A Vision Fulfilled
Humanity is at a threshold, unprecedented in its stake as well as in its scope. The world faces a host of critical problems, the complexity of which is such that, as Einstein said, they cannot be solved at the level of thinking at which they were initially created. Yet, it appears that political and religious leaders keep on approaching today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. In truth, today’s problem can really be solved only by tomorrow’s solution. And to reach tomorrow’s solution means that we envisage a brand new tomorrow in which today’s problems are essentially absent. That tomorrow is the solution. To create that tomorrow is the resolution. To engage in the creation of that tomorrow is what it means to be on the side of the solution.
However, a tomorrow in which today’s problems do not exist does not mean a tomorrow in which no problems exist. Life is problematic. Problems are an essential element of life. We may long for an utopian state of life, “heaven,” wherein no problems exist at all, but, in point of fact, heaven without evolutionary tension is tantamount to hell. Problems are a manifestation of evolutionary tension inherent in life. Heaven is not a static cloister wherein problems never arise but a dynamic field wherein we consciously create new problems as an expression of our creative vision and evolutionary passion.
The term “problem” stems from the Greek word proballein and the Latin word probl_ma, which mean “to throw before.” A problem is something thrown before us in our path, which we must overcome and prevail over in order to move forward. If we had no intention to proceed on our path, if we had no commitment to our path, nothing thrown before us would become a problem. A problem arises because we have a commitment. And the character of our commitment determines the character of our problem.
Making a commitment means to intentionally create a future in thought, action, and actuality. The act of making a commitment sets a course of action that results in the actualization of a future which would not otherwise have come to pass. Commitment is the whole, integrated, creative thought-in-action by which we engage and partake in the creation of a new future.
The nature of commitment is such that the future we envision in our commitment is discontinuous with the present. This discontinuity, the differential gap existing between the present and the future, creates an evolutionary tension in and from which problems arise. Thus, to solve problems implies to eliminate this gap by bringing the envisioned future ever closer to the realized present until the gap entirely disappears. If the envisioned future were not discontinuous with the present, problems would not arise. But it would be a world without change, without evolutionary tension, which could serve as a good definition of hell.
Therefore, the fact that problems abound in the world is essentially good. It is a sign that we are at least not in hell. What is not so good is the fact that people are addicted to having problems so that they can remain victims thereof and continue to suffer therefrom. Problems are not thrown before us so that we can continue to victimize and preoccupy ourselves with the same old issues. We create problems out of evolutionary tension so as to fulfill our evolutionary commitment by solving them. But people continue to preoccupy and victimize themselves with the same old problems. In fact, there are people who even think, albeit unconsciously, their survival or success depends on the perpetuation of the present problems.
To approach today’s problem with yesterday’s solution is to be reactive. It is a sure way to perpetuate today’s problem. What appears to be today’s problem is in truth yesterday’s problem in new disguise. This repetitive cycle of problem-solution-problem-solution is a vicious circle in which nothing is really solved or changed. This is what the Buddhists call samsara—the endless repetition of the same old karma, a thought-pattern showing up in and as action, which is in reality a reaction to and from one’s past thought-action. Most of today’s problem-solution vicious circles are nothing more than the recycling of humanity’s old collective karma.
In contrast, to approach today’s problem with tomorrow’s solution is what it means to be responsible. Responsibility means the “ability” to “promise (spond) anew (re).” Responsibility implies the ability to bring forth a new future as a commitment through the act of promising anew. Responsibility requires the ability to approach today’s problem with tomorrow’s solution. But how can we approach today’s problem with tomorrow’s solution? The answer is “by inventing a new problem that renders today’s problems obsolete or irrelevant.” This new problem needs to be an authentic expression of evolutionary tension—of our creative vision and evolutionary passion.
One transformative issue that will engender a powerful evolutionary tension and render many of today’s problems nonessential is the challenge of extinguishing humanity’s chronic addiction to the sense of guilt with which the human race consciousness is inflamed. Many of the problems that plague the world today would simply dissolve if we could collectively liberate ourselves from guilt, because in the final analysis, those problems are diverse forms of self-punishment arising from a common sense of guilt. One type of people tends to punish themselves with various kinds of disease, misery, and suffering, while the other type tends to punish others through myriad forms of physical and psychological violence. The former introject guilt unto the self, while the latter project it unto others.1
Evil is the word “live” spelled backward. Evil thus signifies the anti-evolutionary force that counters the evolutionary movement of life. Guilt is the prime weapon of evil. Guilt is the psychic poison poured into the soil of the human race consciousness to prevent the seed of life from growing and evolving freely. The problems that are created by the guilt-laden consciousness can never be solved by the same guilt-laden consciousness but only by a guilt-free consciousness. In fact, the guilt-laden consciousness creates those problems in the first place as solutions to the problems of profound and persistent pain arising from the sense of guilt. Today we have sufficient resources and technological know-how to eliminate poverty and starvation. Today we have really no reason to continue violence and war. That is, except for our vested interest, arising from guilt, in keeping these problems in place as forms of punishment of self and others.
Humankind without guilt-laden consciousness would be new humankind. A world without guilt-caused problems would be a new world. Now let us imagine a world in which humanity is completely free from guilt. It will be a world wherein guilt-based punishment is wholly absent and wherein love-based giving prevails instead of guilt-based taking. When we become free of guilt, the law of substitution will work to fill the space voided by the painful feeling of guilt. What will fill that space is the ecstatic emotion of love, which is life’s evolutionary thrust for optimal unity. Then, our life will become a luminous evolutionary process—a delightful process of unfoldment and transformation in and of consciousness. In this process of evolution and transformation, we will intentionally create and consciously transcend problems that are the expressions of our evolutionary passion and creative vision.
Therefore, we should not be beguiled by the utter complexities and difficulties of problems that appear to confront humankind. Most, if not all, problems are the devolutionary means of our own making designed to punish ourselves and others in the perpetual recycling of our guilty consciousness. The real problem is our slavery to guilt. War, poverty, and corruption—we can solve and resolve them all if we stop repeating our guilt-laden karma. We must know that we have the power to liberate ourselves from this slavery to guilt. If we shift our fundamental intention from that of assuagement of guilt to that of freedom from guilt, we will be able to see aright the reality and truth of the problems of the world. War, poverty, and corruption are not real problems but reactive, attempted solutions to the real problem of the pain of guilt. Punishment can never be a real solution. Freedom is.
Evolution is an open-ended process of learning. Evolution is the only real and legitimate purpose of life. We human beings are here on earth to evolve. To live our lives in integrity with life’s creative vision and evolutionary thrust for optimization is to live in heaven on earth. In heaven, problems that we cast before us serve as guiding themes of our evolutionary possibilities and cosmic destinies. This is the reason that I do not directly deal with the visible, seemingly real problems but with the invisible, actually real problems of life and the world. In order to be truly effective in solving problems, we must deal not with effects but with cause. In order to be truly effective we must be causative.
Perennial philosophy and contemporary physics both support that reality is inversely proportionate to sensibility. The more real an existent is the less sensible it becomes. Reality or noumenon is not sensible, while appearance or phenomenon is. Reality is cause and appearance is effect. Therefore, we will have a far greater probability of changing the world of appearance if we deal directly with reality behind and beyond appearance. And when we deal directly with reality, we realize that reality as such is heaven and hell only appears to be. We realize that we have the power to manifest reality in its full glory and beauty in and as the world of appearance and thereby to transform it into heaven on earth.
Therefore, my vision, in short, is to manifest heaven on earth by living in and from heaven every day of my life—heaven that is the eternal reality dynamically existing as the ever-present origin of evolutionary vision and creative passion. This heaven is that future to the creation of which I am committed. And that future is in truth eternally present, here and now. When there are more creative individuals who can live the future in the present, then we can together bring back the future to the present.
Strategic Vision
Authentic vision is not that which we have but that which we are. Authentic vision defines who we are in the world and for the world. Therefore, my vision, of manifesting heaven on earth, is the kosmic destiny that defines my self and the moral principle that guides my action. Now what is required next is the formulation of a strategic vision that will ground my action.
Around 1989, insights and observations throughout my youth led me to the following conclusions:
1. Thinking as an authentic spiritual activity leads the individual to the realm of consciousness beyond thought, which realm is at once the source of spiritual enlightenment and of creative thinking.
2. Authentic thinking is a rarity in the world. Humanity at large does not really think and does not really know what it means to think. The relative absence of authentic thinking is a fundamental human condition resulting in misery and suffering. Therefore, if we can bring forth a culture of authentic thinking, we will then be able to bring about transformations in the world.
3. If one were to pursue the path of transformation through authentic thinking, one should not be a “guru” who, as an external authority, would dispense metaphysical wisdom to his “followers.” Rather, one should commit oneself to facilitating transformations in human consciousness through provoking authentic thinking—by asking questions that can cause breakthroughs at the foundation of what it means to think and to be.
4. If one were to pursue the path of transformation through authentic thinking, one’s path would be a path less traveled, for authentic thinking or authentic transformation is rare precisely because the common, ego-based human nature is such that people neither want to think nor want to do what it takes to cause transformation.
Starting from these four initial premises, I developed a fourfold strategic vision as a way of manifesting my eternal vision.
1. Developing a global culture of authentic thinking
Authentic thinking is my English rendering of kami-kaeru, the ancient Japanese word that, as kamgaeru in modern usage, came to mean “to think.” “Kami” has three basic meanings:
(1) the union of the male and the female (symbolizing creation); (2) the body of light (symbolizing divine intelligence); (3) the invisible or the unmanifest (symbolizing the ground of being). “Kaeru” means “to return.” Therefore, kami-kaeru means “to return to kami, the ground of being and the divine intelligence, and then to return from kami, the unmanifest, back to the manifest world through the act of creation.”
Authentic thinking is a spiritual activity in which we express our deep intelligence and creative potential. Authentic thinking consists of a continuous complementary movement of meditation and creation. In the meditation phase, we return to our interior spiritual base, kami, while in the creation phase, we return to the exterior world of appearance with new knowing and inspiration. This two-way motion of meditation and creation is in essence how geniuses think in their creative fields. Virtually every human being has the potential capacity to think in this way. Unfortunately, however, the traditional educational systems more often than not “de-geniusize” people. Through the promotion of authentic thinking, we can contribute to the effort to “re-geniusize” people.
What people usually think thinking is, is what I call “information shuffling.” It is the mental process of arranging and rearranging acquired information according to an established organizing principle. It is a mechanical process in which no real creativity is involved. Nothing is wrong with information shuffling in itself. We need this skill to function in this world. But if information shuffling is all there is to thinking, we are grossly underutilizing our intelligence and creative potential.
When we engage in authentic thinking, we hold and uphold the whole (kami) in our consciousness, and here the whole includes the dimensions of the unknown. In authentic thinking, we hold and uphold the unknown within our consciousness so that we become enabled to think the unthinkable. This conscious holding and upholding of the unknown opens a space for new realizations to arise, which in turn opens new possibilities for transformation. For, transformation occurs always with the transfusion of the new, never with the re-translation or re-shuffling of the old. Authentic thinking thus leads to transformation. The two-way complementary motion of meditation and creation that constitutes authentic thinking is the evolutionary engine that powers human transformation.
2. Transformation of the ideosphere—the metaphysical environment of ideas and ideation—from the concentric configuration of the past to the omnicentric configuration of the future
The ideosphere designates the invisible, metaphysical sphere of ideas and ideation in contrast with the geosphere and the biosphere, which are both physical and visible. In accordance with the previously stated ontological inverse law that reality is inversely proportionate to sensibility, the ideosphere is more real than the geosphere or the biosphere which is sensible. The ideosphere is clearly the most immediate environment there is because it exists without a boundary between the inside and the outside. It penetrates our mind and infiltrates our consciousness. Therefore, it has a powerful influence upon our thought and action.
Most people do not exercise their capacity for thinking. Most people do not really think. Instead, they are being thought. They are being thought by the beliefs and the thought-patterns that have conditioned and acculturated their mind. They are being thought by their ideospheric environment. And when people do not think, they tend to become thoughtless and behave thoughtlessly. Thoughtlessness eventually leads to the breakdown of the moral fiber of a society and civilization. Therefore, it is critically important that we transform the ideosphere so that people become authentic thinkers.
Throughout history the configuration of the ideosphere has remained concentric with external authorities at the center surrounded by circles of believers and followers, wherein the authority did the thinking for the followers. Even today, in the scientifically and technologically advanced postmodern Western society, our educational system is primarily designed to produce educationally-specialized, intellectually-proficient, and professionally-marketable non-thinking adults who are content to accept prevailing beliefs and to follow external authorities rather than take responsibility to really think and question. For, authentic thinking requires self-authorship, which in turn requires genuine self-knowledge about which our education is silent. Thus, the philosopher Martin Heidegger states: “The most thought-provoking thing in this most thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
Nevertheless, the evolutionary thrust for optimization inexorably propels our individual and collective transformation toward an unprecedented height of culture and civilization. The new ideospheric configuration consistent with this evolutionary thrust is omnicentric. The omnicentric configuration consists of intellectually and spiritually sovereign individuals who are autonomous yet interconnected centers of the ideosphere. Those sovereign individuals are self-authorities in the matter of thinking, knowing, and action. They will be the generators of their own thoughts and the originators of their own ideas, while their thought, knowledge, and action will synergetically co-develop throughout the omnicentric configuration of the evolving ideosphere. The Information-Communications Revolution underway with the omnipresent Internet is simultaneously the manifestation of and the apparatus for this new omnicentric configuration.
Thus the transformation of the ideosphere does not primarily mean the propagation of any particular set of ideas. Rather, it is the transformation of the configuration of the ideosphere itself from concentricity to omnicentricity wherein autonomous individuals engage in authentic thinking in synergy with others. In this respect, various dialogue projects taking place today in the forefront of societal evolution are vitally important, because dialogue processes directly influence the vortical movement of the ideosphere. The ideosphere is the global matrix of meaning and value through interaction with which people derive their own meanings and values. In and through dialogue, we interact within this dynamic field of ideation and thereby participate in the generation, movement, and transformation of the ecology of ideation itself.
Humanity thus far has chiefly developed the “monological mind,” and what people think is dialogue is all too often only a two-way monologue, not an authentic dialogue. Through engaging in the dialogue process, we will learn to develop a “dialogical mind” beyond our monological mindset. The monological mind thinks and can only think through the filter of a single and mono-logical paradigm or structure of interpretation. It interprets, or tries to interpret, everything through a single model it has adopted. It is not capable of understanding different viewpoints in their own terms but only in its own terms. On the other hand, the hallmark of the dialogical mind is its capacity to understand different viewpoints in their own terms and to hold the unknown within its purview.
The development of the dialogical mind is essential for the development of an omnicentric ideosphere. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of today’s and tomorrow’s leaders is to engage people in the dialogue process. Authentic leaders of today and tomorrow must not think for others but must think with them for the dialogical evolution of the ideosphere.
3. Creation of a planetary culture of responsibility, authenticity, integrity, and wholeness in the context of developing a new principle of social organization: Alignment Beyond Agreement
Leaders who are capable of dialoguing with others are catalysts for the generation of the culture of alignment. Alignment is congruence of intention and commitment, while agreement is congruence of opinion and belief. Alignment is the organizational principle of the omnicentric ideosphere, whereas agreement is that of the concentric ideosphere. True democracy is possible only through alignment within an omnicentric ideospheric environment.
In the omnicentric environment, unity is attained as alignment of intention, while diversity of individual thought is appreciated, acknowledged, and encouraged. In the concentric environment, unity is attained as agreement of opinion, while diversity of individual view is depreciated, suppressed, or discouraged. While omnicentric alignment of intention requires allegiance to the self-authority of the individual, concentric agreement of opinion requires allegiance to a particular external authority that is the opinion generator and promoter. While unity through alignment is self-sustainable, unity through agreement is not; for unity attained through agreement sooner or later disintegrates into disunity, conflict, and factionalization. Intention, when it comes from individuals’ authentic self, originates in the deepest of the deep of common humanity or human-unity. For this reason, unity attained as alignment of intention is sustainable. Therefore, in order to make a dialogue succeed, establishment of alignment is an essential precondition.2
The culture of alignment beyond agreement will develop concomitantly with the culture of wholeness, integrity, authenticity, and responsibility, because the consciousness that is aligned is the consciousness that has the awareness of and the capacity for wholeness, integrity, authenticity, and responsibility. As the culture of alignment is integral with the culture of authentic thinking and the omnicentric ideosphere, the triune development of authentic thinking, alignment, and omnicentricity will simultaneously require and engender the culture of wholeness, integrity, authenticity, and responsibility.
4. Ongoing evolution of human consciousness
The purpose of human life is self-realization. The evolutionary nature of the human being is such that self-realization, if authentic, requires ongoing self-transcendence. Thus, authentic self-realization is self-realization through self-transcendence, that is, self-transformation. The process of self-transformation is tantamount to the evolution of human consciousness. Therefore, the evolutionary possibilities of human consciousness are the same as the transformational possibilities of self-realization. The purpose of human life is self-realization precisely because the intrinsic vector of human consciousness is in the direction of evolution.
The evolution of consciousness has two distinct but integral aspects: (1) the unfoldment of increasingly more holistic modes of consciousness; (2) the creative development of higher orders of organization and greater integrations of complexity within consciousness.
In the unfolding process of consciousness there are three phases. The first phase is the unfoldment of the objective mode of consciousness in which consciousness is aware of an object within its purview but not aware of the self, the subject of awareness itself. In this phase, consciousness is normally in a state of self-entanglement with objects, which leads to the introjection into or superposition upon the self of qualities that properly belong only to the objects of consciousness but not to consciousness itself.
In the first phase, consciousness learns to objectify itself. Therefore, when we self-reflect, the self that is being reflected is not the self that is reflecting but it is the objectified self that is being projected onto the objective field of consciousness with qualities of an object that are introjected into it. The objectified self, or the object-self, assumes the role of the subject-self, and when it does, it becomes the ego. The ego is the object-self acting as the subject-self. The ego is the “me” acting also as the “I,” which exists by virtue of its being separate and different from other egos. Confined only within the objective mode of consciousness, without the awareness of the other two modes of consciousness, the majority of humanity exists as an ego separate from other egos. Human history thus far has largely been the result of multitudinous “egological movements.” If we want to change the course of history, we must therefore stop repeating this egological movement. We must evolve beyond the ego by unfolding the other two modes of consciousness.
The second phase is the unfoldment of the subjective mode of consciousness in which consciousness is conscious of itself and the self is realized as identical with the content of consciousness. In this mode of consciousness, the subject-self becomes conscious of itself without objectifying itself. This is analogous to light shining upon itself without having any objects upon which to shine. The subject-self knows itself by being itself. The content of consciousness in this phase is the inverse of the content of the first phase. All objects in the first phase are seen as voids within a suprasensuous continuum. What appears in the first phase to be substantial becomes insubstantial in the second phase and vice versa. Hence the ontological inverse law: Reality or substantiality is inversely proportionate to appearance or sensibility. Buddhism uses the term _uny_ta to describe this suprasensuous plenum that appears insubstantial to the ordinary objective mode of consciousness but is substantial to the awakened subjective mode of consciousness. This unfolding of pure subjectivity is nirv_na in which reality beyond appearance is known.
The third phase is the transcendent phase in which even the state of nirv_na is transcended. The mode of consciousness in this phase is nondual and transcendent of the bimodality or duality of the objective and the subjective. The transcending of nirv_na signifies the final annulment of all claims of the existence of a self. Therefore, self-realization in this phase implies absolute self-transcendence in which the self as such is transcended. Both consciousness as object and consciousness as subject are annulled, and there remains pristine consciousness-without-an-object-and-without-a-subject, which comprehends both the objective and subjective modes as pure potentialities. This is the mode of consciousness known as mah_parinirv_na in Buddhism.
There are many educated people who deny the existence of such a mode of consciousness as nirv_na or mah_parinirvana, but an open-minded study of the spiritual philosophic literatures of the world would compel an intelligent researcher to affirm the evolutionary occurrences of these two modes throughout human history. The Varieties of Religious Experience by the philosopher-psychologist William James (who was not a mystic) and Cosmic Consciousness by the psychiatrist Richard Bucke (who was a mystic) are two of the most well-read classics in this field. Further, the contemporary philosopher-scholar Ken Wilber in his work cogently demonstrates the existence of higher states and stages of consciousness. However, in point of fact, there is no other way to authentically and legitimately prove the validity of the existence of the advanced modes of consciousness than to actually unfold and develop into them. The unfoldment of the advanced modes is the evolutionary possibility that summons humanity on its inner search. To fulfill this possibility opens a way for humanity to collectively ascend to the stage of the post-egoic and trans-egoic evolution.
The first phase of unfoldment is only the necessary but not the sufficient condition of being fully human. Only when we enter the second phase of unfoldment do we attain the necessary and sufficient condition of being fully human. For, only when we become conscious of our subject-self without objectification, do we realize our authentic self and fulfill the Socratic injunction, “Know thyself.” And until we realize our authentic self, we remain bound to the state of existential nescience and egological predicaments, no matter how well-developed and “brilliant” we may be in the objective mode of consciousness.
The third transcendental phase of unfoldment belongs to the realm of transhumanism.
Here we become conscious of the entire field of consciousness, comprising the objective, subjective, and transcendental dimensions. To this transhumanistic whole-field consciousness, evolution is synonymous with creation. We now partake in the creation of an evolutionary process and in the evolution of the field of evolution itself. If conscious evolution, in which we are conscious of the phenomena and principles of evolution, is the “evolution to the second power,” the participation in the evolution of the field of evolution itself is the “evolution to the third power,” a possibility indeed of a kosmic proportion.
In the evolution to the third power, the “evolution to the first power,” which is the natural evolutionary trend of developing increasingly higher orders and greater complexities, becomes a conscious, creative, and participatory developmental process. We become creatively engaged in the development of higher orders of organization and greater integrations of complexity within the objective field of consciousness, which is cognitively and energetically intensified by the compound impact of the integration of all three modes of consciousness.
Therefore, to be born human is to be born into the possibilities of being fully human and transhuman—of transcending the limit of the relative, objective mode of human consciousness. Hence, our kosmic journey of evolution continues. Evolutionarily we are not yet done with ourselves. The possibility that inheres in our evolution is indeed infinite. For, our evolutionary journey is a transfinite journey which we take from the finite toward the infinite within the infinite.
A Vision Fulfilled
A new world requires the creation of a new reality beyond the mere creation of a new worldview. A new reality is the experience of a new tomorrow, which arises from the ever-present origin that underlies the whole course of evolution. The ever-present origin, or the eternal ground of being, is also the ever-present horizon of tomorrow. Though no new reality that we create in time is ever the final reality, every day we are given the opportunity to experience a new tomorrow, a new reality, that will lead to the creation of a new world.
We are shaped not only by yesterday and today but also by tomorrow. What kind of tomorrow we behold shapes us even more powerfully and fundamentally than what kind of yesterday or today we hold. If we were to miss the opportunity to behold a new tomorrow, we would only be holding an old yesterday, and thereby repeating the same in the perpetual recycling of our old karma. Indeed it is only when we can taste the eternal that we can also taste a new tomorrow, and the opportunity to taste the eternal is ever present, bestowed on us here and now.
A new tomorrow, a new reality, is enfolded within the eternal reality that is the ground of our being and the ever-present origin of our evolution. A new reality is the eternal reality unfolding in time through the dynamic two-way motion of returning (kaeru) to and back from the ever-present origin (kami). Thus, it is authentic thinking (kamikaeru) through which we can experience a new tomorrow and presence a new reality.
As Helen Keller said, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing.” The silent beckoning of the unknown that calls me to look within and to create without, or to return to the origin and to return back to the world, is an invitation to a life that is a daring adventure. This beckoning is also a voice of compassion to arouse in me wisdom so that I can be of service in arousing wisdom, instead of allowing folly, in the hearts and the souls of my fellow humans in the unending journey of our evolution. This is my ultimate vision. It is also my sacred pledge to the divinity within and without, which my Japanese ancestors called Kami. And in Kami my vision is fulfilled.
Notes:
1. For more complete exposition on the issue of guilt, please read “The Project Beauty and Freedom from Fear and Guilt.” VIA Vol 2 No 3/4. 2004.
2. For more complete exposition on the issue of Alignment Beyond Agreement, please read “Alignment Beyond Agreement.” VIA Vol 1 No 4. 2003.