussion of possibility): beings have no absolute real limits or impossibilities.

If the metaphysics and cosmology read as fantasy—as if entering a strange land—their truth is cast in Logic. Where access is improbable, cosmology of form, next, seeks the probable. Then The Way seeks access to the ultimate (via intelligent commitment that enhances enjoyment and likelihood), transforming it as needed to the probable.

Cosmology and origins of form

Method: necessity of formed and formless process

The only universal way of origin of FORM is that of INDETERMINISM for NOVELTY and DETERMINISM for form. Evolution suggests a general incremental mechanism: indeterminist variation, then selection of adaptive states and a rough optimum step size: if larger, the probability of non viable organisms is high; if smaller, larger steps achieve more. From FP, such ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS origin is generic if not universal; details depend on context; it is causal in a general though uncommon sense; it can explain populations in the universe in terms of the product of frequency of origins and longevity or relative stability; it would explain the origin of form, cause, and laws for our cosmos. There may be other mechanisms but from FP, mechanism is not necessary—there are single step origins.

Generally, function and form are in rough proportion; in a SINGULAR EVENT increase in function is far beyond such proportion. FP implies singular events—events at a threshold of function. Some factors are self-reference and micro-organization of macro-function. Such events partially explain origins of life from complex molecules; origins of human and linguistic intelligence; a hypothesized, perhaps imminent, immense leap in and dominance of computational and networking intelligence; and, from FP, conscious intelligence—with our being among its dispositions—as driver and form of peaks of universal being. Singularity may be a norm in origin of essentially new forms and approaches to the universal.

Physical cosmology and its origins

The aim: show conceptual basis from general cosmology for an indeterminate space-time, relational-experiential cosmology.

Origins. Transients arise in hierarchies of scale from the void. All possible worlds occur; an efficient mechanism is informed by modern cosmology—small near quantum transients combining as large scale near determinate-symmetric-stable hyper-dense state with some near classical behaviors. A DYNAMICS—change in semi-determinate relational identity, § Cosmology, depends on duration of interaction or ‘force’ across extension, and on inertia to change. Experience as relation is an integral part of the dynamics. Essential issues: represent semi-determinate identity; whether this entails process indeterminism; account for dual origin of force-inertia. Aim: improve-particularize-quantify. In realms of opaque measure and difficult analysis, e.g. beyond the empirical cosmos, simulation guided by cosmology may show a way: see online resources at http://www.horizons-2000.org/theway.html for digital models whose principle is layering from the void and random to mechanism.

Elements of Being and agency

Method: analogy to identity mechanics and its necessity in the abstract

Identity mechanics is the foundation of OBJECT-INTERACTION-CHANGE.

Mechanics

The ELEMENTS of a Way of Being are primitive basis of a MECHANICS OF THE WAY OF BEING—of realization. From considerations of difference, there arose a tentative IDENTITY-RELATION-PROCESS MECHANICS. The following are tentative.

Dimensions

DIMENSIONS AND ELEMENTS OF IDENTITY AND BEING (PHASES OF GROWTH): NATURE, CIVILIZATION (INDIVIDUAL, SOCIETY); PSYCHE (the foregoing are often tied to PLACE); and the UNIVERSAL.

Elements of relation

ELEMENTS OF RELATION include the natural—FORCE, FIELD, FLOW, CHEMICAL; of civilization and society—COMMUNICATION: BEHAVIORAL, and LINGUISTIC expression; of psyche—EXPERIENCE, INTELLIGENT AND PASSIONATE COMMITMENT; and universal—ONE and MANY. As foresight, experience and choice mediate identity and process; the mechanics is incremental (see § Cosmology of form), and in large steps: seeing-choosing-risking-acting and consolidating the significant and the ultimate. It is self-examining-referential, ever under discovery, an active part of the metaphysics. It employs-develops The Way, catalysts and ways.

Elements of process

ELEMENTS OF PROCESS include the natural—MOTION, FUNCTION, EVOLUTION; of civilization and society—LOCAL CIVILIZATION or POPULATION and INSTRUMENTAL MEANS: WAYS (revelation), DISCIPLINES, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, POLITICS; of psyche—COGNITION (MIND-THOUGHT) and EMOTION (HEART), and ACTION. INTRINSIC MEANS: WAYS (illumination), CATALYSTS (fracture-integration), PRACTICES, IMMERSIVE ECONOMICS and IMMERSIVE POLITICS; and the universal—ULTIMATE and IMMEDIATE, BRAHMAN and ATMAN—UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION. Universal and local cycles of BECOMING, PEAKING, and DISSOLUTION.

Psychology: Function, Integration, and Development

Combine with previous section?

Method: Logic of the functions

PRINCIPLE, FUNCTION

OBJECT OF EXPERIENCE (experience equates to ‘mind’) is WORLD, world includes experience, leads via SELF-REFERENCE to INTENTIONALITY and SELF INTENTIONALITY

FOCUS, BACKGROUND, leads to ATTENTION with SCANNING, and SYNERGIC INTERACTION between CONSCIOUS and PRE-CONSCIOUS attention and CONTROL

FREE-BOUND, INNER-OUTER, DIRECTIONALITY (PERCEPTIVE, RECALL-MEMORY, REFLECTIVE, ACTIVE, RECURSIVE)

Function and its elaboration and integration

FUNCTION: COGNITION, EMOTION, ACTION

Examples of function, elaboration, and integration

Detail—EXAMPLES: FEELING is inner and includes PAIN; cognition is outer—perception and conception and therefore also includes awareness of both inner and outer; leads to, e.g., THOUGHT, perception, and emotion, and their degrees of interaction

Integration, growth, and change; personality

INTEGRATION is the SYNERGIC-ATOMIC ADAPTATION of the functions to the world which includes mind

PATTERN and GESTALT, FLUIDITY, FIXITY

ADAPTATIONAL ELEMENTS OF GROWTH involve integration and degree of SEPARATION, which is automatic because the body and the world are both ATOMIC and HOLISTIC

There is a PATHWAY OF GROWTH in which integration, separation may be NORMAL, WELL DEVELOPED, UNDER DEVELOPED, and MALADAPTIVELY DEVELOPED

ELEMENTS OF GROWTH are factors that affect and correlate to growth—experience, NEURO-ENDOCRINAL-BEHAVIORAL PATTERNING; ENVIRONMENTAL, COMMUNAL, INNER STABILIZATION and DE-STABILIZATION

ELEMENTS OF CHANGE are factors that affect and correlate to growth; they are continuous with elements of growth and include catalysts and catharsis or CATALYTIC CATHARSIS, RE-PATTERNING, COMMUNAL REINFORCEMENT, WAYS OF MAINTENANCE AND RENEWAL

The Way of Being

The Way is an APPROACH TO REALIZATION, founded in the Ideas. It is a journal edited for general use. It joins the metaphysics to traditional, REFLECTIVE, EXPERIMENTAL, and INSTRUMENTAL PRACTICE as a transformation discipline. Ideas and action are an essential continuity—a contrast to some modern emphases. Thought conceives ultimate ends; action engages with realization; continuity of ideas and action EMBEDS THE REAL IN THE PSYCHE.

Aim of Being

The AIM of The Way is now seen as a UNIVERSAL AIM OF BEING: to know the range of significant Being and realize its highest immediate and ultimate forms for all beings and Civilization.

An ethic for the aim, implicit in the Introduction is this: given that intelligent commitment enhances realization and enjoyment, what energies should we devote to the aim? The oneness of the universe implies the worth of devoting resources to the aim as ‘DUTY’ and joy. Quantitative choice, individual and social, may recognize that RESOURCE ALLOCATION is already integral to our secular and transsecular institutions. ETHICS are DRIVEN BY HEART, CHANNELED BY THOUGHT or ‘mind’, and encoded in culture. ‘RATIONAL ETHICS’ stems from REASON, EMOTION, AND VALUE.

The Way

Approach and Method

Attitude

We should DOUBT universal metaphysics. However, it is internally consistent and consistent with all we know and can know. Its argument is at least highly plausible, e.g. from the proof itself; and as a form of OCKHAM’S PRINCIPLE it is minimal regarding what is not in the universe.

We therefore adopt universal metaphysics as an EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE—valuable in itself and as affording the GREATEST LIKELY IMMEDIATE AND ULTIMATE OUTCOME OF LIFE. Without INTUITION IMMERSED IN ATTITUDE, INTELLECT is impotent.

While accepting temporal limits this side of death—while living in this world—we also live in act toward the ultimate.

Ways

Tradition involves worldviews of universe and person, TRANSFORMATION OF GESTALT by WORLDVIEW and CATHARTIC CATALYSTS, COGNITIVE-EMOTIVE CONSOLIDATION, MAINTENANCE, and RENEWAL.

The INDIVIDUAL-COMMUNAL PATHWAY is one of INITIATIVE, EXPERIMENT (as described in path, below), and SHARED ENDEAVOR and SUPPORT.

Path

Being is ever on the path, sometimes consciously, to design and affect DESTINY. Individuals and civilizations peak at stages of ultimate realization; in death and decay they dissolve into and transact with—are a COMMUNITY WITHIN RECEPTACLE OF ETERNAL BEING. The GREATEST CULTIVATION OF THE PRESENT OCCASION OF BEING is essential: in the singular case, this life as the only life, it is the occasion; in the eternal case, the alternative is as if condemned to eternal death.

The path begins in the given—tradition and the immediate, it continues with understanding, reflection, trial increment (experiment), criticism, consolidation (increment), and repetition.

EVERYDAY PROCESS is a personal, flexible, adaptable routine for living in the immediate as ultimate. It is followed by UNIVERSAL PROCESS—an adaptable process for living in the immediate for and with openness to the ultimate. One approach is to select from these templates; they are adaptable to a range of situations and phases of life and civilization—and deploy the mechanics (Elements of being and agency). RENEWAL, critical to practice, is reflected in the templates.

It is crucial that the everyday and the universal reflect each other and both reflect the immediate and the ultimate.

Everyday process

This brief template is adaptable to a range of ways and phases of life. It requires complement by a practice. Dedication and meditation infuse and are practice for life.

RISE before the sun. Dedication. (W Wilson) We dedicate our lives to The Way of Being—to shared discovery and realization; to shed the bonds of limited self and culture and so to see the way so clearly that even in difficulty life is flow over force; to realizing the ultimate in this life, this world, and beyond. Shared affirmation. (A Gupta) The pure unlimited consciousness that is all Being alone is supreme real. That is the universe, its life and breath, that am I. So I am and embody the self-transcending universe that is all Being and has no other.

REVIEW and meditate on realization and immediate priorities and means.

Everyday process template—1/2

EVERYDAY PROCESS-CONTINUED

3.	REALIZATION. Work and care. Ideas, writing, networking with the young and the established; shared action, transmission, experiment: Everyday, Universal process. Days for renewal. Other activities, e.g. languages, art.
4.	TASKS. Daily (AM); select/regular days for long term tasks.
5.	YOGA. General, postural. MEDITATION. Focus on spaciousness, freeing from ego-fixation, ultimate in-itself-and-the-present, continuity of meditation-action-Being.
6.	EXERCISE. Aerobic: in nature; and photography.
7.	EVENING. Rest, renewal, realization, and community. Evening tasks, preparation and dedication of the next day and the future. Sleep early.

Everyday process template—2/2

Universal process

The actions and dimensions of Being in this template are sufficiently complete. The details show a program of my design; here they are illustrative and suggestive. For further information see the online resources section at http://www.horizons-2000.org/theway.html.

Action

Dimension

Details

BEING

PURE BEING and a spiritual home

Everyday process, bridges the immediate-ultimate. Vision retreat.

IDEAS

KNOWING

For understanding, begin with the Ideas.

For further design information see the online resources.

Universal process template—1/2

UNIVERSAL PROCESS-CONTINUED

Action	Dimension	Details (for topics below, see online resources)
BE-COMING with phases of human life	NATURE and PSYCHE	Ground of real and renewal e.g. as in Beyul (Tibetan Buddhism).
	CIVILIZATION with society and culture	Civilization, shared immersion, community, populating the universe, cultural economics, politics, and ethics.
	ARTIFACT	Artifactual Being and technology.
	UNIVERSAL	Catalysts, ways, in everyday process, and renewal, knowledge, technology, developed-deployed in transforming Being-civilization.

Universal process template—2/2

The path so far

Ideas

The ideas are relatively complete. They the ultimate and a path. Of course, they are and must always be under review.

Realization

My transformation is underway—in process. The intrinsic is a mixed gestalt of the limited and the limitless.

The instrumental, too, is mixed—nature immersion approaches the universal, at least in the moment and experientially. I am on the mountain and can sometimes see the peak. Social immersion limited. The ‘message’ is mostly unheard. I am at the foot of the mountain.

Social and technological transformation remain an idea. The social would be the population of the universe by civilization. The technological would (a) support the social and (b) be an embodiment of the identity—human and higher.

Being

The ultimate is given to all Being but normally only felt, seen, or potential in ‘this life’.

The path is always in the present.

The scope of the path is described in the Ideas.

Index

The index is in the full print edition.