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Scientific
Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the
White House!
Chapter 4: The Culture of Eternal Life
Science, Mysticism, and
Love
Modern science is simply the way of knowledge that is
natural to the left hemisphere of the human brain-mind. It
is the primarily verbal, temporal, and analytical method of
relating to the objects of experience.
Ancient religious mysticism was (and is) the way of
knowledge that is natural to the right hemisphere of the
human brain-mind. It is the primarily nonverbal, spatial,
and holistic method of relating to the objects of
experience.
Scientific knowledge is communicated primarily through
verbal abstractions, and also visual signs, that are
intended to represent “objective” or “concrete” events,
relations, and things.
Mystical knowledge is communicated primarily through
visual symbols and other nonverbal and archetypal signs (as
well as verbal metaphors) that are intended to represent
“subjective,” “subtle,” or “psychic” events, relations, and
things.
The left hemisphere of the brain generally controls the
right side of the body, and its qualities are most directly
analogous to those of the sympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system and to the downgoing and outgoing
motor currents of the body.1
The right hemisphere of the brain generally controls the
left side of the body, and its qualities are most directly
analogous to those of the parasympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system and to the ingoing and upgoing
sensory currents of the body.
Therefore, science and mysticism each represents only one
primary half of the human structural possibility, but each,
in its own time of dominance, wrongly claims to be the
primary, right, sufficient, and even ultimate form of human
understanding.
Both the left and the right hemispheres or zones of
functioning of the human brain contain specific or built-in
functional limits as well as limiting presumptions. And,
therefore, both science and mysticism represent only partial
or half-human forms of understanding. Only the whole body or
total body-mind of Man can provide the structural point of
view for right and ultimate human understanding. Only the
whole body (or total psycho-physical being) of Man can
provide the foundation for a truly human and harmoniously
integrated culture.
Science and mysticism both represent archaic or partial
cultural principles. Each is the point of view of one half
of Man.
Science is not truly “objective,” but it is simply a
style of knowledge and culture that is founded on the
independent functions of the left hemisphere of the brain
and the expansive motor impulses of gross bodily action.
Science is simply the highest intellectual achievement of a
cultural point of view that is founded on the separate and
separative consciousness of self (or ego), the psychic
disposition of doubt, and the motives of physical attachment
and even aggressive behavior.
Mysticism is not simply “subjective” in the high and
heavenly sense that is promoted by conventional religious
cultism. It is simply a style of knowledge and culture that
is founded on the independent functions of the right
hemisphere of the brain and the passive or inverted impulses
of the sensory internalization of consciousness. Mysticism
is simply the highest mental or psychic achievement of a
cultural point of view that is founded on the
undifferentiated state of the deep psyche, and also on the
motives of attachment to internal psychic phenomena and to
behavior that tends toward passivity and nonrelational
self-absorption.
The culture of science is the ultimate achievement of the
“occidental” mind, or the primary mood of Western Man. And
the culture of mysticism is the ultimate achievement of the
“oriental” mind, or the primary mood of Eastern Man.
But what of the culture of Man in his
totalityincluding his total brain and totally
integrated bodily being? That culture has no great
representation in the human world as it now exists. Man is
yet only evolved or adapted to the lower structures of his
possibility, and his cultural achievements still reflect
only his internal conflict. Therefore, East and West are in
conflict, and the parts of human consciousness are
culturally at war.
I am at work to awaken a new understanding of Man in his
totality, and to help establish a whole bodily cultural
movement in the world, that will replace the half-bodily
cultures of science and mysticism. That understanding
includes the total mind and nervous system of Man, and it
produces a culture that is not founded on self-possession,
self-division, doubt, exploitation of Man and Nature, or the
flight from relationships, or even the flight from bodily
existence. Rather, the whole bodily understanding of Man
produces a culture of self-transcendence, relational love,
bodily service, and spiritually illumined consciousness.
Therefore, by this new or radical understanding, East and
West will create a World-Synthesis of human culture, on the
basis of aspiration and adaptation to the Total World, or
the World of Light.
The unevolved or partially adapted and lower-adapted
human being is suffering from a darkened or unenlightened
understanding of his situation and his experience.
Therefore, he reacts to the conditions of his mortal bodily
circumstance. This reaction is personally and culturally
communicated in one of two ways, because of the bifurcated
structure of the human nervous system. Thus, the style of
the common human reaction to the mortal threats of
experience is either extroversion or introversion.
Extroverted reactivity typifies the “occidental,”
“left-brained,” aggressive style of the sympathetic division
of the autonomic nervous system and of Western Man.
Introverted reactivity typifies the “oriental,”
“right-brained,” passive or interiorized style of the
parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and
of Eastern Man.
Science and aggressive worldliness are the characteristic
cultural solutions of Western Man to the primitive reaction
to mortal experience.
Mysticism and passive other-worldliness are the
characteristic cultural solutions of Eastern Man to the same
primitive reaction to mortal experience.
Thus, the basic cultural achievements of mankind to date
are reactive and partial solutions to what is felt to be the
problem or dilemma of human existence. It is the reactive
and partial nature of these solutions that makes them
temporary, incomplete, and even suppressive or destructive
to humanity. And it is the sense of dilemmaor
existence without the Freedom of Ecstasythat makes
individual existence and cultural or social experience into
an intolerably problematic bind that needs a unique solution
(that is, a solution or situation that is not native to the
fundamental situation of existence itself).
The “oriental” and “occidental” methods and solutions of
Man are equally founded in a reactive dilemma, and both are
partial, specialized, emergency solutions that create an
artificial or unreal environment for human adaptation.
The world envisioned by science is equally as desperate,
artificial, and unreal as that created, presumed, or
invented in the psyche by other-worldly mysticism. Both
science and mysticism need to be relieved of the primal
dilemma of reactive fearor recoil from bodily
relationshipwhich is recoil from the plane of natural
events as well as from the Living or Radiant Reality in
which the natural world is arising, changing, and passing
out of sight.
The trouble with both the “oriental” and the “occidental”
solutions of Man is that both ways are based on styles or
methods of experiential knowing about the world of
experience. Both ways are founded in a reactive dilemma, and
both ways, therefore, seek release from that dilemma via
conventional knowledgeor the power to manipulate and
control the conditions of experience. Both ways avoid the
simple, original, radical, obvious, and direct
pathwhich is the way of self-transcendence, or tacit,
nonproblematic acceptance of bodily existence and the
obligation to live as the body in love.
The “oriental” way of inwardness (or mind) and the
“occidental” way of worldly and bodily self-indulgence (or
the way of the “flesh,” separate from the Transcendental
Bliss of the Light, or All-Pervading “Sun,” of the natural
world) both avoid the whole bodily way of self-transcending
love. This is because neither one is founded in the primary
or native disposition of Manor freedom from the primal
negativity of reaction to bodily existence and the
evolutionary trial of difficult experience and
mortality.
Both science and mysticism are founded on
self-possession, or the self-defining fear of death. Both
science and mysticism seek knowledge or power that will
release Man from death (and thus from fear). But neither
science nor mysticism is founded on an original, primal
intuition of the Reality and Truth that relieves even bodily
existence of the need for inherent or chronic fear.
The native Way of Man in his totality is the
Life-positive Way that is priorly free of fear and that
persists as love, bodily, through all experience, and even
death. That Way is the Way of true religion, or the higher,
truly human and evolutionary spiritual culture of Man.
The basis of false religion is the Life-negative reaction
of fear. And false “religion” includes all cultural
solutions that dominate Man in his fear. Thus, the cultures
of science and of mysticism are equally “religious” in this,
sense.
The “right-brained” culture of psychic inversion (or
psychic “other-worldliness”) is founded on loveless bodily
fear and flight from the mortal or ever changing limitations
of relationship. Likewise, the “left-brained” culture of
self-indulgent extroversion and intellectual worldliness is
founded on the same loveless bodily fear and flight from the
impingement of relational limitations.
Cultic religion in an “oriental” culture tends to be
founded on inverted mystical beliefs. But cultic religion in
an “occidental” culture tends to be founded on both
irrational beliefs and Lifeless “rational” beliefs held by
the verbal mind.
Therefore, mortal fear is the bodily foundation of
conventional religion and conventional culture, whether
“oriental” or “occidental.” But true religion is the native
and Life-positive response of relational love, expressed
bodily and as Communion with the Unity, Eternal Existence,
and Radiant Life-Reality in which Man and the World-Process
are always absolutely established.
The Living Reality is always already the Condition of Man
and the World-Process. Man is bodily, originally, prior to
all knowledge and all strategic attainments, in the
situation of Unity with the Eternal Reality. Science, or the
verbal mind, including thoughts of all kinds, as well as
mysticism, or the mind of archetypal images and “uncaused”
ideas, are simply forms of knowledge about the
World-Process. But true religion, or the true culture of
Man, is not about knowledge of any kind. The true Way is
senior to all knowledge and to all the implications of
experience. The true Way is the Way of love, or
self-transcendence via native, whole bodily, or total
psycho-physical surrender into positive Life-Feeling.
The world of science and mysticism is the known world.
But the world of Manthe world of true religion and
higher human cultureis the Living World, the native
world of the body itself, prior to all knowledge.
The Way of Man in his totality is senior to the cultures
of science and mysticism. It is the Transcendental Way of
Love-Communion with Radiant God, Who is Life. It is the Way
in which we abide continually as the body in relational
love, not qualified by any kind of knowledge or inwardness,
and not qualified by any binding reaction to (or recoil
from) the changing conditions of experience.
Note
1. In the field of physiology, the human nervous system
is divided into two anatomical systems: (1) the central
nervous system, consisting of the brain and the spinal cord;
and (2) the peripheral nervous system, which is subdivided
into (a) the somatic system (voluntary), consisting of both
motor and sensory fibers, and (b) the autonomic nervous
system (so-called involuntary) which also has two parts, the
sympathetic and the parasympathetic divisions.
Medical anatomists point out that the division of the
nervous system into a somatic or conscious system and a
visceral or non-conscious system, though offering a
convenient physiological description, does not imply the
presence of two anatomically distinct systems. The two
divisions are different aspects of a single, integrated
neural mechanism, and they are closely interrelated both
centrally and peripherally. In this book and other
literature, Da Free John uses the conventional anatomical
distinctions to create a descriptive experiential analysis
of certain qualifies of human consciousness and action.
The central nervous system, comprised of the brain and
spinal column, is the primary mechanism of conscious, or
voluntary, functioning of the body-mind. Thus, it is senior
to the autonomic nervous system, which is the mechanism of
the generally involuntary functioning of the viscera or
vital organs. In the usual person, attention is fixed in the
functions of the lower body, that is, the functions below
the brows, and in the autonomic nervous system that governs
these functions.
The sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the
autonomic nervous system contain both motor or
outward-directed and sensory or inward-directed nerve
currents. Nevertheless, in general, the sympathetic division
is experientially associated principally with outward
directed or motor impulses, and the parasympathetic division
is experientially associated principally with
inward-directed or sensory impulses. In general terms, the
sympathetic division governs the “hot” reflexes of
excitation and activity, whereas the parasympathetic
division governs the “cool” reflexes of inhibition and
stasis.
The usual man or woman is bound, in his or her
unconscious and subhuman state, to the perpetual play (and
sometimes antagonism) between the sympathetic and
parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous systems.
When the play between these two is harmonized and raised to
a level of Life-positive intensity, through awakening to a
participation in Life that is senior to the struggle for
mere physical survival, then attention is free to pass into
the central nervous system, which is the mechanism for our
higher evolution. And, ultimately, even that evolutionary
mechanism must be transcended in the process of perfect
enlightenment or transfiguration, as described in this book
and in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, by Da Free
John.
The descriptions in this text of the esoteric spiritual
process in relation to human anatomy are based on
experience, as well as knowledge, rather than scientific
analysis. The authors purpose in these essays is to relate
experiential and esoteric descriptions to current anatomical
theories. These descriptions are generalized; they are not
attempts to create a rigorous description of analytical
anatomy that corresponds in detail to current medical
theories. Those who find these suggestive descriptions
helpful may apply them in practice to the processes of
esoteric meditation. Others who wish to consider the matter
further in analytical and medical terms should use these
descriptions as a broad and general reflection on the
analytical anatomy of medical science. They would perhaps
find it interesting to develop these general descriptions
along the more rigorous lines of medical study.
Scientific Proof – Table of
Contents
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