On Becoming Rational

On Becoming Rational

Most people do not need therapy. More people get it than really need it. What is needed is more information about the dynamics of our internal functioning. Mental balance/well-being is our natural equalibriative condition, to which we resettle automatically if we just stay out of our own way. Humans are automatically resilient. But we automatically are participating in a mental evolutionary process which is cyclical; so, if healthy, our thoughts and emotions constantly progress in an non-linear, upward cycle, perceived as natural ups-and-downs, always tending to increasing wisdom. We can’t help learning as we go. It is a recent development in our collective evolution that we are now much more aware of the fact that we are multi-leveled organisms, and we are focusing on it. We have noticed that we have an external level of existence, and a very significant, separate inner level. Though the two are very intimately involved with the other, the mind is not the body. Some speculate that the mind arrises from the body, but that is not the case. In fact, it is the other way around; the body is actually an out-birth of the mind. Our minds come into being gradually, along with the body, manifesting over time. The brain is not the mind. When I refer to the mind I mean consciousness itself. The relation between the brain and consciousness is properly described within the framework of the philosophy of metaphysical Idealism. A satisfactory explanation of this requires a detour that is too lengthy for now. A complete description is in my book, The Personal Universe.

The outward appearance of a baby, small and helpless, is a reflection of the consciousness within. Babies know nothing at all except how to suck. Our minds posses no content at first, only some innate abilities, but these skills are only active in rudimentary form, mostly as potentials requiring development. If the potential skills are not cultivated, they might become stunted into a seeming state of non-existence. The primary skill I am here concerned with is our ability to reason. Our inborn ability to reason first starts to appear in childhood, and if it is properly cultivated and nurtured, it can grow and if brought to fruition. Reasoning can become rationality. We have the innate ability to sequence experiences, create a context for the relative position of phenomena, and assign meanings to all objects. This occurs in our consciousness. The sequencing is experienced as progress, i.e. time, and the relative positioning is experienced as space. The meanings we choose serve as a bridge to our inner levels of consciousness. Actual rationality is created by us through the use of our talent for reason. This creation of rationality requires intentionality. The ability to reason is a gift of life, the state of rationality does not happen automatically. To become rational is a choice. We are free to become rational if we want to, and if we exercise our minds properly.

As physio/psycho beings, our inner development is a secondary stage. Human consciousness is an ongoing dynamic unfolding. Initially, in our youth, consciousness is entirely embedded in nature (spacetime), consciousness is interwoven with the body and its concerns/states. Somewhere along the way an awakening occurs, when the mind becomes aware of its own elevated independent existence: we discover that we are actually spiritual beings evolving within outward natural shell of concerns. This moment marks the birth of our individual rationality. Our enuring aspect is the combination of will and intellect. This is our spirit: will, seat of our affections, desires and our emotive experience, plus our understanding, our cognitive element. The two combined are the ultimate form of our existence. The true essence of Reality is consciousness and it is spiritual. Time and space are not the creators of reality, they are a framework of order supporting the essential reality we gradually discover. We slowly discover our true rational selves, and we discover that we have the ability to choose the eventual form that the self we have been given will become. As we assume the full responsibility for our life, we eventually also gain increasing internal control of our place in the spacetime level that we inhabit with the lower levels of our consciousness.

Rationality is a state of consciousness characterized by a stable, harmonious, objectively informed, inter-related dynamic balance between the natural and spiritual levels of the mind, as we have become well informed of the facts of the organization of the external and internal conditions through which we exist. To become rational, that is attain a state of harmony between our inner and outer levels, we must know that the inner level exists in a distinct state above the external level, and the distinct spiritual level must be established as an independent autonomous reality.

Natural states of consciousness are subject to spiritual forces. Spiritual forces are the ideals of goodnesses and truths, but there are also negative (evil and false) spiritual forces. Goodness is not just an essence, it is a force. In fact, it is the supreme force. Truth has real power. It should be known that goodness and truth are actually a single, unified reality. Truth is the cognitive form of good, and there is no truth that is not also good. This philosophical principle is well developed by Swedenborg in Divine Love and Wisdom.

Natural consciousness is combined mental and emotive states which flow from physically centered agendas and paradigms, both personal and collective. If we learn the order that governs the spiritual level, we can apply spiritual influence to our natural mind and effect positive change. The consequent physical phenomenal experience will then also improve. Rationality recognizes spiritual influences, and uses them to modify and control natural states of consciousness. Our thoughts and emotions are the essence and foundation of reality; within the individual, these thoughts and emotions flow into consciousness from the spiritual or the natural level, meaning we are either working from a spiritual paradigm or a natural one. and they effect our external bodies, and our experienced phenomenal world, our relationship to the overall shared phenomenal reality. Awareness of the spiritual (emotive and cognitive) realities which impact us is crucial. The thoughts and emotions we embrace determine the quality of our spiritual life, and the thoughts and emotions generated by our society are also spiritual forces impacting us profoundly, which must be managed. These spiritual forces are cognitive and emotive. (I will use the term ‘spiritual’ to signify the combined emotive and cognitive aspects of our being.) Prolonged anxiety (a spiritual state) can produce physiological results such as high blood pressure. Also, emotional drivers create behaviors like laziness, binge eating, and alcohol and drug use/abuse. These physiological effects and negative behaviors can be brought under control by first establishing a distinction in our rationality between what is spiritual and what is strictly physical. We must attain a deep understanding of the fact that reality is consciousness. Our thoughts and emotions are the generative basis of all our behaviors and experiences in life, and we have the ability to take control of all of it. With determination and discipline we can master the recurrent intellectual cognitive contents (philosophies, beliefs, and thoughts) and the affections, desires, and emotions; we are not created to be victims of these things. Embracing sound emotive and cognitive content will produce improved external outcomes. We must learn to properly govern our will and our understanding.

The spiritual (heart and mind) level of reality is the level of cause. The external (phenomenal) level is the level of effects. The first step of actually becoming a spiritual person is to discard the natural idea of self, our idea that we exist primarily as an individual in an independent physical context, and instead find a sense of identity within and in harmony with Universal Humanity, existing within and above the physical level, transcending it, but not dismissing it. When we have properly established ourselves as a spiritual person this means that our primary motives are no longer self-centered. We understand our unity with all other spiritual people, and our unity within the Divine Collective Humanity. We are no longer focused on externally oriented desires and ambitions, instead we have eternal ambitions. We work to discipline our personal emotions and cognitions, and we endeavor to contribute to the betterment of the collective consciousness. This new spiritual paradigm is true rationality, because it is totally reasonable relative to the conditions we encounter within the complete, objective, universal human existence, including both the spiritual worlds, and the natural world. It is not possible to be spiritual and natural at the same time. Jesus said, “no one can serve two masters: for either he will hate

the one, and love the other; or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24) Once the primacy of the cognitive and emotive level is recognized, externals become much less important; they are only adjunct to the spiritual. Our consciousness does fluctuate between enlightened and unenlightened states. Once enlightened, we can’t possibly actually forget what we have learned. We can however get caught up in the external dramas that surround us, temporarily lose sight of our spiritual knowledges, and fall down amongst the savages, to defend our external concerns. This is actually all right and good as long as it is tempered by the love that remains in the deeper level of our heart. This is our prime spiritual motive which we had genuinely established previously. The Divine allows us to fall out of heaven to the earth, and even into hell if we need to learn. The regenerative process is cyclical, but spirals ever upward. We cycle through selfish stages and tendencies, so we can gradually outgrow them, eventually finding and abiding in a state of transcendent wisdom.

Our thoughts and emotions cause our bodies to manifest physical results. Negative states of heart and mind will eventually cause negative physical effects. Positive spiritual states will eventually cause positive physical effects. Rationality forms the bridge between the two levels. Rationality sees what is present spiritually, and determines which spiritual forces will be allowed to flow down into the natural level to become a physical reality. Rationality is neither unconscious nor non-intentional. It exists only in a state of mental freedom which is born of knowledge. We attain spiritual (cognitive and emotive) freedom through educating ourselves about the rules of order which form the basis of the universe. Freedom means mastery. If we have attained spiritual freedom this means that we can control what we will think and what we will feel, deliberately, using higher-level truth. We have put our hearts and minds into an ordered state. The Divine is Order Itself. The essence of God is Love, the manifestation of God is Order. The essence of our being is the gift of individual freedom (control) within the Divine Order, the manifestation of our being is realized in developing and empowering our rationality.

Anxiety is an irrational internal state, that is the result of a combination of erroneous philosophies and thoughts and misguided values and emotions. Those thoughts and emotions are not self generated. The structural basis of the individual may be described as a consciousness vessel capable of receiving spiritual or natural influx. That vessel does not generate thoughts and emotions, it receives them, they flow in. We are one individualization within a universal spiritual organism which Swedenborg called The Grand Man, or The Divine Humanity. Early in our development, on the spiritual level, we are held in equilibrium, equally influenced by the forces of good and the forces of evil, this establishes us in freedom, midway between the two. As we progress through our life, making choices, we are gradually aligning ourselves with either heaven or hell. Beyond the grave we find our home among those with whom we find the greatest similarity and harmony. We go to live with angelic beings if we harmonize with them, or we will choose a life among the diabolical if we feel like we connect with that crew. The various philosophies (truths) and the various values we embrace determine what sort of spiritual company we keep. We think and feel in harmony with that community. Right now you have both angels and devils whispering in your ears. One is the voice of love, trust, hope, peace, goodwill, unselfishness, etc. The other is the voice of hate, fear and despair, self-righteousness, unforgiveness, malice, violence and revenge, selfish ambition, and disregard for the less fortunate. Which of these attitudes we embrace determines the thoughts and feelings that appear, and reappear in our consciousness. Eventually we become a manifested form of the thoughts and emotions we embrace as our own, we become angelic or we become demonic.

If the voice of anxiety is ringing in our ears, generating a undesirable internal state, we can use our rationality to neutralize that voice. Our rationality must be equipped with spiritual and natural knowledge in order to have the necessary power to effect the changes we desire. If we desire peace and well-being, informed rationality is necessary. Multi-level knowledge is power.

Swedenborg’s presentation of the structure of the mind, and the individual’s membership in the collective consciousness, runs somewhat counter to the popular psychological theories that view the mind as a thing. The unconscious mind, conceived as a thing, having content, this idea combined with the theoretical idea of an inborn, human nature, possessed by each individual as a foundational character are the rudimentary essential theories of most psychotherapies. Therapists try to “get to the root” of psychological upsets by trying to make the content of the unconscious mind conscious, and facilitate character adjustments. Swedenborg describes the mind as an empty vessel, that receives influx from the various levels of reality, including direct influx from the Divine, which is the ultimate source of our life. The other influxes are from our natural society and our spiritual society. These influences can be mitigated and controlled if we are aware of them. The past is past, and only affects the present according to our choice to resuscitate and sustain it. Popular psychological theories postulates the existence of complexes, which are described as powerful objectified structures in the unconscious composed of clusters of emotions, memories, perceptions and wishes. There is understood to be an individual unconscious, and a collective unconscious, each containing these theoretical complexes. The fact of the matter is that these ‘things’ do exist, because we believe in them. The past is present with power as long as we allow it to effect us. Our baggage is very real as long as we drag it around. But once we realize our dynamic reality as an autonomous spiritual being (a state of consciousness), we can drop the past and the baggage, and it will become quiescent (dormant, without effect). When we recognize the source of the influx of thoughts and feelings, as from outside of us, not self-generated by our own being, we can separate our sense of identity with those thoughts and feelings, and choose others. We can choose the spiritual (and to a more limited degree the natural), company we keep, and an entirely new state of consciousness is attained. We can do this both as individuals and as a society. This is enlightenment. As the Buddhists teach, the past, with its baggage, is recognized as illusory. The unconscious mind, as a thing, is an illusion. If we are unconscious of the influx of spiritual and natural society, “the unconscious” is an issue, but it is not granted the status of an object of existence. Influx is not a thing, it is a stream of energy, and we can simply find our way into a new stream. The unconscious influx no longer exists as something driving us once we become conscious of it; then we are enlightened, and free, spiritual beings .