45 PERSONAL REORIENTATION
In the previous chapter the question was raised - can we reallyrid ourselves of the concept of preferred relationships, of friends and family, and can we possibly eradicate the competitive drives from our characters? The answer is that of course we can because these characteristics are false, whereas our nature is to be true - but, I repeat, to realise our true nature requires that we become supraconscious. To achieve supraconsciousness, in order to realise our true nature, we have to get past our automated self - the conscious self which is our false 'front man' - in order to reach the inner, true self.
A minority of us see existing reality as false and wish to change it, and tend to 'go it alone'. But this minority cannot be effective as long as the majority do not see the basic Machine as false and do not wish to change it fundamentally. The minority have to try to enlighten the majority, because this automatic reality will be changed only when the vast majority turn away from the present opinions and feelings of their automated outer shells and adopt the humantrue values of their inner selves. Humantrue change may come about only by the collective intentionof supraconscious humanity.
To prepare ourselves for this process of enlightment, it may be helpful to recapulate the reasoning which lies behind a determination to do so. The greatest care is vital if we are to get it right, and it is a mistake to imagine that humantruth can be arrived at by way of short-cuts or compromises. Remember that human thinking has been busy with our problems and questions for thousands of years without solving or answering them satisfactorily. Yet the answers have always stared us in the face, and we have never had good reason for ignoring them.
Although the task of humantrue awareness to prevail over the enormously complicated reality which exists seems formidable, or even impossible, it is no greater than that of convincing the individual mind, and all minds are potentially bound to accept it because it is the truth which it is their function to discover and realise. Automatic reality is explained by the fact that the instinctive Machine is in possession of our world, and we are possessed by automatic instincts. Our release from it is a question of the individual letting go of ownership of his or her being by instinctive will, however sophisticated, and becoming a supraconscious self, drawing strength from postconscious will. It will not then be possible to shut away into unconsciousness the suffering that comes of frustrating the true aims of intellect. It will then be painfulto lie and deceive, just as it is presently emotionally painful to suffer injury, hunger, or extreme cold.
The Machine subjects us to its concept of reality at birth, and places our beings in consciousness, cut off from our own true minds and guarded by our own instinctive will, and tries to keep it there throughout our lives. To break the Machine's hold over us we have to shatter that concept in order to change our adult ways, and to so bring up our children that they become supraconscious of their proper, humantrue nature from the beginning, and immune to false automatic influence.
The thinker who breaks free of automatic reality is likely to feel and appear unstable, because the norm provides nothing that is wholly true to which he or she can steadily hold. People of stable automated character are unlikely to break free of the norm because they depend on its support. The thinker's problem might seem to be solved by him or her becoming eccentric to the norm, but not if this means retreating from the whole truth into another limited concept of reality with its own contrived stability, for discovery of truth requires that the mind be open to everything. To make that discovery we have to intellate, rather than think, and it just has to be accepted that the role of the intellator will be lonely and hard to bear, but compensated for by her or his growing awareness of truth.
It can be seen, when one considers the unrest and bloodshed all over the world, that good people are in danger from bad, and that strong governments, police and armies are necessary to protect the former and suppress or control the latter. But all this conflict of oppression and revolt, aggression and counter-aggression, crime and law enforcement, occurs against a background of inequality, competition and injustice, in a world which has always been in such turmoil since civilisation began. Automatic reality causes the unrest which creates the reaction which produces antagonism which boils over into violence which requires control. This can only continue unless our society begins to move towards humantrue constitution, when human individuals will respond humantruly. Individuals feel they are compelled to act as they do, and that they may not change voluntarily until that compulsion is removed. That it remains is because weobey it and do not remove it. Onlywe can remove automatic compulsions, and the ways of doing so are freely open to us, but if we believe ourselves powerless to do so we are lost.
Probably all of us want the world to change for the better, but mainly our way, so that we ourselves need not radically change. Personal conditioning can be very strong and hard to break, because it is held together by our own will to be what we have come to be and to defend that being. Besides, since that conditioning grew out of a society of conflict, we are in any case preoccupied with the confusion of our own reflected conflicts. We are as we are because the here and now is as it is. The here and now remains as it is because it has made us what we are. When almost everyone and everything goes chiefly by the Machine it is hard to stand away from it all, make our own standards and stand by them. But this is what we have to do if the world isto change for the better. None of us should regard our self as sacrosanct, merely because it is ours. You can say łOh, to hell, I'll just make the best of things as they are˛, but if you do, your mind will be failing to fulfil its true function.
To an extra-planetary observer we ourselves, as typical human beings, must appear humantruly incomprehensible, and we areso, because we are conditioned by and harnessed to an intellectually incomprehensible reality. We are continually reborn into a grotesque world, but repeatedly blinded to the fact and robbed of the will to make it what it should be, generation by generation, by the compelling way in which it perennially shapes our thinking. Though we know inwardly how we shouldbehave with each other, look at the way we dobehave. Individually, though we try to do the humane thing, we are drawn into needless disagreements by competitively separate aims, interests and beliefs. Collectively, these are enlarged into bitter international quarrels to the point where we are persuaded to kill each other in war. We should open ourselves to the truth, which is the same for us all. We should be prepared to submit our views to the criticism of others as well as ourselves, otherwise we stand in the way of our human potential for agreement.
If we mean to change this world we should cease taking it, and the debased behaviour of our automated selves, seriously. We should uproot our beings from this world and replant them in our upper minds. We should recognise that we are not as we ought to be, and that although we cannot change the temperamental basis of our character we can essentially change by developing, and then being,our postconscious minds. In this way we may bypass our present external traumas and supraconsciously imagine another humantrue reality beyond in which both we and our society are already changed. We may then intellate accordingly, and wherever possible act accordingly, making ourselves keenly aware of existing reality, but alien to its concepts and values, in anticipation of change.
Let it be said once more - we must take care never to judge according to the existing norm. Automatic reason is able to make nonsense of humantrue ideals, because they have been tried in the past, without success. But in our automatic past the humantrue ideal could never be viable, and it will never become viable in the future if we cling to automatic reality. We have to overcome our emotion with our reason, supplanting gut feelings with intellectual intentions. We have to remind ourselves that if we persist in this our emotions will eventually adjust. At first this will leave gaps in our range of satisfactions, gaps left by de-automation, but in due course these will be humantruly filled.
It is wrong that we should be divided from each other by any thing. Government by politics is a humanly irrelevant compromise between spurring and curbing the Machine, and between automatic differences of state, opinion, belief, desire and ambition. There is no real reason for these differences. We should be united by humantrue understanding of our common concerns. Until we reach that unity we should unite our efforts to achieve it by coming together voluntarily, by intent, though it be against our apparent present inclination. It is not enough to give selfless but unquestioning service which, in a continuing imperfect world, appears especially good and above reproach by comparison. This is to stunt our concept of morality by orienting it to personality and limiting it to presently realistic local concerns.
Any individual's decided intention that human society must change and become humantrue has to include the following realisations :-
Whether we can bring ourselves to believe it to be possible, or not, those of us who have hope of a better world, or who pursue truth, or who are already entering a state of supraconscious intellation, should not be deterred. It is only be pressing for the ideal and spreading humantruth, whatever the apparent odds against it, that a humantrue reality may come to be. It is well to remember that all minds potentially support humantruth, whilst automatic reality relies only on their false bonds of conditioning for its continued existence.
Having made this decision, and started searching our minds in earnest, we have already begun, or joined, a process of humantrue change. We have already reoriented ourselves, and as we intellate towards supraconsciousness our beliefs and attitudes to all things will change. We should now realise that, presently, what we outwardly areand do,and what we have inwardly allowed ourselves to beand think,is not us,as we naturally ought to be, but usreacting to a world reality which is not as itought to be. The more we try to do something, or assert ourselves, in terms of this automatic reality, the more immersed in it and conditioned by it we become, and the more strongly and inevitably real it appears to be. Our minds, habits, emotions, fears, hopes and all expectations have become so attached to it that we can believe this setting to be fitting to our character, and our character fitting to this setting.
Once we have recognised all these things we have constantly to remind ourselves of them, and make certain personal rules to follow. As suggested before, we have deliberately to divide in two, body and mind (our outer shell and inner core), placing our humantrue being in our mind (our inner core of self). Our body cannot escape existing reality nor, in one sense, should we wish it to, because its experiences are necessary to us, that we may critically examine the here and now, enabling us to reason clearly against it. Our intellating minds will be comparing it with the humantrue alternative, in which there will be no divided nations, no dominant governments, enforced laws, armies, or authoritative politics. No competition, economics of the money kind, , trade, commerce, possession. No hierarchy, discrimination, compulsion, formal education. The mind will perceive these features of the Machine to be the complicated rules and moves in a wholly unnecessary, dangerous game, working out what is wrong with them and how they can be replaced.
We now recognise that our bodies, for the present, live inescapably in automatic reality. They seem to be free only either to obey or disobey Machine laws. Our objective, however, is not the opposition of bodies - conflict between those who uphold the laws and those who oppose them - but the agreement of all minds, which shape the laws and may change them, then remove them. Therefore we obey the laws, for the present and where they are unavoidable, for to do so is more peacable than to disobey, and this does not mean that we agree with them, nor does it disqualify us from reasoning against them. If we do not respect the humanity of those who uphold automatic laws for the wrong reasons, how can we expect them to respect us and listen to humantrue reason?
On the other hand, where instituted laws do not compelus to follow, we do not let them lead us. Neither do we follow automatic lores,which are the basis of instituted law. Wherever possible and harmless we oblige our physical being to go contrary to the norm, following humantrue rather than automatic interests. When presented with a fact the mind's task, if it is to learn, is not simply to record in order to recall that fact, or to orient it to a fixed and limited prejudice of the conscious mind, but to submit it to the maximum possible number of correlations and thus to evaluate its place in truth. Intellation invariably leads us away from the false concepts of the Machine. As a process of exhaustive correlation of knowledge and reason, and of breaking down deeply ingrained, widely held and time-honoured such false concepts and practices, intellating is difficult but rewards the whole mind with true awareness. The hardest and at first most painful part of the process is that it means turning on and breaking down our own automated selves - figuratively speaking, stripping our bodies and leaving them naked in a falsely clothed world.
We have to recognise that our spontaneous thoughts, opinions and convictions may not be truly ours in that the true centre of our being, our whole mind, freely created and formed them, but may be the result of conditioning imposed on us by circumstances. There is no virtue in clinging to them merely because we have come to own them and identify them as ours. We have to deny the very basis of our present being, our own character and the constructions of mind, beliefs and self-expressions it has evolved, and change them until we knowthem to be true. We have to deny our ego, and its emotions which try to keep our character intact; which turn our criticism away from ourselves and the reckless reality which more or less guides us all, justifying our own shortcomings and our unjust actions by blaming them on the errors, antagonisms and injustices of others.
We no longer see our bodies as the centre of the world. With our beings in our minds we are seeking to belong, in common with all others to one and the same humantruth. By guiding our bodies in this way we make them eccentric to the norm, which puts them in a difficult position. Both they (instinctively) and we wish to join with others in community, but we will not allow them to take part in automatic practices on which the present community is largely founded. Consequently our bodies are made to look foolish, which is hurtful to their ego. But we recognise that this is bound to be, for we can not be one with our bodies until they and all others, and we in common, are part of the humantrue reality which we envisage. Wedo not feel our body's hurt, which is theirs and not our whole minds'. Ourhurt is much greater, arising from the knowledge that humanity as a whole is harming itself (and betraying us) by neglecting its true potential.
So our minds are now in control of our bodies. We recognise that all other bodies are presently trapped in automatic reality too but that most dictate to their minds, with both being dictated to by that reality. Consequently we do not take human actions, or statements of belief and opinion, at face value but expose them to humantrue doubt, question and criticism. The more authoritative importance the Machine gives them, the less seriously are we prepared to take them. Rather do we bypass the overt social explanations of human behaviour, and the automatic reason underlying it, perhaps our own included, and try to reach the reasoning of individual inner minds which is quite different, humantrue in nature, but generally confused and kept private.
We realise that only in the single individual mind can all things be correlated and brought to a humantrue balance - that this can not be done by a number of minds each specialising in separate spheres of interest. Intellect, the faculty of knowing and reasoning, cannot be truly built except by growing of itself. Propositions may be presented to it, offered for its free and true judgement, but when they are imposed, or self-imposed with pre-determination that capacity for true judgement is impaired. At this humantrue level of awareness which we have now adopted, we no longer believe there is, or ought to be, reason for anything existing or happening in the world than our own supraconscious reason does not show to be unquestionably humantrue.
Let it be repeated - man's life-force-will to survive, geared to instinct and progressed by the technical ability of the conscious mind, is leading to his destruction as a potentially intellectual species. This actual present reality represents the barrier we have to break through, the barrier which instinct erects between us and our intellectual potential. For humanity, the barrier is reinforced by a fear of giving up that dominance of instinct which, for hundreds of millions of years, we and every single other evolving form of life have obeyed, and all of nature on Earth has dependently served. We, the one and only species on Earth to have acquired the ability and therefore the need to do so, have to give up this main reliance on instinct and transfer it to intellect. We have to go further and reject the concept of a central governing authority of any sort (which only our instinctive automatic reality makes necessary) and trust humanity and the whole world to the responsible care of the human individual.
We have to look outward fromsupraconscious intellect in order to recognise the right human questions and problems, and then look supraconsciously back into intellect for understanding of the humantrue answers and solutions. We have then honestly to expound those answers and solutions by every channel of reasoning open to us, our minds unshakably aware that what is humantrue must be true for all humans and only requires to be understood to be agreed, and agreed to be cooperatively implemented.
Having got this certainty into our minds we have to keep it continually in the forefront of our awareness - that automatic reality is absurd. The Machine is a powerful influence on the body and its applied thinking but by conforming to it, however intelligently, we do not make it less absurd - we merely confirm its real existence. To postconscious intellect it is so weak and without correlated reason by comparison with humantruth. Only to conscious thinking which the Machine and its institutions have founded can it appear logical. To the supraconscious mind humantruth is much more powerful, for it rings unmistakably true. Political, money-economic, religious or even scientific discourse of opinion and belief does not have that ring of truth because it is not truly founded or formed - as a false or irrelevant trail it can never lead to whole truth. But it may be judged true by a mind imbued with the present concept of reality - by the conscious mind constructed of false trails and overawed by the fact that this automatic reality, over which that concept presides, actually and powerfully exists.
I run the risk of labouring this point, but it is very important - a matter of maintaining a viewpoint which does not help but hinders us in the here-and-now. For example, if we need to buy something which involves bargaining, automatic values and concepts apply to the transaction and it is difficult to avoid applying them in our own competitive interests. If we do not think in this accepted way of trading we may get a bad bargain - we may lose money which, since we are dependent on money like everyone else, we cannot afford to lose. This fact, and the thought that we have been cheated, may rankle in our minds so that we determine not to let it happen again. Next time wemight get the best of the bargain, so that our opponent determines the same. This is automatic influence working on us, so that we perpetuate it and allow it to prevent us dealing with each other honestly.
Existing human world society puts the cart before the horse. The cart is the established Machine, and humanity itself is the horse which follows wherever the cart leads. The establishment cart is built by competition, steered by money-economics, secured by law and maintained by government. In order to live this way the horse must put its power into pushing the cart, kept in harness by the belief that this is how it has to be, and persuaded by politics that he,in fact, is steering, that this is the way he wants to go and that it is, in any case, the only way he cango.
To live successfully in the present reality it is necessary to accept it, manipulate it, go along with it, or at least in some way adapt to it. On its terms we try to win, and failing that we contrive to survive if we can. But by its nature the competitive Machine must have a few winners, many survivors, and many victims. We make the winners into leaders, and the survivors into the average norm. Because we are not yet completely dominated by the Machine we are yet free to exercise innate compassion, and so to its victims, where it allows, we extend compassion in the form of charity. But this prick of conscience is an afterthought of intellect, not a prime mover.
Take the case of a famine, occurring somewhere on the other side of Earth. Whilst it is newsworthy, and so brought to our attention, we on this side may allow ourselves to feel we have sympathetically dealt with it by sending money to a charity relief organisation. We should rather treat it as though we, or our own kith and kin were involved, for these are our human brothers and sisters who suffer. We should ask why the famine happened, what is the underlying problem, and how can it be permanently solved. We should ask ourselves what kind of a world this is where chance exposes millions to the yearly possibility of starvation, whilst most of usare made permanently comfortable, safe and secure from want.
Humantruth puts a newly aware horse before a very different cart - a supraconscious humanity leading a cooperative and contented life. But as the prelude to that ideal our minds need to be opened to awareness of that disastrous famine not as a case for world charity but as the result of world discrimination, indifference and neglect - a crime of automatic society which our true humanity cannot condone and must correct, once and for all. Humantrue awareness turns our present concepts upside down. The kindness of charity is made a human virtue only by contrast with our inhuman automatic reality. The notion of charity comes from the acceptance of poverty and want as inevitable - 'the poor will be with us always'. The kindness which charity selectively represents would, if fully expressed, be hell-bent on removing those automatic causes which occasion it.
It is a question of attitude- of putting the interests of whole humanity on a level with our own, and of being prepared to suffer material loss for the sake of humantrue gain. When it is a present matter of bargaining, only if both sides are humantruly supraconscious can they put automatic concepts and values aside and deal with each other fairly. Only when we are allhumantrue, and the Machine and its concepts abolished, shall we have replaced the practice of competitive bargaining with mutual giving of needs. In the meantime, even whilst we are forced to deal with each other in automatic ways, we should expressour contrary humantrue attitudes to others, trying to lead them to the same understanding. And to demonstrate our faith in the humantrue alternative, wherever possible we should act in ways which reflect it and promote it, negatively to the Machine and its reasoning, though to do so is against our own automatic advantage.
Pt.VII REALISATION
PREPARING THE WAY FOR CHANGE
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46 New Attitude
47 Affirmation
48 Peacable Action
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