The Wrong Reality. PartVIII - Further Illumination, Chapter 50 How to Humanise Reality continued

The following Figure 14b illustrates the existing human situation.

In existing reality our affairs and communications (A) are almost entirely confined to the conscious arena. Individual internal dialogue between postconscious and conscious is severely limited to occasional intuition, which is not normally regarded as reliable or significant. There can be no direct contact between individual postconscious minds, only indirect understanding which, though vital, is presently almost non-existant.

There is, of course, an additional subconscious instinctive pathway (C) which is supposed to be subservient to (A) but which, in the virtual absence of (B), presently exercises undue influence - as illustrated by the following Figure 14c.

Figure 14c illustrates the reason why (A), the conscious arena,is presently universally preferred. It is backed up by ancient instinctive emotion and more recent history. It is confirmed on all sides by the evident facts and bases for argument that actually exist and exert their pressure on us. The potential knowing of (B), on the other hand, does not prevail in the world and, consequently, is ignored, denied, or suppressed. The hope for humanity lies in the fact that human fulfilment is equivalent to postconscious knowing, which would lead inevitably to realisation of humantruth, represented by Figure 14d.

Figure 14d illustrates a human world, whose plan has been universally agreed, which is collectively sustained by human individuals whose nature is, supraconsciously and responsibly, to cooperate externally according to the inner cooperation of their every mental faculty under the guidance of the common truth of their postconscious minds.

The present human dilemma is that we are stuck in the conscious sphere of thought, within the conscious arena of reality, so that our activities threaten to retard us permanently, or to destroy us. The question is how to humanise reality. Our fundamental problem lies in the difficulty of escaping from or cutting a way through our conscious conditioning in order to discover, and attain to, a new supraconscious awareness. This difficulty is illustrated by Figure 14e.

Figure 14e (with which the remainder of this chapter is directly concerned) uses hypothetical individuals X and Y, Y to represent humanity as it now exists and X to represent humanith as it truly ought to be. Figure 14e illustrates the present obstacles, at the level of the human mind - (1) to individual Y breaking through internal bars to awareness and becoming another X, ie supraconscious, and (2) to individual X establishing such meaningful communication with Y as will assist such a breakthrough. Within individuals Y, presently the great majority, the postconscious mind is contained by a barrier. Apart from some infiltration into consciousness by way of intuition or conscience, and intake of information from the conscious world, this barrier keeps the postconscious from its own conscious mind's concept of self and worldly reality, and from developing strong links of humantrue understanding with other postconscious minds.

There is no direct pathway between postconscious minds, only the possibility of mutually shared knowing. This means that the only possible direct communication between X and Y is the pathway D - from X, onto B, along D, onto A, and thence to Y. Having reached Y, which has no direct contact with its ownpostconscious, X's communication is made available to Y's postconscious, indirectly and with or without conscious intention, but has to cut across the contrary currents of convention, and may have to pierce the unwilling barrier of conscious will in order to do so, a barrier that will usually prevent any true response from emerging in any case. Even before reaching Y, the message from X has had to pass along pathway A, as we have seen, which is unsympathetic because it was formed by the concepts and facts of the Machine in order to carry the commerce of existing reality. Of course, an individual Y, attempting to contradict and refute X's message, faces similar difficulties of communication in reverse.

Individual Y, however, when facing or addressing an X, has the advantage of being in tune with the reality, accepted by millions of other Y's, that actually overwhelmingly exists. Also Y, apart from the pricking of conscience, is not subject to the contradiction of his or her postconscious. But the truth is that Y's thinking and reality are false. Any individual X, when addressing a Y, has the disadvantage that in order to be understood he or she has to use the reasoning and language of existing reality. That reasoning and language is unsuitable to X, not only because he or she rejects existing reality but also because this reality evolved out of the development of the Machine and is thus inappropriate to the description of an alternative reality entirely different from the Machine. Nevertheless, the postconscious mind's message, in this case using X as its communicator, has the advantage that it is humantrue. Provided that the majority do begin to open to their postconscious minds, that advantage should be decisive in persuading them to reverse their present orientation.

Suppose that Y, as well as X, is dedicated to discovering truth, so that both believe that they are on the same true path. Y's mind has been developed consciously. Consider what this means. All of Y's thinking is dominated by conscious will and is confined to the conscious arena including the utilised part of the postconscious. Y's thinking is conducted and recorded in language because, if it is to be acceptable within a conscious reality, it must be demonstrable and explainable to others in language. Y's thinking is governed by the self because this is the way of nature which humanity still follows despite the fact that egoism requires an inhibitive common code, such as instinct, the inhibitive part of which we have largely abandoned. So Y's mind excludes the independent postconscious because the independent postconscious is unconscious to the self, can not be governed by the self and, its processes being unavailable to consciousness, is neither clearly demonstrable nor precisely explicable to others. Yet although Y's thinking is confined to the conscious arena, excluding the much larger capacity of the postconscious, it is nevertheless a formidable organisation of fact and reasoning extracted and compiled by way of an extremely able critical analysis of existing world reality, past and present. But Y's reasoning is restricted to the limited reasoning capacity of the conscious mind, which cannot go to the ultimate and thus arrive at truth. Consequently normal human reason, and much of its fact, is contradictory, but because consciousness cannot, or will not reason further, existing human society has to allow these contradictions to co-exist and to put up with the dangerous conflict that results. So in order to establish an identity the realistic individual, Y being an example, has to select from the available wide range of options, and defensively or offensively adopt a suitable set of beliefs and opinions. By insisting that human reason must be conducted at the conscious level, so that it can be demonstrably grounded in evidence and argument, the Machine, represented by Y's confinement to Philosophy's discipline of thought, guarantees, as always, that conscious, automated humanity will not discover truth and, therefore, that it cannot agree.

X has developed postconsciously. X knows that it is vital for the human postconscious to guide the self and gain predominance, but it is faced with the fact that existing reality is weighted heavily on the conscious side. The total conscious arena contains the Machine, which controls almost all the mediums of communication and colours all languages, which also embraces all institutions, including that of Philosophy with all its evidence and argument, and in which X's status and influence is relatively very weak. Y, on the other hand, is very strong in the conscious arena, commanding many and varied complex but narrow patterns of reason backed up by many and varied separated groups of fact about existing reality, past and present. Y is weak in the postconscious sphere, indicated by the failure of all this fact and reason to get anywhere near humantruth, but Y does not recognise this. Indeed, Y regards postconscious intuition, which penetrates his awareness as faintly as it strongly guides X, as a weakness precisely becauseit is not grounded in the evidence and argument provided by existing reality and its enveloping conscious arena. Y's beliefs, opinions, and arguments are generally understood, accepted, or tolerated in the world as it exists, whereas X's are either ignored, denied, or resisted.

It is necessary for X to convince Y. This cannot be done directly because of the absence of any but the link of mutual knowing between postconscious minds. X must go through the presently normal pathways A. X's thoughts must pass into the conscious sphere, there to be converted into language capable of expressing them so accurately, yet so understandably to Y's highly consciously organised reasoning, that Y will be unable to ignore them or deny them entry to his or her postconscious mind. If X's thoughts are true, they must eventually be accepted by Y's postconscious (if Y's conscious self admits them) because truth is the function of all postconscious minds. The reason why the independent postconscious mind is able to work truly is that it is unconscious, it has ample capacity, and it is well aware of, but not directly and actively involved in, all the competitive, instinctive, historical, institutional, egoistic, and factual influences of false reality, which create differences and cause confusions in and between conscious minds.

The conscious is a knowledge-gathering mind with a vast memory and a huge amount of fact to work on, but it lacks the capacity fully to embrace that knowledge with reason. The postconscious is a mind of infinite reasoning-power which reduces knowledge to its essence. Suppose that Y's conscious store of factual knowledge is far greater than that of X. For this reason Y believes his understanding to be truly superior, and this opinion is backed up by the facts and norms of existing reality, and by tortuous arguments that cannot be dismissed on their own terms, only by reference to their false foundations. It can be seen that honest communication between X and Y can only be accomplished through Y's admission that he might be wrong. Without immediately conceding anything, Y would then drop his defences and allow a new idea, or a hitherto rejected or ridiculed theory, into his postconscious, there to be either accepted or rejected. If the idea or theory is accepted, as it must be if true, Y might well then be self-persuaded not only to allow, but to voluntarily encourage and assist his postconscious mind to begin a process of demolishing that which is false or incomplete in his consciously-upheld thinking, and to rebuilding it truly. He would then be bound to acknowledge true knowing, conveyed to the self by its own postconscious. Eventually, when this process is completed, X and Y will be in essential agreement.

Pt.VIII FURTHER ILLUMINATION
Previous Chapter
49 The Flaw in our Accepted, Philosophical, Mode of Thought

Current Chapter
50 How to Humanise Reality

Next Chapters
51 Contrary Concepts
52 How to Humanise Ourselves

Back to Home Page INDEX.htm