Christ-Consciousness

Much has been written on the concept of “Christ consciousness,” a term which has been interpreted different ways by different people. For anyone who is interested, a simple Google search for the term will bring up multiple hits to explore; there is even a “Center for Christ Consciousness” website! As for this blog, we will examine what Preston Harold understood by the description.

Harold describes the arising of Christ-consciousness as a person becomes equivalent to the idea of one:

Jesus’ drama depicts the Authority-Ego speaking to the multitude of personality images surrounding it. The group ponders, rejects, doubts, does not fully understand. Resistance continues until one in the group becomes equal to the idea of one – then light enters his consciousness. A scribe, raised to a “higher orbit of thought” as he listens to Jesus, says: “’Right, teacher! You have truly said, He is One, and there is none else but Him. Also, to love Him with the whole heart, with the whole understanding, and with the whole strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself – that is far more than all holocausts and sacrifice.’ [Jesus replies] ‘You are not far from the realm of God.’” The scribe has stated the concept of one and wholeness.

So for Preston Harold, Christ-consciousness is centered around a unitive awareness and vision in which all things are connected, beginning with the connection of humanity to God and neighbor. What might the result of this vision be when put into action? In his letter to the Phillipians the Apostle Paul tells us, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” True Christ-consciousness, it seems, leads to humility and servanthood. Preston Harold might say, “a higher orbit of thought leads to a lower valuation of egotism.”

But how does Christ-consciousness manifest in a person? How does a person “become equal to the idea of one?” Harold surmises…

Jesus tries to explain that the spirit or energy of truth is spread about in man in a manner by no means comparable to preconsciousness or to any image of self in the ego-group, but that as one’s superconsciousness is heightened, Christ-consciousness condenses in his mind, and like an “electron” becomes as a compact body moving around with his ego-group. This drama, He, Himself represented, and He must show that in life as man’s consciousness reaches a certain pitch of intensity, a vision of the Christ will emerge like a genie – in the finale one sees this happen.

This may explain how Christ-consciousness arises, but it doesn’t tell us exactly where it comes from, does it? We will explore this riddle in the next installment. Until then, peace.

Something Unknown Doing We Don’t Know What

Going back to Eddington’s statement in which he says “our particle can never have simultaneously a perfectly definite position and a perfectly definite energy…. Hence in delicate experiments we must not under any circumstances expect to find particles behaving exactly as a classical particle was supposed to…”, Preston Harold interprets this as it pertains to the ministry of Jesus:

Thus, Jesus, who in a delicate experiment made Himself a symbol of the “classical particle of God,” could not in truth behave as Messiah was supposed to, and He could not produce the “ideal classical particle,” God the Father, any more than the physicist can produce today the ideal iota of matter.

Harold goes on to explain how this ideal classical particle exists within humankind:

Men see in other men only their personalities – a wave group acting like a particle, a ego-group acting like a man; but just as searching the wave-group does not lead to the ideal classical particle, so searching the ego-group does not lead to the God-cell within man. This cell is “our Father” to the ego-group, is “my Father” to the Authority-Ego, h, and all of it that man may see is the form that surrounds it – the form of man, a being conscious of God within himself, as Son, one. In the divided conscious domain where super-, pre-, and subconsciousness operate, the ego-group may be likened to a cloud of electrons…

Eddington, again from his “The Nature of the Physical World,” describes to us the behavior of a cloud of electrons:

An electron decides how large it ought to be by measuring itself against the radius of the world in its space-directions. It cannot decide how long it ought to exist because there is no real radius of the world in its time-direction. Therefore it just goes on existing indefinitely…

We see the atoms with their girdles of circulating electrons darting hither and tither, colliding and rebounding. Free electrons torn from the girdles hurry away a hundred times faster, curving sharply round the atoms with side slips and hairbreadth escapes. The truants are caught and attached to the girdles and the escaping energy shakes the aether into vibration. X-rays impinge on the atoms and toss the electrons into higher orbits. We see these electrons falling back again, sometimes by steps, sometimes with a rush, caught in a cul-de-sac of mestastability, hesitating before “forbidden passages.”

Behind it all the quantum h regulates each change with mathematical precision….The spectacle is so fascinating that we have perhaps forgotten that there was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list. Similarly the description of the processes must be taken with a grain of salt…

Something unknown is doing we don’t know what – that is what our theory amounts to.

There it is! “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what!” Materialistic science hates to admit this. If they were to admit it, it would be tantamount to pulling the curtain back on themselves and exposing the materialistic-reductionist illusion which they use and manipulate to maintain their power, prestige, and to keep the money flowing. Why don’t we all try heed Eddington’s suggestion, which he applies to his own descriptions, and apply them to all scientific enquiry; let’s take it all with a grain of salt. This is not denying science, this IS WHAT SCIENCE IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE. Certainly every scientific discovery made within the materialistic-reductionistic paradigm needs a few grains added to it’s recipe.

Preston Harold follows on Eddington’s electronic cloud descriptions:

In parallel, man’s ego-group bespeaks an unknown process – something unknown is “doing we don’t know what” – and one might say that, like an electron, a self-concept or an image of another which makes up the ego-group goes on existing indefinitely, but is relegated to the subconscious, or is repressed into the unconscious, not showing itself until some stimulus from the outside world calls it from latency. In man, the “something unknown” that, with mathematical precision, is doing “we don’t know what” can be only the Authority-Ego working to bring forth a genuine, classical elect-one: a personality in accord with one.

We will continue this train of thought in our next post. Until then, peace.

Love and the Authority-Ego

Through the cycle of life and death we come to know the fullness of love. Up through the “twisted tree of knowledge of good and evil” our Authority-Ego within leads the way.

In rebirth, one partakes of love’s spirit…He is reclothed in the flesh of God, virgin flesh, that he may live again to learn the cost of evil doing and through learning, be redeemed. In death the Authority-Ego divests man of his garment: it is this psychic factor that sheds one’s blood for the remission of the many sins of his ego-group; it is this factor that determines life or death…Love itself, which is his Authority-Ego, resurrects and holds inviolate in the id those of the ego-group whose own expression of love has redeemed them; and love resurrects also those that must live again unto the resurrection of damnation until their forces of good and evil are recast into a nonmaterial responsive factor that will prevent abusive exercise of power, and into the pure or purified evil that matter in itself must be seen to be; and in each rebirth love brings to life something of its whole being that has yet to partake of the tree of knowing.

What might this “nonmaterial responsive factor that will prevent abuse of power” be? Preston Harold will ultimately turn once again to William Wordsworth for a poetic description:

Thus, into a new world of being, the Authority-Ego brings its love of life, the ego-group restated: “he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” In time, as consciousness comes to the ego-group, the voice of worldly experience is heard: conscience sounds its note from one’s subconscious depths. And then, the superego is formed of that element in the id that is responsive to truth and can carry a word of it into the world, as the Authority-Ego “elects” them, giving to these the “keys” to the kingdom within. Through the superego, love speaks, and makes its presence felt in:

…that blessed mood

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened: -that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,-

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul…

Here Wordsworth describes an “out of body” experience, a body-free state of rapture; a “nonmaterial responsive factor.” As we become a living soul, there is no need for abuse of power, no need to flaunt ourselves, just increasing knowledge and assurance of blessedness. But why does this knowledge have to be hard earned? Why can’t God simply and totally reveal Himself and our full human nature to us? Let’s ponder this in our next installment. Until then, peace.

Jesus the Biochemist, Pt. 1

Preston Harold sees Jesus’ life as a parable of two scientific concepts: biochemistry and light. We will look at how Jesus’ story reveals the scientific theories of light later in the The Shining Stranger but for now we will explore how His story uncovers biochemistry.

As symbol of primordial life, giving voice to that which all things were made, Jesus’ strange words appear to enfold what is today called biochemical information – and from this point of view, the whole story of the Son of man as Jesus depicted it may be seen as a parable revealing the life of the cell. To reveal life’s deepest secrets is incumbent upon truth bearer:

“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.” –Matt 13:35

In other words, Jesus’ parables run DEEP, going much further than what we may have even imagined or been able to understand of them up to this point. Many excellent and enlightening volumes have been written on Jesus’ parables, but none have ever gone, or even considered going, down to the microscopic levels of biological life. But why not? As Harold says, truth resides at ALL levels of our lived experience. Why then leave out biochemistry or any of the sciences for that matter?

The psychic operation between Father, Son, and the world of man as Jesus described and depicted it parallels the biochemists’ description of DNA and messenger-RNA operating in a cell. The biochemical operation may reflect the psychic operation and vice versa… One may see the cell’s DNA as Father, and the cell’s messenger-RNA as Son of man, which has partaken of the “life” of the Father, DNA, and is sent into the world of the cytoplasm to reveal the Father’s, or DNA’s, message.

Very good. Now Harold will tell us how the world of the cytoplasm mirrors the subconscious, ego-group, and superego:

This world is a complex system containing thousands of small bodies of various sizes, shapes, and functions; these bodies are called Mitochondria and are the “powerhouses” of the cell; they may be compared to the ego-group, “Israel.” But these ‘bodies” are not the ones messenger-RNA must impress with the Father’s, DNA’s, doctrine if the cell is to have life or the know-how to produce the substance it must have. In the cell, there are smaller “particulates” containing RNA; these are called Microsomes and they are the protein factories; they may be likened to the subconscious. In addition, there are tiny particles densely distributed on the network of membranes associated with the microsomal fraction in the cell; they are known as Ribosomes and may be likened to the superego or the disciples because they contain just about all of the RNA, which may be likened to “truth.”But the ribosomal-RNA does not carry the genetic code; ribosomal-RNA is something like a “key-blank” which can be ground to fit any lock. Upon this “key-blank” the messenger-RNA, sometimes called template-RNA, impress DNA’s message, giving ribosomal-RNA the “keys,” the secrets, of the “kingdom within,” the nucleus, seat of DNA, Father.

We will continue with this line of thought in our next post, Until then, peace.

Error, Forgiveness, and Resurrection

“The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” John 5:28

Preston Harold tells us that the “end of the world” is subjective and comes for each person at the moment of his or her death. But there are many “small deaths” that occur before that:

…the conscious domain [is] peopled with countless images of oneself and others, images born of one’s experience with them. Thus, within this domain man lives a world of lives, and each day that passes leaves a grave in the subconscious, a self-of-himself has expired.

Notice in the gospel passage quoted above that

Jesus does not say, “shall hear MY voice.” He says, “shall hear HIS voice,” and thus He is speaking as symbol of the Son in man. His words present the concept that those of the ego-group in bondage to sin and error are returned to consciousness unto the resurrection of damnation in this domain until they spend themselves of their destructive potential and grasp truth as it works in life. Thus, the “lusts of your father ye will do.” But in the process truth disciplines – it does not destroy. In the legend God does not destroy Cain. ALL that is given man is precious – even his evil. Nothing of IT is to be lost. The resurrection of good AND evil in man presages the build up of something of value to be realized in time to come as evil’s destructive potential is spent.

Forgiveness is the key to expending the fullness of our evil:

Jesus says that the Son in man is the Self-factor that will lead him to reap in kind his sin and error. Thus, each punishes himself. But Jesus proclaims also that the power to forgive is vested in the Son, and that one’s return on the bread he casts upon life’s waters is hundred-fold. He saw that in reality a man cannot forgive a brother-being without forgiving himself a like measure of the evil he has done. As though the poet senses this, Goethe writes in Iphigenia:

Life teaches us

To be less strict with others and ourselves:

Thou’lt learn the lesson, too.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Amen. Until next time, peace.

Dilemma of the Ego-Group

In his poem “Tintern Abbey” William Wordsworth describes an all too rare state of consciousness:

…I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Poetry is necessary because nothing yet in psychology’s concepts of ego or superego provides for humanity’s direct correspondence with complete truth and joy.   Nor does psychology provide concepts for the inner certainty of infinity, or deathlessness. According to Wordsworth’s poem, the sublime sense of joy and eternity is based on the sense of a “presence.” Usually our sense of “presence” is rooted in a person, or some living being. Yet in our everyday lives we regularly identify with groups, becoming a different personality depending upon the group with which we are interacting. Harold says:

Dependency upon the group means loss of one’s individuality – this is seen…to be the growing problem. Dr. Van den Berg says, “We are not ourselves; actually there is nothing we can call a ‘self’ anymore…we have as many selves as there are groups to which we belong.” In simple truth man does present a different self to every person, to every situation – he always has, always will…

This reality of different selves leads to an issue that needs to be solved:

Man’s consciousness is not expressed by an ego, but by an ego-group which includes an image that corresponds to each person he knows, sees, or thinks about. His Dr. Jekyll selves are haunted by his Mr. Hyde selves, and these graduate one into the other – but none of these selves are the man himself. Only as he tries to merge these ego-members into a Self-consistency, into a Group-ego, to replace Authority-Ego must his identity incorporate every degradation he has suffered, inflicted, witnessed, or read about. Attempting to be one-self by making of the ego-group a Group-ego causes the personality to reflect all that characterizes the group in society – no part of it is responsible for one’s failure or misery, no part is wholly mature.

So what is the remedy for making a person wholly mature?

A governing authority, one central to man’s being, appears to be necessary to him. Jesus teaches that this authority, which upholds social and moral law even as it transcends law’s limitations, cannot be found in society nor in man’s conscious domain where conscience operates. But such an authority is within each man: it is a certainty in being that accords with truth and turns consciousness to experience truth as it works in life. Upon this Authority’s shoulders the government of one’s life rests; in time it brings him to reap as he sows; it refuses much that consciousness accepts; it returns the forgotten errors the ego-group refuses to face; it will call itself only by its God-given name, “I.”

And there it is, our remedy, our answer: the sense of “presence,” an “I,” an experience of “one person,” each person’s Authority-Ego. We will explore our Authority-Ego’s leading in our next post. Until then, peace…

The Tower of Babel and the Mystery of Language: Part II

What is the reason that the Tower of Babel cannot be finished? What is the legend trying to tell us?

Consider that each man speaks a language of his own begot of his understanding of any word. Where his understanding stops, or veers off in tangent, the babble of words falling upon his inner or outer ear serve only to confuse the issue and disperse the force of those who strive to control his thinking. Thus, he can be conditioned so far and no further – no utopian dream can permanently adjust him to Homo sapiens’ insufficient lot in life: the tower cannot be finished because man, himself, is not finished. Man is only partially conscious, his body is an expression of mind power only partially in use; and powerful as it is, the subconscious is not the end of his being.

The subconscious is constantly trying to make itself the distinctive, identifying factor of the human being, attempting to “reach heaven” on its own while overriding the Authority-Ego’s proper administration.

Dr. Rolf Alexander likens the subconscious to a factory that needs an over-all understanding to direct and coordinate the know-how of each laborer. But he sees that the “factory” does not identify the man: “Search as we will, we can never find the reality we all hunger for in the conditioned illusions of our subconscious, nor in our intellects which are oriented to these illusions….we must return to the task of developing the instrument of conscious perception abandoned by us in childhood – the true personality.” This echoes Jesus: one must become as a child to receive his name, to enter the kingdom of God within him.

But even though the subconscious is trying to override its proper jurisdiction, it is still a necessary part of the picture; life is impossible without it:

If one accepts the teaching of Jesus as revelation of the Authority-Ego in man operating from the unconscious domain, then one accepts the concept that the over-all understanding to direct and coordinate the subconscious is there; and that the yoke of the subconscious mind has been assumed by Self in order to enter life through nature’s avenues, for nature appears to operate the animal kingdom through a subconscious, mechanistic process – that is, through converting experience into instinctive, conditioned responses.

Jesus indicates that the Authority-Ego has willingly taken this yoke upon Self because through the subconscious mind’s working, the burden of accumulated knowledge is carried easily; because of it man learns rapidly; and it relieves him of the operation of his mechanistic body. As symbol of Authority-Ego, Jesus
says to the ego-group: 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me…

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light…

These words and the Babel legend indicate that man need not fear the hold his subconscious mind has upon consciousness, for man cannot be confined within its limitations or be enslaved by its mechanics – he is more than the “computer” that operates for him.

So what about the themes of language and communication we explored in part 1? We will return to these in our next post. Until then, peace…

Three Realms of the Unconscious: Part 2

We now look into our pre and subconsciousnesses and how they were defined by Jesus…

Preconsciousness may be readily defined: Freud conceived it to be that which is latently conscious but may be readily called to consciousness.  Jesus delineated this level: eyes that see, ears that hear.  Subconsciousness represents a state of unconsciousness that Jesus referred to as seeing and yet unseeing, as hearing and yet unhearing.  The subconscious is the lowest stratum of consciousness which…contains knowledge that has not been consciously catalogued because the knowledge has been stored automatically…  The answers it hands to consciousness incorporate everything that comes as stimuli, and everything that has been a part of environment or experience, for nothing escapes it.  

So our subconscious is a repository of all our experiences.  Even though we may not remember  a particular experience, it is lurking there, never “forgotten” by it.  It is always present and can be called or brought to consciousness when looking for an answer…

The subconscious is both as old as the man and as new as the instant, now, when the answer it gives represents a new analogued sum of existence, wherein the whole of one’s experience has been computed, and this sum prompts him to specific response.  The subconscious, then, is the seat of “my-being.”  It is “me” in terms of  the sum of “my” experience.  

What doesn’t lurk in the subconscious is anything that we have NOT experienced.  Harold explains:

But the unconscious is the seat of “I-being” which is the governing factor in one’s life because “I” has knowledge of what has been experienced and what has not been experienced, of what has been consciously catalogued and what has been unconsciously catalogued, of what has been repressed and must sooner or later be faced in consciousness.

Our “I” is aware of what we have done and what we haven’t done, as it is aware of our glorious possibilites.  But is also aware of all the hurts and failures we repress and would rather not deal with.  Just because we don’t like particular members of our ego-group doesn’t mean we can just set those aspects aside and they will disappear with no consequence.  Harold continues…

Jesus says that not all who knock shall enter Authority-Ego’s realm.  Under certain conditions the door is closed, and there shall be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” when you see “yourselves*” thrust out.  These words pose the concept that psychic disorder ensues when repressions, which are painful self-images, return to the conscious domain after gaining strength and undergoing a metamorphosis in the unconscious. Because these selves have known the unconscious and its Authority, they think themselves blameless and in good standing.  “We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.”  They do not recognize themselves to be pain or error incarnate.  When the time comes that repressions must be faced in consciousness, the “door” to the unconscious must be shut, and this psychic act generates the anxiety, depression, and despair that accompany the individual’s awareness of Self-estrangement.

*read “yourselves” here as the repressed egos of the ego-group

I am not sure how repressions “gain strength and undergo a metamorphosis” in the unconscious, nor do I know why the door must be “shut.”  But I do understand that our repressions must be dealt with in the light of day if they are to be overcome and reintegrated healthily into our lives.  I suppose shutting the door gives no recourse for these repressions to become unconscious once again, and we are left to deal with the reality with which we are confronted.  It is the only way forward.

The last quote above finishes with the concept of Self-estrangement which we will begin exploring in the next post.  Until then, peace…

Recapping the Ego

Before we move on to the superego, we need to tidy up a few things about the ego…

In dealing with the concept of man’s ego, one finds many definitions of the word.  Philosophically, it is defined: The entire man considered as union of soul and body; the conscious and permanent subject of all experience.  Psychologically, the term is defined: The self, whether considered as an organization or system of mental states, or as the consciousness of the individual’s distinction from other selves.  In psychoanalysis, ego is seen as: The self-assertive and self-preserving tendency.  As regards ego, psychology speaks two commands: 1) lay down your ego, cast off your self-centeredness, you may identify yourself by becoming part of a group, by focusing your attention outside yourself – 2) build up your ego, be an entire man, fulfill yourself by knowing, being, expressing yourself, becoming an inner-directed and not an outer-directed person.

So, how do these definitions relate to the mission of Jesus?  Harold continues…

Jesus personified every aspect of ego, as the word is defined – and as it is defined, the two words, ego and life, are synonymous, so that ego must be seen as life to man.  Jesus used the word, life.  He said, simply, that man must lay down his life in order to pick it up again.  Conscious rebirth is implied, as well as rebirth into life.

Our esteemed author then goes on to tell us of the ego’s role in the unconscious.  If the ego = life, and Jesus = life, then ego = Jesus…

Freud admitted to a sort of continuation of life in the unconscious.  In it “are stored up vestiges of the existences led by countless former egos; and when the ego forms its superego out of the id, it may perhaps only be reviving images of egos that have passed away and be securing them a resurrection.”  Freud saw this sort of immortality as a “cumulative effect in History which gradually penetrates to “those depths of the psyche far below the ego level that actually can transmit patterns of behavior whether ‘acquired’ or not.”  Jesus posed the concept that life continues in the inner realm of the unconscious.  He says, “I have other sheep, too, which do not belong to this fold…” – this fold of consciousness known to those He addressed – “My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them and they follow me; and I give them eternal life; they shall never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”  A flock, not of the fold of consciousness, a flock to whom eternal life is given, must refer to that which is redeemed and immortal in man.  In this passage, Jesus indicates that man’s ego is not of the herd-instinct represented by the sheep.  Ego is not motivated by the impulse to belong and follow.  Ego is shepherd: the sense of one being as self, and the differentiations of personality, the sheep, follow it – or, straying from this sense of certainty in being, are lost and must be found.

Man knows himself to be a flock of selves searching always to find the Self of selves to give direction to these composite lives.  Therefore, in this study the term, ego-group, will be used to designate the selves of the conscious domain and the term, Authority-Ego, will be used to designate the one governing factor of the ego-group, “I” in man which has its being in the unconscious.

I’ve never before entertained the idea or possibility that when Jesus is talking about His “sheep” He is discussing his own inner life!  Well I’ll be, huh?

As for the “resurrection…of countless former egos” and of man being “a flock of selves,” I will have much to say in the near future.  But for now we are ready to explore the superego and it’s role in our unconscious, which we will do in the next post.  Until then, peace…