The Way of Being | A Journey

This version of The Way is a sketch. For more information see the Resources section and the Website for The Way.

The Way of Being is search for and realization of the ultimate from and in the immediate.

The Journey is discovery of and living on the paths of The Way.

The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility.

‘Greatest does not mean best but it does include the good and the right; and if we value the good and the right then there is an imperative to be on the path.

The universe and its identity are limitless in extension, duration, and peaking - sustaining - and dissolution. There are cosmoses and physical laws without limit. There is cyclcity but the greatest periods of the cycles are without limit. Brahman is the name of the universe in this sense.

The individual or Atman realizes Brahman.

There are efficient and enjoyable paths to Brahman. Inherited from tradition the paths themseoves are ever open to intelligence, experiment, and reason. There is ecstasy and pain which are unavoidable; ecstacy may be enjoyed, pain should receive the best compassion and address, e.g. in terms of modern medicine and therapy; but the best address includes being on the path to Brahman and its calm anticipation, for it is this that gives life its greatest enjoyment and meaning.

Meditation on the path is important but meditation alone is not realization; it emphasizes exploration via ‘mind’an inner aspect of the way; The Way is amplified in the next section ‘The Ways’, which also emphasizes an instrumental aspect—action, body, and technology. There is a direct path in and from this life to Brahman; it is rarely achieved. Far more common is an indirect path begins directly but ‘realization’ is incomplete in ‘this life’—it is via death which is diffusion of individual identity into the universe and later remergence in higher form that ties together the individuals in joint memory. From death to life may be great in physical time but short in conscious time. Other individuals just live and die, not living in a path, until, in some future reemergence, they are aroused to a path. The direct and the indirect, the path and the non-path are not essentially distinct.

The Ways are The Ways of tradition, enhanced by living experiment and reason.

Reason includes all modes knowing, direct knowledge of the world (understanding) and indirect knowledge by inferring; it includes the knowing associated with and that drives choice and aims in action. This concept of reason recognizes distinctions and unities in the world and knowing. Its process is reflexive—interactive among all modes; but in the end it seeks directness and seeing the truth where we are.

Tradition includes Yoga and the western ways of discovery and exploration—science, technology, and more.

Here is an outline of path templates.

Everyday—Rise, review, realize, yoga-exercise-share, exploration, evening renewal and community, and sleep.

Universal—Pure Being and community, Ideas, Becoming (nature with psyche, civilization and society, artifact, universal and unknown), and Universal Being.

The resources have demonstrations of claims, elaborations of the ideas and details for paths.

A field manual of the essential way—has the above, especially details of the paths.

A brief version of The Way—has greater detail than the field manual; emphasizes the ideas.

A complete narrative of The Way—the most complete version with motive, explanation, foundation, application, and more. This version is in process—see resources for writing and planning the way for a rough guide.

A system of human knowledge—a knowledge resource. Peliminary explanation—that the universe is the realization of the greatest possibility is named the fundamental principle of metaphysics (FP). The fundamental principle is the basis of a metaphysics that is perfect in its representation of an abstract of the universe which is shown to be ultimate (as the greatest). This demonstrated metaphysics is, in this sense an ideal metaphysics (note that it is constructed by demonstration rather than argued on limited grounds or intuition). About the system of knowledge—it is a system constructed from the ideal metaphysics as a framework for (valid) cumulative human knowledge to the very present day.

The dimensions of experience—experience is conscious awareness in all its forms. This essay shows that there is a sense in which sentient beings do not transcend their experience but yet there is objective knowledge of two kinds: ideal by abstraction and so objective in the sense of perfect faithfulness and pragmatic as discovered in experience and codified, say, in science which is objective for some purposes. The analysis of experience shows (i) these two modes of knowledge are—may be seen as—a single system named the perfect metaphysics or just the metaphysics that is perfect according to dual ideal-pragmatic criteria (the pragmatic being ideal with regard to realization), (ii) how it is that experience is the place and way of realization—inner through experience itself and outer via the application of the experiential as in science, reason, value which is also emotive, and technology, and (iii) elements of experience and, correspondingly, pure and pragmatic dimensions of the world that are useful in developing the system of human knowledge and in negotiating the real and in realization.

Lessons for The Way of being—addresses anticipated difficulties of motivation and understanding The Way. Attention is given to (i) the issue that the metaphysics of The Way is essentially new and that it does not fall within a continuum defined by our common paradigms, secular and transecular (ii) showing consistency with what is valid empirically, logically, and symbolically) in the paradigms, (iii) various doubts and problems of understanding, and (iv) the issues of meaning—particularly the use of common ordinary and philosophical terms with new meaning, that such new meaning is necessary since the metaphysics goes beyond the putative boundaries of the known, and that meaning lies in the collection of concepts as a system and not just in the concepts as a mere collection.