Br3 FACING YOURSELF
For one person supraconsciously to face itself is essentially the same as all persons facing themselves.
Humantrue destiny is in the hands, not of the organisation but of the individual. It cannot be achieved by authority imposing some sort of common order on a multitude of disparate individuals. It must be a matter of all individuals discovering in themselves the same humantruth which binds them all in common.
Excepting for the supraconscious ones - whoever and wherever they may be - all human selves are presently misplaced. They are going about according to wrong or incomplete rules, instructions and directions. They are not living according to the guidance of their central faculty - their postconscious minds. If all were supraconscious, then all would be in agreement as to the essential practical matters of life. As it is, people are largely in disagreement. Why?
People are in disagreement because their wilful selves are confined to the conscious sphere, firmly attached to their particular group of pressures, influences and opinions. If the world is to be put right all people need to reach agreement in humantruth, but they shall not do so unless and until they themselves discover that truth and change their minds voluntarily. They cannot be made to abandon their present conditioning of mind because, to them, that conditioned state represents truth and thus, understandably as long as they lack supraconsciousness, they shall refute as false anything they may be told to the contrary, however true.
The most formidable obstacle to the humantrue ideal being realised is our present concept of self. We regard the self as our personal identity in relation to current reality, according to the status and substance given by the Machine, and according to our unique personality given not only by our genetic character and temperament but also as of right by our chosen attitudes and constructions of conscious mind. The intelligent human race cannot afford to go on indulging this presently held unintelligent concept of self. Our personal identity is not the focal point of our conscious mind. Our personal identity is the true understanding of our postconscious mind which invests the self, the focal point of consciousness, with humantrue awareness and understanding.
Part of the resistance to the idea of world change comes from the widespread belief that outward reality cannot be changed. That it is not our responsibility. That our individual responsibility is limited to ourselves. That our reality is not a state of which we are an integral part but something which is imposed upon us and which we have to deal with as best we can.
The supraconscious individual envisages a completely transformed society, a society in which the humantrue ideal is a reality, not dubbed a Utopian dream by Machine-society as it is at present. In that ideal reality the 'outward' self, in its humantrue relationship with the whole world and in its responsibilities to the rest of the human race, would be represented by the conscious self, of course, but not by the self limited to the conscious sphere of Machine reality. It would be represented by the conscious self submitted to and under the guidance of the individual's postconscious mind, ie by the supraconscious self.
The title of this piece is not quite accurate in that we cannot face ourselves, strictly speaking, because we are our selves. But we can face the prejudices, influences and opinions that form our selves and hold them up to the scrutinity of our own postconscious minds or, in other words, deeply and critically doubt, question and criticise them in the light of truth and without regard to false Machine interests. Even this is hard to do because the self normally identifies with the mind-sets that go to form it. The self is required voluntarily to adopt a powerful construction of mind dedicated to that critical doubting, questioning and criticising which, if continually raised, must attract the attention of the independent postconscious mind which shall then make known to consciousness its true judgement. By this process of supraconscious intellation the false prejuduces, influences and opinions shall be gradually dismissed and replaced by humantruth. Humantruth shall prevail because it stands up to any amount of critical doubt, questioning and criticism and emerges honestly unscathed. This is the process, natural to any intellectual species, which shall bring the human species to itself.
The foregoing is really a shattering truth! Nobody yet admits this blinding truth because recognised human thinking goes on in the conscious mind. The conscious is our lesser mind, yet the whole of human reality is contained in its sphere. That's why our reality is false. How is it that the human race, given its huge capacity for intelligence, can possibly accept and tolerate so false a reality?
Whole humantruth is the great point at issue. The supraconscious understanding (that is to say the understanding of a person's postconscious mind shared by his or her conscious self) is that the postconscious mind's function is humantruth - this is the only possible logical function of a faculty of the utmost reasoning-power. Since the happiness of any creature lies in fulfilling its every faculty, then the optimum happiness of humanity lies in the fulfilment of the postconscious, i.e. of humantruth.
The reason for this is that human happiness depends on agreement and COOPERATION, and the only purely moral, and indeed possible basis for agreement and cooperation amongst an intelligent species is absolute truth. Knowing that disagreement and non-cooperation is destructive, we must also recognise that anything less than absolute truth, i.e. part-truth, or relative truth, is futile.
The postconscious mind is almost universally ignored, excepting for its background moral influence by way of conscience, because absolute truth has no place in existing reality. In our present reality the limited conscious mind rules, and it permits endless differences of opinion and belief, and continual conflict between them. The conscious also admits the instinctive principle of competitive self-interest, which makes no sense to full intelligence.
The world is run by conscious minds. They're resistant to truth because they don't listen to their own postconscious minds. They are engrossed in a spurious version of actuality - humanity's existing false reality. All human life, all worldly affairs, presently revolve round this false reality. Whatever meaning peoples' lives have is relative to this false reality.
Take the case of children. At birth every human child is equipped with genes, instincts, a conscious mind and a postconscious. The child is on the threshold of life. Ideally, in absolutely the right circumstances, that child's development would be as it should be - a matter of true fulfilment. Such true fulfilment is what the child, every child, is 'designed and built' for. But the child is not in absolutely the right circumstances - very far from it.
The child is faced with the wrong reality. It finds itself in circumstances which are not conducive but which require that it compromises its true nature and deliberately adjusts to a false world. The child has little or no say in the matter because, whilst it is soon brought to understand simple issues of right and wrong, it doesn't yet know the subtle and complex differences between true and false, between abstract ideals and actuality. By the time the child becomes a person who understands those subtle and complex differences, if it ever does, it shall already be trapped in the mechanics of false reality, just as its parents were.
The child is equipped with the desire and ability to learn. Reared by parents embroiled in false reality, it is then subjected to formal education which is geared to the same reality, past, present and future. If the child capitulates to existing reality it will probably succeed in worldly terms, but it will close itself off from any likelihood of discovering humantruth. If the child determines on following its postconscious, however, and persistently and honestly seeks to discover humantruth, it might end up an eccentric failure in the eyes of the present world which does not recognise humantruth but it may equally well end up playing a vital part in the realisation of humantruth. In any case, regardless of the outcome, to be supraconscious is ultimately the most fulfilling and satisfying thing a human being can do.
The existing world picture hardly presents a simple overall example of good living for children to follow. The home is their retreat and launch-pad into the wide world, but it is invaded by television, radio, CD-players and computer games. Parents are in the best position, at home, to influence children, but they are distracted by their own struggles to cope with outside reality. Often disunited, they may also be distracted by battles with each other. Concerning their childrens' future, while perhaps dreaming of ideal perfection they cynically give way to the belief that there is no escape from hard reality and, like the schools, prepare their children to face that reality. Nowadays parents are generally resigned to the fact that otherwise, in their free time, the children shall devise their own life-style. Teenagers wander their own wilful way because they are unable or unwilling to see other more compelling ways to follow, so, with the added force of cool and peer-pressure, they allow themselves to be emotionally guided by instinct, rather than intellect.
Nobody is satisfied with this situation. We would all like an ideal solution. I repeat, and your own postconscious will agree - humantruth provides the ideal solution, also the basis for agreement which is vital to adopting that solution and getting it to work. We are so entangled in the concepts, principles and practical affairs of the present human reality as to make escape seem impossible. But escape shall be possible when we see this truth of ours, disentangle ourselves, reach agreement, and resolve to put the ideal alternative in place. We shall advance towards the ideal while continuing along our present ways, as humanely as possible, fully aware that they are the wrong ways. By intellating to our utmost we shall eventually reach the point where our true reasoning is irresistable, and wholesale change is undeniable.
List of Branch articles, in no particular reading sequence:
PREVIOUS :1. The Nature and State of the Human Race: 2 : Truth - No-Go Area :
CURRENT : 3. Facing Yourself:
REMAINING : 4. Explaining the Mind : 5. Moral Mind : 6. Great Men : 7. Comment Pinker : 8. The Way We Think : 9. Sanity for Humanity : 10. Evolution of Mind : 11. Free Thinker View : 12. Reality : 13. Understanding Consciousness : 14. Bottom Line : 15. Brain-Mind Relations: 16. Open Letter to Philosophers : 17. The Mind and Philosophy : 18. Self Twixt 2 Minds: 19. The Holographic Dimension:20. Transhumanism Transcended : 21. Mind, Will and Self
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